Here’s my friday night dinner via my lovely wife.   French Onion Soup!

Here’s my setup!    That’s 1 computer and 1 laptop there.   No cats this year, I just created this stack (Usually the desktop lives elsewhere.)

I, too, will be making somethign this weekend. Hopefully something good!

Also, my wife has already ‘thrown down’ in the food compo, having made a meal plan for the whole weekend.

I had to close proactiveapathy.com. So you’ll probably have trouble downloading my stuff until I find alternate hosting.

Edit: Mirror

Tools I used!

• GraphicsGale - Art / Graphics
• SFXr - Sound (Yaay DrP)
• Komodo Edit - Python (and others) IDE
  • Komodo ran really slow for me. Someone on IRC said I could turn a bunch of stuff off to make it faster. I use Ecplise sometimes, but I can’t get my Linux install to run it right. I need to just use Xemacs.
• python & pygame
• pen & paper: Ideation

I intend to post a follow up as soon as my family visit settles down a bit. If I could do it differently I’d probably pick a different graphics program that works on Linux As it was I had to transfer graphics from my laptop to my desktop. And, as I mentioned above, I wasn’t happy with Komodo Edit.

Here’s the 1.0 version of The Chain Fight

The python only link: TheChainFight.zip — Unzip the file, and run ‘python main.py’

The Windows link: TheChainFight-Win.zip (Mirror) — Unzip the file, and run ‘main.exe’

Please find me on IRC, or leave a comment if you find anything wrong. Thanks! If the debug info from the AI bugs you, you can hit ‘D’ during gameplay.

As a note, notice that above, the python is 133 KB, and the Windows version is 2.6 MB. You’ll save yourself a lot of downloading for the python entries if you download and install python and pygame

Here’s my The Chain Fight game.   TheChainFight.zip   There’s some instructions in the readme.txt.  You will need python and pygame to run it.  If you want to see it in action, set both AIs to Random and set the Money to $5000.  Chaos will ensue.

I’m planning on improving the AI, and adding a tutorial.

So, I’ve been a bit lax in my food blogging!   This cannot do!   Luckily I took pics of most of what I did:

Saturday morning was coffee:

   Just like being at work, with less soul sucking.

Then, for lunch my lovely wife brought home Portillos.   With genuine Chicago-Style hot dogs.  Of course I forgot to get a picture of THIS before devouring.    Oh well, maybe I’ll have more today.

Snack was popcorn and Amp:

Saturday Dinner was Salisbury Steak and Potatoes:

And then this morning (Sunday) breakfast was Cereal with the daughter:

Well, there’s about 25.5 hours left, so it’s about half way.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

I think it’s a game now.   At very least, you can win or lose; there’s some limits, and everything on the screen functions as intended (except the score readout, which I honestly plan on pulling off)

The Menu to select game options is 95% done.  Here’s the rest of the stuff on the to do list:

• Other Unit Ideas - I have at least 2 more units I’d like to introduce
•  AI - The Random AI makes some very stupid mistakes.   I need to write one that works a bit better.
• Tutorial - How to play screens, etc.

Here’s more of my progress I’ve made with the game:

I had a pretty strong idea of where I was going with this, but I’m not sure it’s enough of a game.    Oh well.  It should be fun once everything’s in place.   Back to the board….

My idea is something to do with playing vs. an AI opponent on a grid. You have to put these Chainer guys down, and they lay chain for the rest of your guys. The rest of your guys will have other effects on the grid. I’m hoping to work out some chain reaction effects between the guys, but I’m not sure how to balance them.

Just to post something up while I think about other things, here’s a grid.

I’m going to do something with a grid, and chains across the grid, and creatures that walk on the chains and interact in various ways.

A nourishing meal of Pizza and Poppers is just the thing!

Here’s the desk.   Complete with my cat Molly.

And here’s my reference books.  In there with all the other books.  And the toys.  And you can see why they’re all on the floor right now…

Ludum Dare 8 was my second ’short term’ game programming contest, and my first solo. The theme was ’swarms.’ I was bound and determined to do an RTS game this time, since my partners in team compos always want to do something actiony. I think I actually wanted robots or magnets or something like that.

I thought it would be nifty if instead of directly building units, you had to attract units with various buildings. So you start with a base and 1 swarm. There are resource buildings (Apple, Flower, and Metal) that you can hover over that will give you various resources. You also have a base. You can build either Apple or Nectar huts in your base. These increase your attraction rates for food or nectar. (It was originally going to be food and sex, if you read the code. I guess bees have sex with flowers or something.) Once bugs are attracted to your base, you can add them to existing swarms, or break them off into new swarms. You can also build Radar to increase your attraction range, or buildings to increase the power or speed of your bugs.

Initially this was going to be swarm vs. swarm warfare, but I ran out of time pretty quickly. (I’ll go into my mistakes below.) So instead the computer just sent a specified number of waves with a specified strength at you at regular periods, and you needed to have swarms built up and ready to fight when they came.

Obviously one of my largest problems was art. As you can tell from my screenshot, It’s ugly. Really really ugly. All the art in the game was ‘placeholder’ art that I was going to go back and fix. That never happened. Secondly, I panicked at about 30 hours. I barely had an engine, and the deadline was closing in. I actually ‘gave up.’ I came back to it, and finished up later. Thirdly I didn’t have a good plan. I know I wanted an RTS, but I didn’t have a good execution plan. I also bit off WAY more then I could chew back then.

My tips for beginners are:

1. Make a plan - Seriously, take that first hour, and may out some code to get rid of the urge. THen take the next hour or two, and make a task list. What code does your idea need? Divide it up into tasks. As you go along, check things off that you’ve put in.
2. Take breaks - This is always a newbie mistake too, but, make sure you take regular breaks. 48 hours, even with a couple of sleep periods, is plenty of time to get something done.
3. Start Small - It’s much easier to add to a simple game then it is to try and cram in everything a more complex game needs.