Development Log
April 15 2004 - 3:34 PM EST Today, during one of my infrequent visits to www.allegro.cc, I stumbled upon a news post about the Ludum Dare 48 hour programming comp. Having participated in contests like the Allegro SpeedHack I knew this would be a good time and a motivator for me to get off my lazy ass and code. Hopefully I manage to create something worthwhile and don't lose my sanity in the process.
My goals for today are:
- Finish this website
- Stock up on the four food groups: coffee, coke, hotpockets and ramen noodles
- Make sure Allegro and MingW32 are up and running
- Download POV-Ray and make get Impulse Tracker working on this new XP install
April 16 2004 - 11:56 PM EST So the theme is infection.. I have a couple vague ideas floating around, but nothing to the level of detail I need to start coding.
April 17 2004 - 5:10 AM EST Just woke up after a 4.5 hour "nap". Still thinking! I must be the only one who hasn't started coding. I have several mediocre game ideas, but really want to do something different for this contest.
It looks like i'll most likely be writting an action shoot-em up where you play the part of a virus infecting whose goal it is to infect living cells (on of my mediocre ideas). You must pilot your bacteriophage onto binding sites on uninfected cells (like Moonlander) and inject your virus DNA while avoiding white blood cells, antigens, competing virus's and cells infected with a different virus.
Pretty boring huh?
I need more elements to the game besides infecting and surviving. Maybe make cells play an important role after they are infected. They could serve as repair/refeuling stations for your bacteriophage. I could even set it up so you could inject different mutations of the virus causing the host cell to take on new behaviors.
The game sprites will probably be made up of 2d vector graphics and the whole game will look as though its being played under the lens of a microscope. This should be interesting and difficult as I have no idea on how to do collision detection of vector graphics.
April 17 2004 - 6:45 AM EST Game design is getting there..
Overview:
~~~~~~~~~
You play the role of a virus. Your mission is to take over a living system by infecting all of its cells while
avoiding death by host defenses.
Goal:
~~~~~
Infect all cells of a given host (level) while avoiding host defenses
Host defenses:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
White blood cells - Attack by enveloping the virus
Antigens - Attach themselves to your bacteriophage limiting movement and flagging the bacteriophage as a
target for white blood cells.
Bacteriophage defenses:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Antibiotic Cannon - Main defense against white blood cells and antigens.
Envelope - This acts as a cloak against white blood cells and antigens. Lasts for a limited amount of time and
can only be used once before a recharge is needed. All GlycoProtein is used up as well as some ATP
when you activate your envelope. Use sparingly.
Bacteriophage raw materials:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ATP - Fuel. If you run out of ATP, your dead.
DNA - Needed to infect host cells.
GlycoProtein - Used to create emergency envelope and serves and sheild.
Antibiotics - Ammunition for your antibiotic cannon.
At the start of the game your bacteriophage is equiped with only ATP and DNA, you must infect a cell to start
producing the other materials.
All of these materials are regenerated by cells infected by you.
Host infection:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To infect a cell you must manuver your bacteriophage onto a healtly cells binding site. Touching a cell on a
non-binding site will result in the cell fleeing and calling for white blood cell backup.
Once your bacteriophage has been docked, the payload DNA can be administered to various types of infection.
These are as follows:
1. ATP Factory - Produces ATP
2. DNA Factory - Produces DNA
3. Glycoprotien Factory - Produces Glycoproteins
4. Antibiotic Factory - Produces Antibiotics
5. Cellular bomb - Turns the host cell into a timebomb which will kill all white blood cells, antigens
and bacteriophages in the blast radius
Once a cell has been infected, it cannot be reinfected.April 17 2004 - 8:34 AM EST I've drawn out my first vector sprite on graph paper, a bacteriophage.
Now I need to implement a vector sprite class. I think i'll describe sprites by a list of endpoints and line segments in a simple text file. This should be easy enough to enter once the sprite has been drawn out on graph paper. My next step is to write the functions needed to get this sprite loaded and drawn.
April 17 2004 - 11:00 AM EST Basic vector sprite class has been implemented. Load and draw code works:
Right now I'm using Allegro's routines for drawing my lines, the quality isn't that great so i'm probably going to end up using OpenGL in the end.
April 17 2004 - 11:00 AM EST Starting to look like a game:
The circular area to the right is where all the action is going to take place. It's supposed to look as though your looking through a microscope. The pink circles are healthy cells waiting to be infected. The blank space to the left of the viewport will be filled with a ell radar and various player stats such as material levels, cells infected/left to be infected ect..
I'm going to take an hour break and go outside for a bit. Wouldnt you know the weekend of the year falls during this compo.
April 18 2004 - 10:24 AM EST 8 hours left in the competition and there is still a ton of stuff to implement. I had a really productive morning yesterday, but I ended up getting sidetracked for most of the afternoon and some of the evening. Most of my worktime was spent hunting down the most obvious bug (why do they have to make X'ys look so much like Y's?).
Today I hope to get the game to a semi-playable state. I need to implement cell infection at the minimum and see what else I can squeeze in.
April 18 2004 - 8:58 AM EST 2 Minutes left. The game is very unfinished and barely playable. Infection, white blood cells, ..pretty much everything wasn't implemented. Here's a screenshot of the final release:
I wish I would have spent more time on this project and had actually made something playable.
Source: bafsoft.com archive