Having been away and sick I didn’t get a chance to write this, but I’ll do so now(with a little over 24 hours to spare)

Let’s get started then. Not with the beginning, that’s what is expected, let’s go for a random order.

“A form of monotheism” a silly name, thought of in the last 30 minutes as a better-than-nothing name. It surprisingly works and fits the mechanics of the game. You’re an exterior force with equal control over everything in the game world. You can chose sides, be impartial, have some work for the benefit of others and so on.

The original idea was to have the player be some fellow that clones himself amd tweaks said clones to accomplish some end (repopulate the planet, fight off aliens/ zombies/ in-laws) but someone already  had that idea. Can’t remember who.

The second idea was to make a platformer and beat the theme into it with a stick. Since I forgot to make a platformer framework before the compo, I decided that’d take too long so I dropped it.

Back to square 1.

I wanted the player to start with one individual, and have the ability to spawn more and breed a populaton.  That took too long, so I ended up spawning a whole bunch right from the start.

Species and similarity

What you’ll notice is that creatures are divided into specias: humins, cats, rats, and llamas (the llamas were supposed to be centaurs but I gave up on that) . Each individual also has an empathy-o-meter/ similarity-rating, the color under them. The more you interact with an individual the more that changes. New creatures get one based on their parents.

Breeding and killing

Creatures of different genders and the same species will produce an offspring if they are similar enough AND one or both of them are assigned as breeders. This is mostly to avoid population floods encountered in early testing.

You might wonder why breeding and killing are in the same subcategory. Because they both depend on similarity. If two creatures are too dissimilar they’ll want each other dead(regardless of species). If you keep a similar population confined and breeding you’ll notice that eventually they’ll start killing each other to keep ‘strange’ ones away. Much like history isn’t it?

Social commentary much?

Yes. The only time when you can be sure things won’t be killing each other is when there is only one left. Hence alone. After I finished the game I was left disgusted. I unwillingly made a game about racist intolerant cartoony critters that strip the land of resources and kill eachother because the color under their feet is different. You know: like real people. The relative accuracy of my ‘simulation’ was even confirmed by someone who actually bothered studying these things.

Anyway

The good is working with processing and making html5. A lot easier than I thought.

The bad was not getting to add sound effects, which I knew how to do, and making a cheap hack to loop music. Uneven distribution of resources and a lot of other gameplay and balance tweaks.

The achievements: The end game, when you have a single individual left, a single species left, or one individual of each species. A total of 7. I don’t think anybody got any.

Want to give it a try? knock yourself out:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5432

It’s been requested and I’ve only now got a chance to do it. A short gameplay video of “A form of monotheism”. Feel free to fullscreen so you can actually see what’s being clicked and so on.

Play/rate the game here!

It’s not really a post mortem, well it sort of is, but not for the game I made this Ludum Dare. That’ll come in  a while after I sort out my thoughts on it. I might do a technical post mortem first.

Anyway

It’s about my previous ld game(again, sort of), which has been my first proper contact with game-making after a long long time. As if I put it (making games) on a shelf and forgot about it for many years and let it collect dust and cobwebs. It’s something I can do that makes me happy regardless of the end result. It’s something I can do that takes nothing and time and makes something, and at the end of the day I can sit back and look at something which wasn’t there before.

And you guys are to blame for me finding it on that shelf.

People liked this game of mine for some reason(the ones that understood it) and some made a point to tell me in IRC they remembered and liked if from all the way back then which blew me out of the water. Days later I still can’t believe that happened. So now that said game is on the android market and the ubuntu software center and desura and such I feel that I should give something back to the people who inspired me to keep going.

So what I’ll do is post a bunch of desura keys for that game of mine every day till Chritmas.

Let’s start with 2 for now and see where that takes us:

R42VR-VIU5B-ZBR2T-EL8BD-RIZIK

PUOJQ-X0BD5-I2QG2-E26MQ-KZCQC

So I found this thing which makes custom Santa messages.. sort of. So I made one for all of you

I’ve added my entry to the chrome web store because having it in html5 makes that a hillariously simple task.

Grab it here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lmkbojccjjlficidfnpkgehomippmfgi

Rate it here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5432

I didn’t http:// before adding the play link to my game, so the link didn’t show up at all! it’s fixed now. I would have spotted it earlier but ‘the pages are cached’

http://software.o-o.ro/ld22/index.html

and the rating page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5432

Sorry about that to anybody who tried and failed to play

http://software.o-o.ro/ld22/index.html

Other than some rogue images, sounds and a win conditions (and some stuff on the host page) it’s msotly there.

Does the text display? Any GUI suggestions? Any other ideas/thoughts/suggestions/bug reports?

Can anyone try this and tell me if it loads/doesn’t? There are still placeholder graphics(mostly buttons that look like”?”), but the core is pretty much there. It’s the sandboxy thing the actual game content will be built on.

It should be noted that all species of beings look the same for now, so that’s why some might not breed with each other.

Assigning traits works thusly: click them on the menu on the left, click a being, and on the bottom you should see 3 icons, the middle one changes gender, the other 2 are slots. Click one to ‘equip’ the selected trait.

I’m also open to suggestions and ideas of goals/buildings/traits(jobs,hats etc)

http://software.o-o.ro/ld22/index.html

Processing.js Y U NO like 3 dimensional image arrays?

Right then, screenshots. After I wasted some time with that platformer I previously mentioned I’ve went around and started working on one of my original ideas.

What you see here are a bunch of squares. Boy squares and girl squares. They have numbers attached. What these can do is, walk around, kill eachother, breed (like rabbits), and interact with buildings. The buildings are naturally the gray rectangles and the ellipses shall be buttons.

The rectangles on the sides are also buttons.

Now I see a lot of fancy graphics being thrown around without much coding done yet so I figured I upset the balance

There will be alone-ness, and there will be more stuff. I just need to figure out the more stuff part. Maybe some lemmings-like thing. I don’t know.

8 hours in

12 hours in

Yes it doesn’t look like much of a difference, that’s behind the scenes.

Let me tell you a secret about it… (more…)

Until further notice that is.

Once more I’ll be using processing(.org) and its assorted libraries. I might go crazy and throw some php in there for kicks. I’ll prolly use the aviary music thing for sounds, and gimp for graphics. Unless I decide to snap photos/ record sounds. Oh the possibilities! They are endless.

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish this one as well and have a decent game which doesn’t looks like it’s drawn by a 5 yearold. (Famous last words)