Ok final version uploaded, libraries updated with the bugs found during the weekend, some donuts eaten … time to rest for the week to come !!

don’t forget to play the final version here : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=825

cheers !!

Good nutrition for good morning!

I just woke up. I was getting a little stuck last night when figuring out my concept (which is what always happens to me).But, I got some sleep, am about to get more coffee and will probably eat something soon.

Hmm, I just decided that I would scan some of my note/sketches. I’m putting it through the automatic document feeder to not waste time, so it might look a little washed out. — GAH, nevermind, the auto doc feeder is a POS. It always fucks up.

Good morning! Having a breakfast sandwich for breakfast along with another Rockstar (one was from last night). I’m sure I’ll be in the kitchen a few more times today though. ;] Things are coming along nicely:

The game is sort of a Minecraft/Dwarf Fortress-like where the player must dig their way to the ladder and escape from [undetermined number] of randomly generated levels. Currently the only obstacle is lava which floods player mines. Stones will be used to create bricks to block lava flow and also water when it is added. I’m also planning on adding cave-in events which cause dirt walls to be destroyed and non-mine-able rubble blocks to be created. So far I’m really happy with how the game is going! =]

it’s noon here so i decided to whip up some breakfast.

I baked bacon and eggs with cheese on top to make these adorable breakfast puffs. We also have the most professional plates. Okay? Okay.

And breakfast for Machiavelli too!

Hope everyone is doing okay! I have some backgrounds to color.

LD 21 has been going far too fast so far. After an attempt at using Flixel, and failing due to too little knowledge I’ve slid back to GM8. I hope to use Flixel for the next LD after I’ve had a proper look at it.

Like a few others on here I’ve opted for a Tower Defence, I didn’t stretch the boat like I usually do with my interpretation of the theme, but it was 3am and I was tired.

The base game is there with placeholders, just gotta flesh it out, do my graphics and make more gameplay, so should be finished as usual 10 minutes before submission!

Until then, Sackboy is helping me eat some awesome Garden of Eatin’ Sesame Blues, yum!

I’m almost done. Once again way too little content, but that’s what usually seems to happen when making anything content-based in a very short amount of time, logically.

Before posting final + screenshots, here’s a second foodphoto. It’s a late dinner consisting of duck ragu and nettle pasta.

Way to start the compo … is to eat and post a foodphoto. My wife whipped up some excellent ingredients for this Tex Mex moment.

In fact I’ve been working on an entry for maybe 2-3 hours now, but I don’t have anything sensible to post about it yet.

here is my task list :

1. build models :
1.1. mailman
1.2. zombie
1.3. kitten
1.4. building
1.5. sidewalk
1.6. street
1.7. shotgun
1.8. street light

2. prepare sound effects
2.1. define sound track
2.2. record zombie sound
2.3. record kitten sound
2.4. record shotgun reload sound from nerf
2.5. find shotgun shooting open sound
2.6. find steps sound
2.7. create sound track

3. create user interaction
3.1. arrange in the scene the first city with some streets (copy real neighbour ?)
3.2. add camera to the character
3.3. move the character
3.4. define positions to generate zombies
3.5. define kitten positions

4. prepare actions
4.1. get weapon from kitten
4.2. display and count lifes
4.3. game over scene
4.4. shoot and kill zombies
4.5. count zombies killed
4.6. deliver letter

5. add main screen menu
6. add final score screen

lets do it !!

Oh man I am at a loss… So far my ideas are:

Tumiki Arena – Tumiki fighters except in an arena. It would fulfill the theme because every time an enemy died, they would give you a gun or whatever for you to handle further enemies. This could either work in robotron style, or in astroids style. With the second one it would be a bit like captain forever. I don’t think that is a bad thing though.

TowerTron – Similar to above, but you can pick up and drop turrets. Maybe this is more like herzog zwei crossed with tower defense. I don’t know if I can figure out A* this time though, or really any pathfinding.

Castle Defense - Missile Defense, except you can occasionally add stuff to you towns and cities, and they all shoot automatically at the missiles. “this is a dangerous place to have a town, here take this”.

Ok gonna just roll with one of them. I clearly need to light a fire under myself, I just spent 20 minutes messing around with my timelapse script. HOLY CRAPPU, GOTTA ROLL.

Also, here is my desk, and my lunch and dinner (I just cooked 2 meals at once):

What I’m eating while writing this post:

Here’s my sketch / ideas / incomplete todo list :

I sucks at drawing but I have to write ideas even if I’m the only one to understand what it means.

The compo started at 4:00 am in my local time, and it’s now 12 pm. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what kind of game I could possibly make in 48 hours and in accordance with the theme. I was close to give up. But I’ve decided that even if the game will be bad, deja vu, not original I will just enjoy making it and have fun. So here it is

The first screenshot with our little yet unamed buddy.

It will be a metroidvania. Probably. With a little twist in the story. If I have enough time to do all that I planned.

Breakfast? CHECK

Supplies? CHECK

Concept? CHECK

My concept I’m going to start fleshing out now is to do a tribute to Gauntlet where the player that plays alone gets a special item to help with the difficult levels that are designed for 2 players (tying in to the theme). This is probably more than my poor art and sound skills can manage, but its the best idea I can come up with that actually seems like fun to me – so here goes nothing!

Starting design work and timelapse capture now…

Quick food photo, nothing fancy. A few adorable left over Easter eggs, some Kielbasa and assorted things.

Poor adorable eggs. You're going to a better place.

And the result:

I guess technically, not the final result.

Totally set food wise, good into the early morning. Was busting my butt trying to get a trailer done (check it out it’s spiffy), and game up for XNA peer review for the past 24 hours. Starting to wish I would have gotten at least a little pre-compo sleep. Hopefully the over abundance of food keeps me going.

After playing a bit of Dad N’ Me and thinking about other similar Behemoth games, I just can’t bring myself to fire up Flashpunk. Looks like I’ll be going the normal Flash route for this compo. It’s such a shame too, because I’d love to come up with a simpler concept just to get some Flashpunk experience, but I’m drawing a blank for this theme.

Raided the local Asian market for random drinks, white rabbit candies, seaweed crackers, and some fruit! Now maybe I should see if I get a window up using SFML…

Getting ready for Ludum Dare!

I’ll be using AS3, like I’ve done for previous Ludum Dares. Unless somehow I get an idea that would be better in 3d, in which case I will go with Unity.

Music: Coding theme song. Level design theme song. Gaps filled by Pandora.com.

Food: It has become part of my Ludum Dare ritual to go nuts buying snacks before LD weekend.

Framework: Stego, the as3 framework that’s been grown out of the reusable parts of previous compos.

IDE: FlashDevelop.

Graphics: I’ll be doing pixelly sprite stuff in a copy of Photoshop CS 1 which as far as you know was obtained completely legitimately. I’d like to start doing more vector-based stuff, but I figure for LD I’d better stick with what I’m used to.

Music: I will probably mess around with GreaseMonkey’s music generator like I did for LD19. I’ve also used Wario Ware DIY and Wolfram Tones in the past and those kind of worked, so if for some reason I’m not liking what I’m getting out of one tool, I’ll switch to another.

Sound Effects: SFXR and/or BFXR.

Timelapse: Keeyai’s Chronolapse. It’s worked great so far.

Sauce Control: Mercurial, pushed to a repo on Bit Bucket.

Twitter: @ExciteMike

Interweb pagesite: http://excitemike.com/ Has my games and stuff.

Plan: At present, I am leaning toward doing something extremely simple, even for an LD game, but then have lots and lots of levels. I’d also love to make something multiplayer, but I don’t think people tend to have friends nearby when they go to play or rate LD games. Hmm, that sounds kind of sad when I say it that way. Point is, while multiplayer is often super fun, fewer people will be able to enjoy my game if it needs two willing people in the same room.

Done finally done!

In hindsight, I guess my feature list was pretty ridiculous. Seriously… a social game?… bah…

On the bright side in the last hour before submissions I was able to pare things down a bit, and get all of the semi-working features tied together.

Learned tons this LD, the timelapse was a great motivator / distraction.

Post-mortem and timelapse with some sweet cat-stop motion going on in the background, coming soon!

Oh and one last food photo

Took a quick break to knead the dough for this Monkeybread

Alright! I am now submitted. Somehow when I started, I thought that I would have enough energy to port the game to windows after 9. Ha! No way that is happening, I am going to go to bed and curl up with a comic book.

I feel pretty good about my game, there are mechanical, aesthetic and experiential issues, but I think it is fun for at least 2 minutes.

Here is all the food that I ate and forgot to post:

cabbage rice and egg

breakfast 1, kix

kale and rice

more cereal

Chinese!

I’ve been slightly worried recently on if my game will be allowed as it’s based on copyrighted stuff. I’ll find out soon if it is or not I suppose.

All menus are done and now I’m getting the final pieces finished and then I need to remember audio!

I’ve got work tomorrow but I won’t be giving up 5 hours left!

Passion fruit and shredded wheat. Trying to bounce back from last night’s junk food.

This probably looks like exotic baby vomit if you've never had a passion fruit before.