GBGames

I tried asking specific questions about what I would like the player to actually DO in the game. What’s the goal? How does he/she achieve success? What challenges does the player face, and what tools do I provide him/her to deal with them?

I had some baby carrots to tide me over until I’m ready to eat a meal again.

In this image, you can see that I’ve started sketching some GUI components.

When I start working on the game in earnest, I’m going to try to have the graphics ready before I write the code for them. And I need to remember not to worry about making them look fantastic. I waste too much time fiddling with each pixel.

Here’s a mockup:

In this image, you can see that Red and Blue just can’t seem to be peaceful in any game, and they are building walls to surround resources, claiming them. There will be a variety of resources, and those resources let you purchase more walls to build each turn and hire more soldiers.

Using 16×16 tiles means that there isn’t a lot of room for detail. Abstract is easier and faster for me, but it also provides the challenge of accurately conveying to the player what is happening. I’d like to get a game working as fast as possible. If the maps are too large, then I can try 32×32 tiles, which are much nicer for detail. But again, I’m not an artist, so I should focus on code and abstract art for now.

And I should get coding as soon as I can. The first day is almost over!

I was originally planning on sketching out some basic designs for each of my main ideas, but I had a lot of fun making the one I started with that I decided that it was the game I was going to make.

As you can see, I had some snacks while working on this one: blue corn chips with garlic lover’s hummus.

And here’s a close-up of the initial design:

I uploaded the time lapse for the past weekend:

Here’s the final entry with link:

The binary-only download is about 1.5MB in size.
https://www.gbgames.com/downloads/ld13/roadlockdown-gbgames-linux-r71-test.tar.gz

FIXED SHORTLY AFTER THE DEADLINE: https://www.gbgames.com/downloads/ld13/roadlockdown-gbgames-linux-r77.tar.gz

I’ll leave the old version up in case anyone is worried about cheating, but I managed to fix all of the little bugs that were preventing it from being a real game. I’ll have source and a Win32 version up soonish.

EDIT: Source! (8.3MB)

I finally got the game to include buildings and roads. As you can see, the cars don’t know about them yet, and in fact they drive over them. Now that the game is aware of the concept of intersections and buildings, I’ll be able to randomly place the Bank and require the cars to only make turns at intersections.

Since dinner almost killed me, I decided to have a salad. Romaine lettuce, walnuts, and raisins, covered in lemon juice. Pita chips and tapenade on the side. And of course Orange Juice, still a proud sponsor of GBGames.

I took the time to jot down some notes about how I want to proceed. How will the getaway car find its way to the banks, rob them, and get away? I think if I force the cars to only make turning decisions at intersections, it will not only make things easier on me, but I also think it can look pretty good. I also need to update the bank sprite.

With less than 6 hours left, I need to get a working game as fast as I can.