Three hours on, here’s where I’m at:
- Fixed a bunch of gameplay bugs, a few of them causing spectacular crashes (but these were all the usual corner-cases where you expect to find crashes.. respawning after dying while in the middle of using a petition was one of these, for example).
- Tuned time bonuses so that individual games now tend to last about two to three minutes for me. I’m sure that if you went in really trying to play as long as possible, rather than just having fun, that you could probably play infinitely. But I don’t really have time to do proper play tuning and difficulty ramping for a release tonight, and I don’t want the game to be too difficult for first-time players. So I’m erring on the side of ‘accessible’.
- “How to Play” screen implemented. I like it a lot, even if the code is shocking. I’m going to have to put an apology in the file, when I release the code.
- Adjusted VectorStorm’s initial resolution selection code (for the very first run only). VectorStorm now tries to initialise a resolution of 800×600, instead of choosing the smallest supported fullscreen resolution. If the current hardware doesn’t support 800×600, it will choose the next smallest resolution supported. If nothing under 800×600 is supported, then it will choose the smallest resolution that is supported. The resolution can still be changed from the options screen.
- Added a “back” option from the options screen, so people don’t have to guess the ‘q’ keymapping.
Stuff that remains to be done:
- Custom graphics for three different characters
- Polish title screen
- Sound effects
- As much gameplay tuning as I can manage.
Not going to spend too much time writing here, but.. this game was definitely overcomplicated for what I can comfortably design and build in a week. With only twelve hours to go, I finally have my first fully playable version of Damsel with all gameplay elements in place.
Stuff remaining to do, in approximate order of importance:
- A “How to Play” screen.
- Tune time rewards for actions taken.
- Add a few new graphics. (I’ve reused colored versions of a few sprites for very different purposes right now)
- Find and integrate sound effects.
- Make binary builds.
I have serious trouble typing the word “petition” at speed. It keeps coming out as “peitition”. Writing it on paper isn’t a problem. Investigating other words with repeated sound patterns, I found that “Banana” reliably comes out as “Banena”, and “Pinocchio” as “Pinocchiao”.
The only conclusion I can draw from this experiment is that my mind is really good at inventing creative means of procrastination, when I really should be programming.
Another day of not quite achieving the goals I set out for myself. I still don’t have a fully playable game prototype, but the scene is now much more recognisable than it was yesterday. It’s amazing how just a few vectors can give a scene some context.
I ended up not having as much time to program today as I had hoped, again due to a combination of illness and unpleasant weather. But I’m still generally pleased with how much I got done today, under the conditions. And I’m still pretty confident about having Damsel wrapped up on Sunday (though I would have liked an extra day to polish the gameplay)
Stuff that has taken longer than I expected: Finding an appropriate size for characters relative to the level graphics, while still making characters vaguely recognisable and having a nicely sized level to work within. Navigation AI for the AI characters, to keep them walking along the edge of the street. And, of course, general design. I’d originally allocated the first two days to nail down the game design, but I’m still tweaking with it now as I’m implementing it, trying to make the game more compelling. (The four-way intersection, for example, is a design modification that I made today; the game was set in a parking lot, yesterday).
I’ll probably start showing off bits of actual gameplay tomorrow. Very close to having everything I need in place to turn it into an actual game. :) And of course, there are still lots and lots of graphics left to create. But it’s coming together. So overall mood: missing every deadline I set myself, but I still think I’ll finish on time.
It’s late. It’s been extremely hot today. It’s half past midnight as I write this, and it’s still far too hot to sleep. Or for that matter, to really be very good at coding.
I really wanted to get a playable Damsel prototype working today, but I’ve simply been unable to focus. Oh well; at least I made some progress, still! The shot above is a partial screengrab of the current state of play. The red rectangle represents the player, the blue rectangles represent other game objects. They’ll all be replaced with other graphics, eventually; probably Saturday. And the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed the score display that i’ve blatantly copy and pasted out of the Asteroids sample game from VectorStorm.
At this moment, the game does respond to player controls, but you can’t yet really play the game; no scoring is implemented, and very few actual gameplay functions are in place. But at least all the major types of gameplay objects are there, and it’s just a matter of wiring up all their functionality. With any luck, I’ll be able to make up for lost time tomorrow, and get my full gameplay prototype implemented.
