Plan for Xavier "eXoDuS" Amado
by Xavier "eXoDuS" Amado · 05/28/2004 (10:08 pm) · 7 comments
Yesterday we had or Game In A Day contest. It started at 6AM my time, 10 am lazy brits time, problem was I had gone to bed at 4am, so of course I wasn't awake by 6. So my dev actually started at 10 a.m. The theme was "Force of Nature" but it wasn't mandatory, and at first I wasn't going to use it, but I thought of an idea that would be funny, so I ended doing it. For my game I wanted to got 100% from scratch, so that's what I did, and ended only using SDL components, SDL, SDL_mixer and SDL_image. The only bit of code I reused was Sprite class from a previous 2D game experience, since It took me a while to get it working in a reasonable way and I didn't want to redo that.
I think there were 6 people working on games in total, but I'm not sure who finished yet or who didn't, since IRC server went down a couple of hours ago, and no one has rejoined the channel, yet.
Overall it was a lot of fun, although I was expecting the competition to be 24 hrs straight, but seems that brits are weak and they had to sleep ya know :)
So I did sleep too, although I went to bed at 6 a.m.
The first 8~12 hours were the most productive, since in those hours I got the basics for most of the code, then I kept hammering and improving on them.
One thing I later regretted not doing was a Resource Manager, despite Tom's recommendation I went ahead without one, and in the end I was cursing how much easier and cleaner some parts of code would be if I had one. But oh well, you can't expect everything be perfect in 24 hours of development.
We have to start somewhere:
The background was completely tile based, decision I regretted later when I changed the theme from 'tech' to 'outdoors'.
Here's a picture taken in the middle of the dirty work: (too big for inline)
www.blackbloodstudios.com/~xavier/pics/gid/gid4.png
And a ficture of the final version:
The development cycle was very fun, being all of us in an irc channel, and some spectators too, cursing over stuff that was crashing or werent able to figure out. Making fun of each other and all that IRC stuff.
The final version of my game had several classes and features among, point and rect structures (sdl's rect sucks), some math stuff like calculating if a point is inside a rect or drawing a square, basePlayer class with derived Player and Enemy classes, basic AI which walked along the platform and shooted when inside it's LOS, collision detection (this was the worse part), projectiles, animated sprites, an input layer and of course, the level.
The idea of the game was that you play the tree and have to kill loggers who are there to cut down trees, but well, being it my own art I ended using megaman for the loggers, and they shoot stones as you too.
I would have posted a build, but I develop on Linux, so It's not much use for most people. I will post a windows build later. Now I'm going to have dinner (3AM).
I'm very happy with my outcome of this and I'll definetly participate in next ones, and hopefull more people will do so!
I think there were 6 people working on games in total, but I'm not sure who finished yet or who didn't, since IRC server went down a couple of hours ago, and no one has rejoined the channel, yet.
Overall it was a lot of fun, although I was expecting the competition to be 24 hrs straight, but seems that brits are weak and they had to sleep ya know :)
So I did sleep too, although I went to bed at 6 a.m.
The first 8~12 hours were the most productive, since in those hours I got the basics for most of the code, then I kept hammering and improving on them.
One thing I later regretted not doing was a Resource Manager, despite Tom's recommendation I went ahead without one, and in the end I was cursing how much easier and cleaner some parts of code would be if I had one. But oh well, you can't expect everything be perfect in 24 hours of development.
We have to start somewhere:
The background was completely tile based, decision I regretted later when I changed the theme from 'tech' to 'outdoors'.
Here's a picture taken in the middle of the dirty work: (too big for inline)
www.blackbloodstudios.com/~xavier/pics/gid/gid4.png
And a ficture of the final version:
The development cycle was very fun, being all of us in an irc channel, and some spectators too, cursing over stuff that was crashing or werent able to figure out. Making fun of each other and all that IRC stuff.
The final version of my game had several classes and features among, point and rect structures (sdl's rect sucks), some math stuff like calculating if a point is inside a rect or drawing a square, basePlayer class with derived Player and Enemy classes, basic AI which walked along the platform and shooted when inside it's LOS, collision detection (this was the worse part), projectiles, animated sprites, an input layer and of course, the level.
The idea of the game was that you play the tree and have to kill loggers who are there to cut down trees, but well, being it my own art I ended using megaman for the loggers, and they shoot stones as you too.
I would have posted a build, but I develop on Linux, so It's not much use for most people. I will post a windows build later. Now I'm going to have dinner (3AM).
I'm very happy with my outcome of this and I'll definetly participate in next ones, and hopefull more people will do so!
#2
Thanks.
05/28/2004 (10:45 pm)
Heh, It did, not saying that the last hours of development weren't productive, they were just slower, since getting the basics is more significant show off than getting the 'parts' polished and improved.Thanks.
#3
Nice-one. I've been toying around with a few ideas myself. Nobody knows but I was thinking of doing my own personal 24hr game sometime very soon as I've got a week off work to play. :)
I was thinking of doing either a 2D shoot-em'up or an advanture game system (with included game).
I'm pretty excited about doing a simple, fun game whilst I've got time.
- Melv.
05/29/2004 (1:58 am)
Xavier,Nice-one. I've been toying around with a few ideas myself. Nobody knows but I was thinking of doing my own personal 24hr game sometime very soon as I've got a week off work to play. :)
I was thinking of doing either a 2D shoot-em'up or an advanture game system (with included game).
I'm pretty excited about doing a simple, fun game whilst I've got time.
- Melv.
#4
05/29/2004 (7:46 am)
That's cool Melv, but if you are going from scratch, try to KISS (Keep it simple stupid). Sometimes you don't realize the amount of work that needs to be done for you to be happy with your code. If I were you I would go with the shoot-em up, adenture sounds far more complicated, but maybe you can do it, you are absolutely a much more experienced programmer than I am, so if you feel like it, go for it. Let use know how it goes of course :)
#5
The adventure thing is nowhere as complicated as it may sound; certainly no fancy graphics. I was going to do the adventure 'system' and a friend was going to do the actual adventure script.
I must admit though that I'm drawn to a whizz-bang 2d scrolling shooter though. Certainly simple but extremely pretty with lots of explosions!!
As long as I don't get distracted with other things I think I'll probably do the 2d-scroller...
- Melv.
05/29/2004 (9:07 am)
Xavier,The adventure thing is nowhere as complicated as it may sound; certainly no fancy graphics. I was going to do the adventure 'system' and a friend was going to do the actual adventure script.
I must admit though that I'm drawn to a whizz-bang 2d scrolling shooter though. Certainly simple but extremely pretty with lots of explosions!!
As long as I don't get distracted with other things I think I'll probably do the 2d-scroller...
- Melv.
#6
Question - do you think the IRC chatting slowed you down / distracted you significantly?
05/29/2004 (9:16 am)
I think these competitions are ABSOLUTELY cool and probably extremely valuable exercises. Wish I could participate myself... but I'm a little short on time these days. Question - do you think the IRC chatting slowed you down / distracted you significantly?
#7
@Melv, certainly I think that a 2d shooter is more interesting, but either is a cool project to attempt.
@Jay: Hope to have you on the next competition. About IRC, it does slow you down at times, but it also you keeps you a bit unstressed when you need it, plus if you need help thinking or tweaking an idea you can get some tips, comments or advice from other people doing the same thing than you.
05/29/2004 (12:56 pm)
Crap, wonder where my post went, I replied to this originally a couple of minutes after you.@Melv, certainly I think that a 2d shooter is more interesting, but either is a cool project to attempt.
@Jay: Hope to have you on the next competition. About IRC, it does slow you down at times, but it also you keeps you a bit unstressed when you need it, plus if you need help thinking or tweaking an idea you can get some tips, comments or advice from other people doing the same thing than you.
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