First of all, if you haven’t already, go play Subatomica

Regrets, I’ve had a few…

First and foremost, I regret sleeping. The 8 hours I had would have been very handy, and I know I can push through if I have to – I’ve done it twice at the Global Game Jam.

So being short on time meant I wasn’t able to add any sound. I thought about throwing in a few as3sfxr sounds, but I ended up deciding that they didn’t fit the mood of the game at all. I would have had to spend at least a few hours making sfx and music that I’d be happy with.

The bright side of life

In the positive column, I managed to squeeze some fun out of the concept! I was worried that it was a hopeless cause, but a suggestion on twitter lead me to remove particle-particle collisions and suddenly it was fun!

I also found a graphical style I like, and could handle in the time. I usually rely on my brother Adam for art, so my skills in that area are a little rusty at best. A few items feel unfinished, like the goal, but otherwise it’s consistent and most importantly readable for gameplay.

What a tool

So a rundown of the tools I used!

• FlashDevelop – A joy to use as always, my IDE of choice
• Flash Pro CS5.5 - I like vectors better than rasters for this kind of game, plus swcs are a great format and integrate well with FlashDevelop

And the libraries!

• nape - Still my favourite AS3 physics engine, well thought out, perfect for games, super performant!
• Flint - A great particle engine, very easy to throw together amazing effects very quickly
• BetweenAS3 - The best tween engine IMO, just really flexible and quick
• Signals - A better way to dispatch events
• tomvianas3 - My own personal core library, I ended up using quite a lot of it as usual!

Parting words

I had great fun making Subatomica! This was my first LD48, but it most definitely won’t be my last. For next time:

• No sleep!
• Get sounds in early, even if only rough!
• Try to avoid the urge to refactor, even though my code will be made public!
• To do lists helped a lot!
• Change venue – I found sitting at the same desk for 2 days really hard, go work in a coffee shop/library for a few hours a day

It’s up! It’s in! It’s done!

At least two of those statements are true. I just submitted the game, now officially called ‘Subatomica’. You can play it here!

The submission page is here, if you’d like to vote/leave feedback

OK guys and girls, it’s really starting to take shape now!

The main question I have at this point is: Is it fun? That’s where you can help! Have a play if you have a few moments, the 6 included levels take about 1 minute to complete in total (for me). Did it suck? Bring you enlightenment? Let me know! And thanks!

Details on how to play in my previous post

Hello once again!

I’ve been working towards having something actually playable by this afternoon, and I’ve hit my target! That means you can go play it right now!

You control the moving charged particle. Your charge is determined by the y position of your mouse on the screen – there’s a handy bar on the left to show you what you’re doing. Red is positive, blue is negative. The same goes for the static particles, and just like in real life, like charges repel and differing charges attract.

The red-blue shimmer in the bottom left is an example of an electric field, it’ll accelerate you based on your current charge. The green ripples are a magnetic field passing through the screen. It’ll accelerate you based on your velocity and charge.

The yellow area is a temporary goal I set up. The game doesn’t stop when you hit it yet though, but it shows you that you’ve reached it! The gameplay is going to be a maze/obstacle course sort of thing. I’ve got a couple more subatomic tricks up my sleve too…

Click the image below to go to the game’s temporary site!

Hello again!

I’ve been working though the night (LD started at 2am here in the UK) on getting the game engine ready for action. I’ve just finished adding in electric fields and magnetic fields (left and right boxes respectively). You can see their effect of the particles!

As I mentioned, the game is based on subatomic physics, specifically on the motion of charged particles… I’m moving onto the controls now, so I might have a playable demo next update, and an explanation as to what on earth is going on! Any guesses?

I’m taking inspiration from images like this:

Hey all, hope you’re having fun so far!

I’ve been coding for about 2 straight hours now, and I have something visual enough to show! The game is based around the very tiny world of subatomic physics, a subject dear to my heart (no, really!). As I mentioned before, physics will be handled by nape.

The first bounce:

Orbiting:

And my super awesome workspace!

I’m pretty excited for my first foray into LD! I think this’ll be my 6th game jam, but the first done in the comfort of my own home.

I’ll be using Flash as usual, with FlashDevelop as my IDE of choice, along with Flash Pro CS5.5 as my graphical tool. Sound effects-wise, I’ll be taking my own medicine and using the as3sfxr library and tool I ported across a few years back. I’m not sure just yet what I’ll do for music…

On the coding side, I have my own base library that I’ll be using. I’m just cleaning it up now so I can upload to github before the kickoff, I’ll update here when that’s done. If I go for a physics based game, nape will be there for me. BetweenAS3 is my go-to tween engine, Signals is great for events and as3corelib has a good lot of useful stuff.

OK, back soon with that github link!

Edit: Personal code on Google code for now! http://code.google.com/p/tomvianas3/

Tom-