Month: August 2014

The Ludum Dare 30 Game Jam is about 30 minutes past the submission deadline. I made an effort, but didn’t complete on time.

I do have the makings of a nice little game. A lot of the game’s intended depth and variety was simplified or removed for brevity. It should still be fun to play though.

The current state:

It’s starting to look good. But there’s a lot of numbers to deal with. It’s a bit of a ‘spreadsheet-game’. But that’s how these in-depth strategy games usually are — they tend to have a lot of numbers to crunch.

There are really only four or five issues to complete:
1. Moving units (Forces/Spies/Envoys)
2. Resolving conflicts
3. Organizing unit displays
4. Game balancing (in the above image, all numbers are identical)
5. Difficulty settings (optional)

I’ll keep working and I’ll have it done soon.

Charles Kiptin
A day late, a buck short.

There’s just a little over three hours left in the Ludum Dare 30 game jam now. I don’t think the game will be completed. That’s another deadline gone. I’ll finish this though — it’s close to completion. The game will make for a nice addition to the Starjump website.

Here’s the latest screenshot:

I did some work on the orbit views. There are images for 25 different planet/orbital-body types. All are in use, some are repeated. There’s a mix of ‘photo-realism’ and photoshopping. It’s a bit wonky. Procedural texture generation would work nicely here.

The colors in the viewer are picked randomly. It’s just a lot of placeholder art. Once the features are working, I can go back and improve on the look of the UI.

Charles Kiptin
Game Jam Insomniac

Two hours to go in the LD48 Compo. Unfortunately, I’m not going to make that deadline. I’ll keep pushing for the 72 hour jam.

Even after cutting many of the ideas that I had had, this game idea stills seems a bit much for even a 72 hour game jam. The defenses/enemies will likely need to be static, which will ruin the replay value. Also, a limit of 10 or 15 turns might be required.

Here’s a screenshot of the Game View prototype:

A recent rebellion along the Rimward Corridor has brought space travel to a standstill. The outermost Skelli Group, a cluster of stars at the corridor’s end, has fallen to a separatist movement and has broken all ties with the Terran Alliance. Jumppoints along the Rimward Corridor are vital to Terran trade and defense. This corridor connects the interior systems of the Terran Alliance with the Free Worlds frontier.

As General Director of the Rimward Corridor, you have been tasked with eliminating the separatists and reestablishing the corridor’s continuity. Through the use of military force, political negotiations, espionage, and economic measures, you must defeat the newly formed separatist government and reclaim the Skelli Group for the Terran Alliance.

A map of the Rimward Corridor:

And a map of the Skelli Group:

So far the Ludum Dare 30 game jam is going well. More work to do!

Charles Kiptin
Navigator

The Ludum Dare 30 Game Competition is currently in progress. The theme for this LD is ‘Connected Worlds’.

I’m eight hours into the 48-hour game compo and so far, it’s going well. I’m building a science fiction strategy game. I won’t label it a 4X game, as there isn’t much exploration or even expansion. Maybe it’s a 2X game? If that’s the case, the player’s task is to simply exploit and exterminate.

The Trade Relations code has come together quite nicely. I had thought that this part of the game would be the most difficult to program. It’s just a lot of code, really. And instead of maintaining many-to-many relationships, this small game will have only one-to-many relationships. That is, the enemy/neutral factions will only interact with the player, and not each other.

I put together a quick prototype of the player’s trade screen:

Ludum Dare 30 — You are cordially invited to correct your trade deficit!

So this competition is going to keep me awake and programming all weekend. It should be fun though. Everything in the game is original and it’s all created during the 48 hour time frame. The game is an idea that I have been considering, but haven’t had the time for. So this is an opportunity to test those ideas.

Charles Kiptin
Game Jammer