Finally, I finished… It took me about 18 hours or so of work to get this up and running… and I had to do a plane travel from Lisbon to Dublin in the meantime and all…

This was by far the smoothest compo I was ever in, probably because the game isn’t as ambitious as my previous attempts… I don’t know whatever I should be happy for finishing a product (complete in terms of menus, music, sfx, even a pause key!) or unhappy because it’s so unambitious… I’m getting old, methinks…

Anyway:

You can download it here (Game)

Source (C++/DX9) can be downloaded here (Source)

You can also download a more complete journal here (Log)

Timelapse can be downloaded here (*.wmv)

And I think that’s it, looking forward to judging you all (eheheh, sounds funny said like that)…

Covenant, signing out…

I’ve managed to get some game stuff into the game. So it’s possible to play it, and it’s possible to win or lose (only there’s not check for it yet). It’s not overly exciting. Or intriguing. There’s an AI that plays decently if it’s lucky, but almost never wins except if you’re stupid. But it’s something.

What’s left is to fix a few known bugs, add some kinds of instructions, and end of game check, and pack it up. Exciting, huh? I’m quite tired, so I don’t really jump around in joy, but maybe I would have been. Probably would have been more had this game turned out better.

I’ll write about how you actually play in the submission post.

And I forgot to post my lunch photo from earlier. It was lasagna.

And then I just had supper. It was toast.

And no, I did not take a lot of photos of the same toast and use them to post multiple times during the course of this compo. It really was different instances all of them!

I’ve thrown out a lot of code and streamlined (simplified) gameplay. It’s still fairly pointless, but it’s pointless in a much more easygoing and fun way. Which is important.

I just need to figure out some restriction/bonus given by the tower height. And introduce an AI player. And fix some way to solve conflicts. And come up with a goal. I mean a single actual coded goal. I can think of lots of different other ones, like reach certain height in as low number of turns possible, or be the one with highest tower when resources are all out etc.

Anyway, here’s a screenshot. It looks kind of like before.

The game doesn’t work as it is. Needs to figure out a design that does. At first I thought (as I wrote) I just needed an slight control change (or a bigger one, but I went for the small). The actual game rules were the same, only this showed that the game was fairly pointless (when didn’t have to set workers every round). One just had to set them up and let the turns pass. Might have been better with an opponent, as then you’d have to figure out most optimal route, but that still wasn’t much work. And the bothersome thing left was to manually build the tower. Tested to remove that too. Made it less bothersome, but even more pointless. So I need to figure something out.

Oh, right, at least I had some candy.

Not much of a gameplay yet, but at least it’s possible to move around in the tower.

YouTube Version (I couldn’t find how to embed it in the blog entry :/)

Better quality (2.7MB)

So much left to do, so little time.

I’m trying to figure out whether I’m to change the control scheme. The current one is a bit of a bother at lower levels and will be a lot of a bother at higher, or so I suspect. Just feels there’s a lot to rewrite, and I’m not sure how I should adjust the tower building. Most this probably doesn’t mean anything yet to you guys as you haven’t even played it. But just so you know I’m pondering.

I’ve added small icons so one can see directly where things have been ordered and where things can be done. Also improved the roads. It looks more promising than it plays though, so not sure I’ll get this stuff to be fun or not. It really needs an opponent to make any sense as it is.

I’m having breakfast.

It’s toast AND A DONUT.  It’s like the most awesome breakfast in weeks! For me.

I’m up and and working again. Have continued on the roads stuff so that now you can assign workers beyond influence level if it has road connection. Things missing at the moment are building fundament and expanding level of influence. And, like, and AI, decent graphics, multi-player mode etc etc.

I’ve noted that the way worker assignment is currently done is quite bothersome. Not sure how it should be instead. Thinking either that workers stay assigned and can be unassigned, or that one can just select what resources to buy for the remaining workers after having built etc. Currently it works that you select action for each hex during a road, including assigning workers. Then on next round those things are reset.

And now I need to go out in the rain on a quest to buy breakfast stuff.

The middle point has passed and I still have nothing playable. Doing 3D from scratch, combined with bad preparation are making my progress really slow. Will I be able to finish a game?

Tomorrow I’ll have to focus on gameplay at all cost.

Almost time to turn in…

Most of the game is done, including sound and music… Just composed some stupid tunes on the acoustic guitar, recorded it, cleaned it a bit in Goldwave, and it’s done… Got a game music and a title music… even considered adding some lyrics to the title music, but I don’t have the gear to mix up the voice and the guitar and I can’t do both at the same time, because I suck! J

Going to wrap this up for tonight, get everything ready for my trip tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll be coding again in about 15 hours or so (which leaves me with about 7 to 8 usable hours left)… Thankfully, only things I miss are the Main Menu, the Instructions, some levels (which can be done pretty fast) and some gameplay tests)…

Just thought I’d give some word on my progress before I go and get some sleep.

It’s now possible to expand the tower. It’s also possible to build roads. Those are perhaps the only different game changes. I’m not posting a screenshot because the roads are just lines at the moment.

Night all.

Solved the stalemate on the game design by adding another color… that breaks the pattern and makes the game more fun…

Now I already have win and lose situations, with all the flow in it…

As usual, took me longer than I wanted, the glue structure of the game (get to the next level and such things…)

Anyway, this part is done… game starts, goes to the first level, if you’re successful (that is, if you can build the tower with bricks to spare), you go to the next level, otherwise, you get to repeat it…

Now to add the lives indicator, and add the game over and well done screens…

I’m a bit worried about sound… I doubt I can make it work today and tomorrow I won’t have the gear for it… K

I don’t really now where all the time went, but at least there has been some progress. Added drawing of the tower with variable number of levels. And initial building of it. And getting and assigning workers to resources. And getting resources. And a bit of ending turn. And simple UI. … Well, so I guess I’ve done more than I remembered at first, but it’s still not a game, far from it. Here’s a screenshot.

And I’ve just had supper. What do you think it was?

That’s right. The toast subclass of bread. With a little butter. It’s really supposed to be a lot of butter, but I ran out of it, and wasn’t clever enough to buy more earlier when I was shopping. So now I have something fun to do before breakfast tomorrow! Yay!

Ok, basic gameplay is inplace (no win conditions yet…)…

I’m trying to play it, but the game reveals itself impossible in lot’s of conditions: for instance, in the screenshot below, you can see that there’s no way I can transform that block into something that doesn’t screw everything up…

I wonder why most my games in LD48 end up like this: impossible… I should think things through better before coding…

Anyway, I’m gonna try and find a solution…

I have written hex picking code, so now I could add some kind of interaction. Might be fun. Also been to the store and bought some microwave food for tomorrow. I really should have prepared yesterday, but you know what they say: “If you work all day and play all night you don’t have much time to prepare for LD48″.

Also bought some cheap low quality donuts.

Explosions are done…

They even look cute… Anyway, now I have to decide on exactly the gameplay is… I can drop blocks from wherever I want and they explode if they come in 8-way contact with blocks of the same color… So now, I just have to decide between the explicit building (where the player has to place blocks so they don’t blow up, according to some pattern and as fast as possible – this option would have me change the 8-way collision to 4-way, I think, or else it’s just alternating stuff. This choice is also more work in the level design thing); or the implicit building, where blocks come out of the sky and the player has to change their color while they drop, so that they don’t explode when they land… This last option is much easier, since it becomes more or less random and I just have to design towers… I’ll do a break now and decide…

Progress is going extremely well…

I already have level definitions, rendering code, some game logic, input, etc… Only thing that’s lacking is an actual gameplay idea… or better, a decision on the gameplay decision. My wife’s been helping me with ideas, and I have 3 or 4 possible gameplay paths available, I just don’t know which one is more fun/less work…

Anyway, here’s some photos and such…

At my desk, heavy in thought:

My cat ready to pounce the mouse:

48 hour salad (all done with tomatoes and olives by my wife):

Brain food for lunch: burgers, mediterranean salad, cooked mushrooms, raw carrots… everything the body and mind need:

And the game screeny:

The blocks of any color can be placed in the tower structure, and they’ll fall down until they found another block or get to the ground…

I have spent way too much to create a rather crude world generator. Well, maybe not so bad really, but the output does not always seem to make any sense. Guess I can improve Mr Parameters when I got a game.

I’ve finished with the laundry, and also had a bit of lunch. The famous Salmon and Stuff dish.

Woken up about 2 hours ago, and saw that the topic is Tower… Basically, it sucks… My wife came up with the basic idea of what I’m going to do: a brick tower building game… the game part is still unclear, but I probably will think of something… I want to try to have most of the game built today, since tomorrow I’m off to Dublin and will loose lots of time in travels and such…

Anyway… Here are the obligatory pics:

My office:

First food of the day:

And the screenshot:

Except for doing such unproductive stuff as showering and doing laundry, I’ve drafted out the intial idea. Thought I’d share it with you.

Base tile types:
Clay - together with water and a worker gives bricks
Moutains - together with two workers gives stone
Forest - together with a worker gives wood
Field - together with a worker and water gives food
Water - nothing, but provides water to nearby hexes
Sea - together with a worker gives food

Created tile types:
Fundament - created from stone, allows for building tower, on rock it doesn’t require stone, on water it requires two rocks, and on sea three.

The tower:
Building new levels costs a bricks or stone and half that in wood per level already built, plus food for each worker, and as many workers as levels are also needed.

Workers:
You gain workers by area of influance. Area of influence is decided per tower level. 1-5: radius 1 (up to 6 workers), 6-10: radius 2: up to 6+13 workers. And so on.

Workers actions:
Workers can either build, produce or do nothing. Building costs food. Produce costs nothing.

Roads and channels:
Channels gives water to distant hexes. Roads makes it possible to transport goods. Costs nothing but a build action per hex. Can be built beyond influence point.

Ships: Allows fishing further away.

Alt. 2: Must build quarry, lumbermill, farm, brickmaker etc before getting resources from them. Or else have them as optional bonus givers? Could also build/work beyond influence, but at half speed?

Perhaps a bit too much stuff, but it’s just so I have where to aim.

So it has begun! The theme was among my favorites as it’s an open theme. Lots of games can be made with a tower theme.

I have an idea of what kind of game I’d like to make. The gameplay details are still fuzzy but I have enough to get started so now that the caffeine is slowly starting to work I’ll start the coding.

I’m not using a fancy pre-made engine library so I have to do the boring stuff again. I hope I don’t waste the whole day just to display some 3D objects, so that I can start working on the interesting parts. It’s annoying to have to code stuff like texture loading or a timer in every compo but at least we’re not using the insane “mechanical cat” rules where you weren’t even allowed to look at code you had written before the competition (apparently the poor people competing in PyWeek still have to do that). I remember losing hours because of that stupid rule during the making of my Lightstream48 and Ring48 games.

First I had breakfast.

It was toast with butter and water.  Yum yum! Taste like ghostmas.

Then I tried out basic hex rendering.

I’m up an about, and while the theme wasn’t something as good as say ‘pacifist’, it’s still very decent. Compared to the theme of the last LD it has super mega combo greatness. Only drawback I see is that there could be about 50 tower defense games, and 10 x-jumpy games. So I have no interest in making that, at least.

No, instead, the first idea I had was kind of like Civ., but instead of cities there are towers, and all players have only one tower. Then they need to expand the towers influence to gain more land, and then by exploiting the land keep adding levels to the tower. First I thought like these could by 20th century skyscrapers. Then I thought that perhaps it’d be better to set it in older times and make it like the Tower of Babel. First to reach the sky wins. So that’s the idea so far, yes.

For now, I’ll start by writing some hex playing field code, I believe, and do some test art. I think I will use the D programming language this time.