Game evolution

On a scale from “Amorphous Blob” to “Rigid Idea”, this is where my idea fits in:

In other words, I had pretty much settled on what idea to use. I was also pretty certain I would be using Java as the language, Slick (an OpenGL-based 2D library) for graphics rendering and SFXR for sound. Despite being relatively sure about what I was going to do, I didn’t get as far in the first day as I have in past contests. I more or less had my technology working, but no game to speak of. The second day, I woke up with a terrible headache that prevented me from working on the game for a couple of hours. Something was clearly wrong (see the image to the right).

A bit of technology

Before discussing a few gameplay issues, I’ll try to explain how the underlying technology used for the arrows and stars works. The stars are in fact controlled by a vector field with relatively sparse density (every 20 or 30 pixels or so). Each vector will turn downwards and change its length according to the strength of gravity over time. When an arrow is drawn, a new vector (that points along the arrow) is added to the vector field at every point in the arrow. This means that multiple arrows will create a stronger effect. For each star, the closest four vectors are then interpolated and added to its velocity once per frame.

The vector field without gravity looks something like in the screenshot below. Note that the arrows faded out a bit too quickly compared to the vectors when I took this screenshot.

What went wrong

Shooting mechanics: I spent a fair bit of time tweaking the rain, gravity and arrow effect mechanics, trying to make it fun. Despite this, a lot of people have said that the arrows did not work as expected. The general sentiment seems to be “I expected the stars to follow the arrows closely”. I can appreciate this, and I did have this plan in mind briefly. In retrospect, I should probably have abandoned my attempt at making a somewhat more “correct” physics model, and instead let stars follow the arrows.

Rain: Having the stars fall down from above seemed like a great idea, but in reality it just made sure that the bottom of the screen never got any “ammunition” to use. A few alternative approches that I could have used are:

• Letting the stars be “attached” to the sky, leaving a limited amount of ammunition per screen. With this approach, one would need to be more careful with arrow drawing (to avoid wasting ammunition). Perhaps stars could also grow back over time.
• Having stars come from particle sources to the left or right, thus avoiding the “no stars in a given area” problem.
• Creating stars for each arrow – perhaps they’d stick for a while and fire a couple of stars before disappearing? This could be coupled with more limited arrow-drawing and enemies that can only be shot from below, or behind, or at a certain point.

Lack of variation: The game lacks variation. There needs to be more enemy types and more variation in the shapes you’ll use for the arrows.

What went right

Visuals: I am primarily a coder, and not an artist. Despite this, several people have said that they liked the visuals of the game, and that is something I am happy with. While the arrows don’t quite match the pixelated style of the rest of the game, I think that the overall style is rather coherent.

Proof of concept: Having more or less settled on the idea in advance, I knew turning it into a fun game would be a challenge. However, I think I got at least halfway there, and I feel confident that further experimentation with the concept could yield a fun game. Several people have also told me that the mechanics may be suitable for touch screen or Wiimote-style controls.

Polish: Even if I didn’t have time to fully develop the gameplay, I think the game feels relatively polished; I’m happy with both the title screen and game over effect. I often skip both of these when making games, but taking the time to make them was well worth it.

Conclusions

Visually and polish-wise, I am happy with the results. I’m also relatively satisfied with how the game turned out overall, but I feel the gameplay could have used another day or two. A little bit of variation and better shooting mechanics could’ve made this game a lot better!

This was my third time participating in Ludum Dare. Once again, it’s been a lot of fun! I’m looking forward to competing again soon.

Here’s a screenshot of the title screen from the final version:

…Okay, I exaggerated a bit in the post title. There’s just one stick figure. Sorry :/

I felt it would be good to respond, so here’s some quick answers to the comments.

(1) Sorry, I was too busy making fancy-looking graphics to do the reset button ><

(2) Sorry, I couldn’t finish the music in time, so there’s no sound! Once I regain some energy I will release a new version with sound. I think this game has legs.

(3) Yeah, the wall-switching is a bit cumbersome. I guess this is where memorization comes in – if you know the pattern beforehand or can read it quickly, then you know which wall colours to use and can set it up pretty quick. Not sure if that’s bad design… You can actually just hold down a shot button and move laterally across the wall to change all the circles at once, by the way.

(4) Sorry, there wasn’t a help screen, or it would be more obvious that there are three weapons (Z, X, and Z+X), and that each corresponds to a different colour for wall-switching. Edit: I haven’t encountered any problems with the wall-switching – maybe my explanation was unclear? An animated tutorial might help.

(5) shrt, it seems you have one of Those Keyboards. I’m not sure what the exact reason is, but some keyboards (like the one on a laptop I once used) seem to not want to register a combination of a letter and certain arrow keys at the same time. So you can’t press Z, Down and Left together. Best I can do is to put in 360 pad support, and possibly other pad support too, in the remake.

(6) All told, if you actually use all the bombs, you have 12 shots of the superweapon. This is (in theory) enough to clear the Horrible Rush Of Enemies before the boss, and kill the boss, without firing a single conventional shot, and being invincible about 90% of the time. (Edit: Assuming you don’t die before the Horrible Enemy Rush, that is.) C launches the superweapon when your wall is up, and re-summons the wall when it is offline. I was actually worried that it would be a game-breaker, but it seems it… well, wasn’t. If you’re having trouble, use more superweapon!

(7) There’s a semi-hidden trick to the game. You can operate either the spread shots or the laser simultaneously with the missiles. To do so, hold either the Z or the X key to fire the spread or laser, and simultaneously tap the other key (X or Z). This increases your firepower very substantially, but also makes your movement speed erratic, so threading a path through bullets gets a bit tougher.

(8) Have you ever encountered flying monks that *weren’t* attacking you?

Edit: (9) Muku, your comments were completely spot-on. I wonder if you were reading my mind! Yes, I realized a couple of days ago that I should have added a readme with instructions – will try to remember to do so next time. Yes, I am actually considering a more extensive remake/expanded edition with SNES-style blocky sprites (after I finish solving the more obvious issues). Yes, I did think about adding one or two ticks of acceleration, but my experience in the past has been that adding excessive acceleration to a shmup causes the player’s movement to feel sluggish – that’s probably something that can be solved with tuning though, so if I do a more extensive remake I will seriously consider it (thanks to your feedback!). Finally, the wall mechanic currently relies heavily on memorization (you switch the wall between waves to prepare for the upcoming wave); in the remake I am thinking of giving the player the choice of 2 different “wall modes” – manual and semi-automatic – where the former is the same as the current wall, and the latter is easier and more responsive but also far less flexible.

“But why,” you ask, “would we want to hear your story?”

I’ll tell you why: do you know what I hate? I hate free hosting services. And so, instead of my daily dose of self-flagellation I decided to download all of the windows-playable LD 14 games, many of which were hosted on places like 2share, rapidshare, getdropbox, etc. This was painful.

But, like any other zealot who has recently undergone such a rugged purificaiton, I have Good News! Instead of jumping through these hoops yourself, you can instead download this:

Torrent of Windows Binaries!

There. Now I’ve taken away your excuse; you have to vote! And, once you’ve voted, please (please!) take the time to seed this for a week or so. I’m only one man, and, more importantly, I’m only one man with a single DSL connection.

*note: Where possible I’ve included whatever each participant marked as “download for windows” or similar. If a downloadable Java or Flash version was provided, I included that instead of the online version. Where no windows binary was available, I included the source code if it was in a language that (might) run on Windows (i.e. python+pygame, Löve, etc.).

**note: Missing from this torrent are: secret_knitter (broken download link), winferno (broken download link), increpare (OS X only), GBGames (Linux only), and eugman (*nix only). Please remember to look these games up and find a way to play them!

***note: URLs for Flash games hosted online but not linked for download are listed in the file “Links to Online Games.html”.

The forces of light have killed your master, you have to go to the inner Sanctum to revive him!

The music can be found here:

http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00498/

The game runs in fullscreen, at 1024X320 . After multiple attempts, I still can’t get this image to appear in 1024X320, so I give up.  PICTURE IN CORRECT RESOLUTION:

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/9735/darknessgame.jpg

EDIT:  This post was made on time.  It would have been up sooner but I’m new to the word press system, and didn’t realize you have to hit “Publish” Instead of just save.

For all of those that want to try my entry and found an import error, i fixed it (it was caused by pymunk, i forgot to remove pymunk import from code).

I also reduced the zip package by half it’s original size by removing useless files and version control info. So for you that already download the broken version it will be less pain to download it again.

Download

http://bannergame.googlecode.com/files/rollbak_LD14_BlackHoleComming_Fixed.zip

Here it is also WIN32 .exe:

Download WIN32

Here is a screnshot of my entry running in Windows XP (at work pc..shhh):

I have fixed this and uploaded a new version to my site as both zip and webstart:

• Webstart
• ZIP file

Sorry about that!

:: ethergrind ::
:: distribution (source and win32 .exe) ::
:: source requires pygame and pgu ::

:: keys ::
:: arrows – move ::
:: space – shoot ::
:: enter – accept powerup ::
:: f – turn on high-quality visual effects ::
:: esc – quit (why would you want to do that?) :: 

:: start main.exe or main.py with the -f switch to run in full screen mode :: 

I’m calling this one done. Will post a post-mortem (and food!) later.

Download:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/5parrowhawk_LD14_WallGirl.zip

Instructions:

(1) You’ll need at least the XNA redistributable to run it. Also, a decent 3D card (anything from the last 4-5 years. Technically Intel GMA should work too!)

Download: XNA redist

(2) During gameplay, Z fires spread shots, X fires laser, Z+X fire missiles.

(3) The wall circles block enemy bullets of the same colour. Move into the circles and shoot to change the colours.

(4) When the wall is up and running, C uses your super attack (+ temporary invincibility). When it is offline, C summons it at the cost of one bomb.

(5) When the game finishes, please press Esc to exit. Didn’t have time to test and debug go-back-to-main-menu, even though the code is half-finished.

Troubleshooting:

If it doesn’t run even after installing the XNA redistributable, please consult my contest page:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

How is this related to Advancing Wall of Doom? Well, the player has to get to the ladder of the level to advance higher up. The ‘doom’ would be the cans, lasers, and the bottomful pits. The part after you get into the chimney are just ‘final’ levels that have no relation to the theme.
Read READ MEEEEEEEEEEE LD14.txt for more info.

There are two secret areas, can you find them?

Download

EDIT: Uploaded the image to the site.
EDIT2: Game Maker 7 source: Download

By way of apology, I’ve not used python in ages and this was my first stab at using pygame! Keys: LSHIFT brake, RSHIFT accelerate, LCTRL jump.

Download here.

Sadly there was a tiny bug in the final version of my game – the line “state = STATE_LEVEL;” was missing, so no pause screen would be shown between levels (although the code for layout and mechanics of that screen was already in there, as can be seen in the source).

I have fixed this and uploaded a new version to my site as both zip and webstart. I realize that this may not be taken into consideration when judging the entry, but I thought I should at least upload the entry as it was meant to be (and as I was certain it was!)

• Webstart
• ZIP file

Sorry about that!

—

ORIGINAL POST:

Okay, here’s the final version of “Sky Upon Us!”, my entry for LD14.

I tried to upload the zip file containing launch files for Windows, Linux and OSX to the blog. Sadly, WordPress wouldn’t accept it even if I changed the file extention. Meanwhile, the game can be downloaded or started from all the following links:

• SkyUponUs.zip (Including Windows .exe and Linux/OSX .sh files)
• Java Webstart 1 (Java 1.4+, retroweave)
• Java Webstart 2 (Java 1.5+)

While the game didn’t quite turn out the way I hoped, I’m still happy with most of it. However, the gameplay does get a bit repetetive; excuse!

As always, any comments are warmly appreciated!

A screenshot from the game:

The above screenshot says it all. I wanted to have more enemies and bullets on screen for the picture, but they were gone before I could take it *grin* All the player’s abilities are now complete – after this I’ll be doing the level design.

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/WallGirlAlpha3.zip

Please test if you have the time and energy. I really do appreciate the feedback.

The controls are: any key to begin, then arrow keys to move, Z for firebolts, X for laser, Z+X for missiles. When the wall is up and running, C launches the super attack (which consumes the wall). When the wall is not up and running, C will expend one bomb to summon it. You have 3 bombs.

The circles that make up the wall will absorb same-coloured enemy bullets. If you move into the circle and shoot, it will reappear (after a brief period) as the colour of the shot you used.

Enemies who hit the wall are immediately killed, but the circle they hit will be pushed back towards you! If the circle is pushed back too far, there is a chance that it will disappear. After three circles are gone, the entire wall disintegrates. This is a good time to use the superweapon (before it disintegrates, that is).

Esc exits the game when you’re done (sorry, it still doesn’t return to title screen).

For troubleshooting, etc., please see my previous entry:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/04/18/wall-girl-all-player-weapons-complete/

!rss show twitter

If you’re in the IRC channel and you want to tweet out (???), do:

/msg twitterbot twitter identify twitterusername twitterpassword

!twitter status Tweet

Actually, I don’t know why you’d use this last feature — I assume you have a working twitter client. Though I suppose it lets you avoid switching windows…

Also: Please do not spam #ld14! I’ll just have to kill the bot and we’ll all hate you.

Need to take all that empty space out some time…

Well, this is probably all I’m getting done tonight. Added some little helicoptor dudes to attack from behind, make the game a bit more exiting. Also made it so you can only buy from a store ones and magic does twice your attack rather than the same, in order to have some incentive to using it.

Latest version: http://willhostforfood.com/access.php?fileid=63226

I’m afraid I’ve bitten off more then I can chew. With wife, kids, and such, I don’t think I’ll have enough time to complete it. Originally the idea has a little turn based battle happening for control of any give city, but I definitely won’t have time to complete what will turn out to be two games. Of course, I’m only 4 programming hours in, so who knows what will happen.

As you can see, this is still a toy. When it becomes a game with a backstory, you’ll probably have to kill some guys and rescue others. There’ll be some sound and graphics too, hopefully.

You can test and comment on the prototype:
Download fidaner-LD14-prototype1 (Windows)

Keys:
Enter – Restart
LMB – Put wall
RMB – Delete wall
MMB – Put agent

I’m open to new ideas too.

Big milestone here. The other 2 player-weapons are finally done! Next update: THE WALL.

I’ve released a version with all 3 weapons:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/WallGirlAlpha2.zip

As always, I will be very grateful – not eternally so, I’m afraid, but very grateful nonetheless – to anyone who feels like testing it.

As with the previous version, controls are Up, Down, Left, Right (arrows) to move. Z launches firebolts (spread), X fires the laser, and Z+X launches magic missiles.

When the program starts you need to press any key to start the game. Esc exits.

You have 4 lives, and when all are gone, the game doesn’t return to the title screen (yet) – you have to exit and start again.

For those of you who are missing a redistributable, you can find it on my compo page:

http://haitaka.googlepages.com/ludumdare14

And now I must sleep. Good night (or whatever the time is where you are).

Hint: The Malice Cannon technique is alive and well, for those of you who know what that is!

Its kinda an RPG type thing where you have to run away from the advancing wall (which gains speed over time) while fighting enemies to gather money to advance in several things, including health, strength, possibly speed (possibly because it may make the game to easy), and purchasing units to run forward and destroy things. Using Construct to make the game, and I have some decent progress so far. Gonna spend tonight thinking up ways to make the game more challenging.

play it here…

Since there is some confusion.. this is an actual flash game I coded as a warm up in the 2 hours leading up to LD14 theme announcement.  It isn’t just a screenshot..    When the game loads, click in the screen and use your keyboard to win!