I’m going to sustain myself exclusively on these things during the compo:

So, exploration. Not sure what I’m going to do yet, but it’s probably going to be a platformer of some sort. Kinda want to do something ala Monty on the Run or Dizzy, but we’ll see.

Right now though I’ll go fix some bugs in slug: Mode switching corrupts the graphics, and mouse coordinates aren’t scaled right. Might add some new features too, though I suppose I should wait until I actually need them now that the compo has started and all. In fact, I’m not even sure I’m going to use slug at all, might try to go for a Flash game again instead. Time to  make up my mind =]

Oh, and here’s some eggs I had for breakfast:

Had Shreddies for breakfast (no photo again – my family already think I’m a bit odd without me photographing my breakfast cereal). Then was busy until about 12:30, so it’s time to get cracking!

Priorities today: (which I may well completely ignore…)

1. Let the player move! Left, right, jump.
2. Let the player fire bullets, rather than them appearing from the centre of the screen! Hopefully with a mouse-click, if I can get that working within a reasonable amount of time. Shouldn’t be too hard though, hopefully.
3. Have blocks interact with the player – ie, if they fall on your head you take damage.
4. Killable dinosaur, really simple.
5. Finish the level-scrolling code – I put a lot of it in already, but the level has so far been the same size as the screen.
6. Better dinosaurs.
7. Panic because I’m running out of time and still don’t have much of a game.
8. Levels, and finishing-up – sounds, maybe extra frames in animations, etc.

This will probably last me way past noon tomorrow, when my 48 hours elapse. But oh well, that’s the way it is. I like this game enough that I’ll try to produce a snazzier version after the contest has ended.

Bovril toast and orange juice breakfast

So!  Woke up at half 7 this morning, took a peek at the theme, and then went back to bed for a while to think about it.  Caverns, eh?

Eventually got up properly and made bovril toast and 200ml of orange juice for breakfast!  Yum!  Liquified cow.

Been doing some brainstorming on the pad you can see to the left there – I’ve got an idea I rather like:

Alternative Club Tycoon: The Cavern Club

You own and run “The Cavern Club” – a struggling nightclub for the goth/metal/rock community of your town/city.  It’s up to you to choose the tracks, price the drinks, and get everyone happy (well, keep the goths poetic, at least).

Plus Points:

• The graphics will be gravy.  It’s going to be  a number crunching game, or at least a number balancing game.
• Any graphics I do make for it will be heavily stylised and hopefully ‘cute’.  Look forward to cubic metal heads moshing!

Worries:

• Music.  Huh.  I’m going to see if I can get away with being sneaky here, because there’s no way I can create ‘generic goth track number 17′ and ‘generic metal anthem 8′.

Oh, and I discovered that I can’t use the ‘play and charge’ cable to make an XBOX 360 pad work on the PC.  Doh!  I’ll be getting a wired controller some time today – but if it’s a sim game, mouse control seems best anyway!

Progress! I woke up around 6:30 this morning and squeezed in a couple hours of development before my stomach forced me to seek out food. Warning: placeholder art ahead.

Unfortunately for the player, shooting the advancing wall only makes it grow faster, and there is not as yet any way to beat it back. That’s next. I have no idea if this idea is actually going to work out to be any fun, so I’m focusing on gameplay today and I’ll worry about art tomorrow. Hopefully.

Also, breakfast! Words cannot describe my love for waffles.

I had breakfast, it was mostly toast. I would have posted an image, but you can just check out all the others, and you’ll get a good idea. Though there was a cupcake too. Nom nom.

Anyway, some ideas
You use an advancing wall of doom to crush cities. This could either be a puzzle game (use your wall in the most optimal way!), some sort of RTS (gather resources etc, expand your wall), or RPG-like, you only actually control one character, but it’ll need to go out and gather power to advance the wall. Or something.

Also had the idea of not crushing cities, but rather have two elements that fight, one being for example a jungle and another the desert. The edge would be the ‘wall’, and both strive to doom the other. Would probably work best as some sort of RTS.

Then there’s of course the tower defense sort of thing, but it’d be wall defense. Could sort of work from either side — either you build the wall (wall defense!), or you need to defend against the wall.

And there’s a lot of ‘run away from the wall’ kind of games, but I’m not interested in those because I don’t usually find that kind of games fun.

Don’t yet know what I’ll do, the RTS ones sounds most fun, but would probably require a little bit too much work. So I’ll ponder some more.

Just got up, checked the theme, had some breakfast:

Still no idea for a concept.

It’s Saturday morning!  Here’s breakfast!

Apple-cinnamon pancakes that my wife made while I started working away again.  I don’t really have much to show for it yet, since it’s all behind the scenes stuff to manage the background and road.  When I get something, I’ll post it, hopefully before lunch.

I’m having breakfast.

It’s toast AND A DONUT.  It’s like the most awesome breakfast in weeks! For me.

So that’s my breakfast for today Yeah tea and a cookie I think i will go for a walk now and then beck to work on Crystal Towers

P.S I usually only drink tea at breakfast but today i need some strength

My workstation, including my crazy chair, the Swopper.

Champaign grapes from Trader Joe’s.

Couldn’t take the pic quickly enough!

Peanut butter jelly time!

Big, gravity-defying water mug:

I made breakfast (scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese) for my wife and myself:

Progress is going extremely well…

I already have level definitions, rendering code, some game logic, input, etc… Only thing that’s lacking is an actual gameplay idea… or better, a decision on the gameplay decision. My wife’s been helping me with ideas, and I have 3 or 4 possible gameplay paths available, I just don’t know which one is more fun/less work…

Anyway, here’s some photos and such…

At my desk, heavy in thought:

My cat ready to pounce the mouse:

48 hour salad (all done with tomatoes and olives by my wife):

Brain food for lunch: burgers, mediterranean salad, cooked mushrooms, raw carrots… everything the body and mind need:

And the game screeny:

The blocks of any color can be placed in the tower structure, and they’ll fall down until they found another block or get to the ground…

Woken up about 2 hours ago, and saw that the topic is Tower… Basically, it sucks… My wife came up with the basic idea of what I’m going to do: a brick tower building game… the game part is still unclear, but I probably will think of something… I want to try to have most of the game built today, since tomorrow I’m off to Dublin and will loose lots of time in travels and such…

Anyway… Here are the obligatory pics:

My office:

First food of the day:

And the screenshot:

First I had breakfast.

It was toast with butter and water.  Yum yum! Taste like ghostmas.

Then I tried out basic hex rendering.

Well, at least breakfast doesn’t need working collision code to be yummy. I’m thankful for the small things ya know?

I ate this while detailing out new collision code algorithms for MinMo on a notepad. Then, I went for a brief bike ride around the neighborhood while thinking about them. Time to implement!

It’s toast. Oh, and here’s some candy:

But it’s really from last night.

mmmm.. breakfast sandwich and OJ.  Good morning ludum dare 11.

My girlfriend said she’d make me a breakfast sandwich as long as I post it to the LD blog, so how could I refuse?  It was gooooood too. 

In other news, I got about 6 hours of sleep and am working on getting my basic character functional in a code test so I can post something game related soon. 

It’s still just sandwiches.

I just woke up and checked the theme.

Out of all the themes in the final round minimalist was probably the only one that didn’t imediately give me any ideas for a game. (Ok, that and bumber cars) Oh well, I guess I’ll go make some coffee/breakfast and hope to come up with something within the hour or so.