In the end I did get my pathfinding working to the point that I was happy with it.  However I spent so much time on debugging that I had to simplify my game play significantly.  Painfully, the game play that is included barely requires any pathfinding at all.  Another downside to so much time wasted bug hunting is that I didn’t take the time to improve the graphics.

On the plus side, I got a few levels made, and I think you can call this a fairly complete game.

Follow the link to play online:

http://disruption.ca/roads/roads.html

Click here to download the source and .SWF:

http://disruption.ca/roads/roads.tgz

BLDR is done! It probably could have used more levels and obstacles, but I think it’s great! Postcompo version will definetly include more levels.

Download it here: http://www.filesavr.com/bldr

EDIT: I forgot to include it in the instructions, but arrow keys to move and R to restart the level.

Postcompo edit: New download link at http://kittylambda.com/files/BLDR.zip (thanks to PsySal)

Ah, it was work, but it’s more or less done.

Download here for windows. (2MB)

Download here for OSX 10.5 (2.3MB) (added 19th dec)

The source is here. (2MB)

Permanent homepage is here.

I’ll have a mac version cobbled together within the week.

Tools:

Used Allegro/C/The GIMP/FMod Ex/a microphone/audacity/milkytracker/sfxr/Dev-CPP.  Used two samples from soundsnap.com.

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.

[Update, Dec. 8 2008]

I forgot to provide the source code until just before the deadline, and my Internet connection wouldn’t work the last two hours before deadline. Anyway, here is the source:

Sourcecode (not very pretty, mind you. It’s rushed 4kb code.)

—

I’m done!

My game is called Tekicars4k. My plan is to enter it both into LD13 and the Java4k contest. In other words, it is a 33 hour 4kb game with the theme “roads”. Thanks to the size limitation, there is a grand total of 6 levels available. It is available as webstart and as a CompoGameLoader ZIP file, which has .bat, .exe and .sh (so should work on any OS).

Webstart (note: this version may be updated after the contest)
Zip file

Some instructions:
The goal is to place blocks in advance so that each Tekicar reaches an exit of the same color, without colliding with any other Tekicar. Walls will turn Tekicars clockwise, roads will speed them up, and arrows will re-direct them along the arrow.

As soon as you click “Go!”, the test begins - if you pass, you reach the next level.

Note that the ZIP file is way larger than 4kb, mostly thanks to the .exe wrapper. The game JAR itself is only 4kb.

A screenshot:

Well this is going badly at this point. No sound, and no AI. I just finished the abilities to build buildings that spawn units, working on the AI as quicky as I can, but I somehow think it won’t neccesarily work out too well. But here’s a screenshot anyway…

I’ll have something remotely playable soon, hopefully a little entertaining. I didn’t plan it out nearly well enough so the whole Roads genre kind of got lost when I realized I wasn’t getting enough done nearly quickly enough…

LineCount: 1783

Well, I am completely shattered now, but it’s been worth it, because now it’s done! \o/

http://jwhiting.nfshost.com/coding/onlyforward.zip

I spent the few hours implementing a special ‘Survival Mode’ that is unlocked after completing level 5. Apart from that, general just generally tweaking and fixing up bugs.

Final important stats update
Hot Brown Caffeinated Beverages: 12
Time Spent Actually Working: around 24hrs
Total new Lines of code written: 1216
16×16 Sprites drawn: 20
SFX Generated: 9

It’s been a lot of fun, cheers for the support everyone

Right, now it’s time to sleep for an age.. Hang on, work tomorrow, grahrg!!1

So my game is now almost playable, you can set up roadblocks (only 5 at a time) to stop the cars from running over the frogs. Unfortunately you can’t really see your score at the moment because I haven’t drawn sprites for all digits yet. A work-in-progress version can be downloaded here (Requires Windows and DirectX 9).

There are more progress logs available at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~moores8/ld13/index.html.

So, I feel like I’m approaching “finished” for this silly little game.

Journal

Here it is running on the Java Mobile Edition phone emulator (”Default Color” at 240×291 resolution). I’ve heard people complain about how making MIDP phone games is tricky because you have to deal with lots of different screen sizes/resolutions. It truly can be a pain in the butt, and I haven’t dealt with it properly in this game … on my 128×128 Nokia 6230 the sprite positioning is out of whack, and I don’t really feel I have the time or energy to go back to square one and fix it to work at any resolution. So at the moment it will only be reasonable to play on largish screen phones. I may try to make a special 128×128 version tomorrow, if I get time (basically, I’ll start by shrinking the sprites). I’ll probably also release a non-phone Java applet version so people have more chance of playing it.

Still need to do sound.

Food

The “significant other” reminded me to eat a few hours ago. Looks like I got sidetracked … haven’t eaten yet. (Update: I just ate a banana. No photo, since it looks just like the banana in my last food photo).

Right, well I’ve got a few levels worth of simple text based in-game tutorials in, so it shouldn’t be so bewildering to people that start it. Not really sure what I’m going to look into next, but not because I lack things to do to it! I might try and get some sounds and/or music in.

I also had some breakfast, I was going to cook some bacon, but I felt hungry and lazy, so just had some toast with peanut butter instead. Will have to do something more exciting for lunch. More tea was also involved (of course).

Well, back to the grindstone then. Took forever to get to sleep last night, my brain was just buzzing with ideas, probably a good thing, but quite frustrating nonetheless. Work up feeling kind of tired, but still plenty motivated, so I decided to start double buffering my tea consumption.

Taking my hot brown beverage consumption total to 7, rock and roll!

I spent the last hour or so crafting a bunch of progressively harder levels to ease a player into the game (it is, I suspect, pretty damn confusing if you just get thrown into it). Definitely glad I took the time to make an in game level editor. It also means it’s really starting to feel more like a game and less like a dodgy prototype, which can only be a good thing.

Still loads and loads and loads I want to get done though, so I guess I’ll just keep plowing on.

I’ve spent a lot of time today fighting with buggy path finding.  The code is supposed to find the shortest path from any road tile to the city.  It’s mostly working, but it occasionally produces incorrect results when there are loops in the graph.  Frustrating.  I haven’t implemented any game play yet because I’ve been trying to get this right.  In the future I think I will need to take a more planned approach to this sort of thing, and work out my algorithm in advance instead of just hacking together the first idea that comes to mind.  Either that or modify my game play idea so it doesn’t require any path finding more advanced than a flood fill.

Dinner this evening involved hors d’oeuvres at a Christmas party.  There always seems to be something else going on during LD48 weekends.

Taking a picture of my food in the middle of a crowded room in a formal setting was a bit weird.

Well, as the clock ticks down and I find myself with less than 22 hours left in the competition I am trying to keep my spirits AND energy up.  While I am pleased enough with the work I’ve done, I have worked much more slowly than I wanted.  Not sure what this will mean for the adventures of CoMuTor but only time will tell.

Here is a “tech” demo if anyone wants to check out my progress so far.  You can basically move CoMuTor all around and jump and perform his flip car attack though sadly there are no cars yet.

The win32 zip is here

And here is the screenshot for the sake of completeness:

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.

Well I’m definitely getting back on track, the past few hours have been rather productive. I just love the feeling rolling out lines and lines of reasonable code, I’m really enjoying myself at the moment.

I’ve mostly been doing stuff behind the scenes stuff. I’ve put in an entity spawning system so that player+enemy positions are all stored in my level data. Rather happy with how it’s worked out (I’m wondering why I haven’t done something like it in the non-compo game I’ve been working on recently).

Then I’ve put the groundwork in for some rescuable stickmen things, I’ll come clean and say the *idea* of rescuable things that follow you I’m pretty well ‘borrowing’ straight from my other game. Having said that, time is (obviously) at a premium, it’s a concept I’m particularly fond of, it looks pretty cute, and it’s going to work a bit differently here, so, *shrug* I don’t really feel bad about it.

Here’s how it looks at the moment (the stickmen things bob up and down a little, it’s kinda cute).

Oh yes, and finally, why the title? The suns going down now here, and I started working before it started coming out. The bulb in my rooms light has blown, and the bulbs I bought to replace it don’t work for whatever reason. So, coding in the dark it is!

I have a functioning screen that you can press ESC on, and a font that prints!  It’s miraculous!

I bounced zillions of ideas around last night, never found anything that struck me square in the face until I gave a moment’s thought to Night Of The Cephalopods.  It’s not a very good game, and I don’t think it does anything very impressive in the realm it sets out to impress in, but it’s a fun idea: having the game narrate things as the player does them.

Well, my game is no action game, in fact it’s a point & click adventure.  So narrating that is more akin to building a story that is being read to the player, based on their actions.

Or in this case…. a poem.

I chose this project because it will be *extremely* easy technically, yet a huge challenge in terms of content.  I’m going to have to invent rhyming lines that work in various sequences so that any path you take continues to conform to the poem’s meter.  Basically, I chose a project that I will have fun making as opposed to something you will have fun playing.  But it’ll probably amuse you a time or two.  It’ll certainly be interesting.

So prepare yourself for Two Roads: An Interactive Poem.

Finally, dynamic map generation + clickable objects. The final game is (hopefully) going to be a business/trading sim, where you control a trucking company — the interface is supposed to be a road atlas. Maybe tomorrow I’ll figure out how to make more squiggly roads. Right now, though, it generates a map with random cities & roads, and lets you click on cities to find out what they produce & demand. Screenshot (!):

A little while since my last entry, but I’ve been pretty busy at least. I’ve come up with some slightly more road like graphics (I kind of miss my old hyper abstract ones, but it feels like I should work the theme in when I can). I’ve also added some AI opponents, so now instead of one blob there are several

Each enemy has somewhat different behaviour, kind of like in pacman. Actually the whole thing was starting to become very pacman-esque which was a little worrying, I didn’t particularly want to make a clone of something if I could avoid it. I was getting a bit bogged down generally too, so decided it was a good time to get some fresh air, go to the shops, and stock up on some food. It worked pretty well, I’ve got a much better idea of what to do next now, and I’m much less worried about the pacman thing (there’ll be similarities, but I don’t expect it to feel like a clone).

Got back from the shops, was hungry, so mades cheese on toast for lunch, served with more browny beverage goodness \o/ (my count is now 3).

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’ve been making a cover of Phil Hassey’s “Escape from Anathema Mines” today.

I’ve been wanting to try writing a roguelike for a while, and what better time than during LD? It is beginning to be playable so hopefully tomorrow I can get enough gameplay in it to call it complete.

I really enjoyed the simple, satisfying feel of GBGames LD#11 “minimalist” entry. The anxiety-inducing two-tone audio was also great touch. Not wanting to work too hard this weekend, it’s also simple enough that I was sure I could make a cover version without to much stress ….

Here’s a quick screenshot of where I’m up to.

These might turn out to be placeholder graphics (or they might just remain ). So far I have the basic feaures of GBgames original implemented, including the anxiety-inducing audio. I’m also adding a new spin on the idea … the enemies move a little, and can be ‘baited’ to coax them away from the exit.

Update 1:

I decided to go for option 1, the ultra-simple 3d modeller.

The other options didn’t set my “ooh shiny!” reflex ablaze, although they are probably significantly more doable in the time frame.

In the same vein as Ludum Dare I have given it a Latin name - Carpe Lutum (Seize the Clay).

I have put all the woes I had with Flex in LD12 behind me - i had so much trouble because I was trying to treat it like normal Flash, and it will resist you every step of the way if you try that. Use it like an app platform and it purrs like a kitten.

Here is a screenshot of my interface as of hour 5:

(edited for repackaging)

Here it is… Description comes later. I’m already late because I couldn’t upload the stupid file.

All in one Windows binaries:

Get it here. Unzip. To run, drag owliver.love on love.exe

Game and engine separated (required for Linux users):

Get the game file (OS-neutral) here: http://noe.falzon.free.fr/static/owliver.love

And get the Löve engine:

• Windows users: installer is here. When it’s installed, double click on owliver.love to run the game.
• Linux (Ubuntu/Debian): a .deb is here. When installed, run “love owliver.love” in a terminal.
• Linux (other distros): sources are here. Compile, then run “love owliver.love” in a terminal.

Post deadline update:

I have been told that the game was too difficult to play some levels. I checked, and yes, a bug due to last minute savage editing made the lightnings very difficult to repair. Here is a post deadline version with this bug corrected, plus cosmetic details (level names, global offset for “correct” transition between levels).

I post it so you can enjoy the game anyway, and reach the last level, which was quasi unreachable in the other version.

You can get the Windows all in one binaries, or the Löve game file. Installation/running is the same as above, where stuff is named “owliver-postLD” instead of “owliver”.

Hola =]

Looks like I’ve finished with 10 minutes left..a new personal record! This is much nicer than finishing with 2 minutes left. Look at me writing this like I’ve got time ;]

I didn’t manage to have time for sound, which is probably good news, I was going to sing.

So Teenage Mathant Ninja Towers is a tetris clone, with numbers and addition, subtraction will be available in the retail version which hits shelves august 2012 for one million dollars MWAHAHAHA preorder now.

No, really, I could use the cash.

The file is here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?njp8o70rl5u

Let’s hope this one works! I included some redistributable files from MSVC2008 in the zip.

Good luck! Looking forward to playing some of your games!

Edit: Drat, well I found a bug, at level 3 there’s minus signs in the tower, however the code for computing minuses isn’t in, so some equations at level 3 and above will not clear. Here’s a link to a zip with no broken minuses, in case you’re really getting into the game and want to play it past level 3, but this version is not to be judged!

http://www.mediafire.com/?w9ptefdxbzc