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Archive for the ‘LD #18 – Enemies as Weapons – 2010’ Category
Grabitas: FINISHED!

Got the game finished, complete with enemies that actually shoot. Check it out. I didn’t have quite as much time as I would’ve liked to tune the difficulty curve, but it seems to be close enough to what it ought to be.
Grabitas: progress report 07

Scoring and difficulty progression done. Almost there…
Grabitas: progress report 06

Two hours to go, and I have added background music and eye candy. Still no scoring or enemy bullets.
I really need to work on setting priorities.
Grabitas: progress report 04 and 05 because I forgot to publish rather than preview

Improved grabbing, added sounds, enemies turn red when they’re damaged. All in all some decent progress.
All right, 7 hours left. Finally, this is the kind of pressure that I can work under.

Player now takes damage when colliding with enemies. Added some kludgey code to avoid wonky behavior. Almost playable.
5 hours remaining. Need to implement scoring, write music, and add more enemy types.
Grabitas: progress report 03

Implemented enemy grabbing, flinging, and damaging. Now we’re actually getting somewhere. Still debating how exactly bullets are going to work.
Grabitas: progress report 02

Starting to implement enemy behavior. Not a lot of progress, but it’s something.
This is actually going to be an actual game with actual gameplay, I promise.
Grabitas: Progress report 01

So I’ve been slacking off brainstorming design ideas for a while now, and have settled on something like a fast-paced arena shooter. And a title. Right now I have tentative player movement implemented, and… that’s about it.
So thoughts:
I’ve got some ideas coming together of specific mechanics I want to play with. My inclination is to wrap those in an action/platformer game, but platformer engines with good solid physics are kind of a pain to write. Maybe it’ll turn into more of a beat-em-up.
Enemies as Weapons!
Sweet. This is one of my favorite themes in games, so I’m pretty excited about what I could do with this. Time for a bit of brainstorming, then some feasibility assessment to narrow down designs.
Inspiration on the topic of Enemies as Weapons: TUMIKI Fighters (adding on), Pokemon (capturing), Kirby (absorbing abilities – or more pertinently, wielding directly in Kirby 64), Rayhound (redirecting attacks), Mischief Makers (enemies as projectiles).
Framework use declaration
I’ll be using this Processing project skeleton – the same one that I use for my weekly games – as a basis for my LD #18 compo entry. Mostly, it’s just so I don’t need to reimplement things like a main loop and particle effects for every game I make.
Other tools that are likely to feature prominently include sfxr, PXTone, Audacity, and possibly The GIMP if I bother making a game with graphics this time.


