Ludum Dare 48 - Time Log

Start 0 Hour, 2:00am BST (British Summer Time, GMT +1)

Turns out the game Theme this time round is 'Infection' initially I was somewhat disappointed with this since it's not one I had anticipated. However on reflection this is a lot broader than it initially seems. The exact brief is "Make a game involving the spread of something. A virus, coffee shops, etc..." this allows some decent scope. So on to brain storming!

0:30, 2:30am BST

The first theme that springs to mind is some kinda of zombie infection (must be Dawn of the Dead / Shaun of the Dead related). Which is kind of strange since there was a theme 'Zombies' earlier on and that died off quite early in the selection process. Genre wise I think the most obvious is 'puzzle' for this theme, but there are some strong possibilities in the action area.

Well i'm not up for doing the conventional, so lets try turning the 'Zombie' theme around. The principle of this is that the 'infection' isn't something they want (err Death). Now there's no reason to keep that. Life as the opposite is mildly interesting, but not so gripping. Which leads us to our favorite pair. Good Vs Evil. This fits the 'Zombie' theme by placing the 'Evil' zombies vs the good people. Hmmm now this some potential. So flipping this gives us good people vs evil zombies? A lot of tension in the average 'Zombie' flick comes not from the getting killed part it's about the lose of control that comes from the Zombie state. Basically turning people into something they their own worst nightmare. I believe this element is what i'm going to latch on to.

Now I always intended to go for humour with this entry, so people don't cut it. Now my modeling / art skills are somewhat dire so simplicity is key. Good Spheres Vs Evil Cubes? Ok maybe not that bad. I think the plan is to create a 'Evil' player that the 'Good' is trying to infect, this leads to all kinds of 'Evil' things the player can do - since they couldn't care about blowing stuff up etc. Hmm blowing stuff up... Evil... Funny... and there we have the theme for 'Kitten Carnage'

Basically you'll play the Evil overlord on a planet of Evil animals, just about to reach ultimate victory on one of the planets many long wars (which everyone loves) a mad scientist unleashes the terrible virus 'Cute'. This turns the elite combat hardened troops into small cute fluffy animals who then start 'attacking' their fellows. This can not be allowed to happen, and must be stopped at any cost... and possibly some small fluffy animals might get blown up along the way :)

1:30, 03:30am BST

Putting the web site and time log together. Decided to make the working title 'Kitten Carnage', might make a more 'infectiony' title by the end though. The game design seems to have evolved around a 'puzzle grid' allowing the player to work his way past the infected cute fluffy animals (CFA), and 'save' his fellow uninfected. By using a grid movement system I can side step the animation issues a least a little bit.

2:00, 04:00am BST

Finished web site structure, written out game mechanics. Dry paper run a level, kinda works. Guess it's time to get coding!

2:15, 04:15am BST

Created the basic framework, added the initial teapot screenshot. The DirectX Wizard framework doesn't exactly give you much, but it at least provides a method for drawing fonts, which is annoying as . The MDX extensions will be critical to getting anything done in a reasonable time frame. I'm just debating creating the basic level geometry in code or just moving 'Block' meshes around. Guess you'll find out in a bit.

4:00, 06:00am BST

Added Mesh manipulation code, i'll be using the standard .X file format. However this needs 'wrapping' a bit to use more easily. I still feel it's worth using a strong(ish) OO approach even under the time constraints. Anyway, we now have meshes loading.

5:00, 07:00am BST

Added a subset of my normal 'texture manager' code. Obviously writing if from scratch knocks out some of it's usual better features, but hey it's all part of the competition.

7:00, 09:00am BST

DirectX doesn't have any kind of useful GUI editor (it's possible to sync to the window and use normal windows components but that's ugly and doesn't work so well full screen). On a previous project i'd written a GUI layer that basically reinterpreted the windows form (so I can use VS.Net as my 'Editor). I don't anticipate using much for this project, so at the moment it does text controls and labels. Combining this with textures this should allow a full GUI. Infact on reflection i've done this in a very stupid way, I guess if I have time later i'll come back and fix the drawing with vertex buffers rather than stream positions.

8:00, 10:00am BST

Added an interface manager to allow flipping between 'Forms' this allows a start and then the game screen. Using the 'wizard' start is getting to be quite the PITA now, since I don't know exactly what it's doing. However i'm probably still quid's in from using it. I think i'm going to start off the level design with manipulating meshes since i'm sick of building vertex buffers for a bit.

9:00, 11:00am BST

Got the first level in, added in a moveable camera. Not exactly the worlds most exciting scene yet but hey :) Updated screenshots.

15:45, 5:45pm BST

Well my progress at generating the art assets officially sucks. Over a quarter of the time down and i've managed 1 out of the 8 I have planned. Hmm. Guess i'll give it a few more hours then downsize. Note to self do 2D game next time :) I've got the first hints of gameplay in, and it's not completely terrible. Which I guess is a good thing!

16:45, 6:45pm BST

I'm getting old, only 16 hours in and i'm fairly toasted. However my family are insisting I go our and eat with them. On the bright side I have a rather bizarre looking cat model done. Might have to redo it though, since I was aiming for cute rather than faux-modern ;)

21:00, 11:00pm BST

Hmm nearly half way and still fluffing around with models. Na, times up, you get the stupid looking 'cats'. If there's time to improve them it'll come later. Becoming weak, must sleep... No not yet, not till the level loader is done! Never give up, never surrender!

23:00, 01:00am BST

Dam, half way rabidly approaches. I'm feeling a bit better now though. I have both the main characters in game, two out of the four power ups I want prepped (check out the new Cat Mower in screenshots). If I can build a logical rule set that constructs winable levels (while maintaining some challenge), then I can move on to getting multiplayer working! Oh and I reversed the ordering on the screenshot page, so you don't have to scroll to the bottom to see the good stuff. I'll consider it for this one :)

24:00, 02:00am BST

Well day 1 down, I completed work on my object replicator and 'shape' super class. I can now get the critters / objects / level tiles into the game nice and quick. So basically day 2 is all gameplay and maybe even multiplayer :) Added 'Good' cat army to screenshots. Have a good evening.

24:45, 02:45am BST

I knew I shouldn't have started with the wizard version, it just took me 15 minutes to get the dam quit working properly, and another 20 to fix the 'resize' mesh issues. Evidently 'Managed' is quite as managed as you'd expect! Well they're fixed now, so if you're feeling insane (Note ~380KB File) you can see armies of cat's at 1600x1200 with 8xFSAA :)

25:00, 03:00am BST

Updated to downloads page to have links to the required support files for the game, and added the above 'wallpaper' link. I really really blitzed now, guess it's time to go to bed for a bit. Catch ya on the flip side. Have fun.

26:00, 04:00am BST

OK maybe I did a little more, but now i'm gone. See ya :)

31:00, 9:00am BST (British Summer Time, GMT +1)

Well got some sleep, today is gameplay day. I got all the ground work done yesterday.