Sheep Thieves's Time log

Timelog for SEGludian (Stewart Gray) for the second ludum dare 48 Hour Game Programming Competition.

November 8 - 10, 2002

Entry: Sheep Theives from Mars

November 8, 2002

11:20 pm Got back late, theme is Construction/Destruction with a Cosmetic theme of Sheep. Hmmmmmm. Need to brainstorm

November 9, 2002

12:15 am Still nothing

01:07 am OK, I finally have an idea that doesn't sound too difficult to finish and doesn't sound like something someone else is already doing.

Game Design:

Title: Alien Sheep Rustlers

Description:

You are farmer Brown, and aliens from another world have come to steal your sheep. You can throw your pitchfork at a UFO a couple of times to destroy it. If you destroy a UFO, a useful piece of technology may be salvaged. If you get enough pieces of technology, Mrs. Brown will begin construction of a force field. When the force field is complete the aliens will retreat due to their inability to steal sheep. However, if the UFOs are not destroyed, they will beam up sheep. If they beam up all the sheep they will beam up you and Mrs. Brown, and it is game over.

Game will 2D and will be played from a side view.

Keys will include [LEFT] and [RIGHT] to move, and [SPACE] to fire a pitchfork.

Later levels if created may simply change the probability of a destroyed UFO releasing useful technology, the amount of technology required to build the forcefield, the number of simultaneous UFOs, and the number of sheep you begin with.

Well, it is late. I guess I will start programming this tomorrow, I need sleep.

12:19 pm Wow, that was a very long break. Even though it is a simple game design I might have taken too long a break. Well, I hope I don't spend too much time looking at everyone elses work first.

12:57 pm Drawing sheep wasn't going so well. I am going to just make it in Simply3D v2 that I have and do a bunch of screen grabs. So far I have one sheep without legs.

1:25 pm Well, I now have six sheep pictures. A three frame walk that I hope is good in two directions. I really need to speed this up.

2:08 pm I now have a two stage UFO sprite. Doesn't animate well but hey, I still have a lot to do.

3:16 pm I have now created a farmer and pitchfork file in Simply3D, time to render them to disc. After that I should just have a background to do, maybe some clouds or something if I get fancy.

3:52 pm Farmer and Pitchfork have now been translated to gifs. I need to start programming sometime.

4:56 pm All this time and I have only made a background image for the game in GIMP. Ooh boy I had better start some code. I want to upload a screenshot already.

5:24 pm Finally I have got some code. Unfortunately, it is just a rip off of a Dietel&Dietel example with my pictures. Next I will try to make the sheep walk back and forth between the edges of the screen.

5:42 pm The sheep now moves back and forth on the bottom of the screen.

6:34 pm I have a CSheep class it now compiles, but I don't know if it works. Have to go. Probably won't continue until tomorrow or late tonight.

11:32 pm I am back. Lazy boy that I am, I am going to look at the timelog and pictures first.

November 10, 2002

12:01 am Think I have seen most of the new pictures. Added an init function and a constructor to CSheep. Compiled the first time, strange. Now I will work on a class to encapsulate a list of sheep.

12:50 am I had to remove the package statements (I'll figure them out later), but now I have a CSheepList class. I will need to test in the demo program. Maybe I can have 20 sheep walking around on the bottom of the screen.

01:28 am Problems. The sheep won't move. I am starting to think that Math.random or my use of it is to blame.

01:45 am OK, I figured it out. I was thinking Math.random returned a number between 0 and RAND_MAX so I was using modulus to chop it down. Instead it returns a number between 0.0 and 1.0 and I needed to multiply. I now have sheep moving around the bottom of an empty screen.

2:00 am Machine just crashed. May need to go to bed soon. First I want to upload my screenshot and maybe put in a background image.

2:15 am There is now a background for the sheep.

2:20 am Changed the main frame to call pack instead of setSize with odd constants. Will work on UFOs next.

3:30 am I got some stuff done (thanks cut/copy/paste) I now have sheep, a background, and some lobotomized UFOs and UFO auto-spawning. It might end up as a game yet. Now I need to get some sleep.

11:58 am OK, I am finally back. I think I should start on the farmer class.

1:20 pm I now have a farmer, and he can move around the bottom of the screen in response to keyboard input. It could be a game soon. Uploaded a screen shot.

1:30 pm Time to start on a CFork class to represent a pitchfork, and a CForkList to manage an list of PitchForks.

2:40 pm OK, I now can have the farmer throw pitchforks at the alien UFOs and destroy them. Much closer to a game now.

2:50 pm I need to get the UFOs stealing sheep. I am going to change around what I was doing a bit. Now the UFO will randomly descend and when it gets to the bottom (random destination between y1, y2) it swipes one sheep that is whithin it's bounding box (if there is one) after that is ascends and switches back to hover/bounce. Now I just need to code it.

3:35 pm OK, it looks like the UFOs now descend and steal my sheep. This is almost a game now.

3:45 pm Next step is for the status display area, and the win/loose conditions. When that is complete, I will consider this a game. I will then turn it in and try to add more stuff.

5:00 pm Woo Hoo, I would call this a game now. You can win and you can loose. Like my previous effort there is no scrolling or multiple levels, but I like it. Now I need to put on some extra stuff if possible then I will turn it in. Think I will start by making some obnoxious sounds maybe some explosion and smoke will be added too if I have time.

5:33 pm Well, I spent a lot of time making funny sounds, but it doesn't look like I can use them in a application using the applet getAudioClip stuff. I don't want to use a different method because I am not sure it it would work everywhere easily. So, no sound. Sorry. Don't think I want to add explosions or smoke either. I think this is good enough. Time to turn it in. Didn't really have anymore time available anyway.

6:05 pm Spend time converting my timelog to a readable html. Looks like time is up. I had fun.