Category: Game Design

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.

It’s hard to see from this partial screenshot, but the getaway car has reversed direction after hitting the road block. The road blocks are temporary and disappear after some time, and you place them by pressing the space bar.

Only six hours left to go. I still want the getaway car to rob banks, make turning decisions to avoid road blocks and the player’s car, and, you know, get away. Oh, and I need to put roads back into the game. B-)

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

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:

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!

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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-)

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.

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.