Giddy's 48H Game Log
This is my progress report for the 3rd LudumDare 48-Hour Game Programming Competition. The theme is "Infection: make a game involving the spread of something".
The Newcastle Chicken Slaughter
A chicken farm has been infected with the Newcastle disease. You must destroy all the chickens before they spread the disease to the neighbour farms.
Try it now
- Launch with Java Webstart
- Download binary at LudumDare
- Download src and gfx at LudumDare
You can download Java from www.java.com.
Work log
NB: All timestamps are in local Danish time (GMT+1)
19/Apr/2004 - 03:00: Uploaded
Wooho. The game is finished. Now I just have to create a readme file and upload it to Ludumdare.
19/Apr/2004 - 01:00: Game complete
Wooho. The game is finished. Now I just have to create a readme file and upload it to Ludumdare.
18/Apr/2004 - 22:00: Map
Decided to do a map mode instead of radar. Now the player can see the complete playing field from a birdseye view by pressing M.
Now I will implement the winning and loosing conditions. The player wins by destroying all chickens, hens and eggs. The player looses if a chicken or hen manages to leave the safezone, or if the number of hens gets too high.
18/Apr/2004 - 21:30: The end is near
I have improved the collision detection and tweaked the various game constants (number of second between a chicken lays an egg etc).
It is nice to have something that is starting to look like a game.
I have decided to submit my entry no later than 24:00 (GMT+1), so that gives me a bit over two hours to create a title screen, winning and loosing conditions and a scoreboard. If time permits, I will also add a chicken radar.
18/Apr/2004 - 18:56: Shaping the level
I have changed the ground texture to grass, and added obstacles to the level. The camera follows the player. Now its time to create a hud display with chicken-radar, scoreboard and other info
18/Apr/2004 - 17:20: Collision detection
Now the chickens and hens die when they are hit by bullets, and the eggs are destroyed when you walk on them.
18/Apr/2004 - 16:10: Bullets
Added bullets. Each time the player shoots his gun heats up, and it cannot fire again before it has cooled down. Current settings allows three simultaneous shots. I must resist the temptation to tweak game parameters before everything else is in place.
18/Apr/2004 - 15:43: A game is forming
I changed the camera position and added a player character that can be controlled with the keyboard. The player is the the buttugly cyan thingy.
18/Apr/2004 - 14:28: Back from sleep
Holy cow. My game is far from complete - you cannot even call it a game yet. I have decided to upload it, so you can try it out. When you get bored looking at the chickens, you can press ESC or close the window.
18/Apr/2004 - 04:40: Chickens are spawning
Time is running too fast. I have created a basic chicken spawner. It manages the lifecycle from egg to chicken to egg-laying hen. Now I have to create the user-controllable character that must kill the chickens.
18/Apr/2004 - 00:40: Coding
Oh oh day 2 has arrived. I have been tweaking and testing under Windows XP and MacOS X. Seems like the basics are in place. I need to refactor the code and create a prioritized todo-list. I must have the first playable version ready within 8 hours.
17/Apr/2004 - 22:00: Monsters created
I have modeled the 'monsters' for my game. Egg, chicken and hen. They
still need textures, but that will have to wait. Now it is time to code...
17/Apr/2004 - 20:55: I have an idea!
My game will be called Doctor Rockfeet and the Chicken Invasion. It is an action-maze-game, where you control Dr. Rockfeet who has to get rid of the chickens that are spreading through the hallways of his laboratory.
This is how the chicken spread: First the chicken is tiny, yellow and harmless. It just wanders randomly about. Then it becomes a hen and it starts to lay eggs in the halls. It is very protective, so it will attack you if you approach the eggs. After a while the eggs will hatch and new chickens emerge. Its an invasion!!!
17/Apr/2004 - 19:45: Model loader
Wuhu. I can now load and display a static rendered mesh. If I had taken the pure 2D approach, I could have saved these five hours work and used them on gameplay instead. But I really hope that the eye-candy-effect of 3D models will add some quality to my entry. Here is an "in-game" screenshot:
Now it is time for a coding break. I have to get something to eat. I have also just realized that I have no real idea about what my game is going to be about, so I have to spend a couple of hours thinking.
17/Apr/2004 - 17:40: Model format parser
Phew, this was a tough one. My original plan was to create an OpenGL based sprite system, but I couldn't resist the temptation to go full 3D. I have written an extremely simple parser that can extract a PolH chunk from a Caligari GameSpace .COB file. This gives me the vertices, faces and uv coordinates. I will have to do do the material and generate normals in code.
I created a simple mesh to test my parser. It looks like it works. Next step is to create the renderer, so I can see my mesh inside the game.
Here is a picture of the mesh inside the modeler (gameSpace)
17/Apr/2004 - 15:00: OpenGL and deployment
Sweet. I have OpenGL up and running, and I have created a WebStart-page for publishing, so users can install and run it easily. Tested on Windows XP and Mac OSX.
17/Apr/2004 - 13:00: Back from sleep
I wasted a couple of hours getting LWJGL to run on the mac, so I am going to use JOGL instead. I know that works :-)
17/Apr/2004 - 03:00: Theme announced
The theme is "Infection: Make a game involving the spread of something. A virus, coffee shops, etc...".
I will develop my entry using Java and LWJGL, and deploy it using Java Webstart.
16/Apr/2004 - 22:50: Art compo
In the waiting hours before a theme was announced, we had a little 10 minute art competition. The theme was "pizza bees". Here is my entry.