Gopher's LD48 compo work log
April 17, 2004 01:36:04 (GMT Time) Theme Decided : Infection!
Decided on my game concept. All I'm saying for now is the name - "The Trouble with Tribbles"
Two ways I might go with it, first task is testing one. Not going to spend more than an hour and a half seeing if I can get the concept to work, if not or if results unsatisfactory, reverting to plan B.
April 17, 2004 02:13:21 (GMT Time) Scrap Plan A
Ok, worked far enough downt he Plan A road to decide it was gonna take more work than I could reasonably cram into the time available, so going to Plan B.
April 17, 2004 03:14:12 (GMT Time) Enacting Plan B
Plan B involves only one really tricky piece of tech code, the rest is simple stuff. I'm working on that first, should have that done in 3-4 hrs tops to be on track.
April 17, 2004 04:46:34 (GMT Time) Success! I am a geenius!
Ok, I just got the GBA to draw 1,024 8x8 sprites at the same time! Woohoo! <happy dance!> Time now for a brief break.
April 17, 2004 05:37:13 (GMT Time) First screenshot
Here's a screenie of the 1024 sprites at once running in VBA.
April 17, 2004 06:08:20 (GMT Time) HW issue Fixed
As of last updates, only worked on emulator; just got it working on the actual GBA hardware. Yay!
April 17, 2004 07:59:56 (GMT Time) Bleah
Ok, when I went to actually start making the game, discovered a major bug in my 1000+ sprite system that I'm trying to isolate. However, it's very late where I live, so I'm calling it a night and I'll try to stomp it in the morning.
April 17, 2004 14:25:38 (GMT Time) Up and back at it
Ok, 6 hrs of sleep and I'm back on the case. First task for the day is figuring out that @#$! glitch.
April 17, 2004 15:03:41 (GMT Time) Found it! hahaha!
After proper rest, found the bug in short order. Yay! Was a realy sneaky one, though; the sprites are divided into batches of 32, and it worked fine if the number of batches was a multiple of 4 (as it is in the case of 1024 :)
When adding them one at a time, I've still got a wierd flicker that happens every 32 I'd like to isolate, but that's minor compared to the previous problem.
April 17, 2004 15:44:46 (GMT Time) Dammit. :|
Ok. Main bug was squashed, but there was a worse one remaining than I realised. For some reason removing objects is breaking things, which makes no sense.
April 17, 2004 16:48:33 (GMT Time) Stumped:(
Still can't find the problem. Commenting the 1K bits out for now and getting on with the game, I'll go back and take another shot at fixing it later (time permitting) Game's gonna be a lot more dull with only 128 sprites tho. :(
April 17, 2004 20:38:33 (GMT Time) Basic game running
Have the basic game running, still a lot of work to do tho. Right now fiddling with it increase the "fun" factor.
April 17, 2004 21:52:27 (GMT Time) Stop to take stock
Decided to stop and take an objective look at where I am and what I've got left to do. Main tasks remaining : game HUDs, the radiation layer, Text layer, Ship map view, menus, sound, and the high score table. Lot of tasks, heh, but I've still got 27 hours left
April 17, 2004 23:02:41 (GMT Time) Art
Finished some art content, specifically a set of background tiles. Soon as I get them into the game I'll post another screenshot.
April 17, 2004 23:24:22 (GMT Time) More Art
While I was at it went ahead and drew a better character sprite. New screenshot to come.
April 17, 2004 23:31:35 (GMT Time) Why wait?
Went ahead and just took a screenshot of the tileset and the char.
April 18, 2004 02:35:53 (GMT Time) Importance of code structure
For some dumb reason, up until a while ago I was putting everything in main.cpp. This had become unwieldly and so before I started adding a whole new unrelated set of functions, I wanted to pull stuff out into separate files. I've done that now. Oh, and there's another screenshot showing the new BG tiles. here it is:
April 18, 2004 05:51:22 (GMT Time) New screenshot
The radiation layer's going now, there's a screenshot here. (got tired of putting the thumbnails both places, so you'll have to click.)
April 18, 2004 06:47:40 (GMT Time) Got the new sprites in
the new character and tribble sprites are in. Looks about 1000% better than it did with all programmer art, still not happy with the bg tiles (too small compared to the sprites) but that'll have to wait until I've got everything else done.
New screenshot posted.
April 18, 2004 15:17:55 (GMT Time) Back to work
Went to bed intending to just snooze for 5 hrs, slept for 7 instead, so only 10 hrs remain. Time for a final review of the work remaining!
Essential tasks
- Text System
- HUD Layer / player RAD counter
- Game Menus
- Ship Map
Gonna work on them in the order indicated.
April 18, 2004 16:41:18 (GMT Time) Text Layer Complete!
Finished the text layer. It's not pretty, but it's readable. There's a screenshot posted on the screenies page.
April 18, 2004 18:19:15 (GMT Time) HUD layer complete!
finished the hud layer. It's not much to look at, but now you can see how many rads your character is taking. This is helpful information, since too many rads will kill you. There's a new screenshot.
April 18, 2004 20:12:48 (GMT Time) Ship Map View
The ship map view screen is drawn and in the game. The image was added to the screenshots page.
April 18, 2004 22:21:23 (GMT Time) Almost there!
Got the whole game written and playable. All that's left is the main menu, instructions, and credits.
April 18, 2004 23:49:20 (GMT Time) Declaring it done
The menus are as bland as humanly possible, but the game is finished. I'm submitting it now.
I'll probably come back and work on it more later. As soon as I upload it to LD, I'll work on the website and actually make an main page for the game.
Source: willt.freeservers.com archive