Today was a slog.  VERY difficult to work today, ran into a number of things that did not work as planned.  However, as seen from below, something did happen today – and despite it looking very … odd (because that’s not the game, nor a background: that’s the _landscape_ or _level_ from a top-down view.  All 16 of them, randomly shown.  I could do 64, they pack in an area of memory, and I can unpack them.

Here’s what’s going to happen from here:  I’m going to take this and work on it more this week, turning it into a game.  I’m not going to worry about fitting the theme, because it’s not going to do that – this is going to be a RPG/JRPG/Roguelike thing.  I may try to do RL7D, I may just say “I don’t care if it fits in something.”

This is not the game.

POSTMORTEM:

What went well

I got code done yesterday (Saturday) and didn’t have that many difficulties; that was due to pomodoro.

I had fun with the little guy generation _and stopped fiddling with it and moved on, knowing I could come back later_ – and I could improve them in various ways, but they were  _good enough_ and I could make _lots of them_ – and had some ideas for more things I could fiddle with.  (Mind you, it may need to be _2_ or _3_ numbers per character, because of the numeric limit I discovered today.)

The status bar looks good, not too shiny, not too “coder gfx”

What did NOT

The pico8 utilities from the ‘awesome pico-8’ thing: they .. didn’t work with pico-8 and swanky paint. I filed swankypaint bugs, but quite frankly, I think I can write the utils better.  (And I already did the “join” thing using zsh.)

I didn’t have enough experience with Pico-8 internals to realize when I should be using the Pico-8 builtin, and not ‘make-my-own’ lua bit – or depending on an external lib.  Some more experience with lua is also needed. (Strings are immutable – oh yeah I knew that but did it sink in?  No, I thought “Oh if the integers are too small I’ll stuff the data in a string.”  No, no you won’t.)

I didn’t get any music or sound in – and before the next thing, I’m going to need to do something with that. Because a full game needs that (:

What didn’t have any bearing on things

I never had a really good feel for the theme.  I made some stuff for _a game_ but the theme didn’t enter into it, it didn’t give me any inspiration, it was just there.  I didn’t _worry_ about it, other than during reviews of things when I would say “I have no idea how I’m working the theme into this.”

The ideas I did have – they might have worked into something, but they weren’t really go-do-it ideas.

What I would like to work on next with this

Text stuff.  I need to see how I can generate text, possibly from a 2nd cart, and use it in the game.  There’s the possibility for colored text for emphasis, I haven’t done that yet.

I have to determine if I’m going to do a pseudo-3d-view for it, or if I’m going to do a top-down view.  Top-down is easier, but I think the 3d bit may work out nicer.

The level bits make good ‘forest’ areas, but I should try a ‘town’ generation and a ‘building’ generation and a ‘dungeon’ generation.

Adventure gameplay.

So yeah, this one – I’ll work on it more in the next few days – then work on Amiga stuff (:

So today has been mostly trying to implement things that I’ve run into solutions for in pico8 (shifts… grr) and now math (not my strong suit) and still not really anything on the theme other than “we’ll shoehorn it in somehow” (right now I have a guy named Dr. One Room.)

The good thing is this will totally work for a jrpg/roguelike/rpg/thing and I’ll just keep at that, rather than trying to shoehorn it into the theme.

So back at it.

No one understands those Ludum Dare guys anyway.

So there’s… this.

I’ll sleep now, but basically, the main todo part … is “figure out how to make a game out of this.”  One that… you know, uses the theme, uses the things you can’t see in the status bar (you haven’t picked them up yet) and the loads of different types of people that can tell you all about the girl’s posterior.

Yes I just spent a tad too much time with a rather annoying bug with the text formatting.  And yes, that is my default text. Other people do “Hello World.”

Froggith

Froggith here is one of 4096 faces or so.  It’s been fun fiddling with them but I should get on with figuring out what to do with the _game_ part, which I still am unsure on.

Froggith also has an unseen textbox thing he can write things in.

I may make Froggith and his ilk look better later.  (And yes, I’ve already slept, so I’m not as far behind as it might seem, though I’ve been struggling with some of my workflow and have submitted some bug reports as, well, the import/export procedure is producing buggeth.

So slept; didn’t really come up with much, though dream did have something. We’ll see if I can turn it into something.

My idea to use the pico-8 utils and swankypaint have revealed some bugs in both and I’ll have to mention the bug to xix for swankage and I will likely just create my own python tools to deal with the other, as the workflow isn’t what I would really want.

(I’d like to break the files into separate things, concatenated them, and insert them into the p8 file.  The concat part of the utils inserts some code I don’t need around it (I’m sure it’s useful for others but I doubt it’s at all useful on pico8.)

back to working.

As leblane is doing his voxel bit and I’m doing my pico-8 bit, it’s compo for both of us.

We’ll see if I get the pre-jam library for pico-8 basics up or not.  I’m mostly practicing lua in pico-8 right now.

Well no I’m setting up another machine for development and being sure this one is ready.

—

Update:  pre-jam library no, tired: yes, theme in 20, get theme, sleep on it.

So I’m in, or at least, team (” is, and we’ll be doing the same as last time:

Game for pico-8, tools beyond that are basically SwankyPaint (maybe) for gfx, sublime text for me for editing, git, and for LeBlane, he’ll be using vim or something.

We’re gathering now to be sure we have tools and stuff in place before we start, so we don’t spend half or more of the time getting tools ready.

So, yes, for the record:

Truck finished something before the deadline.

Now, yes, it was a team effort; Halides did the music and Leblane did some things, and there was collaboration. However – Leblane was sick all weekend and really couldn’t submit much (he did the menu and some of the graphics) so pretty much all the code is mine.  Which explains why it is not that fantastic, and why I’d redo it differently if I were to start over.

So – here’s the link to the game:

Team (” presents ‘I need Tea’

And some screenshots:

So let’s cover some items in the game that made it in and are half-working:

The printers and phones made it in.  The printers do show the numbers for the extensions, and they do collect (so you don’t have to write them down yourself.)

The _dialing_ mechanism, including the finger and animation, didn’t make it in. The finger picture exists, the animation – that’s coming up post-jam.

The computers, locked doors, disk, cassette, and modem stuff – that’s not in. Probably a day’s work to get that in a rudimentary state, and properly hooked up – probably a bit more… but maybe will just do rudimentary as this isn’t the most fun you can have (look for object all over! ok, now take to the appropriate room! THIS GAME MECHANIC IS AWFUL YOUR GAME IS BAD UNINSTALL DOTA)   The sound effects aren’t in the _game_ though they exist.  And the ‘you win’ page – it works, but it’s buggy and just doens’t show.  I submitted with 2 minutes to go after a final test, saying “yep, it works well enough to submit” and – well there you go, it’s a ‘game.’

The point was to make something, and see how far we could get.  Not to rule out bad game mechanics – I mean, it _could_ work. Heck, it might even be enjoyable, and making it such would be a challenge. But we finished enough to get it submitted.

I’m not sure many folks understand what’s gone on here, and that hell is frozen right now.  I finished something before the deadline.

So – postmortem will come up, right now, I’m gonna go… have a beer. Cuz.  I finished something before the deadline. And submitted it.  To a compo.

OK! So! This is “finished”  (it’s not but it … has a start and the end doesn’t crash completely)

So now I put it up somewhere and… you can see it and… just posting saying “we made it” and I’ll fill in soon

Here’s the submission… well ok that is not working, I’ll figure out why later. Need to put the actual submission online for people to play!

so it’s submission #8368 … and I’ll figure that out in a bit.

So 4 hours to go and Leblane got a menu and Halides got music / sfx and I have movement and all I have to do now is:

add the actual game part.

But it sort of looks a bit like I might be able to do that… let’s see

I am trying to reach Leblane to inform him of a sudden realization of how the game should change (making it less ‘escape’ and more … it works as an idea for me.)  BUT, he does not answer so I shall post here instead and just go with it:

All you want to do is make tea.

Hi Arthur.

That dial took less time than the movement and similar.

Of course, I’m not sure how to indicate _ZERO_ here, as apparently US/Canadian phones have the Zero in a different spot than UK or European phones.  Maybe I’ll put the … yes that’s what I’ll do.

(the word ‘I’ was left at the end, I have no idea, thus I shall edit the line to be much longer and say I am removing the extraneous ‘I.’)

Leblane is still sick, Halides hasn’t been about so dunno about the sounds yet, but I did get the movement done. Do need to construct the rooms/doors, and then the big part: there are no puzzles yet.

Which is a bit of an issue with 24 hours to go but well.

Maybe I will try to do the phone dialer before I sleep, unsure.  (Yes, there are 3 of us, therefore it is Jam, not single person compo, if anyone thought it wasn’t you are silly (:  )

Considering Leblane is sick and I spent too much time talking to people today it’s not … it looks better than what it should to be honest.

We’ll see what tommorrow brings, the ‘ship’ data is correct (thus the 17 and 41 debug lines) but yes, there’s a lot more to do.

So I actually am not sure if this will be team (” or not but… anyway.

We are in, and it’s Leblane, Halides, and I, on Pico-8.

And I should have gone to bed instead of doing what I was doing … so now the announcement is in a half hour and – no. Sleep. Leblane calling when he wakes up. If he does not have the flu, we move to Klubi, and we begin.

So the maintenance crap is over, I’ve taken a nap, and have my… tasklist.

This doesn’t do markdown, does it (:

Well anyway:

– SIMPLE game.

– Keep Simple.

– Get finished.

Idea is … pretty much someone elses, and I’ll be trying to NOT expand on it til the game is ready to be expanded AND there’s time.

Now the problem: I dunno what to use for the language/platform and I’m thinking ‘javascript/canvas’ but that is step 1. Decide, and go. I am also thinking ‘haxe’ but that is ‘learn a new language’ during it and um no. And of course I’d prefer sticking with lo:ve but – yeah that isn’t web/browser and I should do web as it can be used with work stuff that needs to be done. So. DECISION:RESEARCH now.