A friend of mine (Morre) have convinced/forced me to participate in this madness. I don’t know how much time I can put aside for this mission since I have an exam that I should be working on instead.

Anyways.. Hopefully I can manage to get something finished (thanks to all those motivation posters <3).

I will probably only use Slick as of custom libraries.

Good luck everyone!

I am in! Well, I have an exam on the day after, but I’ll do my best to study enough beforehand that I can comfortably participate in the compo… we’ll see how that goes!

I’ll be using either Slick, which is a hardware-accelerated 2d Java library, or ActionScript3 for this contest, I think. Or fall back on Java2D if I don’t want to use the others for some obscure reason.

I’ll be using some of my SlickTemplate if I use Slick, or my Template4k if I go with Java2D, I think. Both are very short, smallish templates that really don’t do anything besides setting up a frame and saving input states.

That’s all for now. Good luck in the competition, everyone!

Finished! Possibly my most polished and feature-complete LD48 entry yet, and seems to be enjoyable too.

Windows download

Webstart link (for windows, mac and linux)

You’ve got to dig up the rocks and lay down roads to keep the city happy as it expands. Have too many angry drivers and it’s game over! Easy is good for those who want to build a big city, hard is more fast paced and frantic. And feel free to post your high scores in the comments and see where you stand.

About the only thing missing is sound, which I didn’t get time to do. However I did manage to fit in almost all of the gameplay elements, as well as proper menus and high scores, so I’m pretty happy with it - especially since this was a one-day entry. I’ll have to do a proper post-mortem in the week when I’ve recoverted.

Enjoy!

[Update, Dec. 8 2008]

I forgot to provide the source code until just before the deadline, and my Internet connection wouldn’t work the last two hours before deadline. Anyway, here is the source:

Sourcecode (not very pretty, mind you. It’s rushed 4kb code.)

—

I’m done!

My game is called Tekicars4k. My plan is to enter it both into LD13 and the Java4k contest. In other words, it is a 33 hour 4kb game with the theme “roads”. Thanks to the size limitation, there is a grand total of 6 levels available. It is available as webstart and as a CompoGameLoader ZIP file, which has .bat, .exe and .sh (so should work on any OS).

Webstart (note: this version may be updated after the contest)
Zip file

Some instructions:
The goal is to place blocks in advance so that each Tekicar reaches an exit of the same color, without colliding with any other Tekicar. Walls will turn Tekicars clockwise, roads will speed them up, and arrows will re-direct them along the arrow.

As soon as you click “Go!”, the test begins - if you pass, you reach the next level.

Note that the ZIP file is way larger than 4kb, mostly thanks to the .exe wrapper. The game JAR itself is only 4kb.

A screenshot:

I have a demo. You die somewhat haphazardly when objects collide, and it doesn’t tell you when you win (but you have when all the blue thingies have reached the opposite side). I do have win detection, it just doesn’t show anything. What else… Ah, you place roads by clicking the gray tile in the toolbox and then clicking in the world. Roads make objects go twice as fast. Restart the game by clicking [R].

Demo

I’m afraid I won’t be able to add a lot of maps though… I’m aiming to do this in under 4kb (so I can submit the game to the Java4k competition as well), and I’m almost out of space.

Screenie, in case you can’t try the demo:

Happy birthday negativegeforce!

I don’t really have the time to make games right now, but I’m in. I spent one full day studying though, so might run out of time too soon.

I’m going to attempt a themed 4kb java game within ~33 hours… many of which I’ll be sleeping. This should be interesting!

So far, I’ve got almost nothing:

In the mist of portability problems, java comes to the rescue. Because i use linux, and my artist and X-editor uses windows, i have a problem that tools have to be portable. I don’t want to use GTK+, becouse i don’t think i works well in windows, in don’t know QT (maybe i should learn it?), i was very much prepared to write my own UI in SDL, so it could port (that would never work as well as it should). But this morning i realized (duh), that java solves my portability problem. And i might even get a nice builder, which will make it that much posibble to finish TLM. Might even work.

I’m going to give the LD48 a shot this time around.  It’s been years since I have actually attempted any kind of game coding, and I yanked out my old Killer Game Programming in Java book this week and started going through the chapters again.  The personal challenge with this compo is that there is a baseball game (KC at Oakland) on Saturday that I’m going to attend.  That’s a huge chunk of hours out of the 48.  Perhaps I can come up with a way to make them useful.  Design? Sketches? We’ll see.

At least I don’t have to plant my tomatoes this weekend.  I did that yesterday.  I turned some half-barrels into self-watering planters.  If anyone cares, I’ll have pictures on my home blog, www.lonestranger.net, later this week. 

So I’ll probably use the design patterns from the aforementioned coding book and code in Java.  I’m using Eclipse as an IDE.  I have used Eclipse for some of my work coding in J2EE, but I didn’t know about it the last time I was messing around with game coding.  It’s nice to be able to get the method completion and object browsing that you can do in VS, only not using VS. 

The last LD48 that I did enter was way back in late ‘01 or so, for LD48_2: Construction/Deconstruction with a minor in Sheep.  I’ll have to dig out that old fossil if a game that I submitted.  It sucked.  In short, all you did was huck sheep from one side of the screen to the other, knocking over bales of wool.  But I guess the real success was that I completed something in 48 hours.  It’s a challenge in itself.

Anyway.  Good luck to all!