Kingdoms's Time log

48 Hour Game Competition Time Log

03:00am GMT+1 Competition starts.

10:30am GMT+1 Due to time zone issues, I am just getting started. Theme is "Preperation: Set it up, let it go". Now I just need a game idea.

I have decided to use SDL, something I have never used before. I skimmed through the documentation yesterday and it seems like a nice enough api... well, we'll see :-)

1:00pm GMT+1 Well SDL is certainly growing on me. I have a basic framework up and running with images loading, drawing etc. Next I am going to write a simple animated sprite class and then start on game play. That is if I can can up with an idea for a game...

5:30pm GMT+1 Good news and bad news. Bad, I have wasted several hours trying to find a decent font library to use with sdl. In the end I wrote my own in about 30 minutes. Should have just goit stuck into code at the begining. Good news however, I have a game concept. Basically you are the ruler of your kingdom. Once a year you can give orders to your people, and they will try to carry them out over the course of the next year.

One of the key concepts of the game is land. You start with a small amount of land, some of it farmland, some ready for use, and some that is wilderness. You have to decide what you peasents should be doing over the next 12 months, tasks include: scout for new lands (try to find more wilderness), tame wilderness (convert wilderness into land ready for building), convert to farmland (turn land thats ready into farmland).

I want to add soldiers and attacking/taking over neighbouring coutries, but I am not certain there is much time. Guess I should make a start and see how things go.

7:00pm GMT+1 I think that with out the invading other people and taking their lands my idea is a bit dull. Guess I will just have to find the time to code it all... I was originally thinking of having your country in the middle of a noughts-and-crosses type board, with eight neighbours to fight off. More realistically I think I will go with two neighbouring countries. Maybe I can go back and add more for version 2.

I have just wasted more time tracking down a stupid off-by-one error in my font code. I haven't fallen foul of one of those in a long time, but then I normally use formal coding techniques whilst programming which seem to steer me straight most of the time. Hacking out code at a breakneck speed isn't the safest way to develop robust code... but its certainly a fun diversion from the usual piles of documentation and planning :-)

12:00am GMT+1 I have pretty much the final design nailed down now, and most of the code structure written. Now I just need to go though and flesh out the various game states. I realised that I am going to have to impliment some sort of ai for the two neighbouring coutries. For the competition version of the game they are going to be really simple. One is going to be militant, and the other is going to focus on its economy. Probably wont be the most exciting ai ever, but as before, I can always improve it for version 2.

I remember now why I write code, my art work is truly appaling. I have finished the splash screen and have designed a rough template that the four in game screens will be based on. I am still not too happy with it, but shuffling on screen elements around later should be pretty simple if I come up with a better design. Anyway, I need some sleep, its getting late here, and I want to be up relativly early so I get a good amount of time to work tomorow.

10:30am GMT+1 Day 2, awake, showered and fed. Back to coding. First thing is to get all the game screens laid out, then as I add gameplay features I will be able to test them easily.

12:00am GMT+1 Sometimes I am such an idiot I amaze myself. I just managed to delete all my artwork... Oh well, you live and learn. I have laid out the first in game screen which took longer than I expected. However in doing that I have written the code that gives you buttons to change between the screens, so that is good progress.

2:40am GMT+1 Day 3, contest ends in 20 minutes. I am finished and have all the features in that I wanted, but the AI is truly appaling. Uploading the final version now. Still need to grab a screen shot, upload the source and this file and I am done.

This was my first 48 hour contest, and it has certainly been an experience. Looking back I should have got a hell of a lot more done saturday night. I stopped just before laying out the game screens, if I had got that done I think today would have been a lot less hectic as I could have thought over the issues I discovered whilst laying out those screens overnight, instead of being all panicy at the last moment. Oh well, no regrets :-)