Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#13: Dinner and Drinks…Lot’s of Drinks

Soon after I finally managed to make the squad car controllable, my friend came over with another friend and made steaks and salad.

Dinner

As you can see, there is some Sapporo Reserve the wash it down with.

But there was also a lot of other beer. I woke up feeling dehydrated and found the following in my kitchen:

The morning after

I had six bottles of Shiner plus that can of Sapporo. Actually, considering how I felt the night before, I’m surprised I woke up as early as I did and felt more or less fine. I was obviously not feeling 100%, but it’s not like I had a pounding headache.

So this morning, after showering, I had the best chaser of all: The Award-Winning Peanut Butter and Pickle Sandwich!

The Award Winning Peanut Butter and Pickle Sandwich

Two bananas, The Sandwich, and Orange Juice, the official drink of GBGames.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#13: Awesome Road Lockdown Screenshot

Road Lockdown

Check it out! The squad car is chasing the getaway car! This is actually about 200% of the size. You can control the squad car, but I also set both cars to follow the border of the game screen so I can see what it looks like when it runs on its own.

Oh, uh, what happened to the roads? Yeah, they’re coming.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#13: Lunch and Design Notes

After getting some boilerplate code down, I took a break to have lunch:
Lunch

Peanut butter, cinnamon, and raisin sandwich, plus some blue corn chips and hummus, washed down with Tutti Frutti flavored Jaritos. Also, some carrots (not pictured).

I spent lunch and the hour after trying to nail down a specific direction to take this project. Here are my design notes:

Road Lockdown design

I’m still hoping to get basic game play by dinner today. We’ll see how ambitious a goal that is.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#13: Breakfast!

I woke up this morning kind of groggy. I had to sleep on the couch because my cats left me a smelly surprise on my bed. I guess they didn’t like being locked out of the office. B-(

It snowed a lot last night. It’s very white out. I need to drop off my laundry at the laundromat, and I also want to go to the pet store to purchase Nature’s Miracle enzyme cleaner. Darn cats.

Anyway, breakfast!

Breakfast #1

I’m afraid I probably won’t do well in the food competition this time around, but we’ll see.

I’ve also been thinking about my project. Perhaps it won’t be a simple puzzle game because then I would need to design puzzles. I was thinking it could be an action game in which you play the role of the getaway car trying to outrun the police, but then I would need decent AI and it might end up being a clone of Pac-man. I’ll think a little bit more about this game.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#13: Road Lockdown Mock-up

I liked the idea of the police strategically blocking certain roads so that the criminals can’t get away. Road Lockdown is my current name for the project, but it might change. B-)

Road-Mockup.png

From this mock-up, you can see the red getaway car of the criminals as well as the squad cars blocking the roads. I think I’ll keep the road images for the final game, and the cars seem to have come out fairly nice, I think.

I think I’ll go to sleep now. Tomorrow morning I have a lot of coding to do.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Personal Development

LD#13 Theme: ROADS

So the theme is Roads. According to the voting results, it was the only one with a positive number of votes overall, and yet the IRC channel is erupting with people surprised that it was the theme that won out.

What are some ideas?
– Building roads between cities to facilitate commerce.
– Managing traffic congestion.
– Planning/Acting on The Road Ahead for your life.
– Maintaining a small town’s roads.
– Transporting materials along a long road.
– Find your way without a map, searching for a lost road.
– Strategically shut down certain roads to guide a getaway car to the police.

There are plenty of ideas, and I’m sure I’ll come up with more.

Categories
Game Development Personal Development

Ludum Dare #13 Starts Tonight!

Ludum Dare, the 48-hour solo game development competition, will start tonight at 10PM CST. You can check all of the action at the main competition blog.

The theme voting had been separated into four rounds. The winning theme will be announced at the start of the competition, and we’ll have 48 hours to make a game based on that theme. There are currently 16 themes in the running.

As always, I’ll be cross-posting between the official Ludum Dare blog and my own blog. I’m looking forward to this weekend. It’s always fun, and it is easy to learn new things when you are focused so intently for two days straight. Be sure to check out my tips for participating in Ludum Dare if you plan on participating!

Last time I barely managed to put some game play into my submission, and while I got compliments for my approach, I got a lot of comments like, “Too bad it wasn’t a game.” My goal for this competition is to have the game play established within the first 6 hours of work. I’ll probably go to sleep at the start of the competition, so Saturday should see the basic game play before I stop for dinner if all goes well.

Good luck to everyone who enters! Let’s make games!

[tags] game development, game competition, ludum dare, indie [/tags]

Categories
General

Chicago for Child’s Play Charity

I thought I would pass this information along since it doesn’t seem like most people know about it.

From http://www.childsplaycharity.org/events.php:

December 9th 2008

Chicago, IL. (Plan B Chicago, 1635 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago, IL 60647) Dawdle.com and Midway Games are sponsoring the first-ever Child’s Play fundraiser in Chicago! Join us for gaming, booze, and prizes! We’ll have a gaming contest (game TBA) and some other special items. Totally inspired by Funde Razor, we’re doing our part to raise the spirits of some very deserving kids.

To learn more, please go to http://www.dawdle.com/childsplay. To purchase your ticket, please visit to http://childsplay.eventbrite.com/

I’ll be attending, and so should you! Check http://www.childsplaycharity.org/events.php for Child’s Play events in your area.

Categories
Game Development Personal Development

Thousander Club Update: December 1st

For this week’s Thousander Club update:

Game Hours: 409.25(previous two years) + 130.5 (current year) = 539.75 / 1000
Game Ideas: 710 (previous two years) + 63 (current year) = 773 / 1000

I spent a lot less time working on game development than I wanted to over my vacation, but I hope a daily routine will help. Also, by Friday, Ludum Dare #13 will begin, so I will be working a significant number of hours this weekend.

I’m still working on cross-compilation scripts. I want the ability to build GNU/Linux AND Win32 versions of a game without the need to reboot into Windows.

[tags]game, game design, productivity, personal development, video game development, indie[/tags]

Categories
General

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just like last year, I want to take this opportunity to be thankful.

These days it is easy to focus on the negative. The bad news about the economy is constant, hate and violence seems to be erupting all over the world, and there are plenty of fingers pointing blame in every direction.

So it is good to take a step back and think about what’s good in your life. I’m thankful for the ability to focus on the positive. I have a warm home, great friends, two fantastic cats, and opportunities just waiting to be taken advantage of. I’m thankful for my readers, the people who have played my games and given me feedback, and the people who have made the games that I play.

To everyone who has made an impact on my life, you are my teachers, and I thank you for the opportunities to learn from you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!