The Aftermath
You never collapse the day after a true crunch, a feeble attempt you crash the day after but a proper grin you run on adrenaline and string for a while longer then after you get a proper sleep, zombie. I woke up this morning with a jolt of pain, my left leg had spasemed, twisted and knotted the muscle. I woke up in pain, I moved and cried. I really need to stop doing this to myself. It took me an hour of nursing and a warm cloth before I could walk without wincing. Defiantly no heels today.
Oh well I'll toss together the map pack tonight but I'm also getting used to early shifts now. Before this weekend I worked 1130 till 2000, mon-fri. On early shift you work 0800 till 1630 but then you work 4 days a week and get Saturday off. I switched cause this is more conducive to interviews and coding in my free time. After a nice slow start to this week I'm going to get back to the phantom project with a lot more knowledge, especially some vital lessons.
Sand Trap: Post Mortem
All projects bring a learning curve into them, this one was no different. My approach from the outset was decided on a SIMPLE, easy idea and get it done in time. No frills, no fuss. Normally I'm a feature freak but for this project I focused on a single goal, GET IT COMPLETE! A hard thing in 48 hours especially for myself.
The first smart thing I did was I went and asked advice from every experienced 48er I could found. I needed an engine that would take less than 5 minutes to write a base framework in and would support everything I need without jumping through hoops.
I got several candidates for 3d but an obvious winner for 2d was PTK. This brilliant engine has impressed me so much I'm considering buying a license for it. The locating of a 3d engine that grace still alludes me. Granted I haven't sampled many but time was short. I had some problems with PTK, wrote to the dev team and they had a quick response and solution.
So I was pooling ideas for the themes that looked good before hand. One idea that stuck was Dune. The worms being attracted to sound in swarms. So I tossed the thought around along with some others. When I woke up on the Saturday morning and saw Swarms I went for the worms idea.
2D or 3D
Yes the game was more suited to 3d and looking back on it I strongly regret the choice of 2d. The main reason is the worms. The sprite for the worms still makes me wince. I had a vision of these terrible beast of dooming rolling over the dunes. So was 2D the right choice? It was quicker to code but time making sprites was extensive. In the end the choice was made because PTK was such a good engine, and has limited 3d support. Given a second chance I would have chosen 3d, simply because its where my strength lies and the game was better suited.
Sprites of Doom
A scanner or stylus would have made this section TEN times easier but I didn't have one so I dealt with it. I made a quick choice to throw away any ideas of an isometric view. Top down was quicker and simpler. I did however glean a good piece of advice. Pixelated anything looks good, I refer you to my death animation. Something inspired at the last minute but something everyone comments on. A bit of humor that looks good at 80x60.
One File One Cause
To do this in 48 hours you throw all coding practices out the window. 90% of my code was in one file, loads of globals and such. What this taught me is that I should stick to coding practices but a hack here and there might not be such a bad thing. For one thing the code reuseablity and debugging would be nightmare.
Fun or Fud?
The fun factor worried me cause at times I felt this wasn't "fun". I'm keen to see the results of the voting and see the answer to that question. However some things regarding this. The death animation added a giggle, but no gameplay. The worms were either too hard or too easy I couldn't get that mix right. So the skill curve was thrown out of whack breaking one of the first principles of fun. Adding the death animation, intro screen and story added some immersion. Explosions helped as well. I'm not completly happy with the control system however. WASD keys would have been better for movement.
Overall
This is one of a handful of projects I've completed on time. Its also a handful of which I have stuck to spec. I need more self discipline and this is a good training ground so yes I'll be at the next 48hr contest I can find. I also need to set down on paper what I want from phantom and have clearly established goals. The other thing is the IRC helped loads simply because other people on the same wavelength were struggling through the same problems. Overall, I'm happy with the outcome but I'll do better next time 
I’m DONE DONE I tell you.
CLICK HERE FOR FINAL SUBMISSION
Notice there wil be a later polished version by the weekend
Oh well midnight rolled around. It was 4 hours from the deadline but it was the deadline I set myself so I could get to work on time. Screaming, angry I couldn't get more done and wanting to stay up I uploaded and forced myself to go to bed and not worry about it.
Things I cut out due to Time
- Sound, full support no time to record sounds
- A million tiny tweaks and bits of polish in my head
- More Maps
- Balance
Overall a very short list. To be fair both the last goals can be achieved by adding map files which are editable ini in human readable format. Extra graphics can be added by dropping in a png and adding it to the map file, the game does the rest. So a map pack will solve the last two issues, bar some minor tweaks I'm happy overall.
I'll post a postmortem at a later date. Tonight I'll post the game entry in, and final screenshot.
Last 9 Hours
No posts for the last nine hours. I'll tell you why, impossible. The last 12 or so hours of dev time started with me fighting fuzz and brain melt. I took a bath had a meal, took a break nothing. Then I remembered I'm a programmer not a cheerleader, so I drank two redbulls and two shots of vodka and coded like a daemon for the last few hours.
ALL HAIL CAFFEINE!
Big Bada Booom
31 Hours
http://ludumdare.com/files/183_31Hour.rar
It seems rest has helped. A lot of time on sprites and a determination of a blind dominatrix in latex. I will complete this game and it will be fun. Everything else can go to hell but I need to make it FUN!
Progress
- Completed some more artwork: Front, Worm Animation, Explosions
- Explosions work correctly, removed power factor [code still there]
- Changed Right mouse to stand still, feels better.
- Tweaked flocking behaviour (again)
Todo
- Add Water and item Collection.
- Code HUD for items.
- Front Menu / Intro
- Funny bits
Rise and Shine Maggot
28 Hours in
http://ludumdare.com/files/164_28Hour.rar
With under twenty hours left on the clock I need to start rushing. To took 5 hours out, 4 for sleep and 1 for bath and to just freshen up. I need to be out of the door and into work 3/4 hours after deadline ends. So I'll probly have to stop before that to sleep and get ready.
All holder sprites are gone. Its all my work there no, "You can tell by the blood squirting out of your eye sockes".
Overall I'm feeling its all doable. I'm still pissed at having chosing sprites option, but thats a lesson learned
Progress
- Swarming Done, would take more time than I have to correct glitches.
- Control system Done, mouse works great
- Added More Sprites, only a few more left.
- Added Sound base so the worms follow sound depending on strength and age
- Added player collision and walk flags
TODO
- Add a load of cute little superficial things, low priotity
- Add a HUD and menu (intro)
- Add Water, Grendaes and Mines
I cant escape the lines of code
19 Hours
Insanity is not merely a state of mind is a state of the Cthulian Empire. To answer your questions the code has once more blurred into nothingness. I'm going to have something to eat and sit down. In this peroid of 19 hours I've had 1h52m break accordning to my coding clock. Bear in mind the only real break I took was a 40 min break. That time is mostly bloody research and mirc.
Scrolling game area, cleaner swarming now. Only thing now is to throw on HUD, intro menu and of course grenades and goals. The core elements are complete though. I need to see if I have time to make a 3d port after I polish this game off.
Several Hours Later
14 Hours
Basic collision detection setup. Still a bit to buggy. Might need to put some kind of turning curve on the worms. Also looking at stopping them flocking but move in the same direction slightly. Going to centre them on hives. Also will make a scrolling map to increase play space.
Spent a good 2 hours on sprites. Running man is still a holder. But I've been fighting to get the worms, just right. Still not happy.
Wish I had gone 3d. Then it would be a simple matter of protruding the landscape. Also models are easier than sprites, even sprites made from models. Also would have looked better.
DAMN ALL SPRITES TO HELL!!!
Aaaa WORMS
7 Hours In
Okay I've been up since early this morning coding Dune Worms. The attack is taking FOREVER to code. I've been hitting lots of glitches and stupid mistakes on my part. Currently I'm using placeholder sprites that are not my own and I will replace. I just needed them to test animation.
Will post next update in a few hours.
Bricks, Bees and Strong/Weak nuclear forces of attraction and repulsion
The voting as it stands at the moment, the top five are.
- 211 - Magnetism (attraction repulsion)
- 148 - Swarms
- 111 - Infinite Levels (random/procedural generation)
- 102 - Evolution
- 80 - Construction
My personal choice would be construction but I've had to through my lot in with Swarms in a hope to avoid the magnets. Most the people against the whole construction thing are worried about Tetris clones. I have something much more interesting in mind. Evolution would also be interesting and I have several ideas bouncing around that. Infinite Levels is sooo wide open and broad there is almost no way to pin it down, so loads of ideas there. Swarms I have a nifty idea. Then finally I'm battling with Magnets one.
As a mental exercise I'm working on writing down a paragraph of text for each theme and solid ideas. Hopefully when the final result comes out I will be able to know where to go from there then.
Kill them all, lol
Chatting is one of the most useful tools out there. It lets me keep in touch with my friends and discuss things in a wonderful media. HOWEVER! If you do not have one of the following things, then it will go as discussed below.
- Person is friend or previous acquaintance from real life
- Conversation is started in order to solve a problem
- conversation is started as a result of a fan site / dev site or common interest
If the conversation doesn't start like this I can say from my personal experience 9/10 times you will hear the lines.
Do you have a webcam?
ASL?
Do you have a boyfriend
And a slew of other so called intelligent pick up lines.
My favorite deterrents are first barraging a person with intelligent questions, horny people are stupid. If they pass that I apologize and then just tell them why I did it. This does two things stops any offense I have caused and then clearly states my intentions. However at the end of the day the block and ignore buttons are a girls best friends. That being said, I'm always opening to intelligent conversation and a laugh.
Rushing Deadlines
Okay I didn't update yesterday. Bad Claire, no chocolate, none not a piece. Okay back in the world of the sane I have recently raised the Cthulu alert to orange today. Sometime, somwhere insanity is highly likely to occur, more details cannot be released because they would totattly diminitise this system and the so called intelligence backing it. Still I do advise you wear a top today for fear of the sky loosing a rivet.
In the rushing peroid up to deadlines I've organised for the freezer to be full, 10 litres of soda and a six pack of energy drinks. I've been swamping through various engines and platforms to devolp this weekend on. In the case of 2d, the current winner is PTK. Sadly build errors and watermark as well as a requirement make what at first like a very attractive package a dwindling pleasure. Still I think I shall stick with it as my 2D choice.
The forerunner for my 3d coice is either my own base code (attempting to avoid jumping through hoops) is g3d and SDL base with extended 3d Functions. It might pack a little too much punch for what I need but its the best one I've fouund so far. I'll dig around a little more maybe. It supports everything from Quake Models to HLSL support.
I've voted for Contruction theme I hope it wins out. In other news I've worked out my budget and in one short phrase. OUCH!
Crazy Codey Coffee Cat Catching C
Magical C++, oh the insanity I have signed up for a weekend of code. Ludum Dare 48 Hour comp. Basically you get given a brief and you have 48 hours to make a game that works. Basically you deprive yourself of sleep sanity and all sense in order to complete a block of code. I enjoy crunch time but I'm terrible with time management.
The reason I'm doing this is because time management is one of my biggest problems. Also because in theory it will get me a solid weekend of coding, to resharpen my skills. The other reason is that I will have a 'complete' project, I like a nice resume stuffer.
Other than that the only thing to report is I'll be moving to early shifts next month which will allow me to work more overtime and get away from work earlier when I need to code. Hug the insane bunny of addiction that's nibbling carrots under the table. Oh by the way project will be iced slightly while I use what's left of this week to get some libs and stuff together for this weekend.