Following on from what I made in the compo, I’m going to try and build upon it’s underlying ideas and concepts. Currently, I’m experimenting with moving the core of the game over into a Unity project… slowly getting there

Yep, slowly getting there

Currently on my check-list of things that (I think) would be awesome for the game:

• Multiple “floors”
• More use of lighting
• More interesting turrets
• Better level transitions
• Level editor (A must )
• Treasure

Once I’ve got the basis of it working in Unity, I’ll post a test build of it and some more info about what I’m trying to get out of it

Following on from my first post mortem… I’ve uploaded pictures of the notes that I took throughout the comp.

First things first, I finally got the timelapse to upload!

Discoverer – 48H Timelapse

Now onto the post mortem.

What Worked

1. The Idea
   The idea was simple enough.What I’ve found from working on other projects, is that I tend to get carried away with the idea, and never actually work on the game itself. So for the LD I forced myself to set out the idea, and then not to alter the idea too much (Slight variations were okay though!)
2. Enemies as Turrets
   Having the enemies as turrets turned out to be better in the end (In my opinion anyway ). Rather than have crummy AI that wouldn’t have been able to follow the player properly, the turret concept got better the more I went with it, and started to explore ways in using the concept more (Teleporting turrets anyone? ).
3. Simple Graphics
   I know that I’m not a good graphics artist, and that to pull off anything fancy, I have to take time. Having said that, I think that I’ve done a good job of it’s looks, even if it was a bit “quick and dirty”.

What Didn’t Work (As Expected)

1. Map Generation
   The map generation was quite appalling in the end. I had envisioned that the generator would build structures and challenges that got more complex as the player went though the game. But in the end I ran out of time, and it never really progressed. When I do a “remake” of this project after the comp, map generation is definitely on the list of things to fix.

What Never Made It In

Challenges... never quite made it in...

1. Weapons / Treasure Chests
   I had also planned that the player would get more powerful weapons as they progressed through the game, but in the end, it was left out as the mechanic wasn’t in place, which meant that having it in there would have broken the style of gameplay that I was going for.Again, this is one of the things that I hope to fix when I look at it again.
2. Challenges
   Something else that I had hoped to have working in the final version of the game, but it never did make it in. If they were in, they would have been like the boss levels, except that they wouldn’t have been required to progress through the game.
3. The Final Boss
   The final boss, also, never made it. It The idea was that after you had gotten the 4 keys from each of the arms, you would then fight a final boss before finishing the game. Ah well, maybe in 2.0

And that’s that done. Now to downgrade the required framework from 4.0 to 3.5 (Or even 3.0!)

Update: Have uploaded another copy of the game that targets C#2.0 instead of C#4.0 (Source code included, slight alterations to some files, optional paramaters aren’t supported by C#2.0 ), the download link for it can be found on the submission page.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=3094

http://mitchdev.com/projects/ld19/

Note: The game requires that version 4 of the .NET Framework is installed on your computer. You can download it from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0a391abd-25c1-4fc0-919f-b21f31ab88b7

Overall, it was a very fun experience building a game in 48 hours

I’ll write a post-mortem in the next day or so, and I’ll also upload my chronolapse video either later on today or tomorrow (Waiting for 12:30 (AEST) to come around, before I start to edit it). I’ll also attempt to port the code over to Linux as well (That might be a challenge!)

EDIT: Fixed a few small problems. All should be good now!

So, I’ve finally nailed the way the game handles the storing of “keys”.

Hurrah! A UI!

The game is 95% playable. You should be able to complete the first arm (The north facing one). I’m going to improve upon the map generator (It really sucks at the moment), fix up some tiles, and complete the remaining arms. And then do the “final battle” stuff.

Also, I’ll stick in a backstory so there is a motive to actually play the game too

If you want’s to give it a try, you can download it from here.

Keys:

WASD – Move

E – Action Key

R – Reload

LMB – Shoot

Finally settled on a name for the game, Discoverer. Has a nice ring to it

Progressing along nicely, finally fixed the problem where projectiles were missing the players bounding box. Have decided that the player must fight a boss in order to get the key that allows them to “finish the game, and find out the secret”

Back to coding!

Here’s my progress over the last 24 hours.

Chronolapse is also still chugging along, at 16,000 frames XD

So, I’ve now got “portal keys” working. If there are portal keys present in the map, the portals that are on the map will not activate until all of the keys have been collected.

Once the keys have been collected, we can return to the portal and goto…

Somewhere in space? Hmmmm, I wonder where this could lead to…

10 hours, 45 minutes later…

I wonders what we shall discover here

It’s slowly taking shape, and I’m kinda starting to like the way it’s going. Next up on my list of things to add would be enemies, the most important part

After that, I’ll work on adding the backstory to the whole thing, and tidying up some other things (Art, Sound).

I’m looking to be on track (For a change)

5 1/2 hours in, I’ve managed to get the game to read this file…

And import it into the game like so:

Still having a bit of trouble rendering the tiles though, but I should have that fixed in the next few hours.

Next up, “chests”

Edit: Who would have thought that changing one letter would fix all of the problems

From:
for (int x = (int)tl.X; x <= tr.Y; x++)

To:
for (int x = (int)tl.X; x <= tr.X; x++)

Can relax now

My idea for the game is slowly taking shape (I’ve settled on the style, and hence the type of view). Here be a screenshot of the game so far

Better game name coming soon

Moar screenshots to come

Having had a quick looksie at how chronolapse performs its video encoding, and wanting to have more “control” over the process. I wrote up a small program that provides more functionality.

Screenshot

The main addition is the ability to skip over photos, which means that if I record a frame every 5 seconds, I can then later on record the video using only every 4th frame.

The only problem at the moment is setting the output format (It currently records to the file types “equivalent video format”, MEncoder isn’t making it easy, or I’m not looking in the right spot…), I’ll keep trying to get it right (Or if someone knows what settings should be used, let me know )

You can download it from here.

I’ll look into fixing problems with it once the comp is over (Only an hour to go!)

Here’s the setup that I’ll be using this weekend for building my entry.

And here’s the specifics of what I’ll be using:

IDE: Visual Studio 2010

Language: C#

Libraries: SFML2 (C# Version) : My Base Code

Audio: SFXR

If I need to create pictures, I’ll use Photoshop (Vector Art FTW ).

I’ll also do a chronolapse of the whole thing as well (I’ll record at 4 frames a minute, but I might use less in the video or something )

As for type of game, I’m thinking maybe a simple RTS or perhaps a platformer.

For the competition, I’ll be using “My Rendering Library”, a little C# library that provides helper classes/functions for SFML2. The most current copy of it can be downloaded from here.

Edit: Updated some parts of the code, and added an application which starts up a minimal copy of it.

Edit #2: Updated more parts of the code, now has particle emitters!

Edit #3: Added “Object Shadows”

Edit #4: Fixed error in the culling algorithm (Was removing objects from screen when the screen was rotated).

Edit #5: Fixed problem where the offset was not being applied properly for objects that inherit AdvancedRenderable.

Going to make an attempt at this LD (First one too!). It should be a fun experience to build a game in 48 hours!

For the programming side, I’ll use either SFML or XNA (Depending on what the theme is) in C#. For pictures, either Paint or Photoshop. And sfxr for sounds

Good luck everyone!