Ludum Dare 27

This week end I participated in Ludum Dare. You basically have to make a game from scratch in 48 hours with no external help, based on a voted theme. This time, the theme was "10 seconds".

To play the game (And vote if you participated in this Ludum Dare):
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=7462

The game's basic idea is that you think shopping for groceries is boring, so you gave yourself a challenge: Put the items on your shopping list in random order and picking them up in that order, within 10 seconds each. You have a drifting shopping cart and other customers curse at you when you bump into them. Once your list is done, you have 10 seconds to get to the cash register. Every level increases the list size by two items and also increases the number of customers in the store. Once in a while, you have to shop with the power out.

What I got out of this is the following:
- I hate making interfaces
- I'm a very bad graphical artist
- I can make decent sounding songs in very little time
- I need to show my work to others to stay engaged

My girlfriend encouraged me all weekend and followed the progress of the game very closely. This gave me a lot of motivation and I think made me break the record for the amount of work I've done on a game in that small time frame.

Let's be honest, the graphics suck. I've never been good and it's clearly visible here. That's why I hire a graphics artist for my serious projects.

I've decided to use the lighting engine I've made for my zombie game and it turns out it's really easy to use. It took me about 15 minutes to fully implement it in the game. I really love it. I'll put lighting in all of my games now! On the down side of it, I noticed it doesn't work in HTML5. Looks like blend modes don't actually work in the web export.

That's about it. These are the key points that came out of this competition.

Leave comments about the game!

Progress Update 2

In this post, the lighting engine, items and the smart phone.

LIGHTING ENGINE

So it is basically done. I don't think there are any bugs in it, any that were obvious are already fixed and I tested it extensively.

Here's how it works:
Most of the effect is achieved with a subtract color blending. First, draw the whole scene normally. Second, change the draw target to a white surface. Subtract ambient light (Example: If ambient light is blue, surface is red). Subtract any light that is in there (After drawing the shadow casters on the lights themselves). Subtract the whole result from the scene. That gives you the following:

Car with headlights and two shadow casters

 Same car, brake lights on (They will get new graphics too)

The first screenshot has 5 lights and 3 shadow casters, the second screenshot has 7 lights.

Now since GM:Studio doesn't compile the code yet, all these loops are pretty slow. The FPS drops to about 45 with the car's headlights that casts both static and dynamic shadows, and that's only with 3 shadow casters.

On a bright note though, this is also with the car physics and everything else going on in the background.

Bonus: I paid special attention to make the engine easy to use and intuitive, so I will most likely release the it for everyone to use in their projects, free of charge. Stay tuned.

ITEMS

Laying the ground work for the items at the moment, got most basic items types worked out: Crafting materials, light sources, batteries and ammunition. Left to do are consumables, weapons and weapon attachements (For firearms).

The item system will be volume and weight based. Volume will dictate how much stuff you can carry around (Or put in the car trunk) and weight will affect car physics and your energy requirements to move around.

SMART PHONE

It requires power. You start the game with a rechargeable battery in the phone, but I'm guessing it's going to be quite hard to find a reliable power source to charge it back, so to help the gameplay, every battery will fit in any device that requires power. Once your smart phone runs out of battery (And let me tell you, that light it has drains it quite fast) just remove it (Keep it in your inventory because it's rechargeable!) and put another one in that has charge.

Now this will have some good uses in the game. You will find the minimap (Something not unlike Google Maps), it has a light (View screenshot below), most likely other features as I think of them. Maybe I should've put more thought into this. I'm sure more will come.

A bonus feature about the smart phone, if time allows it, is to have an API so that anyone can make apps for it, and then share them through an in-game global server accessed through the phone itself.

Smart phone light

Progress Update 1

Well, after making a lot of design changes and research, I've done some consistent ground work for the game engine and mechanics.

So, here's some new content for everyone!

I'm currently working on the lighting engine for the game. All in all, it will support coloured lighting, global illumination, self illumination and FoV simulation.

The following screenshots show day and night light colours. Don't mind the Ferraris and the Audi, they're place holders considering I will not have the right to sell the game if they stay in it.

Dawn

 Day

 Dusk

 Night

Now one thing you might notice is that the night time is extremely dark. This is intended. Sources of light should be abundant in the game, especially your smart phone when there's no environmental light near.

Other details from the screen shots are the character, the cone in front of him and the background.

The character itself is currently white as different clothing will allow you to customize your appearance. Hats will also be an option and they will be visible in the game world. There will be a good share of silly hats, flaming hats and hats with band trails.

The cone is quite obviously the firing precision. Right now it looks a little large for a handgun (which the character is holding), but this will be tweaked depending on which gun is used. Firearm stats will be realistically based on the real firearm and the selection will be different from what is seen in most games. I will go for firearms that can be more easily found based on real life occurrence, but also include firearms that are rarely included in games. This should please gun enthusiasts and gun owners, and will make the uninitiated discover that there are other handguns than Desert Eagles and Glocks.

The background for now is water as this is what's going to appear when there's no terrain. There's a glitch the the tiling in relation to the rotating view which will eventually be fixed. It is animated.

You can't get into the cars yet, but they are functional.

Game Design

Game design can be taken lightly and give great games like Minecraft, but it can also be taken very seriously and turn into Diablo 2. Small changes to a game can turn into huge changes in how the game is approached by players, so extra attention has to be given to the decisions made when designing the game.

So, I want this to be a game that people have a reason to come play again once they're done with the single player. Quickly, I can think of two things that can help achieve that. First thing is depth, having many strategies, many ways of playing the game, and having room for creativity. Second thing is multiplayer. I like multiplayer a lot, I have a very competitive mind and I know many people would come back to a good balanced, deep game, even if there isn't any reward at the end of it.

But multiplayer for the sake of multiplayer is bad. You don't want to add in the ability to play with your friends just because everyone else does it. That's the difference between World of Warcraft's and Fable 2/3's multiplayer. World of Warcraft could easily be a single player game, but they added reasons to play with - or against - friends. Fable could easily be a good multiplayer game, but they added the ability to have someone else in the game without giving it any reason to exist. They did have reasons to add this, but they didn't do it for those reasons. It ended up severly limiting the positive impact on the game.

What does that mean for this game then? Well multiplayer has to be crafted along with the game and it needs a reason to exist. Here's the overall structure of the game I'm doing.

First, there will be the single player, obviously, where you level your character which you will later use in multiplayer. There will be a plot, an end-game goal and a way to beat the game. When you level your characters, you will gain skill points which you can spend to add utility to your character. Examples of this are stamina to run longer, increased accuracy with rifles, better firing stability when you just want to unleash everything, better driving skills and so on. In no way will there be a power creep. A well placed sniper shot will always be lethal and a car splatter will always hurt the same. You will also find gear. Water bottles, food, medications, gas, cars. All of these are persistent through your world, but they can't be brought in multiplayer. That gives you a reason to play single player, but when you get in the ranked death match mode, you only bring your skills.

So what will that multiplayer be then? Think of this mode like the hunger games. Everyone is put on an infected island with a city and everything you could need. The last one to be alive wins. The ressources on there are more frequent than in the single player mode because it's a more isolated area. There are no survivor NPCs because it's a PVP mode. Since you only bring in your skills, you start with an empty inventory, or more like a common citizen who's on vacation (Clothes, mobile phone, bottle of water).

That's cool and all, but then you get ranked mode. Sure, you can also play an unranked match. Anyway, you need 10 people minimum to start the game (I think if I sell the game cheap enough I can manage a big enough player base for this) and then you win or lose points based on how long you stay alive compared to everyone else. That's like the arcade trap, where the high score is the reason you come back to the game. If there's enough depth, then strategies can emerge and be broken, and competition ensues.

I might put in some cooperative multiplayer, but then again I have to build the game around it. I will not put in limitations on the second player either. There will be no split screen, only network play. Most likely no limit on the number of coop players either. Once the competitive multiplayer is done, the same code can be used for coop, especially since I don't want to disable friendly fire, ever.

Streaming The Dev

Just writing a short post to tell you two things:
• I decided that my online name shall now be EmperorCookie, in every game.
• I am now stream the development of the game on http://twitch.tv/iFred_QC

Edit: Every time I stream, I will also post on Twitter ( @iFred_QC ) so you can start watching as soon as you want to.

Unfortunately, I can't be streaming 16 hours a day because of my real job (Tssss, real life...) but I will try to stream as much as possible, even if I'm only gaming.

So that means I will also stream when I play games, so that includes League of Legends, Minecraft, World of Warcraft and maybe even Forza 4/Horizon (My Fanatec wheel is awesome!). There will be some occasionnal other games, like Firefall Beta and Planetside 2.