Hi, I think I am really quitting this time.  I’d really like to submit something so I can vote, but I don’t really have a game or anything close to a game yet and I’m too tired to pull off the last bits of things that would make it a ‘demo.’

So this will be the last of my posts titled using the names of songs related to roads.

Good luck to all of you who are scambling for these last two and a half hours!

I may try to finish this game up later in the week.

I’ve quit a few times since last night, but I never close Eclipse and I continue to sit at the computer.  I’m fairly certain that I won’t get done, and if I do manage to get most of the things implemented, it isn’t going to be fun for long.

The main part that is missing is the curves in the road.  I had an idea on how to implement them in sprites, but it’s time consuming and I wasted about six hours yesterday fussing with stupid projection equations.  I have those pretty much figured out, so it shouldn’t be a problem next time, but this time it was valuable time wasted.

I may give it some more time, but likely nothing submitted for me this time around.

I’ve not got much to show for today so far.  I spent a lot of time fighting with some stupid physics things before I gave up and just went with the simple stuff.  Since this isn’t Gran Turismo, it doesn’t really matter.  I can flub the calcs just as long as it feels natural enough.

Here’s the latest screenshot.

The car is away from the bottom of the screen a bit, due to the acceleration.  I still don’t have anything that shows the car is moving, so that is what I will work on next.  After that, I still have the difficult task of doing the road curves.  Since this is all sprite based, it’s not going to be as easy as doing it in 3D, I would think.

The day isn’t over yet, so I could still get some good progress made later on.

It’s Saturday morning!  Here’s breakfast!

Apple-cinnamon pancakes that my wife made while I started working away again.  I don’t really have much to show for it yet, since it’s all behind the scenes stuff to manage the background and road.  When I get something, I’ll post it, hopefully before lunch.

I think sleep is near… I’ve not done as much as I wanted, but I think I have a decent start.  So far you can control the car with the mouse, left and right.  I’ve done a simple one-image background that will eventually be replaced with separate dynamic pieces.  Here’s the screen shot:

Hopefully I don’t sleep in too much! There’s still plenty to do!

I didn’t get home until ten o’clock, but I checked on my phone to see what the theme was.  Luckily, it was the one I had done the most thinking about on Monday, so I didn’t have to do much thinking while away.

I’m going to do a racing game, perhaps like Outrun or of the Night Driver/Enduro variety.  I’ve done a little mock up of the screen, just a sketch really.  I’m not sure I like the perspective, but the sprites will most likely be used.  Click to enlarge (sounds like a Viagra ad!?)

From here, I’ll probably colorize the art and then cut it up to make individual sprites.  I should probably just use bounding rectangles for now though, and get some actual game logic going…..but I have learned that if you don’t do your graphics right the first time, you’ll likely not have time to return to them later.  So take the extra minutes now so you don’t have to set everything back up to fix them.

I’m tired, but I want to get something going before I go to bed.  I’m being kept company by a neurotic kitty and a can of No Fear Energy Drink.  Oh, and my Gobstoppers!  Though I think I’m already candied out…  Listening to Iron & Wine right now cause it’s calm and quiet.  Tomorrow I’ll bust out some loudness.

My basecode For LD48_13 is largely the same as the past two competitions.  I have updated it a little:

• Classes are now organized into the package net.lonestranger.common, game and network.
• Network isn’t really too useful yet.  The only class that exists in it is called Report.  It’s job is to take a string of data and send it via POST to a website, where it can be digested as fit.  For example, sending scores back to a central repository.
• You can take jpg screenshots by hitting F10.  They are named based on the current date/time and dumped into the working directory.

Here is the link to download it.

I didn’t really list my goals in my declararion post a few days ago, so I’ll do it now.

• Keep the same art style as last time.  I sketched things out on paper and scanned them in so I could colorize.  Keeping with bold colors and gradients is probably what I’ll do.
• KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!  Making something too complex is just a recipe for a headache at 1pm on Sunday afternoon.
• Make useful additions to the basecode that can be used in later competitions.  The screenshot stuff is an example of something I did previously that helps out a lot.
• Finish most of the work by Saturday night so I can spend Sunday polishing.

Ok, time to finish work and then I’m off to Thanksgiving, The Sequel, but I’ll check in after 8pm Pacific tonight to see the theme I need to start thinking about.  I expect everyone to be in FULL CODE MODE when I get back. 

Here’s the postmortum I promised last week.  I haven’t read the comments on my entry yet and I wanted to get my thoughts down before I did.

THis LD48 was my third, if you don’t count the two that I intended to enter and never did.  My number one goal was to finish, and the number two goal was to do something fun.  I’m happy that I completed goal number one, but failed on goal number two.

Technically, I didn’t really even submit a game.  There is no real end condition or repeatable system that goes until you fail.  I never got a chance to actually implement the “monster at the gates” scenario, as I fought with a stupid bug at the end brought on by stupid changes on my stupid part.

What did I do wrong in the LD12?  I didn’t spend enough time on it.  I should have squeezed three or four more quality hours in.  My mother-in-law was visiting, and that led to the normal distractions as she visited with us and our newborn.  I probably could have completed something that resembled a game with a little more time, and I know that the time existed.  I just didn’t use it well.

I didn’t get any real animation done with the monsters or the dude.  It would have been nice, but time didn’t allow it.  I also used some sound, and while it wasn’t nearly to the level that I wanted it, I thought it was neat to hear the monsters gargle when they died and the arrow whisp away from the dude on the tower. 

I think my usage of the angle/power aiming mechanism was a bad idea.  I think I should have gone with the “point-and-click” method, which would have been easier for the user and fits better with the action oriented design.  The arrow was made up of separate graphics rotated to the closest 15 degree mark.  I could have implemented a rotation transformation, but that would have taken longer and probably been more CPU intensive.   

So what did I do right?

I met the theme of the Tower by simply having a tower in which the dude fired from.  I didn’t stop there, and created a middle floor from him to fire from and also made the doors at the bottom open and close.  The tower isn’t just a pretty graphic.  It’s functional and strategic.

The part I liked the most about my entry was the graphics.  Most of them were sketches from my initial game idea sheet.  I scanned it into the computer and photoshopped color into it and cut it into separate parts and images.  I think it gave my entry a unique style that I’d like to use again in a future competition.  I’m not a great artist, but I think if I don’t try to make everything perfect, it comes off better.  Reminds me a little of the original South Park or other ‘construction paper’ style.

Another thing that I really think I did well was keeping the coding distractions to a minimum.  By this, I mean that I didn’t get sidetracked coding something that wasn’t important ‘right now.’  In the past, I will start to code something that may come in handy later, but doesn’t really help me too much in completing more important foundation pieces.

So all in all, I think I did ok.  I can see that I learned some things from the last time around and I really look forward to taking the things I learned here for LD13 in December.  Same goals, but I will try to think through the game for a little while before coding to make sure that it is actually a game and hopefully fun. 

So this is ‘Tower’ since I didn’t bother to come up with a better name.  (I did all my naming duty with Fiona’s Purple Reign.)

The object, of course, is to defend your tower from the onslaught of baddies.  Unfortunately, there is only one type of monster, but each wave has it’s own speed and interval.  Use the arrows to move the guy up and down the tower, or left and right across the top.  A/D change the angle and W/S changes the power of your arrows.

I’ll probably write a post-mortum later, but you can download Tower.

I haven’t had any chances to really post anything today, so I thought I would do so as I begin my final push.

Here’s a screenshot.  So far, you can fire arrows at wave after wave of baddies.  I haven’t figured out how to give you more arrows, so I’ll probably just make them infinite and limit you to a couple.

Anyway, back to the salt mines.

I’m calling it a night.  Those energy drinks aren’t doing anything, though I’m sure once my head hits the pillow they’ll kick in.

Things to do tomorrow:

• Waves of monsters from the MonsterManager
• Display upcoming monsters in the current wave
• Add melee weapons
• Add scoring
• finish HUD
• boiling oil?
• number font object?
• and a number of other things, I’m sure.

Well, we’ll see how it goes.  See you in the morning!

Oh.  Hey. 

It’s time to bust out can number two.  And I’m running dangerously low on Gobstoppers.

I’m not done for the night, but it seemed like a good time to post a screenshot.  There isn’t much gameplay to it right now.  The idea is that monsters will progress from the left to the right towards the tower, where you are the person defending.  At your disposal is arrows that you shoot from one of three places on the tower.  Ok, so the arrows don’t do anything yet, since I didn’t implement the collision routines.  I have spent most of the past couple hours making the game look better than the black and white sketches that I’ve been using.  Now it looks like colored versions of my sketches.  I like the style, so I am going to keep it.  I think they look better than anything pixel pushed. 

Next up is probably the HUD display for the top of the screen to display the game info.

Oh, and the screenshot capturing is done from built-in code that dumps the frame before it displays it.  I think its neat.

So it’s time to bust out the big guns.

I’m behind, I’m not sure if I have something fun, and we’re down to the last 23 hours.

Here’s my dinner for today.  Cheap chinese food; barbeque pork and orange chicken with chowmein noodles.  Oh, and my wife stopped at another chinese food place to get wonton soup because the first place didn’t have any.  She’s such a wonderful woman. 

If you are wondering, my fortune for the evening is “DISCOVER THE TALENTS WITHIN YOURSELF.”

Yea.

Sure, it’s almost lunch time, but I thought I’d post what I ate this morning.

Bacon, Eggs, Hashbrowns, Toast and Biscuits and Gravy.  My wife had blueberry pancakes and helped me eat the B&G.  You can see baby Hunter in the upper corner.

Here’s my first sketch of a tower game.  You’re the dude on the tower.  The baddies are on the left.  They’ll be working their way to the right to attack your tower.  Not totally original, but it’s something I think I can make fun.  That’s always been the biggest hurdle in any “out there” game idea I come up with.

Now I just need to start working on the Java objects to represent these game objects.

Here’s where I’ll spend most of my LD48_12

Friday dinner waiting for for LD48_12.  Polish sausages with peppers, onions, kraut and a little mustard.  Peas, salad and criss-cut fries as well.