Back around the last Ludum Dare, I decided to try out One Game A Month. Basically, the goal is to write one complete game per month, every month in 2013. Of course I’m great at putting things off until the very last minute–I finally started yesterday. So it goes.
JP's Blog
Ludum Dare 25 - First favorites
This past weekend was Ludum Dare 25, the newest in a competition that has been running for more than 10 years where the entire goal is to go from nothing to a complete video game in 48 hours or less. I didn’t manage to participate this time around, but I’m looking forward to trying it out next April (they run every four months in April, August, and December).
Sandbox - It's Alive!
So I haven’t actually updated the Sandbox project for quite some time (December 9th I believe). Since then, I’ve actually torn out the core of the code and rewritten it to actually be a game, rather than another clone of the general Falling Sand games. Rather than explain in detail what I’ve done (I’ll get to that later), I’ll start with screenshots of the new version.
Sandbox - Multiple definitions
Sandbox - Bugfix
Quick bug fix (plus one new simple feature) for Sandbox.
Bug fix:
- Automatically default to first item on startup
- Allow particles to be placed while paused
New features:
- Number keys select corresponding placeable particle type
Downloads:
- If you may not have .NET 3.5: click here
- To install SDL.NET: **click here **
Controls:
- Esc/Q – Quit the program
- B – Toggle border behavior
- P – Pause / Unpause
- Space – Advance the simulation one step (when paused)
- Left-click – Add a blob of the current kind of particle
- Right-click – Remove a blob of any kind of particle
- 1-9 – Select the corresponding kind of particle
particle
Sandbox - More user friendly
One more update on my quick schedule than it’s back to school so I’ll probably slow down for a while. In any case, I’ve added the ability to change between different elements in the definitions files.
Two new changes to the definitions are the addition of placeability and colorful flags. If placeability is set, the element will show up on the GUI to be placed. If colorful is set, the colors will be varied slightly (see the screenshots).
Next up, seeing if I can come up with more elements to play with…
Sandbox - Interactivity
I know I’ve already updated this project twice within the past 24 hours, but third time’s a charm. This time, it’s interactive!
I’m using the same rules as last time (with the tweaks I mentioned). The main difference are that you can left-click anywhere on the screen to add a blob of fire or right-click to add a new blob of plant. It’s still not really a game per-say, but it’s got the makings of one!
Sandbox - Reactions
So I stayed up entirely too late last night / this morning and decided to go ahead and add reacti0ns to Sandbox. Turns out, it was far easier than anything that I’ve implemented thus far on this project. I spent some of the day (when I wasn’t at the family Thanksgiving celebration) tweaking a few things to make it look a little better.
Basically, reactions have four parts: a core, reactants, a chance, and (possibly) a product. The core is the particle that will be reacting. The reactants (each given with a concentration) are the neighboring particles. The chance adds a bit of randomness to reactions and allows particles to fade (see the fire below). The product (if present) is the result of the reaction.
Sandbox - And so it begins
For the past few years, I’ve been fascinated by falling sand / particle simulation type games (like this one). Enough so that I’ve set out to make one a fair number of times. Each time, I’ve advanced my own techniques by a little bit, finding new and better ways to make digital sand.
This time around, I’m going to try to use C# with SDL.NET for all of my graphical work and a simple grid for all of the particle data. Rather than looping over the grid, I will be using quadtrees to only update the regions that actually need to be updated. So far the results are promising!