Quick Update

So ludum dare 23 is done, the best rating my game got was 110th place in mood (game page with scores).
Mood was the thing I was most aiming for, so I'm glad the scores reflected that.

Right now I'm working on my own flash game engine as well as learning html/css to make a custom blog theme, so soon (hopefully) these posts will be viewed with a new, interesting interface ;)

Actual Game test :D

So yesterday afternoon I started working on another game and finished it this afternoon. This time it's actually a game, and you can play it here.

Also I captured the whole development process which you can watch below,

After completing this game I think I'm truly ready to make a game in two days for ludum dare.

Now I'm getting used to the tile map tool Tiled.

Ludum Dare!

So this year I have decided to participate in the Ludum Dare main competition.

A long time ago when I first thought about getting into game development, I happened upon the Ludum Dare site while researching where to get started. Back then I was thinking how would anybody make a game from scratch in only two days, I was amazed and thought that I would never be able to do it. Well, years have gone by and now I'm pretty confident that I can.

I'm going to make the game from scratch using:
flashdevelop, lmms, GIMP, sfxr, and probably notepad for levels.

Over the past few weeks I've been gathering knowledge about as3 and flash development. Yesterday I threw together a little "tech demo" in a couple hours to test what I know so far.

This was the first test that I have made just to see if what I knew worked. What I'm doing is, every day until Ludum Dare starts I'm throwing something together completely from scratch in a day so when it's time for the real deal it will seem easier because it's two days instead of only one.

I made this test yesterday so today I'm going to try and include tiles and collisions. This time if it turns out good enough I will put it on Kongregate so you guys can test it as well.

Working on AI

Now that half the combat system is complete, I decided to move on to A.I., the reason being that the other half of the combat system is the enemies, and since there combat is most of there A.I., I'm just going to do the whole A.I. system at once. That way everything will transition more smoothly when I bring everything together.

The A.I. that I'm making for dungeons stray is going to use path finding based on a* which is practically required for a game like this, and we will probably be able to use this system for other games as well.

Dungeon Generator re-done, again, and Update!

So, the dungeon generator has been re-done since the last post due to an error that caused the dungeon to be the same shape if only one room was available to be used by the generator, so it wasn't as random as I thought. Now even with the same room type it generates a different shape every time, so now I can work on other things.

Speaking of other things, I am nearly finished with the save and character systems. When they are done I will make the first dungeons stray video, that video will be the first in a series called "Making Dungeons Stray" and will hopefully have some sort of game-play.

Dungeon Generator Is Done!

So yesterday I completed the dungeon generator, well as long as I don't decide to add anything. Now I can add almost anything as a room and the amount of rooms and halls that are spawned are consistent with the room value, so what do I start next?

The character system. I don't want to give too much away yet but right now I'm working on character creation, advancement, and one special thing that I'll reveal when it's done. To give you a hint, it's something wizardry had that the elder scrolls doesn't. ;)

Dungeons Stray

Hello, first off I would like to say that from now on I will be updating this blog at least once a week
also from now on I will post larger updates on this blog and link back from twitter, facebook, and the unity forums after a short summary of the post, now on to the topic.

If you follow my twitter, came from the unity forums, or you're one of my facebook fans, then you know that I started this project a few months ago and I just recently restarted to give the project the quality it deserves. From the time I originally started the project until now I've learned a lot, I've also gotten much better at sticking to the current task instead of trying to do everything at once.

For those of you who have happened upon this blog let me explain what this game is. Dungeons Stray is a sort of throwback to old-school dungeon crawling rpg's with a mix of newer elements and a slight arcade feel. As you pass each floor you gain score, experience, and loot. The next floor that you arrive on is a little larger than the last and every so often you will hit a boss floor which will contain a much tougher enemy or enemies than the standard mob.

here's an example of the improvements over the previous version

this is what the dungeon generator could do a few months ago after 3 days of work:

and this is what it can do now after restarting and 1 1/2 days of work:
(the assets used here are just for testing the dungeon generator and will not be used in the game)

so this time around I am much more focused on the project.

For the people that already knew this and want some new info, the dungeon generator currently has inconsistent results in dungeon size based on the size value it uses, so that's what I'm doing right now. I need the size to be consistent so that the more floors the player finishes, the larger the floors will get.