LD19 #5 – Errr… finished?

So we have our game. It looks great. Unfortunately the three levels didn’t get fully finished. But we are submitting anyway, because of the completeness of the first two levels and to showcase the work we did put into it.

 You can play the game here online. And this is our Ludum Dare page. The jam was an incredible experience and I really enjoyed working with Unity, even if I got caught up a whole lot in documentation. I’ll be using Unity again for sure, and would suggest it for folks wanting to make fun games quickly. There is a learning curve, but so much is drag and drop it’s embarrassing, but programming and good software design definitely comes into play. If you haven’t tried it I would recommend it.

LD19 #4 – Slacking and Revival

Day 1 was rough. I didn’t get much done and was really unhappy with my progress; I swam in Unity documentation for a while – specifically GUI documentation. We got a little done, but not enough. I made a nice meal of mac & cheese with sauted onions, broccoli and soy crumbles:

Then I was able to sleep, as I have been all weekend, in the futon bed in the living room (which is much more comfortable than I thought):

Day 2, today was much nicer. We spent a good bit of time away from the computer, planning the finer details of the game and went to work. I got the GUI system finished, and implemented four or five quests of the 8 or 9 we have. Josh spent most of the day working on the map and models, which are coming out beautifully. Our final plan from the planning session:

Unfortunately neither of us set up timelapse footage, but I have a screeny from my stuff:



And Josh’s graphics are going on top of that:

I think it’ll turn out pretty well, considering we stuck to compo rules in that all content was from “scratch”. Yes, even Josh’s volcano and rocks were made in Blender or in the Unity editor. Our game’s main idea was to discover a story about this island, but it evolved some island discovery, character discovery, and even a little player discovery (hell, some developer discovery too!). One more day for the jam – here’s to

• Finished all the models
• Adding a small battle system
• Finished the last half of quests
• Polishing GUI
• Fixing bugs
• (Possibly) Implementing a Save\Load system
• (Possibly) Implementing credits and a menu

…all before 9pm tomorrow. It’ll be a long day.

LD19 #3: “Discovery” – Brainstorming Finished

Theme: Discovery

After roughly an hour and a half of strictly no-computer brainstorming, Josh and I came up with an idea we are happy with. We have a vague game plan to go with it, as well. Here’s a picture of our discovery of the game idea:

We had a couple of ideas of ‘discovery’ ranging from spatial, physical to introspective. We even went into disappointment, the contrast of expectation, discovery, and failure for a bit. Though the game idea hasn’t been settled completely, the focus on spatial\physical traversal was our most solid game plan and we went with it. The board defines the game plan: foundation content and code creation, game detailing\core content, and finally iterative content. The latter two Josh dubbed as “enough to make it a game” and “enough to make it fun”, respectively. We’re done for tonight – hopefully to be up bright and early tomorrow!

LD19 #1: Ludum Dare 19 – Game Jam

Yup, a friend of mine and I have decided to pair up and make a game for the upcoming Ludum Dare 19. This also means we’ll be doing the jam, which has less strict rules, and is also extended to 72 hours.

Food and snacks are done so we’re ready for 3 days of coding. T-minus 1 hour!

Of course, the pre compo desk shot:

Ludum Dare 18 – Final Update

I finished!

Here is the submission page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=2236
And the direct download link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10424774/BikersRebellion (2).zip

I met the minimal goals I set for myself, which pretty much consisted of creating a ‘finished game’. It may seem vague, but I had a clear idea in my head:

• All hand drawn images
• Somewhat dynamic
• Simple AI

Which were all met in my eyes. The game lacks the depth I wanted, but is certainly challenging in getting higher scores. I come away with a lot of valuable information about the next Ludum Dare:

• If I’m not using Unity, GameMaker, RPGMaker, etc. then I really need to prepare my engine (XNA, pygame) a lot better. I thought I could just use an engine for another XNA game I had been working on, but didn’t spend enough time clearing out the extra biogenesis code so it was very convoluted. It forced me to spend way to much time figuring out and clearing away overly complicated code. Like collision!
• Hand drawing assets is a lot of fun and gives the game a look and atmosphere I enjoy. I hope to experiment with more complex implementations of this in the future.
• Planning early is key! Plan your work, work you plan helped out a lot.

Ludum Dare 18 – Update #6

Well, there may only be around 7 hours to finish, but that won’t prevent me from enjoying a favorite lunch of mine – smart dogs fried with sauerkraut and onions, topped with relish and ketchup:

Things are going… slowly still. I keep getting caught up on code I should have had prepared. What a learning process though! I’m already excited about 19.
I have most of the images created, the sounds generated, and basic mechanics. The rest of the day will be creating the minimal decent submission I can muster up, and then tweaking the hell out of movement and AI. I’m aiming for a 3 level, increasing difficulty, one map, somewhat dynamic (as in randomly selected content at a given point in time) game that resembles Spy Hunter.

Ludum Dare – Update #5

So I wanted to take a break from coding and got some actual content done!

• Debris has been added
• SpawnManager has been tweaked a bit, but needs more
• Most of the art content is done; everything except an extra car design and all the buildings is finished

In the following picture, everything is scrolling, generated somewhat based on a level difficulty which means scrolling speed and car speed\ acceleration. The only behavior right now is ‘GoStraight’ but that will be changed soon (although some cars will still use that, not all are going to be enraged drivers!)

Ludum Dare – Update #4

Above is my more concise ‘TODO’ for today. I’m giving myself about 6-7 hours, which hopes of getting to be before 2am, only so I am able to wake up before 8am and begin again. I got more caught up on collision, but finally implemented the masking collision (I was so used to line and circle collision algorithms) so now collision is down to simple tweaking. I still haven’t made any actual content, just placeholders. Sunday is hopefully going to be content day. If I get most of this finished, I’ll spend the better part of Sunday morning designing and implementing hand drawn sprites, then move to feature creep. There is a lot I want to do once I get the game playing in simple modes with regular content. Most of today’s recent work has been behind the scenes, but a newer screenshot nonetheless:

The buildings are scrolling, the cars are beginning to sense (the numbers around the car are it’s sensors debug output), and the player is the ‘biker’ in the middle. Here’s to hoping!

Oh, and the obligatory food post – I made channa masala for dinner! I made a whole lot 2 days ago and it’s been serving me well:

Ludum Dare – Update #3

So I’m a little rusty. It’s taken me an extraordinary amount of time to implement the skeleton of AI, Spawnmanager, player movement, and some other functionality. The good news is that most of this is finished so I can begin creating the skeleton of the entire game with simple AI for cars, tweaking the movement, adding buildings, and finally, correct scrolling. Here is a small screenshot of what’s finished, in action:

Game in action with a biker and two cars on the road.

The code is really sloppy, but I’m just hoping for a finished product at this point!

Tentative schedule:

• Sat (Today):
  • Get most of the simple AI completed
  • Get scrolling and movement lined up
  • Create variability of speed, acceleration, etc.
  • Get collision working
  • Have a simple level created and playable
• Sunday:
  • Create the actual content of bikers, cars, building, pedestrians, and debris
  • Tweak scrolling, movement
  • Finish complex AI and integrate difficulty into it and the Spawn Manager
  • Tweak Spawn Manager
  • HOPEFULLY Feature creep
  • SUBMIT A FINISHED PRODUCT

Not too ambitious, I hope. Things are only slightly behind schedule.

Ludum Dare 18 – Update #2

So after Evolution missed first place by a very small number of votes and came in second, I was disappointed but see a nice challenge in the theme of ‘Enemies as Weapons’. I’ve spent the past 3 hours clearing out and refining the biogenesis\Vector Rumble engine to fit my new purposes, brainstorming the theme, deciding on a game plot, and details relating to it. First I’ll post the station of brainstorming and coding again:

Idea Bulletin has come in handy (lack of white board at the moment)

Workstation at 1:20am

So here’s the game pitch:
Bikers across America have grown increasingly upset at the devastation wrought by automobiles and the oil industry. Cars have grown increasingly enraged at bikers in the roadway and have doubled their efforts to hit them and drive them off the streets. As a biker a part of the rebellion you have learned the secret of redirecting drivers’ anger to gas stations and buildings, therefore using cars as weapons against their providers.

Game pitch draft

Unit brainstorm

Updates:

• Graphics will be drawn by hand and integrated into game for a unique look and feel I’ve been waiting to test out.
• Gameplay will essentially imitate a vertical scroller.
• I haven’t decided if I want to use color at all, and if I do, how much.
• Sound will imitate the Spy Hunter theme (an older favorite of mine) and play will mock it a little as well.
• Messing around with sfxr has proven fruitful.
• Making a large batch of channa masala has also proved very helpful.
• Trying not to make the game seem dogmatic but more fun and silly with this overbearing yet half serious pro bike theme.