MolyJam - On A Dime

Everybody get up it's time to slam now. We got a game jam goin' down. Welcome to the #molyjam.

I am working with :
"Imagine playing the only coin in the world and you're being used to decide on outcomes for all global debates."

The plan is to have the player choose the outcome of problems that the government faces. You have to balance attributes like cash, education and police force while maintaining the love of all the interest groups in your country.

So I'm 8 hours in, I have code written to take user input and process it. What is going to take longest is writing the scenarios.

MolyJam!

The MolyJam begins in a little less then 8 hours. I am in!
Check out the web page here for more info.

Current ideas I am look at are:

"What if you were half man half tree? You can only fight when in soil and constantly grow throughout the game."
"Imagine playing the only coin in the world and you're being used to decide on outcomes for all global debates."
"You start the game with no emotion, you must find and obtain them and then use them to find more. My game would have 120 emotions."
"How do you get past a fearless guard? You extract the fear of a pigeon you just attacked and transfer it to the guard. Now he'll run away."
"My Designer workshop #14 : Make a game where the player's only tool is a ruler."
"Imagine a platformer where upon landing on the floor you create earthquakes destroying tribes of little people. Would you still jump?"

Concept "Art"

Why I am a coder and not an Artist

It is over - Flash Game

Throwing together a quick flash game in preparation for next weekends MolyDeux jam.

It is inspired by this short film using this song.

Screen shot one:

All code is written! Just need to add  images.
Which is the hardest bit....

Movement and Style

Movement is now way cleaner. There was some rounding error which had caused movement to be jumpy and imprecise.

I have also added a debug console so that I can easily see what exactly is going on.

Awesome screenshot of nothing!

Next weekend I will be doing the MolyJam! So expect updates about that.

Back end work

I did some backend work today. Level objects, object objects, lists to keep track of the the ui layers. All that fun stuff!

I have come across a bug in the movement. Due to a rounding problem the player can only move in 8 directions. That is on the to-fix list!

The Fall: UI Layers

The movement in The Fall is going to be simulated by the things around the player and how they move.

Objects on screen one are going to be purely background images. They will be 40% transparent, mostly very small and move at half the speed of the player to simulate objects long distances away.

Objects on screen two are physical objects moving at 70% the speed of the player. They will mostly be area rocks and shadows. They will not be able to interact with the player.

Objects on screen three are the physical objects the player will be able to bump into. There speed will be constant at 100% the speed of the player.

Objects on screen four will be the enemies and the player. There movement speed will be "non standard".

"SEAMUS! Why are you putting so much time into talking about how things are going to be drawn to the screen and move once there?" The answer to that question is simple. This game needs a sense of scale and movement. As it is a 2D game the easiest way to do that is to have a very defined speed to the objects and way of interacting with those things!

Also, my xbox RROD. I mad.

The Fall: Launch Post

I'm creating a game at the moment targeted at touch screen devices. The core gameplay will be around using rhymetic set of gestures ti avoid a set of objects coming up from the bottom of the screen.

The current plan is to use moving background images and opponent movement to simulate that the player is falling.

I would love to use gameplay elements similar to audiosurf where opponents come in sync to the rhythm of the music.

Obviously in something like that the movement of the player is key so I worked on that today. See this screenshot!

Ta Da! Nothing!