If you feel like watching me putter around on my game, feel free to stop by and say hi: https://www.twitch.tv/ceosol

Here is what I have finished so far:
http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/34016
Click the elements appearing at the bottom to combine attacks. Some attacks cause the elements to transform into super attacks (that do 5x damage). Other combinations can cause you to fizzle out or have a weakened effect. You will always attack even if you do not click any combinations.

I was going for an Epic Battle Fantasy style of gameplay – endless turn based combat. It is has been a lot to take on in such a short time.

I am not sure how much I will feel like working tomorrow

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/31910

I spent waaaaaay too much time on the graphics today.

Good things:
– The wave system is almost complete, you can choose your next wave when you die.
– Respawning is complete, you respawn after 10 seconds.
– I have 5 wave types. They are fairly well balanced in speed, hitpoints and spawn rate.

Bad things:
– I don’t think I have time to really incorporate the idle mechanics I had planned.
– I don’t have time to make multiple levels with different level design/terrain
– I definitely don’t have time to make an action system. I wanted to have “soldier towers” where little dudes spawn to fight you.

Final things that I think I can accomplish:
– I have 8-way animations for the main character. I should have time to include those.
– The “user” will be laughing at and taunting the monsters (you).
– I want to have the “user” creating new archer towers as he gets money.
– Finally, I want to have some powerups for the monsters…

Oh yeah, and music if I can slap down a nice battle drum beat.

With only 4 hours left, I’m definitely not entering the commpo… well unless I want to throw in a functioning model with half-done graphics and no win/lose conditions 😀

Anyway, I am going to take a break so I can push hard into tomorrow. Here’s an AI controlled gameboard if you want to check it out. You can’t click on anything since I have player control turned off. Its just for visuals.

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

I created a few of the sprites. Still a lot more to do. Here’s the fire elemental for your viewing pleasure

I still haven’t made the sprite graphics, but almost everything else is done.

Balancing will be a major issue. I have a chart made up with a possible solution, but will need to play it a bunch:

points damage resistance hp

Physical
Critters 5 2 1. 2
Peasant 10 5 .8 4
Knight 20 8 .5 10
Tank 40 20 .5 30

Magical
Snowman 15 4 1. 8
Golem 30 10 .8 12
Fire Elemental 30 15 .7 20
Wizard 100 30 .4 20

Force
Dust devil 8 1 .8 5
Banshee 15 3 .7 8
Energy Elemental30 5 .4 15
Jedi 60 30 .6 30

Spiritual
Ghost 12 3 .9 10
Psion 20 8 .9 15
Demon 50 11 .8 25
Angel 80 25 .4 30

I have a pretty nice looking game board
I have some battle mechanics hammered out
I started on AI for the other three factions
I have some AI for the pieces on the board
I made some music, it is not in yet.

I need to make at least 16 sprites (hopefully with attack animations)
I need to balance the factions
I want to have you choose which faction you play as.
I’d also like to have lose/win resets of the game board without changing screens or reloading the scene.

Progress link: http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

Very early prototype. No enemies and very very basic AI for a couple of pieces. Basically, they know not to run into each other

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

I have an idea for a board game with four elements attacking each other. This might be a tad too ambitious. I have a game board at least

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

Looks like I am solo for now. I’m in for either the compo or jam depending on how quickly I can work something up.

Engine: Stencyl
Art: Poser and/or Pencyl
Music: Garageband and Audacity

I have mixed feelings about the themes. I have 3 ideas for games that I might be able to do during the jam. It all depends on what gets voted in.

So I’ve added octaves into the piano. You can cycle through 5 octaves of keys (60 notes in total). The dragging mouse left and right or pressing up and down arrows on the keyboard work. All of the sounds still playback at the end of the level.

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/28475

Next step for the flight demo is updating the enemies list/spawns. I also want to add extra routes that you can take so the game is not as linear. I will wait to put the new version on newgrounds and android until I have enemies updated. I’m also trying to figure out the apple development process to produce an iOS version.

First off, this Ludum Dare has been a lot of fun. It is fortunate and unfortunate that so many people have participated. The good side is that you get such a vast array of talents all coming to the same place. The unfortunate side is that you can’t play all of the games. The ones I have seen so far have been awesome. Great job everyone!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=34411

So Musical Trade Routes… It was a little crazy putting this thing together. I am sure everyone feels the same way about their own games I am actually shocked at the positive feedback I have been receiving. All of the cool stuff that people seem to like were afterthought things that I threw together in the twilight hours of the competition. I wanted to make my game have an abstract approach to the theme – so far most have not noticed it. I wanted to connect the worlds of poetry and music together. As I knew this would be an abstract theme, I placed in a more obvious connecting trade routes between worlds.

Development:

With only a couple of hours to plan on day 1, I could not think of anything to do with this theme. I came up with some views on how to address the theme and posted them around, but that was the extent. I went to bed a little sad that I would not be participating. When I woke up the next morning, I decided to start looking into linking poetry and music and to make a little space game, just so I would have something to submit. The plan was to work on planning each for a few hours and then see which seemed like a better path. As I continued doing both, the idea of a piano ship evolved. I quickly made some piano music and did my best to make a flight simulation. I had never done either one before, so I am extremely happy with how they came out, even though it is not perfect.

I then began to create planets. I was going to leave half of them unnamed and just white circles. Before moving on I convinced myself to just finish naming and coloring so I could say something was done. I threw in some lines between the planets and made it so each planet (0-9) would display its own lines to connecting planets. I finished up the day by making a “difficulty” variable that I assigned to each planet.

Sunday morning I woke up and just started banging out some poetry. Haikus seemed like the easiest way to go. All I need was 120 syllables and all ten planets were done:

I started working on enemies, but just quickly made some meteors. I decided to get done the space combat system. Simplest solution was random spawns based on the difficulty variable. I felt this would make it more interesting because it might interrupt whatever song people were playing and create a new song entirely. I got a chance to play test it quite a few times, so difficulty was adjusted here and there. A few of the polish things that I was hoping to add were a hard mode, music playback and a sonnet. Those who have played it might not have realized that the title screen was a sonnet

The good:
Music playback – This has been a favorite for most of the people who have played the game. At the end of each level, you get to hear the music that you played while in flight.
The poetry – Not many have commented on the poetry, but I am actually happy with how it came out. Also at the win screen, you get to read the planet’s Haiku while your own music is playing in the background.

The bad:
Enemies – I wanted so bad to have a lot of enemies, space ships, curving asteroids, other music coming in. That would have been so much fun.
Free Piano – I added this in post-comp. I received feedback early on that a more realistic piano would have been better. In the post comp, I added in more key sets for playing and opened the option for multiple key strokes at the same time. I have not taken the time to make a music playback for free-piano mode, though.
Graphics – I am not an artist. I know the graphics were not fantastic.

Future of the game:
I totally want to continue this project. I think it would do well in the mobile market. I even tried putting it on the google play store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ceosol.MTR). Its free to download. If anything, at least you’ll have a little music creator on your phone or tablet
I want to add more to the piano, for sure. Maybe you could swipe left or right to go up and down octaves. You could purchase new ships that have different instruments.
A suggestion was also made with the free piano mode that spawn times could be decreased and you would have faster action happening.

Thank you again to everybody who has tried it out. I was so burnt out at the end that I was thinking the game was absolutely horrible. I am delighted by all of the feedback, good and bad. Keep it coming!

You can now play my LD entry on Android. I felt it would be a nice change to the gameplay.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=34411

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ceosol.MTR

Poetry, check. Still need some finishing touches and play testing

The first half of the comp ended a couple hours ago. I’ll probably work a little bit more before going to bed. I have music and some sound effects together. I have the space map pretty much fleshed out with a call for difficulty level. I have 24 routes with 5 difficulty levels. The combat system is coming together.

I still need to translate the difficulty setting into what appears on the screen. I would like to have more than 4 types of “enemies”. I need to figure out how to score things. I need to have some win and/or lose screen.

Hopefully I will get done in time.