Part 3 of Results of June’s Game in a Day

Click below to track my June 2005 GID development progress:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

5:03 PM

Cans of Mountain Dew: 7
Subversion Revision: 35

Let’s take a break.

At this point, I am trying to think about what I can do to improve on the project. Right now, the main player can drop a pulsating bomb which explodes after a few seconds. The explosion will make the enemies disappear. The enemies move about in a random, convulsing sort of way.

I could try to clean up the code, but what’s the fun in that? Cleaning up the code is what you do after GID. During GID, you just try to make the best game you can in 24 hours.

I could try to improve the AI, but that would involve research since I am not too familiar with setting up scripts and the like. Everything is hardcoded unfortunately. Still, it doesn’t close off my options too much. I think I will make the enemies birth new enemies every so often. Also, if they touch the main player, the player dies.

I should probably add a new state to allow you to return to the game rather than call in the main menu state as a placeholder. I believe it also ruins the game by deleting the Kyra engine and creating it again. A new state would be much better.

6:01 PM

Cans of Mountain Dew: 7
Subversion Revision: 39

Cool. The game now pauses, although it doesn’t display anything to let you know. Bad UI, but hey, it’s a feature that wasn’t there before. It is difficult to exit the game since there is no feedback to let you know what state is active. If you hit Esc, you will pause the game. Hit Esc again, and you resume. Hit Q while paused and you go to the GameOver state. Hit Q to go to the main menu. Hit Q to exit the game. Whew.

7:04 PM

Cans of Mountain Dew: 8
Subversion Revision: 46

The enemies can now kill the player. The player can kill the enemies. It goes to Game Over, and if you want to start over again, it now restores the game properly.

The enemies are still stupid, but now the player has a DEAD state. I think it is amusing looking, although it is a bit too subtle:

8:13 PM

Cans of Mountain Dew: 8
Subversion Revision: 49

Took a break to change, wash up, and talk to people in #gameinaday before continuing. My sister took some pictures of development:

10:51 PM

Cans of Mountain Dew: 8
Subversion Revision: 52

COMPLETED!

After a little scare where I had an actual working game and then messed it up WITHOUT having checked the working copy into Subversion first, I finally got it to work again. I changed the vectors to lists so I can actually remove blasts and enemies when they are no longer alive. The enemies multiply at a quick rate, but they don’t currently pose much of a threat as they still just randomly convulse. Still, the gameplay is there. I’m proud of what I accomplished for my first GID. I learned that I need to improve on my understanding of C++ and Kyra if I want to work more effectively with them in the future. And I had fun! I mean, I made an actual game in 24 hours! It has no sound, the graphics leave a lot to be desired, and the actual gameplay isn’t much better, but it is a game. It is something I can claim that I created. It’s a great feeling.

Click on the image below to get the source and graphic files. The packages are available in .zip and .tar.gz formats. Make sure you get the latest revision unless you want to see how the project looked at an early stage. You’ll need to make sure you have the Kyra Sprite Engine on your system, which requires SDL.