Sat - 00:24
I’ve finally settled on an idea, the rest were interesting, but would have taken way too long to get even the basics going. So heres the plan, as to how much I’ll manage to get done of this in 24 hours I’ve no idea.
Ghost Hunter - A 2d top down view game. The game will take place within a haunted house (although you’ll have to take my word for that since I’ll be using programmer art :P) teaming with ghosts (again unless a kind artist donates some graphics, take my word for it).
The player has two weapons, the first is a limited ammo scare gun. It will fire a projectile that will cause ghosts to panic and run away from it (may change into a stun gun or some other variation depending on how the game plays assuming I get that far).
The second is a short range trap that can be dropped and will suck nearby ghosts into it. The trap will hold a limited number of ghosts requiring a trip back to the ghost hunters van. Emptying the trap will score the player points.
The player will lose health should he come into physical contact with a ghost.
So thats the basic plan. Whether it will end up anything like the above remains to be seen.
Sat 12:50
Started work on the GID about 1/2 an hour ago, and thought I’d best upload the first screenshots. The first image shows all the temporary map layers. The bright pink area is the game boundry that ghosts will not be able to cross. The stone looking area will prevent the player crossing but ghosts will be able to wander back and forth through the walls. (thats the plan anyway :P) The second image show the layers in visible order.
Click on the images for a bigger view.
Sat 15:00
Quick thanks to Peter “Deps” Sundling for emailng me a ghost sprite that he’s using in his GID.
I’ve got the tile map loaded into the arena class now. Player spawning has been added as well as basic movement control with the camera tracking the player around the map. Next up is setting up the arena and player collision masks. Then I’ll look into adding ghosts.
Even at this stage I’ve had a load of ideas of how this could be made a lot more fun to play by adding in a puzzle element to the gameplay, however since this is a GID I’m avoiding any feature creep and sticking to the basic game only. I’ll upload some more screenshots once it looks a little different 
Sat - 17:30
Players movement is now restricted by the castle walls and surrounding garden walls. Ghosts are now spawning in the level, although currently it’s just random so they spawn in strange locations 
When I get a bit of time later on tonight I’ll change this to parse the ghost spawn layer and only spawn within valid tiles.
After dinner I’ll add a quick bit of random AI to get the ghosts moving around the level and get player/ghost collisions working. Then work can start on the two weapons. Curry time
Sat - 19:20
The curry went down well, but I could really do with a cup of Tea now Anyhow, I’ve done another 1/2 hour of coding adding in a little bit of AI for the ghosts. They’ll now wander around randomly (which does look a little silly, but I dont have time to spare on the AI just yet - maybe tomorrow), float straight through walls and go where ever they please. There is a magical ghost barrier that winds its way around the outskirts of the castle grounds through which the ghosts cannot travel. I might shrink this barrier later to keep all the ghosts within the castle itself and leave the grounds for other denziens of the night
I’ve not had chance to find a player sprite yet, so I’m using a none transparent version of Deps ghost, which may end up having a paint job with the player been a rogue ghost by tomorrow:P
Sat - 21:40
The first version of the trap is now in the game. It’s a little squishy yellow substance that emits a ghost pheromone. Any ghosts that come into contact with the trap immediatly vanish into it, traps become full after three ghosts have been captured.
The trap doesn’t become active until 3 seconds after first been deployed. Also until I’ve added collision detection with walls, the trap deploys directly below the player. To prevent immediate pickup the player isn’t allowed to pickup the trap until after it becomes active. This will change however.
Next up is adding a particle effect to show the traps working. Also the trap should be thrown rather than appearing below the player. Finally code needs adding to “attract” the ghosts to their doom.
I’ve also added in player health, you spawn with 100 points and lose a small random amount every time you come into contact with a ghost. After losing health you get 3 seconds invulnerability. Could do with an effect to show this as well.
Once the trap changes have been made I’ll move onto the scoring zone, other wise known as the mobile Ghost Storage facility.
Sun - 02:30
After another 3 hours of coding on and off the trap is now functioning. Ghosts spawn on walkable tiles only (fingers crossed) and the player can take the trap once filled with ghosts, back to the scoring zone and swap the ghosts for points. The scoring zone is currently just a pink tile that the player originally spawned on, with the customdata field set to “scorezone”, simple but working.
The game is so easy to complete that I’ve removed the players health compleatly. If a ghost touches you, you die. The next two screenshots show the inactive trap (yellow blob) and the active trap. Ghosts are pulled towards the trap sometimes in an arcing motion depending upon their velocity.
Tomorrow I’ll get a quick gui added to show the number of lives left, current score and game over logo.
So far I would say I’ve spent about 10-12 hours working on this, probably a fair bit less based on the amount of surfing I’ve done :). Progress wise everythings gone pretty well, the largest time sink was creating the trap and having it affect the ghosts regular motion pulling them into it (I’ll get a video uploaded of the final version tomorrow). The tile side of things was much easier than I thought it would be
If I have much spare time tomorrow I might look at the ghost AI, which is currently random. It would be nice to have them try to avoid the trap before it goes active and hunt the player. That might actually make the game a bit of a challenge, although still not a lot :/
Overall though, I think this is the kind of game that’s more fun to make than play That said, fun is the whole point of GID and I’ve added to my knowledge of T2D.
Sun - 15:30
Time to continue the GID entry. The plan is to remove the top menu, change the backdrop to black and add in a score and lives text gui. I’m also thinking of making the player be sucked into his own trap as well, where he’ll collide with ghosts and die making placement a little trickier. If time allows it, I’m planning on adding a death particle effect for both player and ghosts as well as a score effect.
Sun - 17:00
After less than an hours tweaking I think I’m done. Everything is in aside from the scare weapon, which gameplay wise just isn’t needed, its too easy as it is. I’m trying to capture and encode a short video of the gameplay of a reasonable filesize, until then heres a screenshot of the final game with an active trap.
Sun - 23:00
I’ve spent a little bit of time fixing a few bugs in the code and getting the game ready for distribution. I’ve added 2 splash screens and a main menu along with a short help file.
The game is available for both Windows and Linux, let me know if there are any problems with either of the distros. If you don’t fancy downloading the game you can watch a short avi instead (although the avi is twice as large a download as the game itself :P)
