Elf's Hectic Christmas's Time log

Ludumdare 2002 December unofficial week-long programming competition time log

Entrant: sgstair - Real name: Stephen Stair

Entry name: Elf's Hectic Christmas (decided 1:45 AM 12/28/02)

9:55 PM 12/23/02 Finally beginning the compo - I checked the topics last night, and have still not come up with a feasable idea... Still brainstorming but a little harder now, maybe I'll come up with something soon.

10:45 AM 12/27/02 Ok, nevermind about last entry :) I finally have an idea: you are the lone elf awake to load santa's sleigh at 11pm (mainly because you were the lazy one not doing any work earlier :D) ... however this christmas is unusual, something seems different, and when you get to the boxes, you discover that they have sprouted legs... they run away from you when you get close to them... however there is one thing that will save you... they seem to be horrified of scissors, knives, and things commonly used to tear them to shreds while being drawn to packaging things, like bows, ribbons, tape, and wrapping paper. Obviously they can't see very well, their sight seems to be limited to one square in each direction (up,down,left,right... this is a tile-based game) In each level there will be a number of useful and not-so-useful items for you to find and collect... you will have to search for some items (but they will appear in likely places...) There will be other fun features, but I'm not sure how much I want to add yet. Anyhow, back to gameplay... When you or any item is 1 square away from the package (horizontal or vertical...) the package will react to the item/you by either running away in the opposite direction as fast as it can, or by adding that item to itself (moving onto it) - now that's going to be the challenge graphicly :D I will have to account for a lot of packages!... if the package runs into the sleigh (probably a 4x6 tile object), the package will be saved... but if the package runs into a trap, or fire, or something like that, it will be lost. Try not to lose packages as your success at the end of the game depends on having a high percentage of saved packages!

Rendering of the game will use d3d, but it will be a 2d tile-based game :) - this is for 2 reasons: I'm too lazy to write a tile engine with sprites for winGDI, and I want to hone my d3d skills even more :) I would do this game in 3d but I don't have nearly enough experience with 3d stuff yet :\ .... Anyhow - back to work for me !

11:05 AM 12/27/02 Started project, working on framework.

2:59 PM 12/27/02 Many interruptions :) Still working, got d3d up and running... will have basic stuff going before long (drawing tiles, sprites, etc...) More to come soon :)

4:04 PM 12/27/02 More interruptions... working on gfx now, they are still horrible :D no further on my engine, but working on a map editing tool... have yet to decide on format for my maps :)

1:36 AM 12/28/02 Wonderful... back to work - though no noticable progress since last checkpoint :) things I've done: got my d3d init squeaky clean and some nice d3d error checking routines done... Working now on a map editor (in VB hahaha) and map formats, they will probably be released with the game :) -- if I remember right the compo ends at 7pm today this time zone (mountain time..) but I'm not sure :D better get to work!

2:04 PM 12/28/02 Again, continuing to work on the engine.. The map editor is nearly perfect, I just need to get some graphics made, and also work out a system to support transparency properly... My texture data will be exported from the map editor, reducing the number of tools I have to make :) I hope to have basic map and sprite functionality in the next few hours... and the deadline 5 hours away is creeping up far too fast...

2:41 PM 12/28/02 Alrightey - :) I feel stupid now, apparently the deadline is a day later than I anticipated and I didn't think to look on the website to find out :) so it's 2:41 pm MST here, and it's due tomorrow at 11:59 PST... how wonderful I still have over a day - definitely time for a break :D

1:24 AM 12/29/02 More stuff going on... Sidetracked by xbox for several hours :) oh well... anyhow I have finally got a chance to steal the monitor from my mom's computer, so I have 2 computers running now (long story...) I just uploaded my first screen shot- it's of the map editor I spent far too much time writing :D... anyhow it works nicely, and will greatly simplify content generation. I'm now working on graphics and photoshop seems to not like me very much..... so that's going slowly. For now I'm going to get some sleep cause I can't think straight enough to type code in, and I don't feel like fiddling with photoshop... I still hope I get this done in time!

11:59 AM 12/29/02 Back to work, I've been messing with my graphics in photoshop, and I'm down to 5 free tiles :D - so I must be pretty near done with graphics. I'm leaving them open for now cause I'm not sure what I want to do with them. Anyhow now it's time to continue work on the engine, it's really in a simple form at the moment, I still need to load the graphics and maps :) ... back to work.

11:28 PM 12/29/02 I think it's finally past the deadline here now :D and it's beginning to be obvious I'll not be done in time ;) .... anyhow look for a release from me within a day or so! I do plan to get this done- I want peoples opinions!