Week 33: SIDE PROJECTS

Week 33 did not go as planned. Still a good week though!

So I did start the week working on the king game but then I suddenly got really bored of it and started a tiny side-project that is not Tetris at all. But had I not even finished this tiny side-project that the Ludum Dare happened.

There were Pico-8 doodles too!

 

“So I did start the week working on the king game…”

What I did do is implement a zone system. Before, if I wanted to change zones I had to manually change the spawning code, the background’s code and the sprites. Now it’s all ordered up! Changing zone is as easy as changing just one variable in the code. This is great because it let me work on level details more easily, and that’s why the other thing I did is wall, floor and ceiling pixel art! Watch!

This style is not definite. I don’t really like the fact that the pixel art breaks away from the background so much. Decisions will be taken about that but for now it will do.

Next I was going to add some new troops for the player to hire but…

“…but then I suddenly got really bored of it and started a tiny side-project that is not Tetris at all…”

At this point I had been feeling very tired for a few days and doubts were starting to creep on me about the king game. Also I knew Ludum Dare was coming and I was very happy about that because I wanted a short break from the king game. In fact I wanted it so much I ended up not waiting for Ludum Dare.

A new project was born! Before you ask, no it will not be a Tetris clone. Ok, yes it looks like one for now and I’ve definitely borrowed a few mechanics. But the actually interesting parts are coming next week, so brace yourself for that.

The aim of this project is mostly to release something I made in GameMaker for the first time and also try some layering tricks, both of which will happen this week! The game will be released with its source code too, so you can see everything that’s going on if you wish to.

 

“…But had I not even finished this tiny side-project that the Ludum Dare happened.”

Ludum Dare! The biggest online gamejam ever, which happens once every four months, happened this last week-end! In fact those who went for a jam entry are still *jamming*. But I went for a compo entry as I always do and the theme was ‘One Room’ and let’s not argue on whether it’s a good or a bad theme but so was One Room Dungeon born!

(in fact several ‘One Room Dungeon’ were born, given the theme it is not a very original title but I had no time to find anything better)

One Room Dungeon is basically a roguelite that happens in just one room but which can slide on the ground after you clear it and then the new ground spawns new enemies and has new tiles to clear!

I am very happy with it. It is my most ambitious Ludum Dare entry so far, especially in that I went full-on with a skill I am not that comfortable with yet: pixel art. And because I did want it to look very good, all the pixel art in this game took a very large part of the 48 hours allowed. It is also quite ambitious content-wise, as it features a total of eight different enemies and three different zones that have different graphics and different enemies from each other.

My regrets are that I had to rush the audio side of the game in the very last hour. Also, very little testing was done, so the balancing is solely based on my expectations when I coded the enemies’ behaviours. Luckily it turns out the game does provide quite a challenge but is still beatable, which is great and the audio is actually not that bad and does the job well.

The 1600+ lines of code are surprisingly clean too! Most of my LD entries have terrible code because I just want everything to work together but this time I took much more elegant approach and the code I wrote was actually pretty nice to work with!

To conclude on this, One Room Dungeon is the culmination of many things I learned in the last few months, be that about procgen, UI, gfx, the background pixel effects, pixel-art, animating or cleaner code. I am quite proud of it.

And you should play it!!! And if you did LD too or you are interested in what people are saying about the game, here is the Ludum Dare page of the game!

I should write a more complete post-mortem for the game this week or the week after that and it will be posted both here and on the Ludum Dare website.

 

Week 33 was pretty good and it was topped by an amazing Ludum Dare for me!

Next week I’m finishing that not-Tetris side-project and then… I’m not sure. I might get back on the king game but also I might actually pick up JOY again instead. Whichever it’ll be, there will still be Pico-8 doodles. Also Christmas is happening 10 days from now and don’t think I’m not preparing something for you!

Have a great week!

Take care!

TRASEVOL_DOG