I want to thank everybody who tried out my Ludum Dare #18 entry, Infiltrator. In particular, special thanks to those who took the time to comment and vote on my entry. You can still play/vote for my game right now, just click on the banner!

This was my second Ludum Dare, and despite the warnings from senior Darers plus my own analysis of my previous performance, I ended up making a few old mistakes and plenty of new ones. I’ll cover that in…

ChainedLupine’s post-mortem for Ludum Dare #18: Infiltrator.

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… sorta.

My game submission for Ludum Dare 18 is called Bouncing Bellyfloppers. The object of the game is to constantly and creatively rearrange trampolines to reflect bellyflopping obese guys back at the helicopters from whence they came. You know you want to play it. It looks a little like this:

One thing I learned during my development for this competition is that my own framework is rather limited. It’s pretty good for 2D games, but as soon as I considered doing something 3D, I found that it would take quite a bit of time to implement, and time is short. Hopefully I can implement some basic model loading and such before the next Ludum Dare rolls around. I was happy that I picked an idea that allowed plenty reasonable time to create, though.

I love that 100 yen stores are open 24 hours.  After running into too many walls, and realizing that javascript canvas just seemed to slow without doing lots of tricky things (which I don’t know) I decided to look at flashpunk.  And it it is pretty much exactly the structure I’ve been looking for and partially made over the last week (albeit in flash rather than javascript, but that just means at least some hardware acceleration(including my lappy with the last flash update)).

I visited the 100 yen store around the corner again and grabbed some supplies to last me through the night, while I go through the tutorials on the flashpunk site and try to get something out in the next 9 hours and 39 minutes.  It’s for these reasons that I normally go easy on the caffeine, so that when I want to use it, it actually has an effect.

So I went for a walk to go get some taiyaki and think about what to do.  I’ve ended up spending so much time getting the basic useful classes I’ve been wanting for working with the canvas sorted that I totally don’t have time left to make what I was originally intending.  So while munching the aforementioned taiyaki (pictured below), I decided on the best course to take now.  I do like the game plan I had in mind and would like to keep pushing at it after the compo, but I also want to finish something for this, so the logical option: Branch the project.

Now it’s a matter of taking these last 13 or so hours, working with what I’ve made so far and making something fun, slightly flashy and not too tricky to code.  Not too much of an ask there.. right?

Nom'd off fish face

It really took me a while to come up with an idea for a game that I thought was worth making. “Enemies as weapons” is not an ideal theme. Nonetheless, I’m making good progress now that I’ve decided on a reasonable and doable concept. It’s got it all… helicopters, belly flops, and trampolines. Wait, what?

Yes. All of those, and more. Maybe a visual aid would be helpful.

I’ll let you make of that what you will… for now. I will also make you all very hungry by showing you what I had for dinner in order to sustain myself during this quite difficult and daring among competitions!

Deeleeeecious.

You got many of your main food groups (sorta?), with such great foods as noodles, salad with Caesar salad dressing, and a delicious homemade garlic pesto on rolls. Just what I need to keep working on my project. Onward and upward!

There’s an idea in here somewhere, but as usual I’m geting bogged down trying to the language I’m using (this time Javascript and the HTML5 canvas) to do what I want it to.  I need to stop messing around and just get something controlable moving around on screen.  But first to grab some festival food.

I think that settles that…

Oh right, I still need to design and make a game 😉

“Enemies as weapons,” eh? Definitely not my first choice, but I think there’s some potential for creativity and fun there. I also anticipate a lot of very similar games, unfortunately, because there are a few very obvious game ideas in it, but we’ll see. I think I have my (relatively non-obvious) idea about nailed down. This should be good.

But I can’t start a Ludum Dare without proper nourishment!

You know it.

That dinner of champions awesomely consists of homemade P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef, Caesar salad, a yummy dinner roll, and delicious fruit punch soda. Now, to get to work. I’ve got a lot to do… By the way, I’m going to be using some base code from my previous LD attempts, which, to be fair, can be found here.

I have decided on my game title: Birds Of Prey. The ideas are flowing, a bit better than expected! Let’s hope I can keep this up, it’s already 10:30pm here my time…

Mercurial repository on bitbucket: http://bitbucket.org/ricket/birds-of-prey

I am using Java and JOGL, thus the source is in Java with some Eclipse project files.

Hrm, hard to think of this theme in a non-mechanic way.  In the meantime, FOODUM DARE!

Banana is supposed to be good for the brain or something right?

BANANA TOAST!

Also, snacks are esential.  These are from the nearby 100 yen store.  <3 100 yen stores.

Cookies and something with a tanuki on it!

Time to throw in a post before everything starts, with the obligatory environment-I’ll-be -sitting-while-coding photo.  Note the drink at the ready to the left of the lappy and the notebooks to the right.  All I’m missing now is snacks, which shall be amended with a trip to the 100 yen store around the corner in a moment.

As for tools:

• I plan to use Javascript and canvas for code, so the result will be playable online.
• Most code writing will go down in Notepad++.
• GraphicsGale for graphics, possibly with a bit of dash Gimp.
• DrPetter for anything sound, if I get around to it.  Err, sfxr and musagi that is.
• If appropriate, though I have no ideas for it, I might go grab some audio from the festival going on this weekend at the nearby park.

Finally, I might take advantage of the fact I’m working on a tiny laptop and take it out and about to code for a bit.  Change of scenery and all that.

Vote Dreams!

Seriously, it’s right up there with the best themes I’ve ever seen proposed for Ludum Dare. Props to whoever came up with it. There’s quite a bit of room for interpretation and definitely a lot of potential for gameplay ideas and mechanics. The artistic freedom given here is also noteworthy. I haven’t really felt much reason to make a post about other themes I thought would be good, but this one really deserves it.

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