The compo is over, my game is finished and the rating starts. For anyone trying out my game (if you haven’t yet: HERE), I will explain some strategies to survive, just in case you have trouble with it. Additionally, as I tried to get some advice from my wife for setting up the level generator yesterday evening she wasn’t really enthusiastic, to say the least. So for anyone more interested in the tech behind I will explain, why the level generator currently doesn’t work that good for providing difficulty.

The game mechanic basically works with to values that decrease as long as you are digging tunnels (and even when passing existing ones). The first value is food/hunger. You can find three different kind of food which will give you 5 to 15 points back. Food, if there is any, is only revealed if you enter a cage. By that, it is often necessary to leave the direct path and search adjacent rooms if you are low on food. This strategy also has a second benefit related to the second value, hope.

Hope is generated by spotting new cages around you. So progressing the level is the key to prevent death by starvation.  The hope mechanics leads to another point. Often it is better to move to the center of the level because chances for revealing cages is better in free field than at the level borders. This seems contradictory to the aim of getting to the upmost row or the rightmost column which are the only places to escape the level later on. Remeber that you can see 2 spaces horizontally and vertically and one space diagonally (not if you are digging). So if you already are two rows below the top border and there is no cage above, you won’t find any if you dig that direction.

The cacti walls are revealed by digging, so sometimes a tunnel can give further information for planning your path. This only applies if you have enough food/hope left.

To summarize the strategies:

• try to reach upmost row or rightmost column of the cages but pass the center of the level
• don’t dig to places where there can be no cage (2 spaces between player and border)
• don’t hesitate to search rooms for food
• progress to keep your hope filled

Headed to the center and didn't took the direct path to replenish food and hope. Else I would have died short before exit (Difficulty: Hard).

With that you should be able to beat all difficulties after some tryouts. At this point the random generator sets in. The design I used is rather insecure in providing the difficulty level. Instead of spreading a fixed amount of cages for each difficulty, I implemented to check a percentage to set a cage for every field of the grid (e.g. 33:67 that there is a cage on a field in normal mode). Instead of filling one third of the level with cages, this leads to very unsteady number of cages. By that, an “insane” level could have more cages than an “easy” one. Same applies to walls. By that the difficulty selector is a rather vague adjuster. But nevertheless you will notice the difference if you give it some tries (one playthrough is quick; around 15 seconds). So go and play. Good luck.

TL;DR:

Just a game design related teaser for the post mortem coming soon.

I actually managed to finish, though I doubted it quite a few times in the last seven hours. There’s almost no end to the list on how many things were cut and it’s unpolished to no end. But still, you can sort of play it and enjoy it.

You can view the submitted entry here.

Also, here’s a new screenshot (included with the entry), showing truck editing.

Looking forward to test all the other games.

I now have cities and roads, albeit the roads are not very natural. They feel sort of alien. Also, the cities doesn’t have names or populations yet.

Too be honest, I could probably spend the rest of the weekend on making the roads good, so I will probably try to get on with the rest of the game stuff instead, since the game doesn’t actually need perfect roads. Just roads.

Next I should get some factories and stuff out there.

I’ve finally done something that’s visible, the land type map generation, though it doesn’t look much like a map yet, it will need cities and roads and stuff as well.

Other than that, I’ve just written down kinds of resources, factories, trucks etc, and their costs.

So far, I’ve not really done anything other than some texture maps and an island generator:

In all honesty, the base of the heightmap (the noise cloud generation) is almost identical to the one I wrote for The Hat Swarm Attack on Dance Islands. But on top of that, there’s some erosion code and texture maps. Also, there’s mesh creation, but you don’t see that above.

I don’t really yet know what game to make of it though. I have some ideas…

Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing when it comes to procedural generation. I should have had this done much sooner, but I’ve finally reached the stage where I have something which could be described as procedural dungeon generation.

I don’t actually have any graphics or gameplay, but I can now generate maps from a seed number. Here’s a section of map 0:


# # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # X # # # # # # # # # # # . . . . . . X
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . . . . . # . # # . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # . . . . # # # # # # # # # # # #
# # # . # # # . . . X . . . . . . . . . . . . # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # . # # . . . . # # # # # # . . . # # #
# # # . # # # . . . . X . . . . X . . . . . . . . # # #
# # # . # # # . # # # # . . . . # # # # # # . . . # # #
# # # . # # # . # # # # . . . . # # # # # # X # # # # #
# # # . # # # . # # # # . . . . # # # # # # . # # # # #
# # # # # # # . # # # # . . . . . # # # # # . # # # # #
# # # # # # # . # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #
. . . . . . X . . . . X # # # # X # # # # # . # # # # #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # . . . . . . . X . . . .
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #
# . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #
# . . . . . . . # # # # # # # # . # # # # # . # # # # #


Once I’ve had some well-needed sleep I’ll get some graphics done, tilemap rendering, get a player walking around and introduce some treasures for him to find. Bah – there’s loads of time left

Damn. Why do I always do this? I’ve got bogged down in trying to get some procedural generation working and after a good 8 hours I have nothing to show for it

Well, here’s some debug text from my console at the moment:


1 1 10
3 2 10
5 3 10
layer 0
1 1 10
3 2 10
5 3 10
layer 0
# # # # #
# # # # #
# # # # #
# # # # #
# # # # #


It sounds a lot fancier than it really is

Hmmm – “Exploration” – what a theme.

It sounded really interesting at first and I’m pretty sure I voted it up, but now I’m having a bit of brain-fail trying to come up with a feasible idea. I’m tempted to try my hand at some procedural generation, but that’s gone badly for me in the past…

So I had this cool idea about faeries living in the net, and you could browse webpages and recruit them, help them fight off boss critters, etc..

The problem is that I screwed up my time management; I didn’t get started until today, and the deadline is actually much closer than I realized (who uses UTC?!? @_@).  But anyway, I worked up something which is not a game but is still kind of neat.

FaerieNet – Create a Faerie

I probably won’t be able to work on this any more before the official midnight UTC deadline.  So, this is it for me for this MiniLD.  However, I might just continue working on this project in the days ahead…