Life Less Boring

The other day my family and I went to Chicago to pick up my sister at the airport.  Between Chicago and Indiana there is a giant wind farm, with windmills extending into the horizon in all directions.  The sheer number of them makes it a sight to behold.  I usually see these windmills during the day, but on this day we were traveling back to Indiana at night, and going back through the wind farm in the dark was one of the most surreal and awe-inspiring sights I’ve witnessed in quite a while.

There was a full moon that night, increasing the ambient light just enough to illuminate the ground more than usual.  When we first hit the wind farm, we could not make out the rotating blades.  Instead, the only thing visible was a network of synchronized, pulsing red lights.  It felt almost eerie, as if the alien mothership had landed and spawned a horde of fighter.

When we had fully entered the pulsing lights, the moonshine away the slightest outline of rotating blades.  And where perspective aligned the moon behind a foreground windmill, a black rotating monster became visible.

Some of the red lights were not completely in sync with the rest, and some others were burned out completely. In addition, the rotating blades obscured the lights behind them, causing the rows of lights to appear slightly more chaotic than they were in reality.

As I sat there in the darkness with my face pressed against the window, I began to feel a strong urge to capture my experience.  A photograph would not do it justice though.  I had a picture of the moon from NASA on my hard drive after my recent foray into 48 hour game making, so I fired up Inkscape, and a little while later, this happened (click the image for a larger view):

For best results, view the image in a dark room with your eyes fully adjusted.  There are faint details that aren’t visible in a bright room.  Also, at some point I want to animate it so that the blades rotate and the dots flash.

Hooray art!

After 48 hours of marathon programming, I have managed to successfully complete a game in 48 hours!  You can play the game here:

http://lifelessboring.com/ludumdare28

Press space to start, and if you need more screen space, it will resize if you go into full screen mode.  You can also zoom out with the browser’s zoom feature.

I have long wanted to create a game, but this marks the first time in my life that I’ve successfully completed one!

I ended up calling it Alien Punch!  All games in the contest had to somehow use the theme “Tiny World”.  You control a space giant who protects the tiny planet earth from giant aliens.  Use arrow keys to fly around from planet to planet, and space bar to punch!  Punch the aliens into the planets to destroy them, but don’t step on Earth or punch aliens into it.  When earth’s health is zero, the game is over.

Screenshots (click the image for a larger view):

In my last post I wrote that I was in the first stages of creating a video game in 48 hours by participating in the 28th edition of the Ludum Dare contest.

You can play my game at any time by going to lifelessboring.com/ludumdare28!

The theme every game must adhere to is “Tiny World”.  As such, I am making a game in which giant aliens are attacking earth, and you are also a giant protecting the Tiny World.  I want the giant to be able to jump from planet to planet and use gravity to fly around and punch aliens.

After an exciting night of progress, apples, caffeine, and some sleep, I am ready to start the second day of programming.  I have made significant progress so far, including:

• All the art of the planets
• Planets orbiting around a central sun
• Orbit lines drawn on the orbits of the planets
• A minimap in the bottom right corner
• The camera stays inside the field of play
• A player affected by the gravity of all the planets

Next on my list is adding enemies:

I also started writing this backstory thing:

NARRATOR: It was a normal-sized day for the normal-sized citizens of our beloved normal-sized planet earth.

NARRATOR: Suddenly, a BIG PROBLEM appears just outside the range of all the telescopes!

CHECK IT YO — HUGE ALIENS in HUGE SPACESHIPS! –> /\

NARRATOR: The aliens intercept all earth communications to deliver a message of DOOM:

ALIEN 1: TINY HUMANS IN YOUR TINY WORLD! YOU SHOULD PROBABLY JUST SURRENDER!

ALIEN 2: HAHAHAHA TINY!

ALIEN 1: YOU HAVE NO HOPE OF SURVIVAL!

ALIEN 2: WE WILL CRUSH YOU LIKE TINY BUGS UNDER OUR HUGE FEET.

ALIEN 1: FROM THIS DAY FORWARD, YOU ARE NO LONGER EXISTENT!

NARRATOR: Not content with passively accepting non-existence, all earth residents pool their collective powers and let out a collective “AAAAAAAAAAH”.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, in a GIANT floating house just outside the Kuiper Belt, our hero lie sound asleep in his enormous bed. He awakes with a start!

HERO: WHATEVER COULD THAT BE?

I am regularly pushing updates to lifelessboring.com/ludumdare, so if you want to see my progress, just go to that link.  The game has been tested in Chrome, but should work in Firefox too.  Safari may work, and I don’t care at all about IE.

I’ve got a little less than a day and a half before the Sunday at 9pm deadline!