The Game

Oh dear, it's really been a while since I've found time and will to write anything for this blog. But things change and I'd like to write down a few things about this month's GID event.

First, here's a cross-link to the GID's board: http://www.gameinaday.net/viewtopic.php?t=122

Now the game is called Fireworks! and it's about, well you might have guessed it, fireworks, but not really.
I've rather taken a more unrealistic approach and thought about what fireworks look like in cartoons, etc. There they often explode to some drawing or shape, which of course is pretty much impossible. But the idea is nice, and since I've wanted to do some mouse-based/movement-based game, I thought that doing a firework-themed drawing game would be fun.

See the screenshot on the right for what the firewor-theme looks like. You first draw over a shape that is shown and when you are finished the firework starts. You do this to collect as many points as possible to get into the highscore list (doesnt sound like duh?).

The actual idea consisted of actually drawing stuff freely and mistakes would appear in the final firework, too, but I had to give up that idea because I couldn't get T2D to render particles at a certain quantity at low FPS, too, and I didn't want to use separate objects for it. Maybe the invalid strokes will come back , because I kind of like the idea of making invalid strokes more visible.

The score system is pretty ok but the UI suffered because of the time constraint and isn't as dynamic as it should be, but you can get boni and multipliers for lots of things.

Enough said, here's the link to the current final build (there might follow one with sounds later): http://icculus.org/~black/gid/0709/Fireworks!0.99.zip

And here's an excerpt from the readme:

Preliminary Stuff

This is the almost or probably final version of Fireworks!, a GID game (15/16.9.2007).

Pure dev time: 19 hours atm spanning from Saturday till Monday.

The game is released as is, etc.

Most of the source scripts are included, so you can take a look at a few bits pretty clean code midst very hackish stuff.

About the Game

It's pretty simple:
You have to draw over the contours visible in each level to earn points and start/arrange the fireworks (that's pretty much the story).

The score system is pretty simple:
The longer you stay on a contour (the cursor trail is cyan), the more points you get, and after many points in a row, you receive a power multiplier as reward.
Likewise, if you draw fast enough over a part of a contour that hasnt been painted yet (purple at the beginning, green if you've already drawn over it), you'll receive a speed multipier. Also if you manage to finish multiple contours with one, you'll get a combo multiplier.

Each multiplier starts with x2 and increases if you draw accordingly.

But be careful! The multipliers are only applied to the score of your stroke, when you release the mouse button! They add up and multiply your score: e.g. +1000 x + 2 + 2 means 1000 * (2+2). And if you miss a line or your mouse slips a bit and the cursor trail turns red, you'll lose the combo and the power multiplier (not the speed one, though)!
So be careful and don't try to make too big a combo or draw too difficult a contour at once because you could lose lots of points...

If you manage to paint a whole contour line with one stroke, it'll double your current score and also increment your combo multiplier. Same if you manage to paint all contour lines with only one stroke per line. Last but not least, one last word: there's a highscore and there are 5 levels at the moment. There is no game-over condition yet, so you can simply play through all levels and try to get a good highscore.

Post-mortem

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This weekend I've participated for the first time in the GID event. The common task is to create a running game prototype in 24 hours (24 hours pure developement time + naps is allowed, too).

I think it went well considering that this was my first participation but essentially I've failed because my game prototype is nowhere near finished. It's rather at an early proof-of-concept stage instead...

Let me introduce the prototype/game quickly - it has no name yet, so let us look at some screenshots instead:

You see, it's about a stickman that can move. I'm not going to go into more details yet because the game doesn't consist of much more right now.
If you want to see a more interesting animation though, click here.

For those interested here's a postmortem.

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