I have been working like mad during this miniLD#6.  I worked 12 hours on Friday, 17 hours yesterday, and now I have a little over 5hours left to at least wrap up the gameplay.  At this point I’m going into triage mode again like many LD format competitions force us.  In a last minute rabid attempt to cram and adjust all the critical features that will turn a project from a demo into a  game.  This being my third LD type event I have yet to feel that I’ve suceeded within the timeframe.  Not sure this time will be any different yet but at least a big difference is that this time I have been able to play my game a LOT more during creation.  Probably to the detriment of the timeline a little.  I guess that is a good sign though.  Anyway, 8am EST is almost here and that is when my crunch time begins.  I have made a critical todo list to accomplish during this time and we’ll see how it goes!

CRUNCH LIST:

• score file handling to support matrins compo requirements
• detecting most primitive form of ‘you win’ condition when reaching locomotive at head of train
• enemies – spawning, moving, fighting, dieing, dodging (of some type)
• simple player / enemy animations for the logic I have coded so far (right now there is no animation)
• simple event sounds
• tiny train like soundtrack loop (update: DONE @ 9am)
• how to page?  I am confused on this because due to the matrin framework requirement– I was planning on using his idea of the 400×400 image in his framework to provide how tos… but I also want people to be able to know how to play if they just download this level from the blog without the loading framework.. so there is the connundrum of sorts.
• animations for train wheels and locomotive parts and steam cloud

Current screen shot above and current windows build here.  Use arrow keys (left/right/up) to move or gamepad stick with button 1 to jump.

Seeya all on the other side!

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 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.

Here is a “tech” demo if anyone wants to check out my progress so far.  You can basically move CoMuTor all around and jump and perform his flip car attack though sadly there are no cars yet.

The win32 zip is here

And here is the screenshot for the sake of completeness:

Ok, after some great no-brainer advice I hadn’t even thought of, I downgraded my openGL and easily made the executable.

You can grab it here for Vista
or
Here for XP

As in the previous post – the idea seems fun to me, but the product just doesn’t do it enough. Please have a play through and give me your comments and advice.

One thing I’m sure it needs is a targeting system for the bees. For some reason I took this out mid-development… It was probably before the humans would flee from the bees stinging them. Anyway, now its a pain in the ass to follow humans around, so I’ll be adding a way for the bees to track their targets.

Another thing to adjust is the scrolling. I think I’ll increase the area on the edges where scrolling starts, but make the distance you pass over it scale the scrolling. In other words, if you are fairly close to the side you won’t scroll as fast as right at the side. Thoughts?

Update:

Two win32 versions are now available, a fullscreen and a windowed.  No other changes were made to gameplay or bugs.  The resolution is 1024×768.  I recommend the fullscreen version for a more immersive experience. 

Fullscreen win32 available here (2.3MB)

Windowed 1024×768 win32 available here (2.3MB)

full zip with win32 exe and source here (3.5MB)

I’m hoping to post a linux version / instructions soon too.

The goal is to get from the left of the screen to the right of the screen. Each time you do the world will advance one level. Each level brings more flowers and enemies to overcome.

You play as a character with two forms. “Min” – who is thin, vulnerable and snakelike. “Mo” – who is an invulnerable and immovable gelatinous mass.

You can only move around when you are Min but if you are falling off of a block you can transform into Mo to crush enemies below you. If you happen to be cornered by an ememy as Min, you can transform into Mo to let them pass by safely. You can only get hit by the enemies once or the game ends. You can continue though so never fear!

The game world consists of rising and falling blocks that also play the music of the game in time to their movements. There are little flowers that grow from time to time that you can collect for points.

This was created with ruby and the incredible gosu game library.

I used the awesome sfxr for all game sounds too!

Bitmaps created in Tile Studio after some initial concept art inspiration in Corel Draw.

I finished this with 3 minutes left in the deadline. That means that I didn’t have a chance to play it that much to tune for fun. It is functional and seems stable. The player crushing enemies collision detection could be a little better for sure and the levels could advance in a more interesting way. All in all I am very happy with having completed this project in such a short time. I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it under the deadline the past 4 hours or so leading up to the end so I am glad that I actually managed to pull something off. I’ll post a post mortem later perhaps. I can’t wait to check out all the other entries! Good luck and congrats to everyone who participated!