Plan for Craig Ball
by Craig Ball · 11/16/2004 (7:32 am) · 11 comments
Game in a day became game in 10 hours for us. Still, we managed to get a basic game with two spaceships flying around, shooting, pickups and weapons. We were really pleased with how it's gone, and what we managed to achieve. Here's a quick rundown; what I haven't included is all the time doing programmer artwork, sounds effects and all the other developer tasks that you have to do that doesnt really seem to achieve much but eats all your time.
Friday
12:00 - Spent dinner time at work going through some basic game ideas. These included:
> A side on castle game where the object of the game was to stop your castle being invaded / destroyed by throwing rocks, firing arrows and pouring oil on invader.
> A lamatron style crazy claustrophobic shoot em up
> A game where you jump from planet to planet, and fire using planets gravity against other players.
In the end, we opted for a modified version of the planet game. We allowed free movement for the players, but kept the gravity idea. We added weapon and effect powerups, and expanded the idea of planets to 'obstacles' which included gravity, antigravity, explodable, bouncable etc. Quite a lot to go for, but we thought 'what the hell'. We were on for Sunday.
13:30 Back to work. Shhh, don't tell the boss.
Saturday
19:00 Melv spent 40 minutes writing a T2D C++ object that causes a gravity/repulsion effect on all T2D objects. Nice starter for 10, Melv.
Sunday
10:00 - Arrive at McDonalds to order Sausage and Egg McMuffin. Essential food for a developer about to undertake an intensive session.
10:10 - Eat Sausage and Egg McMuffin, oh yeah. Make coffee, oh yeah. Review how much we have to do, and how much time we have to do it. Oh my!
10:20 - Melv had done a mock up of how he envisioned a game screenshot to be. Luckily it was pretty much how I had thought it would be, so everyone was happy in fxDeveloperLand. We went over the basic design again to make sure we both agreed what we were doing, and got a rough idea of how we would implement things (OK, this is about 10% true, the majority being made up as we went along).
11:00 - We had put together the skeleton of the game, having file structure set up, a weapons structure roughly in place, and player objects initialized. We started by putting a game load function in, which loads a predefined text file and generates the level from that file.
12:45 Progress
13:00 - By now we had the players set up, the (awful) graphics were on the screen, and the players could control the two ships, complete with rotation, thruster and brakes. Wheee, good milestone to be at.
13:40 - After putting some sounds and having a think about pickup pads, the Pizza arrived. Spent some serious gorging time to fill our empty developer innards with the bounty of the fast food giants. Again. Watched about 15 minutes of "Mystery Men".
14.00 - After finishing Pizza and a mars bar, we got back to coding. We worked on pickup pads (the pickups appear on swirling pads) as defined in the level file. We got the pickup pads on screen and had a routine for generating a new pickup appearing.
14:48 Progress
15:00 - By now the pizza had kicked in, and the extra caffeine provided by Melv was spurring us on to new development heights. We coded the pickup library and structure, and functions to access the library.
16:00 - We put in the pickup library structures and functions, created a couple of test pickup weapons, and added sounds for them appearing on screen.
16:49 Progress
At this point we realised that we'd done nearly all the coding backbone but we'd not focused on getting some "results" on the screen which isn't going to look good in the screenies.[i]
17:00 - OK, by now we were starting to get a bit weary, but still had enough energy to put in the player picking up weapon upgrades, and assigning them to the player. We added sound effects for picking up. Now we were ready for players shooting.
18:00 - Oh yeah, players were shooting, we had a couple of weapon pickups appearing and we had sound effects.
18:30 - Melv added the gravity object to the pickup pads, and whey hey, the projectiles were suddenly affected by serious gravity effects.
18:32 Progress
19:00 - With tired limbs but happy minds, the Indie Skunkworks team called it a day (OK, we both have families to look after).
[i]Monday
12:00 -> 13.10 - Implemented projectile collision and shields. Players now take damage and its reported on the gui. Players also take on some of the velocity of the projectiles as well as make a nasty damage sound.
13:00 Progress
13:10 -> 14.15 - Changed the background and added a black hole (middle), some pickup pads, weapons and some repelling objects (cash cows). Added a cash weapon that throws cash around like it's gone out of fashion!!
*** C A S H C O W ***
That's pretty much it for now. We've got the game laid down now and the only things missing are some decent level configs and getting some artwork done.
Definitely going to develop this idea further over the next week or two.
Oh, and we will definitely be up for GID:VIII!
Friday
12:00 - Spent dinner time at work going through some basic game ideas. These included:
> A side on castle game where the object of the game was to stop your castle being invaded / destroyed by throwing rocks, firing arrows and pouring oil on invader.
> A lamatron style crazy claustrophobic shoot em up
> A game where you jump from planet to planet, and fire using planets gravity against other players.
In the end, we opted for a modified version of the planet game. We allowed free movement for the players, but kept the gravity idea. We added weapon and effect powerups, and expanded the idea of planets to 'obstacles' which included gravity, antigravity, explodable, bouncable etc. Quite a lot to go for, but we thought 'what the hell'. We were on for Sunday.
13:30 Back to work. Shhh, don't tell the boss.
Saturday
19:00 Melv spent 40 minutes writing a T2D C++ object that causes a gravity/repulsion effect on all T2D objects. Nice starter for 10, Melv.
Sunday
10:00 - Arrive at McDonalds to order Sausage and Egg McMuffin. Essential food for a developer about to undertake an intensive session.
10:10 - Eat Sausage and Egg McMuffin, oh yeah. Make coffee, oh yeah. Review how much we have to do, and how much time we have to do it. Oh my!
10:20 - Melv had done a mock up of how he envisioned a game screenshot to be. Luckily it was pretty much how I had thought it would be, so everyone was happy in fxDeveloperLand. We went over the basic design again to make sure we both agreed what we were doing, and got a rough idea of how we would implement things (OK, this is about 10% true, the majority being made up as we went along).
11:00 - We had put together the skeleton of the game, having file structure set up, a weapons structure roughly in place, and player objects initialized. We started by putting a game load function in, which loads a predefined text file and generates the level from that file.
12:45 Progress
13:00 - By now we had the players set up, the (awful) graphics were on the screen, and the players could control the two ships, complete with rotation, thruster and brakes. Wheee, good milestone to be at.
13:40 - After putting some sounds and having a think about pickup pads, the Pizza arrived. Spent some serious gorging time to fill our empty developer innards with the bounty of the fast food giants. Again. Watched about 15 minutes of "Mystery Men".
14.00 - After finishing Pizza and a mars bar, we got back to coding. We worked on pickup pads (the pickups appear on swirling pads) as defined in the level file. We got the pickup pads on screen and had a routine for generating a new pickup appearing.
14:48 Progress
15:00 - By now the pizza had kicked in, and the extra caffeine provided by Melv was spurring us on to new development heights. We coded the pickup library and structure, and functions to access the library.
16:00 - We put in the pickup library structures and functions, created a couple of test pickup weapons, and added sounds for them appearing on screen.
16:49 Progress
At this point we realised that we'd done nearly all the coding backbone but we'd not focused on getting some "results" on the screen which isn't going to look good in the screenies.[i]
17:00 - OK, by now we were starting to get a bit weary, but still had enough energy to put in the player picking up weapon upgrades, and assigning them to the player. We added sound effects for picking up. Now we were ready for players shooting.
18:00 - Oh yeah, players were shooting, we had a couple of weapon pickups appearing and we had sound effects.
18:30 - Melv added the gravity object to the pickup pads, and whey hey, the projectiles were suddenly affected by serious gravity effects.
18:32 Progress
19:00 - With tired limbs but happy minds, the Indie Skunkworks team called it a day (OK, we both have families to look after).
[i]Monday
12:00 -> 13.10 - Implemented projectile collision and shields. Players now take damage and its reported on the gui. Players also take on some of the velocity of the projectiles as well as make a nasty damage sound.
13:00 Progress
13:10 -> 14.15 - Changed the background and added a black hole (middle), some pickup pads, weapons and some repelling objects (cash cows). Added a cash weapon that throws cash around like it's gone out of fashion!!
*** C A S H C O W ***
That's pretty much it for now. We've got the game laid down now and the only things missing are some decent level configs and getting some artwork done.
Definitely going to develop this idea further over the next week or two.
Oh, and we will definitely be up for GID:VIII!
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#2
11/16/2004 (7:38 am)
yeah yeah I just seen it. Bah, no preview! hang 5....
#4
11/16/2004 (8:25 am)
really cool ... turned out really well :) 
#5
11/16/2004 (8:37 am)
T2d correct? Looks great. Was there a rule that a cow needs to be incorperated into all of the GID's? I keep seeing cows, am I going crazy? 
#6
We've decided to change the flight-model into something similar to ZAP as the standard "Asteroids" model doesn't work that well.
We want to balance this game so we plan to finish the functionality of the next few days, try the alternate flight-model and generate some interesting weapons and obstacles. When we've done that, we'll get some art done.
This definately won't take long to do and it's a great way for me to do internal testing of T2D.
GID was great fun but next time I think we'll definately use the full 24 hours. :)
@Michael: Yes, "Cash Cow" was the theme. The cow in this game repels everything. The cash is a great weapon against evil.
- Melv.
11/16/2004 (8:41 am)
What this screenshot doesn't show that well is that we can now define "obstacles" which can do loads of groovey things to the player and projectiles. We can define pickups which are either weapons or misc functionality. This definition is done with a simple script structure to fill-in for physics, sounds, images etc. You can knock together this stuff really quickly so I think we'll do that over the next week.We've decided to change the flight-model into something similar to ZAP as the standard "Asteroids" model doesn't work that well.
We want to balance this game so we plan to finish the functionality of the next few days, try the alternate flight-model and generate some interesting weapons and obstacles. When we've done that, we'll get some art done.
This definately won't take long to do and it's a great way for me to do internal testing of T2D.
GID was great fun but next time I think we'll definately use the full 24 hours. :)
@Michael: Yes, "Cash Cow" was the theme. The cow in this game repels everything. The cash is a great weapon against evil.
- Melv.
#7
Melv, ahahha, it looks like you've been bitten by the post-GID keepworkingonititis bug ;-) Glad you guys had fun. Hopefully next time you'll have the full 24 hours.
On the subject of 'next time,' the next GID will be next month. If there's any weekends in december you definately cant make it, let me know. It's definately not going to be the last weekend, though, since that'll be the 25th-26th :) I'm leaning towards 11th-12th or 18th-19th at the moment. Perhaps a GID mailing list or forum would be a good idea :)
Tom.
11/16/2004 (12:50 pm)
Michael, as Melv mentioned, "Cash Cow" was the theme for this GID. Following the theme isnt compulsory, though, and this is actually the first time pretty much everyone has followed the theme.Melv, ahahha, it looks like you've been bitten by the post-GID keepworkingonititis bug ;-) Glad you guys had fun. Hopefully next time you'll have the full 24 hours.
On the subject of 'next time,' the next GID will be next month. If there's any weekends in december you definately cant make it, let me know. It's definately not going to be the last weekend, though, since that'll be the 25th-26th :) I'm leaning towards 11th-12th or 18th-19th at the moment. Perhaps a GID mailing list or forum would be a good idea :)
Tom.
#8
A GID forum is a great idea. Saves hijacking other peoples threads; sorry Craig. ;)
- Melv.
11/16/2004 (10:58 pm)
@Tom: That's a good point; Weekends in December are going to be pretty busy for me. I'll check the dates and let you know this evening.A GID forum is a great idea. Saves hijacking other peoples threads; sorry Craig. ;)
- Melv.
#9
11/17/2004 (10:35 am)
oi, hijack your own fxPlan :) 
#10
Im interesting about the ships movement. Something like the moves in Asteroids ?
11/20/2004 (3:39 am)
A short movie about the game would be cool. Im interesting about the ships movement. Something like the moves in Asteroids ?
#11
The original flight model was like Asteroids and I think it's the only part of the game that doesn't work to well. We decided to change it so that it moves something similar to ZAP but obviously without the mouse controls (we haven't got two mice connected).
I'm so busy with T2D dev but I'm using this as a dev test-bed so It'll be tweaked over time. I'd like to think that this'll be at least an example game for T2D so you should get a chance to play on it sooner rather than later. It does play pretty sweet; I'll see what I can do about that movie.
- Melv.
11/21/2004 (9:24 pm)
Gabor,The original flight model was like Asteroids and I think it's the only part of the game that doesn't work to well. We decided to change it so that it moves something similar to ZAP but obviously without the mouse controls (we haven't got two mice connected).
I'm so busy with T2D dev but I'm using this as a dev test-bed so It'll be tweaked over time. I'd like to think that this'll be at least an example game for T2D so you should get a chance to play on it sooner rather than later. It does play pretty sweet; I'll see what I can do about that movie.
- Melv.
Associate Craig Fortune
Anywho... I really like the idea of using the gravity in this way. it makes the weapons like they are homing. Nice work.