LudumDare's 48 hour compo time log

04/04/2003 - 08:13pm - Finishing touches on my pages, getting ready for the compo... Just finished my sacrifice to the Chicken God of Andromeda, to ensure my swift (48h) victory against my enemies! :)
Be sure to check out the photo log I'm making... Just 4h45m 'till the competition start...

05/04/2003 - 02:03am - Decided to get some shuteye... I'll wake up in 7 hours or so and see the topic then... I'll be fresher then...

05/04/2003 - 09:00am - Woke up, saw the topic (Preparation) and started thinking on it...

05/04/2003 - 10:08am - Ok, I have an idea: a gravity-affected space battle! You are the commander of a battle cruiser and you have to hit your opponent with your photon torpedos, calculating their trajectory through various space objects... Now for some software engineering...

05/04/2003 - 10:18am - Finished the software engineering... :) Now for some coding...

05/04/2003 - 10:45am - First black screen of the game! Yeay! Framework is all in place... Now for the grid...

05/04/2003 - 12:08pm - Finally, camera movement and game grid are in place... Now, for some modelling: the player ship.

05/04/2003 - 12:46pm - The player ship is done... My best model to date (yes, I know I'm very bad!)... Now, let's add point exporting to the LudiEngine3d (so that I can use 3ds Max as a level editing tool), and get the player in the proper position...

05/04/2003 - 01:46pm - The player ship is at the right position.. It's placed using a point helper in 3ds Max... I also added code to LudiEngine3d that enables me to display flat-shaded 3d models (in the case of this ship, that's way better)... Think I'm going to make a bit of music to unwind...

05/04/2003 - 03:16pm - I've got the main game music all set up... Composed and played on a Casio keyboard and tracked in Modplug... You can download the music here... Now, back to coding, get the GUI working...

05/04/2003 - 05:58pm - Damn, this was hard!!! The 2d part of the LudiEngine3d was a bit broken, but I never noticed because I didn't use it in the right conditions to detect the problems... After 3 grueling hours of debugging, I finally got my first GUI element to appear! It's purpose is to control the heading of the photon torpedo... Now, for the velocity gauge...

05/04/2003 - 06:19pm - Another GUI element! This is how you control the speed of the photon torpedo... Now, I must get dressed for going out... Me and my girlfriend are joining some friends in Lisbon to go and party... Déjà vu... Well, anyway, I'm going to loose about 10 hours of contest, but it's all for a good cause: booze! :) Anyway, I'll continue tomorrow... I'm going to finally put the ship firing!

06/04/2003 - 12:54pm - Ah, back the compo... Let me see if I can make my ship fire!

06/04/2003 - 07:33pm - Ok, the ship fires, and the shots react to gravity... It took a bit more time than I was expecting, since I had to drop a friend in Lisbon in the middle of the work... And it took me some time to get the gravity weights right! I still have a texturing problems, but I will solve them later, if I have time... Textures aren't important for the game... Now, for a bit of collision detection...

06/04/2003 - 08:24pm - Collision detection implemented... In this shot, the photon shot hit the planet and exploded! Let's try to get some targets...

06/04/2003 - 09:12pm - Targets are implemented... In this first shot we can see the target and a photon torpedo missing because, although the target is dead ahead from the ship, the effects of gravity are felt... In this other shot, the target is hit...

06/04/2003 - 10:52pm - Targets can now move according to a path made in 3d Studio... This screenshot shows one of the moving targets... I also improved the target model and I solved the texturing problem... I was using a TGA image as a texture, but it had the alpha channel all black! :\ Now, to add some background to the game...

06/04/2003 - 11:30pm - Background is in place... I'll use this image as the instructions screen of my game... Now, for some flux control in the game...

07/04/2003 - 00:37pm - Flux added... One level so far... :\ And no goals, really... Anyway, now to add the music I wrote yesterday and add some sound FX's... Gonna make these with my mouth and microphone... :)

07/04/2003 - 01:12pm - Sounds done... Used Coagula Light for the photon torpedo and my voice for the explosion... Just need to do a Game Over screen, a Next Level screen and a Congratulations screen, and some more levels... 1h44m to deadline; this is going to be close...

07/04/2003 - 01:32pm - Screens done... Next level, congratulations and game over... Man, thank God for Photoshop's filters! Now, just a bit more of flux control (ammo, etc)...

07/04/2003 - 02:34pm - Game logic all done... 26 minutes to go... Just need to finish a couple of levels in my great level editor :) and make a readme...

07/04/2003 - 02:45pm - Uber-bug in my engine! The resource manager can't clear up the used up models, etc!!!! That means that I can't clear it all... Desperate times demand desperate measures... I have to change the naming system of my 5 levels!

07/04/2003 - 02:55pm - Trying to upload the game, but the server is probably overloaded...

07/04/2003 - 03:15pm - Finally uploaded it... Final screenshot and all... Going to update my logs, put the game online at my own website and go to sleep... It was a long 48 hours...

07/04/2003 - 04:45pm - Found a bug (already!)... The release build doesn't work with sound... Going to check out if Geoff will let me update it...