Well, I’m back from spending last week in LA at the siggraph conference. Looking forward to playing all the entries.

Here’s a link to my timelapse video. Thanks to Daz for the ETL screencap program he posted, which I used to make this (plus ImageMagick to add timestamps).

A quick postmortem: I was using this compo as a chance to experiment with Ogre3D, so I didn’t expect to end up with something too polished, but i did hope it would be at least playable, which didnt quite happen.

What went right:

• Ogre particles — easy and they look great.
• Art assets. I tried to focus on the minimum that I would need, and they turned out pretty good.
• Learning Ogre. I learned a lot more this way than just reading docs would have taught me.
• Great theme. I had a lot of good ideas for this one (maybe too many).

What went wrong:

• Camera — I spent a lot of time messing with the camera. Afterwards, i realized I should have just went with a fixed close-to-overhead camera.
• Starting with ExampleApp was more trouble than it was worth. In the end, I wasted a bunch of time rearranging it.
• Too many ideas: The theme generated so many ideas for me, I kept changing my mind and adding things. I should have gone with a straight up tower defense.
• Too ambitious. Didn’t get first-playable until Sunday.

I posted a little list of tips on LD Survival, and ended up ignoring almost all of them.  That’s okay, I had a great time and got a bunch of experience with Ogre3D.

A technical note: I was using Ogre’s OpenGL mode during development, and noticed at the last minute that the D3D mode was much faster. So the readme encourages you to use the D3D mode. However, I didn’t realize until afterwards that it blows up after a few minutes, so if you get everything flying off the screen, switch back to OGL. I probably forgot to initialize something.

I learned a lot about Ogre, but I didn’t quite finish the game. It’s still sort of playable but don’t get your hopes up.

Here is the entry:

Moonbase Defense Final

Includes a cgl info file for the game launcher.. that thing is great.

Well, it’s sort of playable. Not much though.

You can build a network of towers, they shoot the bugs, woo.. but right now there’s no win/lose and only the gun tower actually works.

Holy crap! Ogre particles are freaking awesome.. Here’s two of my three planned weapons, the Fiddy Tower and the Flame tower (the third is the “missile tower”).

Looks like those bugs don’t stand a chance. Except there’s still no gameplay at all yet…

I wasted a lot of time rearranging the Ogre tutorial app… but I’ve got towers and enemies.

Too bad they don’t do anything yet.. just sit there.

I’m changing concepts yet again… my last idea didn’t make any sense.

Now my gameplay can be described as “Moonbase Commander” meets “Tower Defense”. Which should be pretty cool. So it’s yet another tower-defense game but different. If you’ve never played moonbase commander you should look for it.

I’m still learning to use Ogre so im not sure if I can pull it off but we’ll see.

I spent the morning mostly making some gun tower models and getting them into Ogre. Now I’m going to see if I can get something playable.

Ok, I have a totally different concept now. It is perhaps doable in the weekend. So here’s the first screenshot with some towers in it..

It’s going to be an auction/action game! And no.. that’s not a typo, it will have auction and action. Whee.

Ok, after prototyping with parts from a board game, and drawing some, erm… concept art… I have an idea. It’s not very well thought out yet.. but it’s something.

EDIT: I just came up with a completely different, much simpler, much better idea. So there will be no more rookery. Phew…

Here’s my desk but there’s someone in my chair! That’s Holly, my 5 month old daughter. And believe it or not, this is her second LD compo!!

good luck to everyone!

Ok, I’ve managed to talk my five month old into letting me ignore her all weekend, and I’m all ready for a weekend of coding. I might be a little groggy during Siggraph next week but that’s the price of freedome!

Here’s my LD survival tips (mostly as a reminder to myself):

• Gameplay first. The first thing you write should be a blank screen. The second thing should be moving a dot around (or whatever equivalent is considering your genre). Once gameplay is in you’re constantly, subconsciously tuning it, even if you’re working on different parts of the project.
• 3D looks cooler, 2D is more fun. This rule has proven itself over and over for me. However, I’m going to ignore it yet again. I have an problem with polygon abuse.
• There is no such thing as temp art. I’ve never made any “temp art” that I actually replaced later during the contest. Whatever the first pass at any art you make will likely be the final one. So spend a few more minutes taking the temp art from “stick figure” to “merely disfigured”.
• Brute force everything. Optimization is for later.
• You can’t improve a game design by adding more stuff to it, only by simplifying. Even the most complicated games can be stripped down to a simple prototype that can be built in a weekend.
• “Friday night rule”. Pick your idea that you think you can get playable by the time you go to sleep friday night, and leave Saturday for polish, gfx, more levels, etc.. Pretend the contest ends Saturday night.
• Don’t be afraid to start over. My favorite of my LD entries (like “Bad Food” and “Cowbell Hero”) are games where I abandoned my original concept late Saturday and tried something different. My least favorites ones are ones where I kept slogging on a concept that I didn’t feel was working (“Hannibal’s Cannibals”,”Bugzapper”)

I’m trying something a little different this time around, I’m using this contest as a opportunity to learn the Ogre engine (I didn’t see it on the rules, but I think it’s allowed and I know people have used it in the past). So that kind of predisposes me to making a 3D game.

Good luck to everyone.