Ludum Dare 48-4 Blog

2004/04/02 03:35:33 PM Welcome to William Cairns' LD48 blog!

I'm really looking forward to the contest. Unfortunatly on the Saturday I am busy all day so I'll be making it a 24 hour contest. Should not be a problem as I believe 20 hours is enough to get a very good game framework ready. As long as I keep my ideas in check I should be able to compete fine with 20 hours work. Being in South Africa also helps as it gives me until 5am on Monday to get finished :).

I'm making lots of preperations for the LD48 competition. I am not writing any code that I will be using in the competition but I am working out all sorts of extra things that I might want to use in the competition:

• I have worked out how to use my digital camera to make sprites for my game.
• I have been playing around with Ejay Techno 4 again to make sure that I am ready to make music when I need to.

I'm a bit worried about how to make special sound effects for the game. I have a small collection of sound effects that I got on a low cost CD that are used for my games. Obviously these sounds are not available to me for the contest so I have to make another plan. I will try get a Microphone and get it working before the contest.

2004/04/15 01:00:51 PM I've been away this last weekend so I havn't done any planning. I got a couple of really nice photos though. A nice picture of a Giraffe and Zebras.

I'm trying to organise a microphone for the weekend to be able to make my own sounds. If I get it tomorrow I'll try it out before the competition starts.

2004/04/16 07:50:18 AM What a relief - in the Third Round of Voting the Small Screen option died. This was the only theme I was absolutly dreading... It just sounded so limiting.

2004/04/16 01:20:41 PM Planning

Well my plan is something like this:
Saturday Morning 3am - Wake up and find out what the theme is!
Saturday until 9am - Write the Game Template - the template must manage game states, rendering, playing sound and possibly high scores.
Saturday until 4pm - Write the Game
Saturday until 9pm - take photos to make sprites from

Sunday - play Magic the Gatheirng Regional Tournament in Pretoria, hopefully home about 6pm
Sunday evening until 10pm - finish off the game elements
Until Monday 3am - Polish, Polish and more Polish!

2004/04/16 08:47:02 PM I've been able to borrow a microphone but it doesn;t produce very good sound quality. It might be a lot of work to make nice sound effects but its definitly better than nothing.

Got a proper page up for the competition. Downloads, Screen shots everything included. I'm going to try update the page about every three hours if I can.

2004/04/17 04:24:22 AM And the theme is:

Infection

Make a game involving the spread of something. A virus, coffee shops, etc...

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

2004/04/17 05:36:22 AM Nearly got my Game Template ready.

EJay has a few nice Screem Vocals. All Techno based so maybe I need to build a Sci-Fi hosiptal game that you control the doctors and nurses and have to help patients that come in - of course things could get faster and faster as you try and give instructions...

2004/04/17 05:56:14 AM 6am version loaded. Goto Downloads to have a look - its about 1.1MB of which about 90% is Music File.

Next version planned to be loaded at about 9am.

2004/04/17 09:05:00 AM I've decided on a Real Time Viral Strategy Game. The concept is that of White Blood cells fighting the the invading viruses that are trying to eat various body parts. A couple of screen shots are available.

This 9am version has been slow as the family has worken up and we had breakfast, batch time etc.

2004/04/17 12:08:48 PM 12am Version is done. Added Minimap, health indicators, Unit Selection and commands list - commands still dont work but will be done now. Screen shots have been loaded!

2004/04/17 02:02:34 PM I've had a very productive two hours. Got multiple object selection box working, allocation of weapons to cells, movement of cells including formations. So things are going well.

The 2pm version avialble for download is the first version that allows player interaction. Have fun :)

2004/04/17 02:17:22 PM Next Step

Add in attacking Viruses and Virus fighting back. My idea is that once a fight has started one thing has to die - basically a fight to the death. This will also apply when healing something - the player needs to decide between healing and fighting.

After that - the organs you are defening - Lungs, Heart, Kidney, Liver. Kidney can create more cells, liver heals cells. Heart is way station between lungs and Liver/Kidney. Oxygen from Lungs give Liver and Kidney resource to do their work.

2004/04/17 04:54:18 PM OK I know its nearly 5pm but the 4pm version is avilable for download.

I only need to add the interaction between the red blood cells and the organs and the AI for the Viruses and the game is playable. My next version will be uploaded at about 9pm tonight. The 9pm version should basically be playable.

Tasks:

• Move Red Cells between the organs carrying oxygen between the lungs and the other organs.
• Add logic to viruses to search and destroy the organs
• Add a source for Viruses, something like a wound that generates viruses. I've also thought of having viruses having babies if they meet a virus of another color - possibly restrict it to black viruses only.
• But it there is a source for viruses the player should be able to do something about it. I was thinking I need a third player unit called blood platelets that rush to the scene of the virus outbreak and when there are ten platelets it closes the virus source.
• Tomorrows task is to add blocking objects in the way. This means pathfinding...

2004/04/18 10:13:39 PM Finally time for more update

Last night 9pm I went to bed - too tired to think really - getting a regular Access Violation Error.

4am Woke up, took 20 minutes to sort out the access violation.

7am finished work, web site is down so I cant upload screen shots or a new doanlaod. Time to finish off to go play Magic the Gatheirng Regionals

Realise my scale is all wrogn - everything is 4 times too big - I need to rescale everything to be 4 times smaller. Also bug in that new viruses just arn't arriving.

7pm - Just got home from Magic - absolutly worn out. I came 8th (of about 72 players) which qualifies me for Nationals. Too tired to work grabbed a few hours sleep

10pm - Ok thats now. Plan: Make scale smaller, work on scenarios, work on sounds.

Lets GO!

2004/04/19 12:18:31 AM The smaller scale works great. First actually playable verison of the game is ready!

Now I am adding levels/scenarios

2004/04/19 02:05:11 AM Game Done!

FIVE levels added - I think the last is impossible... Probably should have had more levels but time limitations......

Just getting everythign ready to load to the server and all done!