Ludumdare 48 hour (4?) Time Log of mrfun. also know as the guy from here.

10:00 AM is the comps starting time for me (in Japan)

9:95 AM:

Hmm, starts in 5 minutes. I guess it's ok if I create the directory names for the comp now...

10 AM:

Infection. Huh.

11:30

Ok, took a bit of a nap but I did think of an idea. I decided against "aids virus spreader", and "last man on earth trying to survive while coping with desease RTS" and the like because I don't really want to spend 8 hours doing normal grunt work like tile maps, walk AI, a nice GUI etc when I already have libs to help me do that but I can't use 'em.

SSOOOO... I'm going to do something very experimental that I'm actually curious will be fun or not. It's a little like Tetris and bathroom teacher (my last entry) in that I think it can appeal to your pattern recognition part of the brain and after a while you can kind of get "in the zone" and become one with the game. Well, tetris was like that in any case, bathroom teacher was kind of a failed experiment, maybe this new one will be better.

One neat thing is the playfield will require some very custom special code, it's not complicated but it could be slow with all the pixel manipulation, not sure if it will run fast enough at 800X600.. I guess I better program that part first before doing the title/intro screens.

12:43

Ok, got to the point of a blank window on the screen. And had lunch.

1:03

Now showing framerate on a blank screen (1300 FPS in a window), CDX is active, I can blit pixels and now if I want.

2:08

Toggled windowed mode with alt-enter now works, I'd forgotten how bitchy it was to set that up with CDX before, ending up writing an assload of code for it

I also setup my CLevel and CGameLogic classes.

3 PM

Ok, everything is setup, I'm finally in a pretty comfortable coding environment. Experimenting with pixel pushing speed.. and behold, my first screenshot! Yes that weird thing on the left are some pixels I plotted, I need to find a faster way.

(comes back, a spider on my monitor freaked me out and I had to 'dispose' of it.. actually I just threw it outside, felt sorry for the sucker. but if I see him again, he knows there is no second chance)

12:19 PM

Took a break for a while, had stuff to do - then hit it hard and got a lot done, mostly playing with the mechanics of the gameplay before doing any "polish" stuff. I don't know how I feel about the gameplay, it just kind of makes me motion sick to play.. but that could also be alcohol I had, hmm..

Some interesting statistics on how much coding I did today:

883 lines of code

Average chars per line: 25!

8:23 AM

Ok, got up about an hour ago and did some stuff, I've decided I'll go for the more artsy-vib-ribbon-esque symbolic graphic approach, yeah, yeah that's it. I've made a simple font with Bitmap Font Builder for the score. I'm now figuring out a good metric for score, based on the ratio of fungi you clean and and how much you good tissue you destroy, and also how much fungi you let slip by (don't zap). It's a bit mathy, to stop the first hit from killing you by a strong ratio I'll need to figure in weighting based on level completion I guess.

It still looks like ass, although I have a few neat wall effects not shown. I think sounds and music will be more important to focus on. And the intro scene-setting screens. Although I really need a "fungi dying" pixel flying effect. Hmm..

12:24 PM

Added a lot of game logic, the progression of start, play, results, start new level. Took some time to redo the font, I'd done a really sloppy job so spacing was messed up, the new one is much better.

Added some sounds using Sound Forge's GM tone generator, seemed a better idea than screaming the mic.

Wrote a little of the intro story, I'll start on the overall level story progression. I want this to be a game you can"win".

3:21 PM

Had lunch, more general tweaking. I'd put up another screenshot but it hasn't really changed much.. I've designed up to level 8 (sort of) and would like to do a few more.

Setup placeholdings for the title and "you lose screen".

Went out and took some pictures with the digi cam which is my 48 hour tradition, I'll use them for the intro and "you lose" screen. (don't ask me how a building and flowers will work for that but uh.. we'll see)

5:53 PM

I'm more or less done with gameplay so I've moved into "make it look less crappy mode". I did a simple pixel based particle system just for fun and for some extra visual feedback.

Next I'm going to redo the ship and "lasers", see if I can come up with something less likely to trigger gag reflexes.

Also, here is the main title screen used the pic I snapped an hour before.

7:33 PM

Took a nice walk with my wife, very relaxing.

Find a nice lightning tutorial here: http://www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorial/lightning_effect/

and made it into an action that automatically pumps out lightings the correct size for my lasers, I think I'm gonna use this trick for my other games, the results are great:

Is that killer or what? Now to make an anim with the lightning matching the laser target, hmm. Guess I can do one and mirror it...

8:25

Sadly, after I scaled it to 62X18 it looks very not killer. But still better than the filled rects from before so it'll do. I also did a new spaceship, tain't picasso but I've seen worse. Once.

11:52 PM

It is finished. Tweaked everything, it's done.

Final screenshot:

Final thoughts:

Well, it came out like I'd planned. I'm still on the fence or not if it's good or not. Does it cause motion sickness or is it fun? It's a hard question and I honestly don't know the answer, maybe if I play again in a few weeks/years.

It is very complete though and "WINNABLE"!

Cya next next.

Download the game here.

Download source here. (Statistics: 1762 lines of source written, 26 average chars per line (including whitespace?))

-Seth