I had some reports that the ZIP file for Broken Cave Robot was corrupt… but I also had plenty of people download it just fine.

I reuploaded the thing anyway, just to be safe. So if you tried once and it was corrupted, it should be fixed now.

Wow… I’m still shaking from the excitement of that final crunch.  I worked on the game pretty much all day today only breaking for necessary bodily functions.  Got it submitted less than one minute before the deadline.  And I’m really pleased with how it came out!  Yesterday I hated it, but today everything seemed to click together like a jigsaw puzzle.

And I had a BLAST making the music.  I recorded and edited it all in Audacity.  I performed it on a little quarter-size Denver acoustic guitar I bought a couple weeks ago for a camping trip ($100 CAD).  I also used a Bluesband harmonica (just a cheap little thing).  As for the microphone… it’s just a crappy $40 Logitech thing from Future Shop I bought for voicechat in online games.  I uploaded the soundtrack as a separate ZIP file as well, for anyone who’s interested: http://mattmakesgames.com/soundtracks/BrokenCaveRobotSoundtrack.zip

Overall I’m happy with all the weird little ideas I got to try out in this game.  The first two days consisted of me dumping every idea I had into the game – today was me sewing it all together.

My game, now titled “Broken Cave Robot”, is nearing completion. 2 hours left! Still need to do one more track of music, one or two more levels, and some testing. Getting tired, but must go on.

Bad news! Yesterday I had to help my aunt move, which took up most of the day. But I’m still slaving away, desperately trying to make this thing fun to play. I started off with just a random assortment of ideas and no real direction, so the final game will likely reflect that. Oh well, some of those random ideas are actually pretty cool! I’m excited to see what people think of them.

Anyways: new screenshot + music to show off!

Broken Cave Robot

Yeah!  Lighting system done!

This trance music has increased my productivity ten-fold: http://www.philosomatika.com/

So I’ve got a Super Metroid-style map system and a simple platformer engine running in Game Maker.  The map system lets me have rooms of any rectangular dimensions fit together in any pattern and lets the player transition correctly from room to room.

Still no clue where I’m going with this, but it seems to be going somewhere!  Screenshots as soon as I have something worth looking at (it’s all just colorful boxes right now).

This is my first LD, and I’m super excited to see what happens.  I plan to use either Game Maker or FlashDevelop + Flixel.  Probably Game Maker if my game demands lots of level design, but FlashDevelop + Flixel if I do something more arcadey/procedural.

Other tools I may or may not use include: PXTone, Audacity, SFXR, GIMP, Paint.NET, a mic, a webcam, a tablet and a guitar.

Let’s do this!