the game

SO…. the game is “complete”. You can select between 3 different animals to play as with 3 different powers. The cat can cough up furballs, the skunk can drop smelly bombs and the labrat get extra evolution points for being experimented on. You fight of scribbles/spaghetti monsters and sometimes they drop bombs that explode. If you kill enough enemies you can evolve gaining faster moments, better powers, more health etc. However, to keep on surviving as a species you must mate with other animals and get children.

the evolve menu

Now I need to spend the rest of the time to polish it up and make the menu system comprehensible and intuitive and not ugly.

delicious food

I managed to get a lot accomplished in a couple of hours.

- get the player’s character in the game
- make it controllable
- add obstacles (most likely boulders)
- make collisions between the player and obstacles deadly
- make collisions between bullets and boulders result in bullets disappearing
- add an enemy
- make collisions between bullets and enemies result in damaged enemies
- make collisions between player and enemies result in killed player
- create a wave of enemies
- create a way to modify the wave of enemies so each enemy evolves in some way

Right now, you can shoot enemies as they approach, and when they die, they become harmless and visibly destroyed. If you crash into an enemy that is still alive, you both die.

Enemies are mindless right now. They simply move forward in a straight line to the left. While I have a bunch of random enemies that looks like a wave, I don’t really have waves as a concept in the game. And with less than four hours left, I don’t think I’ll be adding lots of visibly different enemies and power-ups. We’ll see.

Oh, and my wife was nice enough to bring me something to snack on.

Got any gwapes?

So it may be my last Ludum Dare meal…or maybe not? It all depends on these last five hours. I’m busy working away on the art after having made a simple but tasty baked bean pie

Which may look a little sloppy but I can assure you its tasty, and I’ve still got two thirds of it left so I can guess what’ll be reheated for tomorrow!

Anwyho the game, I ironed out a lot of the code related issues I had, I still have about 4 code issues I need to work on, three bugs and a lot of art. In the meantime here’s a puddle for your enjoyment!

The chances of another update before the compo is ended is slim, however if I don’t get everything finished my work shall leak into the Jam to make sure I have something finished

Oh my! only 5 and a half hours left, guess its time for my last meal, and time to crack on with my list of points left to finish.. not doing anywhere near as badly as I though, and I’ve only 5 art issues, 4 code issues and 3 bugs left to sort out, hopefully I get a little time for polish eh!

I’m quite pleased with my game so far, who knows maybe a screenshot will work its way onto here!

I woke up with a sore back. I was lying down on the floor with my legs up on the ottoman since that’s supposed to help your muscles relax if you do it for about 30 minutes. Then I went back to bed, and I didn’t wake up for a few hours. Then it was time to go to church with my wife, and we had lunch:

That’s a Planet Veggie from Planet Sub. It has provolone, cheddar, fresh red peppers, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, and a tangy olive spread. I washed it down with lemonade.

I wish I can say I’ve made progress, but sitting at the computer has been incredibly uncomfortable. But lying on the floor seemed to have helped, so I’ll be back at this project today.

A reminder of what I’m doing:
- get the player’s character in the game
- make it controllable
- add obstacles (most likely boulders)
- make collisions between the player and obstacles deadly
- make collisions between bullets and boulders result in bullets disappearing
- add an enemy
- create a wave of enemies
- create a way to modify the wave of enemies so each enemy evolves in some way

There’s a little over 6 hours left in the compo. I can do this.

Since we’re going in the right way to finish our game in time, we decided to reward ourselves with a chocolate cake

Progressing steadily, but I suspect not fast enough to make the 48h compo deadline with something nice.

Perhaps I’ll just upload whatever I have, and see what people make of it. But the ‘fun’ factor needs improvement, atm it is just a decent simulator – the player choices need to impact more!

Secondary goal of the game is to combat some common misconceptions about evolution, one of which is that species  ’select’ DNA or traits themselves. Or that species change dna while alive to ‘evolve’.  Only through (untimely) death can evolution really work.
But then you got point-mutations which is kinda random and could happen in a organism during it’s lifetime. Mostly just during conception / birth though.

Conveying those things and still keeping the player involved is hard. But we’ll see. I may deviate to just increase The Fun ™.

The following screenshot does not really show the progress made – mostly it’s under the hood:

Oh and since we’re postin – lets keep the food coming too !

(gotta compensate for all those green…)

Sleep #2 – I doubt I truly fell asleep in 0 minutes.

Breakfast #2 – Mini-Wheats and Iced Tea.

I’ve hit the wall.  I’ve got a bug I can’t figure out and too much to finish in order for the game to be playable.  Not sure how to change course and finish something playable.  It is very frustrating.  I don’t want to quit but I also don’t want to waste my time.

Stuck

Things are coming along well, only 11 hours left hopefully I’ll be able to get everything done and dusted!

Decided to get most of my sprites out of the way, and any sounds I may want, I usually leave all this to the last minute, but at the moment its a bit silly trying to code when the placeholders I’m using really aren’t helping. So I had some Ryvita, along with some spread, soft cheese and chocolate philadelphia… not all at the same time

Just got back from dinner.

I’m not sure it’s really in the LD spirit to do photos of restaurant dinners, but this was with my grandparents so hopefully that’s enough of an excuse Pictured above is a bamboo clam (AKA razor clam) steamed with garlic soy sauce and glass noodles. There was more food, but I didn’t have the time to shoot the other stuff.

That, and I have a near-final prototype!

https://sites.google.com/site/ludumdare5parrowhawk/ld24—re-generation (requires Flash, tested and working on the most recent stable version of Google Chrome)

It’s probably a good sign that I got distracted into playing a whole round when I should have been finishing this post.

I just need to put in the audio and do some minor tweaks to the visuals, and I should be done. The audio files are already done (thanks to the iOS port of sfxr, I did them on the way to dinner) and ready for use.

I might add difficulty levels if I have time.

And thanks to some bodge fixes they’re biting me in the bum as they’re causing other issues I still really need to start on my art for the game too! Plus I should start showing my game more as currently it’s all food, food, food.

At least my lunch is tasty, some of my homemade pulled pork accompanied by some beans from my soup and a crusty roll

Had lunch so now I can code better!

Watch my live stream!

Check out for updates on my Twitter!

mmm I like it

Wasn’t needed but I wanted both so I won’t need to eat until late lunchtime

My game is going ok but at a bit of a slow pace, I had tooo much sleep last night as I got a headache in the evening and wanted to go sleep it off. Plus to top it off after getting up this morning I spent three hours trying to fix a bug that had a super simple fix Oh and my game only works as an exe not in html5 which is annoying.

I’m hoping soon all the scripting will be there so I can spend time on the art which I haven’t really touched yet except for making super quick placeholders. I’d really like it finished for the compo though and not the Jam

Ouch its Sunday already!? Game is going alright I suppose, aspects work, you cannot play it through yet, but figured I should start doing a few graphics and sounds, then the half finished game will look a little better

But for now, it’s peanut butter jelly time!

I made my first sprite ever (and it took me foreveeeer to do it). It’s far from being perfect but whatever. I’m proud of it, and had fun making it.

Also, a cake. I like cakes.

Damn. That’s hard to make a game.

This is my breakFAST! 18 hours left

My wife decided it was time for a near midnight treat to help sugar me awake for a little while. Root beer float.

Eating plain dosa with sambar for dinner (thanks, Mom).

Still a few hours left before sleeping.