I thought I’d post the game in it’s current state as I’m heading for more sleep – I’ve updated the physics a bit and tweaked the game logic, but I have to make it tougher, save the scores to a file, add some kind of game-over screen, and dig out an old windows box to see if I can remember how to make an exe from python (py2exe?).

[same screenshot as before - except with lives]

Feel free to have a play and comment – You’ll need python and PyGame – then just run main.py

You can download it here…

It’s a simple idea, but I hope it’s fun (I’ll make it tougher to play by the end).

So, just found out about this tonight and thought I’d make up for the fact that I still haven’t finished my LD13 entry yet I’ve got an idea for something using the “Minimalist” theme; will start work on it tomorrow morning (I’ve only got till 5pm here, so it’ll probably be fittingly minimal, heh).

Almost final version of my monochromatic Zombii (NOT zombie) game. It’s a classic top-down shooter in which you have one goal: kill all zombiis. Enjoy.

justnoticed the compo an hour a go.  Will do something quick and experimental for tomorrow

towlr? I barely knew ‘er!

If you look closely.. you see the hero of the monochrome train!

I have now added three train car types of various heights.  You can now fall off or in between cars and die.  The train cars detach from the train when they hit the left side of the screen.  The velocity of the car is transfered to the hero so he drifts with them correctly.  He can now jump between all the cars with the jump from lowest car to highest being possible but tricky.  The game is over if you fall off and die or if you get swept off to the left of the screen.   You are supposed to advance to the head of the train but there are no enemies yet or win condition.  Only death…. and that is not handled gracefully.. if you ‘die’ the game ends abruptly.

For the brave, here is the current windows build exe.

Use arrow keys to move left, right, and jump! ESC to quit.

I decided that I had nothing better to do this morning so I started on an entry. Here’s what I’ve got so far. This should look very familiar; this game has been remade about a million times under different names. The guys are going to be able to climb up over one another until they can get on top of your turret and blow it up. It will get increasingly difficult and the goal is to survive until you either get 1000 points, or 3 minutes elapse.

I got back to work about two hours ago (although I did stay up for an extra hour or two last night after saying I would sleep), and the game is coming along quite well.

Most importantly, I have managed to add some of the extra gameplay ideas I had yesterday. The gameplay is now some kind of mix of asteroids and puzzle bobble – with an infection theme, and in glorious monochrome…

I’ve also added a score (as you can see in the screenshot), and some basic sound effects – my musical skills are best described as NULL, so I’m not sure I’m going to add much more, but perhaps I’ll generate something with DrPetter’s sfxr if I think it’ll fit in (I found the debian/ubuntu binary package here if anyone’s looking for one as I’m getting unmet dependency problems installing libgtk to compile from source at the mo.)

Still to do – lives, deaths, writing the score to the file, and some better physics – but it’s come along.

Well, I missed the start of the competition again, but this time I don’t think I’m going to rush to get something done. I think I’ve entered 4 programming comps in the last month and a half, and I need to get away from the computer.

However, you can see my entry for the Java 4k Game competition, if you like. Basically you’re a guy in a spooky house trying to scare ghosts away from your friends before your friends are “eaten.”

Run in an Applet

Run in Java Webstart

I finally got around to create a primitive edit mode. So now I can start building the level.

A shame I have no good ideas for it.

So .. best game ever .. or something.

It’s a typing game.  Type the text in the center of the screen.  Quotes are from Tom Sawyer.

Have fun, or whatever  Again thanks to DrPetter for sfxr and to thirdcog for making an OS/X port.

I decided to go with the theme “Swarms.”  Here is a mockup of what the final game might look like:

I already have the people and aliens running around.  They don’t exactly “swarm” in any coordinated manner, but I’m not going to worry too much about it.

After lunch I’ll impliment the player’s ship, tractor beam, tossing aliens, and alien ships.  I’m just going to hack this together as quickly as I can.

I just finished implementing parallax scrolling background objects for my game.  There is currently a nice cloud layer, a far plateau layer, and a near plateau layer all that move by in different speeds based on their distance.  I’m really quite happy with it so far.

I find I am not making much gameplay progress because it has been so relaxing for me to watch the train and dessert go by.  I have to start implementing some game play now!

Here is the latest test exe if any windows users wanna check it out! Left and Right arrow keys move viewport.  ESC to quit.

OK, time for a journal entry for this fine mini ld.

I’m doing a game where you controls a spidery thing. I’m not sure exactly what’s the point is yet, but I figure that you should a) collect something, b) evolve more legs and c) get to the top of the level. I might have scoring based on time/things collected or whatever.

It looks cooler in action!

I selected the Evolution theme just for the leg stuff, but I later realized Climb would be better really. But by that time, Climb was sadly taken. I don’t have an awful lot of time, so not sure how much evolvment I will have time to implement.

Currently I’m trying to get decent jump and foot attachment sounds, but it’s kind of tricky. Maybe better without sounds.

Well, things are getting off to a slow start this morning as I have been dealing / fighting with 20%+ packet loss on my cable modem…. *sigh*   Anyway– after a few hours it has cleared up for now.

On the monochrome train front, I have been sorta zoning out watching my current tech test demo.  There is no gameplay yet, but I like how it sets the stage for the coding yet to come.

I currently have a wide world of train landscape with cactuses, rocks and tracks.  Populated with a boxcar only ghost train right now.  The train chugs along to the right and will run for approximately 2-3 minutes (not locked down yet) before crashing.

The player (yet to be drawn / coded) has that amount of time to race from the caboose to the train engine to hit the brakes!  There will be obstacles of various types along the way (yet to be drawn / coded).

In this demo, you can press the left and right arrow keys to move the viewport back and forth.  When you stop, it keeps its slow advance.  My current idea is that the viewport moves just *slightly* faster than the train so that if you don’t creep along with it you will also get swept off the back of the screen and fail that way too.

Here is a win exe if anyone wants to see my monochrome train test.

Yes, Im taking water above my head in soooo many areas… f**k that Im gonna go for it.

multiplayer cooperation is the goal. Im ripping the idea straight off Left 4 Dead.

Here is my mockup, now I only need to implement it

I’m not sure what kind of game I’m going to make or even if I’m really going to try to compete.  However, I did hack together the start of a little program, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.

I haven’t decided upon a theme yet, so I don’t know what kind of gameplay I’ll have.  At first I was thinking about the theme ‘Random,’ so I wrote up a little random terrain and trees generator.  I didn’t know what kind of colors I wanted to go with so I tried it with both day and night options.

I personally like the night scene more than day.  I noticed that “Light and Darkness” is one of the options, but I’m still not sure what I might do.  Currently there is no way of dynamically transitioning between day and night.

The themes I might be most interested in are, “Construction/Destruction” (Perhaps building cities on the mountains … or something?), “Indirect Interaction”, or “Swarms” (UFO’s?).

I guess I’m going to sleep on it.

But Balloon Game will be amazing, you’ll see.

This is the state I’m leaving “infection fighter” in before getting some sleep (it’s 3 am here) – the basic code is done and thoroughly bug-checked, and it’s currently working very similarly to asteroids – although I’ve got a few ideas to spice the game up a bit that I hope might work really well …

The player is the cell in the middle (or at least that’s supposed to be a cell in the centre), and you can tell the rotation by seeing where the nucleus is facing. The pill on the right has just been fired.

I’ve got a prior engagement tomorrow (hence deciding to make such a simple game – and needing sleep), but hopefully I’ll have time to add at least some of the features I’m planning, try my hand at recording some sound effects and tie up the bits like scores and lives. And even if I don’t have time to do all of it – judging by the amount of time I’ve been wasting playing it it could be really addictive.

Generally my Ludum Dare experience is a lot of fun so far!

Well, I think I have my basic idea drawn up. You’re a small mining drone of some kind, orbitting around the sun. You fire charges into the sun that blows out valuable plasma, which you collect in your ship. But you have to let it cool down a little bit before you gather it, otherwise it’ll eat away at your (constantly dwindling) shielding. Three buttons — speed up, slow down, and fire charge. You speed up and slow down at an angle perpendicular to gravity, and because you’re orbiting, speeding up makes you move up (away from the sun), and slowing down makes you move down (closer to the sun). If you touch the sun, you take damage very very quickly, but closer is also safer (other than hitting the sun) and richer, since the best plasma is the plasma that’s been blasted away from the sun, and cooled down as it drifts closer back down to the sun. If you collect no plasma whatsoever, your drone will be destroyed in two minutes, but every bit of plasma you collect (even that which has cooled down) reduces your shielding a small amount. Your job is to find the best middle ground between staying alive longer and collecting more plasma.

Now I’m going to play some Left 4 Dead while I think about more specifics.

I wasn’t going to start until tomorrow but I had nothing to do so I decided to implement a small tech test to see if what I wanted to do was at all doable in Flash. Space is filled with planetary bodies, starts and what not and it’s up to the player to feed the suns and make them grow to encompass each other (or something). Anyway, it’s all implemented with bloobs using flash’s bitmap routines. It looks a little something like this:

Oh and the color will definately change!