PGD Annual 2009 - Progress

**chronozphere** · 01-11-2009, 11:01 AM

Good!

Please keep posting comments and progress in this thread. The more people involved, the better.

**paul_nicholls** · 01-11-2009, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by noeska

For me it the first compo ever, but i am having problem finding enough time. Besides i am bit distracted by my new beagleboard. But i hope i can make some progres again today ... But the end result wil be more like a demo for a game then a full game ...

Still...the more the merrier!

cheers,
Paul

**AthenaOfDelphi** · 01-11-2009, 12:11 PM

I'd like to see more people posting screenshots. From what I've seen so far, everyone is doing great, so keep it you guys. You're in the home straight now with a little under a month left.

Unfortunately for me, time has been a major issue. When I started organising, I was looking for a job, then I got one in May and time has been an issue since. It's typical software house stuff... ever changing and evolving project specs, not enough time and being taken off the major project to work on little side projects... suffice to say, it's been eating into my spare time, so apologies for not being more active around the whole thing.

I'd like to echo some of the comments that have already been posted... we had a lot of people sign up and now it does seem we only have a few active entries... if you're working on an entry, post here with some screenshots. It's really helpful from a motivational point of view to get feedback from people and also to see what your up against.

Timewise, when I competed, I only had the weekends to work on my entry and even then I didn't have full weekends but I was amazed at what I was able to achieve. If your struggling to stay focused, I'd recommend a quick read of something like The Pomodoro Technique. I've found it to be a great help with focus and actually achieving stuff. In essence, you work in short highly focused 25 minute blocks. Turn off your email, your browser, your TV, put some tunes on, grab a kitchen timer and set it to 25 minutes and go. Work on one thing. When the timer rings, have a 5 minute break. Rinse and repeat. Every couple of hours, have a longer break. There is more to it than that, but it is designed to make the most of your attention span. There's a great book about it available from Pragmatic Programmers.

Anyhow, I digress... keep going guys (and gals?) and just remember... you don't have to have fully finished graphics and sounds... if you're short on time make/record placeholders, or adopt a style that allows you to use rough and ready stuff. There is after all only one minor prize available for both graphics and sound. The judges should be looking for games that are fun to play, and above all (this is an arcade game afterall) games that could keep people coming back to put their money in the machine.

Good luck

**noeska** · 01-11-2009, 10:30 PM

Ok i made some real progres today.
- implemented enemy sprites
- tiles and sprites are loaded as svg from files
- player takes damage from enemies

You can download the pre alpha 4 version from: http://sites.vanderhoning.net/submerged/

Sorry no screenshot, but feel free to make one and post it here.

**paul_nicholls** · 01-11-2009, 10:40 PM

neat! I will give it a whirl when I get home

cheers,
Paul

**dazappa** · 02-11-2009, 03:53 AM

Originally Posted by noeska

Ok i made some real progres today.
- implemented enemy sprites
- tiles and sprites are loaded as svg from files
- player takes damage from enemies

You can download the pre alpha 4 version from: http://sites.vanderhoning.net/submerged/

Sorry no screenshot, but feel free to make one and post it here.

I'm not even sure what that was. I mean, I guess I figured out what the enemies and player were; but it didn't even look like the enemy went through the player, just over the top. + No controls were listed, and I found myself very confused by rotating the world.

and I think I'll just post this random update on myself here.
1. School's really been taking up every second of my free time
2. My father had surgery
3. My Windows got a virus, preventing _any_ executable file from running.
4. I just bought a new hdd and reinstalled Windows yesterday (My old hdd was 40gb; I thought I might as well buy a new HDD because I had to reinstall Windows. New HDD: 500gb

)
5. I've scrapped my old design doc. Not possible with the current time frame. I've come up with a new project that I'll post some screens of next week; it'll be quite short and very arcade-y, hopefully. I'm sure multiplayer/online scores won't make it by the deadline, so I'll just update the game after the deadline to add those in, because those are nice additions.
6. Have I mentioned? I've never created a game with pascal before

(For example, my latest problem includes my application crashing the nVidia driver). I've made plenty of odd pascal apps though.

So I hope to be able to have something to submit, but I can't make any promises with the way things are going.

**chronozphere** · 02-11-2009, 07:32 AM

Great to have you back Dazappa. The more the merrier.

**noeska** · 02-11-2009, 08:40 AM

Originally Posted by dazappa

I'm not even sure what that was. I mean, I guess I figured out what the enemies and player were; but it didn't even look like the enemy went through the player, just over the top. + No controls were listed, and I found myself very confused by rotating the world.

The rotating of the world is to give things a twist. I hope things become clearer when i move the player (represented as a square now) a bit down so that it is centered.

But thanks for the feedback, as you noticed still a lot more needs to be done...

**NecroDOME** · 02-11-2009, 11:39 AM

\o/ nice to see some action here

**noeska** · 02-11-2009, 04:41 PM

A minor update for submerged :-)

- The scrolling part of the level is now fullscreen instead of being boxed
- A few graphics have been updated with something that is not a square ;-)

In the end it is now a bit more playeable again ...

You can download the pre alpha 5 version from: http://sites.vanderhoning.net/submerged/

PS colliding with an object does cause the player or object to stop. Instead the player looses energy.

So todo is making the player able to defend him/her self and make object that give back energy instead of taking it. And ofcourse more graphics need to be drawn ...