Plan for Chris Cockcroft

GID 11 - One Knight Army: As the last remaining knight standing between your home village and a never-ending onslaught of enemy knights, you control four cannons. Turn as many of your enemies into pink mist and chunky red bits as you can before you run out of cannonballs. You will die, but at least get a high-score before you do.

GID 11 - One Knight Army





As the last remaining knight standing between your home village and a never-ending onslaught of enemy knights, you control four cannons. Turn as many of your enemies into pink mist and chunky red bits as you can before you run out of cannonballs. You will die, but at least get a high-score before you do.

I was originally going to post an hour by hour playback of my GID experience, but looking back, it wasn't all that interesting. I guess I'll just blab about the many things that went wrong, and the one or two that actually worked out kinda nicely.

...Where I went wrong

01. The Theme

I think this is where it initially fell apart. For the week leading up to GID, when I heard about the event for the first time, an idea sprung into my mind. It was happy, cute and most of all, non-violent. This idea was a comfortable place for me to be as an illustrator of generally happy, cute and most of all, non-violent things. (If you're curious - my site)

So the big day arrived and the theme was posted. Gratuitous Violence.

Oh, how you mock me.

(And, yes, I'm aware that the theme isn't a rule, but with this being my first entry, I wanted to stick to main idea of GID as much as possible. And it never hurts to step outside your comfort zone)

02. The Design Doc

I didn't do one. Let's move on.

03. The Game Design

For reasons stated above, there were many serious flaws in my game design from the beginning. For example, losing was next to impossible. While some might like this "feature", the gameplay isn't addictive enough to justify "endless".

04. The Tools

T2D was used as the base for this game. As most of you know, this is an awesome tool. Even relatively inexperienced programmers like myself can pretend they know what they're doing.

So how is this a problem? Let's just say that some "enhancements" I had personally made to the engine caused some unexpected bugs. Like sprites popping up in strange places. Like multiple copies of sprites popping up in even stranger places. And before assuming that it's my "enhanced" version of the engine causing my headaches, I spend a fifth of the allotted 24 hours picking through my scripts trying to track the bugs down.

In the end, I popped in a backup version of the engine, and all was golden.

05. The Complete and Utter Lack of Comprehension in Regards to the Amount of Work GID Entails

That's a biggie.


...It wasn't all bad

01. Sorta Happy with the Style

While I originally planned for full-colour, nicely hand-pixeled graphics, I ran out of time. My original rough concept sketches stayed in, and in the end, I'm glad. It's an interesting look, and something I might pursue on a larger (or at least, better) project

02. Sorta Fun

Despite the design flaws, I think the game is actually fun. Sorta.

03. Better Comprehension in Regards to the Amount of Work GID Entails

That's a biggie.


...So where to now?

I'd actually like to finish the game. It needs a lot of work, but I think it could be something I'm proud of. There are still some gameplay issues, and sound is a big thing that needs to be added.

Speaking of sound, I'd really like to incorporate some British swearing. If anyone here with a thick British accent wants to supply some short soundbytes of creative Old English swearing, let me know. I'm serious :)