Augh. I'm really sorry about that, melly. Don't imagine you'll be missing much, though.

Rest assured, that after the compo, I'll be moving it to Tao, or something with less silly install requirements than XNA, at least.

Okay. Here's the demo for anyone else who can do the XNA thing.

http://www.bezzy.net/Downloads/K2Prototype.rar - 7.94megs.

If someone could do me a sweet favour and mirror it, that'd save me. I'm going to bed, now.

Most Promising But Not Actually Very Good On The Day?

Gots to win something. Even a raspberry.

Holy crap, this is actually really enjoyable. I mean, I am not a fan of MMOs, so I was thinking "how could this possibly make me interested?", and then before you know it, you're watching for forum complaints. The act of designing an addictive game becomes as addictive as the game itself. Interesting message there. And then you realize, christ, it really IS a tycoon game, just with a very different aesthetic/metaphor, but it's ultimately all about keeping the people happy.

That paradigm is fun no matter what skin it's in. Good job!

Way more fun than actually making an MMO, I'm guessing.

Very Nice! The lightening clouds are well telegraphed, so it's never unfair when you're hit.

My only bit of feedback is that it's a bit hard to tell how the combo mechanic works. I just keep hammering jump and *hope* it works, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.

Thanks guys!

I haven't really been focusing on the aesthetic too hard in terms of things like palette, so it's a bit all over the place in that respect. JP calls it "The Debug Aesthetic".

After the compo, I can get it reigned in a little more... more concise, less all-over-the-shop.

Wow that does NOT survive youtube's conversion.

Well, time to give up!

Haowan and Boratso have won. (Again).

Thanks!

Yeah, at the moment, enemies are small, but the bullet collision is very forgiving, so it's not that tough to hit stuff. Bullets seem to explode like flak when they're close enough to an enemy. That's the write-your-way-out-of-weirdness explanation, at least.

I've increased the FOV since the video, so stuff is smaller on screen, but everything now has a shield around it, which helps visability, and makes the forgiving shots more believable. I might mess with easing the FOV in while you're aiming in one direction for along time, only pulling it outward if you try to turn fast. That might be a luxury idea for the compo, though. Time is running out, and I still need ball squids and enemies which fire back! And a menu!

Could you do massive damage along the line you teleport along, perhaps? Like, it becomes a rail-gun shot with your own body? Would that be abuse able, or skillful (like the Shock Rifle Combo in UT?), or even too hard to be useful (lining up the bom, the enemy, and yourself, and then getting the shot - rare!).

Okay! Waves work. Kinda. Just need tweaking.

There's now a basic menu in place, but it needs fleshing out. Joystick is now supported, but given the choice of joystick and mouse, I'd go for mouse for the time being. I can do more for the joystick controls at a later date (some aim assistance, and allowing you to aim and steer slightly independently).

It seems to play pretty well, although I introduced a bug which stops the fireworks working consistently.

And I missed a dentist appointment, which means I have to have a filling next week, on my birthday. But on the plus side, we got internet at home, finally!

Felt really exhausted last night, and didn't do any work.

Going home now to get the basic waves working. From there I can start to flesh out the enemies a bit more (returning fire etc... though that'll still be a serious amount of work).

Eh. Deadline approaching. At least I have the weekend free.

Thanks. Yeah. Things are going alright.

Over the weekend, I had down-time on saturday, but on Sunday I worked hard. I got in proper shields, proper rockets, and proper fireworks (but with a slight limit, or you get chain-fireworks which wipe out everything in the current wave), and made various other tweaks to graphical cues (although they're still all pretty ugly at the moment). Still have to fix the lockon angles, or people are going to confuse the lockon ring for a health bar.

With one week left, I have to prioritize, and I realize that the main procedural generation hook (apart from parametric geometry... which isn't so procudural if I'm honest) is missing! As well as higher level gameplay like scores and enemies who shoot back! There is not even a menu, or any way for the player to be killed!

Last night I started working on the waves. When an enemy is killed, it goes to the sin-bin, and remembers how it was killed. Next wave it is re spawned with upgrades based on how it was killed. The idea is that it may grow weapons, or simply connections with which it can attach to other bad guys to form a WarningForever style boss mashup.

That's going to be a fair bit of work, I have to say.

Looking seriously sweet. I want those kind of little touches of glow etc, but I'm just really limiting myself so I can get hideously unproven gameplay done.

Can't wait to see how the gameplay feels in this.

This is in XNA.

Holy crap. Just saw some of the stuff you posted for your compo - our games look somewhat similar!

This is the first time I saw yours though! Looking great!

Have to get some things nailed at the office today. But last night I got most of the framework for rockets going. After locking on (by drawing a loop around one or more enemies) and pressing fire, a fancy bezier spline path is generated from your craft to the enemy craft. Just have to add actual moving rocket entities and collision on the weekend.

After that, I have to get enemies started. That's going to be interesting... assigning them the weapons that the player already can owns etc.

Worked late at the office tonight... so probably no progress in tomorrow's post (might just fix the minor lockon bug, and start, but not finish, rockets), but I may do another little video. No promises, though.

After rockets, I have to work on enemies loads and loads.

You got a laugh from me.

It's damn believable until people start repeating the same pigeon English.

Fixed the crosshair angle issue yesterday. Also added the lockon mechanism, which has one slight bug, but then I had to sleep.

Turns out my teeth aren't rotting, but my upper left wisdom tooth is growing at a weird angle, and it cuts the inside of my cheek, and this has given me an infection. Today I am on antibiotics and painkillers. Next wednesday, I have a filling elsewhere.

When you say trade-em-up, do you mean like Elite/Privateer?

Not for the compo, but probably in the long run. It'll have less resources to trade, but those resources will be physical objects in the world, rather than abstract numbers in your hull (so, a bit like mana in Magic Carpet in that respect). The economy will also be properly fluctuating based on supply and demand, so taking loads of RED to a RED starved system is going to get you more money, but each sale gives diminishing returns. So yeah. A stripped down trading model, but done in order to focus on what's interesting about trading models, rather than what is just obfuscating detail. And in fact, there's no money. You directly trade resources for upgrades/other resources by flying through rings which have slots which the resources fit in. The upgrades allow you to do more damage, get new weapons, and travel faster and further into the universe, meeting increasingly tough enemies the further you move out (so, like Mount & Blade, in that respect).

Uploading a video now. I don't think YouTube will help it much. Will edit and add.
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Yesterday, I mainly did lots of little fixes and tweaks. Still can't get my head around the problem above.

Gave the crosshair its own trails, which helps a lot to explain space well. Got auto-speeds working. The more directly you aim at someone the more your thrust will activate in your current direction - but, if you're close, and still facing, you start to back off. It works out pretty nicely. The game still only needs one button. You can also "jig" in the direction you move the mouse, if you move it very suddenly. Needs a bit of tweaking, but it should be useful for strafe-dodging incoming bullets.

I barely slept last night because I have a tooth ache. I've set up an appointment at 11:40, and may have my wisdom tooth out.

Ah, it's cool that you've revealed this, Jeeps.

I've been looking forward to it for a long time, since our design outlooks intersect very heavily.