gamejam.org: Teams : beets

Team: beets

gamejam: August0808

Posts

Post mortem

570 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

I'm quite happy with my code. It got a bit messy by the end but overall I have a pretty clean project. And I had very little duplication of code. There are some variables that could use cleaning up or properly initializing instead of the odd "if hasattr()". My gamestate framework came late but very easily due to how I structured things early on, it just worked fine and was very easy to put in dummy versions of states to eg skip the intro during dev.
I was really agile, I basically just went with whatever seemed best at the time. I wanted to get the red bugs back in somehow but that was with like 4 hours to go and so I decided to think of some other hazard. That's where the honey patches came from and I think they're one of the successes. They took like 45 minutes from an idea to completely in the game. The art was quick, and the code was very easy. And they look sweet in game.
Plus it's heaps cute when they're stuck in the honey but still face you :) but you can't get em out :(
The foliage stuff was pretty successful, and also easy and quick, I'm surprised it turned out looking so good. Helped get me motivated early on. Also the in game editor was neat for testing stuff quickly and then making my levels. it needs work though, you can't erase one wall at a time for example, only all of them at once, you can repeatedly save and reload if you make mistakes though.
I ended up making the 9 levels in a very short amount of time, and I'm not that happy with them. I was hoping for more puzzle type situations where you need to be careful of the order you try to complete the level such that you don't pull bugs into hazards etc. Or like deciding you can afford to lose 1 bug to save 12 seconds of completion time for a higher score. But I couldn't really get that level of gameplay in my levels with only like 40 minutes to do 9 :)
I'm disappointed I had no audio. I have a really old song I made, that I was planning on using but it needed work changing the instruments and recording as an ogg etc. Also I just didn't really know what sounds the bugs would make, buzzing for the bee of course but I didn't want like silly lemmings voices for the beetles or anything... hmm.
I'd like to have been able to make the bugs a bit smaller and have larger swarms but the game is too unoptimised at the moment for that. I think it runs ok with like 25 but that turned out to be far too many for a level anyway.
I might hack on this a bit to try to finish it off in the coming weeks or w/ever, but I'm kind of happy to have a break, it was getting pretty intense there at the end. Sorry for losing it a bit last night while trying to upload my game ;) And thanks heaps for the help WRT that Simon, Rob, Brad.
I enjoyed maxxor's postmortem so that's why I wrote this one, would love to read more. I was really impressed with the entries, I hope everyone makes sure to upload anything playable they have for others to check out. The stuff I've played so far is sweet.
Notable omissions [ view post ]

572 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

The game currently does not have:
Sounds
Music
Main menu (currently goes title -> levels one by one -> score -> title)
Things to 'lose' ladybugs to, ie hazards.
High score posting
Will hopefully get to finish some of those off tomorrow, I'm going to package up a release now, upload, and go to bed.
Features of uploaded version: [ view post ]

577 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

D is debug / edit mode
P is pause
1-9 is load level 1-9 (from levelx.xml)
While in Debug:
Left draw to create walls
Space to create bug spawn points
C and X to delete all walls and spawns
shift1-9 is save level to level 1-9
Still need to do goal area (burrow or something) and scoring and main menu etc. Then hazards.
Ok I think I can make a game out of it... [ view post ]

584 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

There is a garden with flowers and ladybugs and it's grand.
One draw terribly significant red flowers start popping up.
The ladybugs love to run up and smell them, but it turns them ANGRY!
The angry bugs chase down the ladybugs.
There are predefined level layouts.
You are a cricket or something (depending on what I can draw).
You need to lead the lady bugs to the safe exit.
You need to try to get angry bugs to chase you to the calming influence of the blue flowers which should turn them back into lady bugs.
Don't let the lady bugs be persecuted, save the angry bugs and try to prevent more from getting angry.
Ok [ view post ]

584 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

I've tweaked the 'attraction engine'. I just pre-interpolate to the nearest pixel and store it. >< (memory is cheap).
Still just using dictionary lookups in python so I'll leave optimization for now and assume I can get a big improvement with numpy when/if I need to.
Betterment [ view post ]

585 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

The first thing I think I need to work on is allowing for a smooth curve for the strength of push or pull between entities based on distance. Currently I just have a float for each interaction type at 5 set distances. This is lame, I need to interpolate between values or allow a actual function to define the falloff. (I worry about speed though.)
I'm off the starting block. [ view post ]

585 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

The idea (and I hope it's not too unoriginal) is that there's these urchins that you need to guide around with the hero. They respond to each other, the hero and their environment (and enemies?, hazards?). It's a little bit unintentionally like The Last Guy (http://lastguy.jp/). But oh well.
They huddle together themselves and will follow the hero, but they give him a wide berth. It's going to be an exercise in optimization I think as the calculations for the 'forces' each has on each other is O(n^2) and I want lots of entities.
I think I'll use the significant asset as something other than the urchins, but I like the name Urchins for the little guys. (I picture them as like little sisters from bioshock but way less creepy.)

Comments

572 days ago beetlefeet wrote:
thanks
572 days ago Psychopsam wrote:
that's looking really polished now!
578 days ago beetlefeet wrote:
No! I am shocked and appalled.
578 days ago Simon wrote:
This is looking quite cool now. Will the bugs splat?
581 days ago Psychopsam wrote:
Your calling is clearly in Art beets - sweet graphics!
581 days ago lloydkranzky wrote:
a very nice looking bondar is that one of yours. a good job!
[ view comment by chrism (584 days ago) ]
584 days ago chrism wrote:
This looks wicked
[ view comment by beetlefeet (584 days ago) ]
584 days ago beetlefeet wrote:
Thanks :) I've wasted a bunch of time just playing with them. Hopefully I'll upload something playable soon, maybe tonight.
[ view comment by beetlefeet (584 days ago) ]
584 days ago beetlefeet wrote:
Thanks.
DW Dodgey, I think we're different enough, little things moving around is a pretty open genre :)
[ view comment by retrogradeorbit (584 days ago) ]
584 days ago retrogradeorbit wrote:
This is looking interesting! Nice graphics.
[ view comment by DodgyBarnett (584 days ago) ]
584 days ago DodgyBarnett wrote:
Damn you Beets! Damn you and your knack of coming up with exactly the same ideas as me!
[ view comment by Simon (585 days ago) ]
585 days ago Simon wrote:
Great idea. If you're worried about speed, you could code a vector class interpolation functions in Pyrex. The compile step is easy to setup in Linux, but I cant speak for Win32...
On the other hand you could use Numpy to do batch operations on vectors.

Posts

Post mortem

570 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

Notable omissions [ view post ]

572 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

Features of uploaded version: [ view post ]

577 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

Ok I think I can make a game out of it... [ view post ]

584 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

Ok [ view post ]

584 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

Betterment [ view post ]

585 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

I'm off the starting block. [ view post ]

585 days ago beetlefeet wrote:

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