Category: Linux Game Development

This is a bowl of popcorn.

LOOK AT IT!

I prefer my popcorn plain. It is much easier to grab a bite and continue working if I don’t feel the need to wipe the butter off of my hands every time.

Progress report:

The driver can exit the vehicle, pick up some mineral, return it, and go back out for more. He can’t pick up more than one mineral at a time.

Oh, he also can’t leave the level without the tank.

Next: adding monsters to their lairs. For lack of time, the AI will have to be very simple. It will cheat and chase the driver through walls. Hopefully they’ll look more like monsters than spheres of a different color. B-)

See the yellow sphere? That’s the driver of the tank, out to get those blue minerals. Both the driver and the tank respect the walls of the level now. The driver can get in and out of the tank, but only from the front. I should probably do something to make it clear to the player. If I have time, of course.

I still need to implement mineral collection, and then it is time for the monster lair to hold and release monsters. After that, a way for you to stop the monsters from coming out after the driver when he’s outside of the protection of the tank.

Then sound, then better looking graphics.

If I have time, of course. B-\

Yes, I do.

I’m really close to moving the player around. He can jump in and out of the tank if he’s near it. Or, he will once I figure out how to make sure that he doesn’t jump out of the tank into a wall.

It’s the start of a level layout, loaded from a file!

You can see the ground, the darker walls, the green monster lair, and the blue minerals.

I hope. Anyone out there who is slightly colorblind and can’t tell the difference between the lair and the mineral? I can fix that if it matters.

I made myself some scrambled eggs, sprinkled with a little pepper. Together with buttered wheat toast, a banana, and a glass of orange juice, it makes a fantastic breakfast. My compliments to the chef.

Gizmo also had some breakfast with me:

Ok, after I shower and get dressed, I’m cracking down on my game development. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Since getting this:

I haven’t done anything, and it’s time to do so. If it took me only 20 minutes to get the tank drawn and moving around, I’m sure I can probably get the rest of the mechanics in a matter of hours. I should have time to add sound effects before the end, something I haven’t done since LD#11, and then I can update the rough graphics, time permitting.

It’s times like these that I like to think of the lyrics from the hit TV show, Perfect Strangers:

No matter what the odds are this time
Nothing’s gonna stand in my way!

Either that, or I like to listen to electronica. Either way.

I had some time when I got to my parents’ house to pick up my father to go see the Chicago Fire game, so I decided to have some dinner:

Lemon chicken and potatoes!

The game:

We had great seats. 2nd row, right at the midfield! Unfortunately, the Fire lost 1-0 to D.C. United. Whatever.

When I got home, I had a bit of comfort food: American cheese singles in Italian bread.

It’s not much:

But that little box on the lower right side of the screen? It’s moving around. I figured I should have something interesting to show while the time lapse capture is running. I am now going to take a long break for the evening to watch the Chicago Fire kick D.C. United’s butt. I’ll take pictures if I find any interesting food there. B-)

After getting an SDL window to open and close when I tell it to, I decided to take a break for lunch:

There it is. My popular famous and award-winning peanut butter and pickle sandwich. I put cinnamon on it, as well. My lovely girlfriend sent me cookies for this competition, so I had one of those. And I washed the whole thing down with apple juice.

Now to get some progress on the game development before I leave for a Chicago Fire game tonight. There are 32 hours left in the competition.

I’m LD, and I win the fight!

After I showered, shaved, and got dressed, it was time to get down to business. Before any new code gets written, I had to make sure my ideas had a chance of being fun. First stop, paper prototypes!

Here’s a close up of the first pass:

I drew some walls, and I placed a few tokens down to represent minerals, the tank, and the driver. Actually, my initial pass didn’t even have walls really, but moving the tank with the driver, then moving the driver to the minerals to collect them, and then moving the minerals to the tank wasn’t very interesting by itself.

The walls made it more interesting because now the tank can’t move past them.

After a bit, I had a more fleshed out design:

Now I have a concept of monsters, their lairs, movable boulders, and selectively destructible floors.

Hmm…now that I’ve written it out, it sounds like I’m making something that might be too ambitious for this weekend.

Oh, well. Onward!