Here is the video:

And some advices:

• Use space to pause the game and issue many commands at once
• Remember about center of mass when you try to push
• Relaxed parts absorb shocks, stiff ones bounce, so its a good idea to be relaxed when you don’t want to bounce, or stiff all parts when you want to push with maximal force
• And it is space, if you are flying in right direction just relax and wait, no need to go crazy and ruin your right direction

Hope this will help some.

Go to the entree page and try yourself

As usual my tools will be Flash, depending on theme may use Box2d. That’s it I guess

Well I am off to “polishing” my tools using old LD entries and other experiments

As for game/idea/progress here is a screenshot

Basically I am going for something top down with massive amount of creatures. Want to finish basic game mechanics and technical stuff today and spend tomorrow adding graphics and sounds and polishing it, may be adding some more features. Will see how it goes by the end of first day. On game mechanics front nothing special, did not got any particularly good ideas so going with what I got

Also setting is mostly undecided, initially wanted to go for insects but now thinking to switch to spaceships

As for idea, don’t have any in particular that I like at the moment. Theme seem to not inspire me to anything original with mechanics that were not overused already… Infestation games with zombies… Some top down arena survival games with possession mechanics. Or again top down survival games but with dodging and using enemies to kill each other. Mostly things I played hundredths of times already and making one more does not inspire me at the moment. Thinking hardly on what to do with theme like that.

I participated in 6 LDs so far producing something playable only 2 times. Have bad habit of trying something technically complex and new for me which ends up eating too much of my time… Kind of doubt that this time will be different but hope it will

Tools? That depends on the theme and my idea for it. Probably Flash for assets and interface, Flash develop for coding + my own code  snippets but majority being coded a new considering my programming knowledge/style. There is chance that I will decide to use some engine/library depending on the idea. They include Box2d/Flixel/Flash Punk. But I kind of doubt that as I do not have good enough knowledge of them to feel comfortable with them. Same goes for Unity 3D, started checking it out few weeks ago but since then interest faded a bit + did not had much time for it. Still chances are pretty slim as I find 3D games to be a hard thing to fill with content in short amount of time.

Checked today an Alchemy port of Box2D from here, from looks of it it seems easy and fun thing, a WYSIWYG physics tuning that allows seamless Flash animation and Box2D physics combination. But only from the looks of it. Still things to learn and code to write for each separate case of such Flash/Box2D binding.

P.S I sure hope Swords or Swordfights wins

As for this LD, I am little bit sick right now + will be busy with some other things so chances of me producing some game are very slim but there are some. Depends if I will like the theme and will have some small casual idea for it that I can finish in half of time or something.

As for tools then as before Flash, may be some engines like Box2D/Pushbutton/Flixel etc but I doubt it as I am aiming for something simple.

• Obviously I got good game idea
• Physics turned out well
• Game mechanic was fun
• Interface turned out to be simple, not buggy, etc. For 12h spent it is weird

What well wrong:

• Failed to make more complex graphics because most I tried made it lag fast
• Made mistake of making game time constrained. Should have been some ind of resource constrained. Thing is that most fun is aiming probe well and exploring planet or even few in one show. Time constraint rather made you shot a lot of average shots instead of aiming really carefully which is bad.
• Probably 1/3 of time spend was spent on things that did not work… Would have been good to spend it more on polishing core mechanics and game aims.
• I added only a mouse-wheel based zoom. That was a mistake as Mac users have problems in Flash with that (tough I head Flash player release on 9 December 2009 should have fixed that, can’t confirm)  Also users playing on notebook without mouse had problems too…

What now:

• Well firstly I think I will make one more version of it removing time limit and adding some “probes per planet” limit. Should make it more fun. May be I will try adding a little bit more graphical things.
• As for large game based on idea I think I will but it on hold. Needs a lot of content and thinkering on technical sides of it(there are some). Exploring idea for enemies and war, AI, etc. I have some other game ideas that have less of such complications so for time being I will not make it in to a full game. In time being I welcome anyone to try and make their versions of the idea Just bother to send me a note/mail. Would like to see it  and play it
• Need to add alternative to mouse zooming.

Longer version of how it went

Day 1.  Well woke up and read the theme. Started brainstorming for ideas and come to two options. First I considered was some top down exploration game based on this my older experiment Alone in the Dark But quickly came to a conclusion that it will be aether boring or too complex(high chances on not finishing) so started to think about second idea.

Second idea. Basically solar system exploration game based on rocket lunching with trajectories. In short idea was to build some model of solar system with planets divided on to regions. First you need to send satellites to find planets and then orbit them to find info on the regions. Then you can send colony ships to colonize some regions. This is that some regions give bonuses and on some it is not possible to land at all. So you also have test probes. They fly in a same way as colony ships but should be something like a lot cheaper. So you lunch those until you are shore you can hit needed region with your colony ships. Of course all ships should have some fuel/distance/view area limitations. Idea seemed very basic and not so hard to make + original at least to some extant + probably fun + easy to extend in myriad of direction adding tech tries, enemies, some defense mechanics, anything

Well all that planing cost me 1-2 hours. I had still 2-3 hours left that day to start making something. Well I set down and made solar system generator with all the rotation and simple graphics in a half of an hour probably. And then hit my first problem. In usual strategies stuff is usually stationary. I mean level and usually buildings are. But in my case everything was always in a move… So I went for following camera target scheme without possibility to wonder with it around but with large zooming. Was not shore it would work well. Also I got stuck here for probably some 2 hours not managing to make proper camera code It is simple but probably long week of work had it toll on my brain and I spent probably 2 hours on thing that really should take 15-30 minutes… Well another thing I spent my time on thinking how to make regions on the planets and how to color them. That was really problematic… Did this in a process. Turned out that it was too laggy and would take time making textures. There was another idea for how to make it but my time was up. Spent something like an hour thinking about this problem and trying this radial texturing.

Day 2. Well it was clear that I will not have regions in time so I scraped that part. Added physics, simple probes, collisions. Took me some 3-4 hours. Then got stuck for 2 hours making fog of war… Turned out that adding even very minimalistic effects (smooth transition on a border of fog, separate view area circles for planets and probes so that you can see which sees which etc) was bringing performance to some 10Fps with 30 probes flying Well you can see what I ended up with. Good I can have more then 30 particles without lags there. Haven’t tested how many tough.

Well spent two more hours polishing parameters, adding screens and sounds.

So yeah here is first screen shot I am posting.You can see sun, two colonized planets, and 3 other planets that are not yet colonized + many moons

Progress

Unfortunately I am bit tired from long week + have many other things piled up from week so I had only some 8 hours to work on the idea… And it progresses very slowly   Also some technical parts of it gave me problems as I have pretty large maps that should be zoomed out/in a lot and still look well and do not lag… Ending up with pretty simple representation in vectors because of it. Also fog of war without lags took some time and looks very simplistic… Ahh… Anyways I almost finished minimalistic part and will probably switch to doing interface/start menu/game over/help screens soon.

Idea

As I wrote yesterday I went with space exploration theme based on my older idea for a game. It basically is based on single game mechanic of lunching rockets in a solar system with more or less real gravitation physics.

I picked this theme because it scales well and seemed as minimal part of it would not be that technically complicated. Well I was little bit wrong… Anyways at max this idea would give me kind of civilization+rocket physics combo. You have mother planet from which you can lunch satellites to find new planets and explore their environment and territories, then prepare colony ship for some territory on planet surface (say ocean or mountains or something) and start lunching probes trying to land them on the territory you want. When successful you lunch colony ship on the same trajectory, if you miss you loose the ship, if you hit you get new colony which you can then expand getting new lunch site + resources + experience etc etc. You can expand the idea in any direction like adding meteorites, aliens, etc…

And idea minimum would be some more casual game where you need in short period of time to colonize as many planets as possible without any resources/ship types/experience and level up complications. Well in the end I am going for this minimum Other things to do and damn how slow and unproductive I am this time Spending hours on some things worth 15 minutes…. Well at least I will have something playable this time.

Well back to work.

Well first thing that come to my mind was to reuse this experiment Alone In Darkness So some dark caverns exploration with a twist of not seeing much all the time. Other then that traps, treasures and stuff… Buuut I don’t think that it is such a good idea… Lot needs to be done technically and probably making graphics for it won’t be so simple aether.

Another direction of my toughs was space exploration and I think I will go with that. I had idea for such game for a long time but it is too complex for 48hours so I will be cutting that idea down to simple elements for next few hours and trying to gather some prototype code together too see if has any promise at all. Wish me luck while I wish you all luck with making cool games in next 1-2 days

This time I am not shore how much time I will have and how creative my mood will be so probably if I will try making something it will be simple/small with intent to finish something.

As for tools as usual Flash AS3 + my code, probably will not be using any libs except for may be some Box2D in case theme and game idea will need some solid physics.

Here is my last result:

So idea was pretty simple after I finished with tuning up my experimental water physics… Game would be called something like A.W.C.A.F.I.T or Asteroids.With.Caverns.And.Fuel.In.Them. Idea is that spaceship traveling trough space sometimes stops at asteroids and tries to got fuel from them. Game mechanics are kind of simple. You need to use rotation of asteroid and gravity to bring fluid to place you dig a hole in it.

So as things are now I will not be able to finish it (at least at a level of quality I want) in time so probably I will stay it at that and finish it properly later this week.

For those who are interested in progress here I assembled all 4 versions of my development here. Good luck to everyone who are trying to finish now.

So now I will go eat something and will be turning it in to a game as it is only a toy right now. Considering not much time is left it will be something really simple… Should have been at that stage yesterday and not today heh

I was thinking in participating but was not shore. So I decided to filter out my ideas that do not fall under Explore and concetrate only one those who are + those which I will be able to extend in a month to make in a better/bigger game then LD usually allows. And in same time try to finish something playable by tomorrows night.

Anyways here is my current progress:

Click to open at DeviantArt page as for some reason it does not work here for me Shows up in Media embedder but in post it self does not show…

Decided to test one my old idea for how to find normal of surface defined by a picture. And it worked

How to use: Click to generate new map. When mouse is over ground it shows a normal vector of collision in that point. When not it spawns water particles. So far not collisions among water particles but already looks promising I wonder if I will be able to have enough particles and did not hit wall of Flash performance

As for my working place here

Just sofa and my good old notebook… Need to scrap it and buy new one… 3 years old already…

Well anyways. Have 3-4 ideas and will probably be testing them together today. Then will decide which to finish/polish tomorrow.

So far here:

Small experiment on on creating caverns randomly using PerlinNoise  and some bitmap filtering effects. Click image to see Flash file itself. Use sliders and other controls to change how it looks and hit save to save it as image. Looks not bad so far

As in previous times will be using Flash. May be some open source physics engine depending on the theme like Box2D. Also may be some of my code libs for user interface and may be physics. Nothing special tough. Doubt it will have any sounds or good graphics as I am no musician or designer but may end up using Photoshop or this srfx(for first time) everyone  is talking about here. Probably will need to test it out on Friday before it all starts.

Saturday

9:00 – Read theme and went to sport gym.
13:00 – Back and ready to develop Decided to use some opensource engine as result should be opensource. Started to look for some.
13:15 – Well sourceforge was having some problems so I was not able to download box2D AS3 remake. Well I went for APE

16:00 – Took me some time to read documentation and try to fix few things engine lacked and produced this. Well seeing current game you can see why I dropped the idea of using APE This is not even close to my needs Source forge was still buggy and I could not download box2d sources so I took a break with watching some Heroes series and eating.

18:00 – Returned from break Heroes were intriguing Well started to read forum about AS3 version of box2D hoping that sourceforge will fix problems soon. Well it did and I started to experiment.

Sunday

1:30 – Finished experimenting with box2D. Made graphics you see right now and hand platforms and randomly falling but still buggy blokes. Probably you may say that some 30-40% of game was ready.

9:00 – Got up and while eating my ordinary breakfast was writing journal about my progress. Watched another episode of heroes and went to shop for pizza ingredients and some cola.

11:00 – returned to work on crystal towers.

16:00 – Well finished writing controller class. Tested all blocks. Finished PlayerMimiker for replays and tested it a bit. And went to a break with pizza and some more episodes of heroes

18:00 – Returned to work. Well got to a stage i hated really much. Making a working user interface. Flash IDE is bad for that… I hope they will merge Flesh with Flex sometime in future. So somewhere after 4 hours of programming my brain was a mess. I started to get lost in my project and feared to break something in a last moment.

Monday

2:30 – Finished my Final version and posted it.

Conclusion

Well I suppose that it was stupid of me to nto experement with engines on week before but I was not shore if I participate and was not shore waht to experement on before competition. Well I ended up learning two Flash physics engiens over weekends Other then that everything went smooth probably beocse I tried to keep things simple.

Okay. Well first two days i was mostly getting feedback and trying to restore my brain to usable state Yesterday started to implement all changes that i hope will make game more fun.

You can still access old version and sources trough links in my Final journal.

And here is new version:

Changes:

Movement – now you can speed up block and it does not loose speed when you release the key. Makes it easier many ways as far as I can say in Try it and say what you think.

Rotating – I finally understood how to rotate block on precise angle. So now blocks rotate to 15 degrees per one press or 450 degrees per second if you hold the key. May be I should make rotation slower but seems almost right now.

Block spawning – now blocks spown with random angle applied to them. Well not really random but n*15 degrees. I didn’t liked what I saw in replays so far. People preferred not to rotate blocks And I don’ like that

Next thing about block spawning is that you don’t lose control over block instantly. You loose it after a second. So you can still try to fit it better or even push other block where you want them. Then also all blocks friction was raised making structures more stable. But until you loose control of block its friction and mass are very small so that you could slide it in to tight places without fearing to push other blocks too much. After you loose control over it friction is turned on and mass is set to original one.

Replay code – after remaking controls i remade how replay code is encoded. Before size of replay was 28 bytes of header with game global info like random seed and scores + n bytes of you nickname. And then it was encoding information on player actions. Before size of player actions was 45 bytes per frame if you push all 5 buttons each frame But old control style was so that it was usually 0-2 actions per frame making it 0-18 bytes. Well I rewrote encoder to make it a lot smaller. Now it is 0-3 bytes per frame. But it seems that current control styles makes player to push buttons more frequently which resolves in more frames encoded then before. So it seems that replays didn’t get much smaller…

Camera – when camera is fixed on controlled object it looks slightly lower then it. No need to look higher

Bug fixes

- Problem with Space dropping resolved because of control style changes.

- Added wordwrap to replay menu so that all code is seen.

- Fixed highscore row sizes and redesigned scroll bar.

- Fixed problems with controller class sometime remembering last game input in next game.

- Fixed some menu navigation bugs

Known issues

- Ok it seems that my changes broke replay system. IT works fine at start but wrong afterwards… Will need to see what is difference…

Things still to add

- Redesigning highscore rows to fit graphic better

- Add next block field too see what falls next

- Adding speed up and slow down to replay system. Still experimenting with different ways of doing it…

- Finding ways to optimize this game without breaking current game style. Have few ideas to try.

- May be adding ‘Look down’ to see what is below. Not shore it is needed. What you think?

- Adding sounds

- Finding some suiting music. Have some music to share?

And here is some replay. Not a record but some unusual style Warning, game may lag with so many blocks Height is 112 meters

eNoFwVto0GUcx+H)9-d-D7-3-V+08mJRBqOxMEvqYmF0mLTKAjEzRBZ2JFxmMIUikEDLQ6hNTUjD

MDJ(F0EuJS(mdIA0GTJCdCku1y(vugkroosUe(6NI2MXft+xr3)v+svzUxlaM7Sy-+cXt-S)Dw7S

Kb(hjtELfc5CWNbBU7DV2OnshY)OCIw6n8BR8Q2cEqfhN+MiXBJ-oy7TLVW3uX(Rn2sRWiwtQ8ul

(9Hz(hfQZukNtF)ahcZdJ9G0awb9afoLu8qsA+uR3Yz1yRZgT5itxjbKdmD7Ze9hZ2XnseliF9Vc

TdNjzYM0T6(ZRfO6mk00b6oZ(vnMmqM0X3vzHc1(NZMEKRihQ2EWocfC)MISC0sJKy0MEbZY2EbY

4+EdwgGFjwmfWxgjjCtMEM4(nCcWi53EXo-ziXcr)kxcovgYccDi48T3LR4iHvf4)fGE4hnilMUL

xD8ULxEvK14h3WV(MWlQ6RXSeqXXSFtD2kbarfQ26QOlD0kfWT(EmrQ0RZrx9Av5WuXryF3K3eRb

leeR71)uJ6+1-BJ5nedXyds9D5N-UD5F)qc8hV9j)gufbd6F3+h+Ez7X-Xb8nuB9+)3yh-BF8kfw

5eYD+L)mz+Gr5Wvw-eYj+Kj7Efxb92)Fj8sn8D)u)+Iz5r-i-8mvUO5VWUB5wMtCyoDKCsoqK+so

G1Q2UbaHMkzZo7K)ckDlIGVU5TDlS5WvK)9Y+ZdKqKJerzqbOkd1LnWt1Ze(G7xu(u7y+hb1C9Ux

6jHVE9STqh)USatnqT9Znaa9QW037R1q76R91NultCusfYZ2t7Xv0h5W+yn-A23nj1k=

Ok here is my final entry. It is far from being polished but I am up for 17 hours 12 of which were programming… My brains are messy now

So no sounds, no bunch of planed effects and sleek interface… And output codes may not be forum friendly… Not time to test and debug but mostly game works.

Also sorry for English don’t have willpower to go and check if I did some mistakes and ofcourse there are bugs and glitches

But at least I did everything I wanted from mechanics point of view. Enjoy this game and share bugs and replays here plz.

Image

Links:

EXE file

Browser version

Source FLA and AS files

Well source codes. Half of the time I was waging war with interface which resulted in really messy structure and some bad dependencies. Also I go tired of commenting so I am not shore if it will be of any use to anyone

Used Box2DFlashAS3_2.0.1 and some my utilities of my own