Whew, my jam entry is complete and uploaded! (I got it in 20 seconds before the time ran out, heh)

My idea for my game was that you are gravity flipping forest creature (which we call the ‘Gravity Cat Thing’, or ‘Mike’), which wants to be alone. Unfortunately, Evil Dr Cuddles wants to give Mike love and attention, so Mike runs and gravity flips away! Gameplay wise, the game was supposed to be a cross between Canabalt and VVVVVV, with bosses thrown in for good measure.

During the first 2 and a half days of the jam, I chugged along with the coding rather slowly (I couldn’t get into those ‘zone’ moments, y’know?), maybe because I was unfamiliar with Flixel as I’d picked it up only a day or two before the start. The game was originally supposed to involve jumping over gaps in the floor, and you were also supposed to be able to run up walls as well. The levels were also randomly generated. But I couldn’t work out how to get the level to constantly generate new content without heavy stuttering every couple of seconds. Generating the content was fine, but Flixel would take a long time putting the content into a tilemap. And to top it off the code was a horrible mess because I was rushing and everything was getting more and more difficult. I did get a boss done though

So then it got to 2:30pm (GMT) on the last day of the jam, with less than 12 hours to go, and I got so frustrated with the whole thing that I decided to start again, but instead of having holes in the floor just have obstacles that are randomly thrown in front of you. After each themed ‘stage’ you’re faced with a boss and then you go to the next one. Once you get through all four you’re thrown back into the first again, and the cycle continues. This time, there character is stationary and objects fly towards you rather than the other way round, which meant the tilemap could just be a static block above and below you. I recycled the old boss and added another boss which was basically a rehash of the first but it shot different bullets (I really didn’t have time to do anything different!).

Here’s a screenshot of the new version, in the forest stage:

As you can see, there’s polishing that needs to be done that I just didn’t have time for. I also need to balance the difficulty (it’s quite hard at the moment), make obstacles easier to see, and also add the other bosses (there were supposed to be four, at the moment there’s two. The other bosses have been drawn, they just need coding). I also want to add a feature that was in the old version where there are rings/hoops scattered about, and if you jump through them you get bonus points. I’ll be making an enhanced post-LD version for sure.

Also a big thanks to Ben for doing an amazing job with the art. There’s still a lot of it that didn’t make it into this version of the game, and I’m really grateful for what he’s done. He also did the music for the game. If you want to hear more of his music, check out his SoundCloud page: http://soundcloud.com/dosage

Oh yeah, and here’s a link to the game:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=4920

I’d really, really appreciate any comments, criticisms, and ideas!

Mike just wants to be alone!

as is customary

As for the Poliwhirls, I found them in my loft and never put them back

We’re in (the jam)!

Thanks for the drawing Ben!

I’m in once again!

Last LD was quite hellish, due to large portions of my time spent coding tile and level loading systems rather than actually making the game. Coupled with me helping redecorate my bedroom in the same weekend… Yeah. After I finished my game I then proceeded to spend three days trying to get the damn thing to compile in Windows (I made the game in Linux), and then more time writing new shaders so the game would run on older hardware, but it still wouldn’t run on hardware that didn’t support OpenGL 3.0+ due to a flaw in my tile rendering system!

So, yeah. I’m not doing that again. It was my first LD and it was still fun, but at the same time quite horrible. I’ve decided that when it comes to making a game as fast as possible, using C++, SDL and OpenGL is not a good idea. Sure, I could probably do it quicker now this time, and cross-compiling is no longer a pain for me, but using those tools would still be unnecessary effort.

This time around, I’ll be using Flash with Flixel. I haven’t used it that much before; I used it for the first time yesterday, in fact, but it seems pretty damn simple and intuitive! I’ve got a day off school on Friday so I’ll be spending that day just getting a firm grasp with it. Best of all, it’ll be cross platform without any extra effort! Yay! I was originally intending to use Game Maker, but with Flash you just click a link in a web browser, and bam, it’s there!

I’ll be participating in the jam, as I’ll be working with a friend who’s going to do the artwork (hand drawn!) and music for the game. He (‘he’ being Ben) has a SoundCloud page here: http://soundcloud.com/dosage. He’s also doing the artwork and music for my main project, Station 6, a puzzle platformer (I have a devlog here: http://supermaximo.com/) </shameless plug>

And I think that’s all I have to say. Tool list:

Language: ActionScript 3

IDE: FlashDevelop

Graphics: Hand drawn by Ben

Audio: Dunno what software Ben uses, but it’s probably pretty good

Code libraries: Flixel

Development OS: Windows in a virtual machine, running on Ubuntu 11.04

Cake? Yes.

And now I leave you with Ben’s gentleman spider eye!