Five Months Break – What’s Going On?

Opposite to my plans, I didn’t continue my game development projects the last five months. Instead, my gamedev ambitions almost completely ceased during the course of last year. So with this blog post I want to give some insight on what has been going on and what I’m planning to do this year regarding my gamedev ambitions.

The initial momentum of 2013

After a pretty succesful 2012 with my game development projects, I was quite motivated to contribute to the OneGameAMonth idea. I was convinced that trying to make a game a month would not only amplify my game development skills but also keep me motivated to keep on making games throughout the year.

The opposite was the case. Continue reading “Five Months Break – What’s Going On?”

Growstruct – Tree Generator

I ran out of time. Haxepunk gave me more headache today than I expected. Nevertheless I learned a lot this past week. I still would like to expand this to a real game with some interesting mechanics, but that’s something for next month. I even made the building sprites:

buildings
You can try out the tree generator by pressing “Space” to make new trees. Nothing else to do :(. (And also it’s a little too wide for this blog page, so it’s warped)

Green Leaves

Finally I was able to implemented the leaves on the trees. This took me some unexpected effort because I had to figure out some specialties about HaxePunk and different behaviour of Image, Graphic and Entity objects. So take a look at those beautiful trees ;).

growstruct_sc03Next to add is the buildings and game logic. Have to finish it today. Hope it will work.

Can I Finish in Time?

Progress on this project is coming along really slow. I have to admit that it takes some time to get into a whole different language (Haxe) with my second project with HaxePunk. This, in combination with other time restrictions (work), makes me doubt if I can finish this game within May. I really hope to implement the basic mechanics to try it out.

Nevertheless, here is a screenshot of the extended tree generator. I only have too add some leaf (circles) and then I can get to the game logic and interaction.

growstruct_sc02

Randomizing the Initial Trees

Unfortunately my spare time for coding today is over which means, that this is only a half finished prototype. Nevertheless I’d like to present you the basic random tree generator. You can refresh the level by pressing “space”.

Next to add is the logic for growing the side branches and generating the leaves. After that I will implement the game interaction and logic.

No Coding – Progress on Paper

I totally lack the motivation to code any more today in the evening after coding at work for a research project today.

So I took a pen to make some sketches for the buildings to construct in the game.

GrowStructSketchRegarding the game mechanics, I made some notes. There will be the sketched five types of buildings:

  1. Planter for trees (uses energy to make new trees)
  2. Powerplant (makes energy by consuming water and air)
  3. Dehydrator (makes water from air)
  4. Extractor (makes air from soil)
  5. Thickener (makes soil from water)

The goal is to balance your ressources by constructing those buildings. The trees will also have an influence on the ressources.

Plans for tomorrow:

  • Implemented randomized growing of trees
  • Make pixel art sprites for the buildings
  • Add leaves to the trees