It’s screenshot Saturday, and you know what that means. Screenshots! Last weekend, I improved the look and feel of the GUI system, and this morning, I added in tooltips. http://isotower.com/media/tooltips.png

This is also my official entry post to the 2012 October Challenge. Technically, I’ve already sold a few copies of Isotower, but it’s not much, and it needs to be more. Way more. This month, my goal is to get more of the game finished, and do some advertising and campaigning to get some more notice of the game out there, and hopefully get some sales to happen. This is basically me dusting off a game I haven’t touched in a little while and spending my time working on it, in earnest.

Normally, I’m against quitting this early, but after spending some time thinking about the theme, and trying to come up with an idea that could work, I decided to try for a trading game.  Then I started to realize how much time I’d have to spend on graphics to make something that looked even half good, and then decided that the scope of a trading game is bigger than I can manage in less than 48 hours.  I might have been able to make something that sort of resembles a game, but I’d rather spend the weekend on my main project (a Sim Tower remake) instead of something that I wouldn’t be all that proud of.

I’m looking forward to playing the games that people come up with, and it looks like there’s a few trading sims being worked on, so good luck to everyone.

I’m probably going to try for a trading game.  Most likely something similar to Port Royale 2 or Patrician, though that might change after I’ve had some time to think about it more.  The idea sounds a bit overly ambitious for 48 hours.

In the interest of following the rules and posting the framework I’m using prior to the compo, here’s the framework I’m going to use for the compo. http://barchok.com/p/SDL_Framework.rar

It’s coded in C++ and SDL, and may not compile in it’s current state, or may not do anything when run, but this is what I’m going to work off of. It’s a pretty big mess and not worth looking at, but I’m posting it here cause the rules said so.

Well, this probably took about 20 hours, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.  But my game is done.  It’s actually pretty hard, due to the AI that tries to follow you, or escape.  I actually turned down the difficulty a bit.  Anyway, ripping straight from the readme:

—IMPORTANT PART—

Controls: 1 and 2 will move you left and right, respectively, 3 will give you a speed boost (the bar on the right will decrease while boosting).  Your vertical movement is limited by your position on the screen.  The white specks give you an indication of what direction you’ll go in that general area.  Escape or 0 will quit the game.

Gameplay: You are the orange dot.  You must eat smaller dots to grow bigger.  When you reach a certain size, the game ends and you can play again.  Enemy positions are random (except for the first game, which has a constant seed).  Enemies are color coded by size, with small sized enemies being light blue, and large enemies being a darker blue.  Enemy movements are semi-random, but they will chase you or avoid you (depending on size) if you get too close.

Download the game here: http://barchok.com/p/miniLD16/miniLD16-thedaian.zip

Get the source code (only) here: http://barchok.com/p/miniLD16/miniLD16-source.rar

Game compiled/tested on Windows XP.  Could feasibly work on other operating systems.

No pictures, because nothing visually has changed, but I’ve got a playable demo of sorts now, so there’s that. I spent a few minutes with a microphone recording some (terrible quality) sounds and playing with windows sound recorder to get the effects, as they were, correct.

Current version of the game is here: http://thedaian.dreamhosters.com/miniLD16-midway.rar

Controls are: 1 and 2 move you left and right, respectively, and 3 will give you a burst of speed in the up/down directions. Escape will close the game. Eat the smaller squares by getting on top of them (the collision code is a bit off right now, so you mostly have to get on top of the upper left corner of another square to eat it). The screen is divided into sections, and each section will either let you move up or down. You can generally tell the direction based on the movements of other squares.

A few things that need to be added
-a proper win condition. (once you get big enough, there’s some graphics problems)
-particle effects or something to indicate where the barriers between up/down are
-a limit to your boost, recharging with time (that’s the plan for the red bar on the side)

Game is written in C++/SDL, and is feasibly playable on everything, but was compiled on a Windows XP machine.

With the limited controls, I figured, why not make a simple little “eat smaller things, avoid bigger things” game, so I’ve been working on that. The idea is that you can only move left/right, and up/down is controlled by where on the screen you are. Here’s a screenshot.

thedaian's miniLD16

Post mortem, thoughts on things, etc. This post is mostly just going to be me rambling about my game, and this particular Ludum Dare. Basically, I didn’t really like the theme. Sure, it’s not a bad theme, really, but I couldn’t think of anything original to do. My ideas pretty much went from “Climb the Tower” to “Tower Defense” to “Build a Tower”, and back. Honestly, both styles of games would be pretty cliche, and I didn’t really want to do that. I figured there’d be plenty of other games with these basic rules, and I was right. That said, there were plenty of awesome and inventive games made too, and games that took these ideas and turned them on their head. Congratulations to everyone who submitted a fully fleshed out game, and good job to those who worked all weekend. I am not one of those people. (Rest of this, plus solution to level 3 after the more.. link

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Final

Well, I finished with about 3 hours left, meaning I made the game in about 3 hours.  However, it’s not much of a game, and it’s somewhat unconventional for LD, since it’s a web based choose your own adventure.  A screenshot would be pointless because of this.  Sorry everyone who demands a screenshot.

The game itself can be found here.  I have included the source code, as well as the backend tool used to create the content here, so you too can make your own adventures.  An important note, though, is that you’ll have to have a webserver with MySQL, and PEAR::DB installed.  Additionally, the tool is NOT secure, and should NOT be used on a live server.  As always, use at your own risk.

About an hour and a half in, and I’ve got the engine working, and am now creating content for my game.  I’ve got a lovely ‘map editor’ working, which took more time than the engine.  The title will probably be “Enter the Tower”

With about 6 hours left, I decided to make a game.  A simple game, a game that will likely not win.  But hey, hopefully it’ll be fun to play.

In case anyone asks, not my workspace.

And I’ve already got half my game done.  See if you can guess what movie it’s based on, just by using the screenshot provided here.  The second number in the title bar is score, since I’m currently too lazy to add in text support right now.

I’ve decided to stop about 2 hours before the end, mostly so I can rest a bit, and eat some food. There shouldn’t be any bugs, although the game balance still needs some work, and there really should be more monsters to fight (there’s only two here, and I don’t really have the time or skill to draw more)

Here for the game and source.  Created in Windows with C++ and SDL.  Good chance of working on other systems.  Let me know.

There’s some simple sound effects created with sfxr. Basic controls are arrow keys to select a command, any other key will activate that command, escape exits the game. Advanced controls are listed in the readme (including save/load)

I’ve finished most of the code, and I have some basic sound effects, created with sfxr.  The game’s formulas are working, as well.  Now, I just need to make the game look pretty, since it’s currently a mostly blank screen of one color, and some bare bones text, and icons.  Time to add actual monster graphics, and a background for the battle.

If there’s time, I’ll allow players to choose a bonus on leveling up, and add in a few more features.  Right now, I just want to make the game prettier.

As part of my game, I needed some way to show damage to the player (and, damage to the monster, as well).  The method I used to render text was semi-hacked together yesterday, and it had a few problems that made it hard to really do what I wanted.  What I wanted (and what I now have), is to have the damage float up from a point on screen.  After some amount of re-writing, and some terrible bugs that nearly stopped me in full, I’ve got a better text rendering function.

Now to fix it so that you can’t gain health by fighting the monster once you’ve above a certain level.  Hopefully, I’ll find time to get some actual graphics going, and maybe fix up the formulas so the game is a challenge, as well as fun.