Great idea!

If I have time, I'd like to have a set of graphical 'themes' it can select based on the words it finds in the source text, as well, so The Raven takes place against a lightning-filled sky with leaf-less trees and gravestones and spooky statues 'cause it has words like 'demon' and 'terrors' in it, while I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud would be all blue-skies and fluffy-clouds, 'cause it has words like 'bliss' and 'dances' in.

DEFINITELY use some sort of Google image search integration to generate the enemies!

/has no idea of the feasibility or wisdom of this

World generation is coming along pretty well - there's a wrap-around surface layer with various area types laid out along it (but not displayed as anything more than a debug string yet) and caverns below the surface.

Other stuff that's gone in: the jetpack, crashed spaceship, NPCs shooting (although this is currently far too random for the non-abstract style of the game).

I'm hoping to post a demo later today (i.e. 12 hours or so).

@thief0: Not from the VGNG, but maybe subconsciously inspired by it.  Also not from my cat. His ideas are more along the lines of 00000000000000000222222222211111111 [...etc]

Really loving the style of this, and the simple gameplay ideas. And lip balm residue :D

The black strip with white text at the bottom makes it look like one of those motivational posters. How about a randomly generated motivational phrase?

/makes secret mental note to investigate Markov chains for own project

Code for modular guyman complete! We're going for the amiga-ish look. I'll make a demo build when there's something to show on world generation.

Screen shot (warning: includes placeholder rubbish art;))

Next on the coding schedule:
- Jetpack and recharging energy bar
- Enemy nests (sketches)
- World: different areas, caverns, etc (**porcedural generation magic happening here**)
- Placement of the crashed ship and ship parts, and inventory
- Very simple intro/outro cutscene framework (just static images and text)

@Tantan - I really really love the idea of Noctis, but got as far as wandering around my ship in mid-space and couldn't figure anything else out. If we do a Space Cat 2, I would like to do an (inhabited) universe of planets with an exploration/trading aspect, each planet being a 2d platform world.... maybe the usual ice planets, lava planets, jungles, etc. We'll see

@PaulMorel - Mao is from another unfinished project. You may see a thread appear in the "Feedback" forum one day

I had a lot of fun with this
(the very loopy version... yesterday i think)

How about a plot about a test pilot for a really dodgy airline (or aircaft manufacturer) - you have to prove that X number of planes pass quality control by flying them along a course.

In gameplay terms, flying a challenge with a number of different planes would even out some randomness but still be an interesting challenge.

discover places - CHECK
bizarre creatures - CHECK
familiars - CHECK

Sounds great!

Sexy cel-shaded blobs! Looking forward to the colour gameplay too.... maybe you could introduce more colours as the game progresses?

Hahah rumbled! (thanks)

Graphics were originally going to be very 8-bit style, but it might be about to turn very Amiga-ish. Fortunately I had some fake-Copper code lying around! Sprites and other stuff coming soon...

(I need to place Space Barnacle actually - keep seeing it and never getting round to it)

@Paul - That's Mao. He belongs in another game . Also he can't survive in space due to the lack of a goldfish-bowl hat.

Early days...



The Random NPC framework is kind of done, as is the random world framework. Neither are *actually* random/procedural yet, mind you.

The player sprite is on temporary loan from another project (and by my artist collaborator). The final cat will be more... Space-ish.

I made the enemies in about 5 minutes. They look approximately 50% funnier than you would expect in motion.

"Space Cat Rocket Ship presents"?

 

Looking fun btw... I hope there's a "curse" button so you can swear to yourself to pass the time as you drift through the infinite blackness

Ex-hactly. Let me know if you find anything, and I'll do likewise

I think it wouldn't be *too* hard to build something around OpenAL to support your example code, but whether it's possible before this particular deadline.... hmmm

Someone mentioned Processing and PureData earlier - I was wondering if anyone knows of an audio library (ideally C#, but failing that, C/C++) that isn't purely sample based- i.e. more geared towards synthesizing.

For that matter, does anyone know of one which is sample-based? I'd quite like a C# library for MOD-style song creation...

The Tao Framework (http://www.taoframework.com/) has a C# binding for OpenAL, which seems pretty reasonable, although I've not written anything using it yet. SDL has sound (and is usable in C# in the form of SdlDotNet). It seems quite limited though - I'm not sure you play sounds at different pitches, for example.

Someone mentioned Processing and PureData earlier - I was wondering if anyone knows of an audio library (ideally C#, but failing that, C/C++) that isn't purely sample based- i.e. more geared towards synthesizing.

My dream would be something that emulated an 8-bit era soundchip, with a modern API. There are lots of chiptune players around but no nice DLL/API things that I can find.

Second choice would be a SFXR (http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/project_sfxr.html) API. I guess I could take the source and APIify it, since its free, but I don't think I'll have time for that this month....

Awesome, thanks man. I'm pretty confident I'm sticking to the spirit of it in that case!

New build up in the same place as the previous one.

Tweaks:
- Player jetpack speeds are lower, hopefully controls feel a bit nicer, although a side-effect is that the balance has shifted around a bit. It's both easier and harder
- Enemies stay dead for a while when you revisit a screen after moving between screens
- Removed the gun taking energy from the jetpack, since it was complicating the flying control
- Flying enemy movement improved

Fixes:
- Fixed occasional random crash when entering a new screen
- Fixed dead enemies firing
- Fixed horrible slowdown bug when lots of gravity-affected projectiles were on screen

Remaining known issues:
- Z sorting glitches on some graphics cards - "shadow" enemy body parts drawn in front of foreground parts, etc.
- Still doesn't support old gfx hardware
- Occasionally get stuck inside an enemy or nest on screen transition (have to quit)

Finished! (Chosen midnight: Los Angeles)
Download here. (Thanks to Mr Hao Wan for the hosting!!)

Also requires .NET runtime.

Various things didn't make it in, but it came out ok. I'm really sorry but it still won't run on older graphics cards due to... some... sh1tty z-buffer-related reason... that I'm too tired to remember. Sorry Inane and others - might be able to fix for the Redux version.

Screenshots:







Instructions:

- Collect the 8 missing spaceship parts from around the planet. They are often hidden inside enemy nests.
- The detector in the top right glows red when a part is on the same screen and yellow if there's one 1 screen away.
- Return to the ship at any time to restore health. Return with all 8 parts to win.
- Firing and using the jetpack deplete your energy (bue bar). Jetpack is not available when energy is zero and guns are weaker. Energy recharges quickly though.
- Press "H" to start in hard mode with lots more enemies

Controls:

Left/Right - move horizontally
Up - jetpack boost
Down - jetpack auto-hover (sometimes useful)
X - fire

And now... sleep. OH NO HANG ON: Work. 

Best of luck everyone! Really looking forward to playing everything and picking everyones brains about secret PG techniques 

Original Post:

Space Cat crashes on a strange planet and bits of his spaceship get scattered around the world. He has to find them all and return to the spaceship to win. (this is all part of a grand plan to avoid Cave Story rip off allegations )
 
The planet is randomly generated based on the name the player gives it a the start (during some sort of intro sequence), so planet "haowan" would be the same everytime, and different to planet "shrimp". People can experiment to find fun planets and share the best planet names online. I'll include a random name generator so you don't *have* to think up a name each time you play.
 
Gameplay will be somewhere between Metroid and Knytt. Main weapon is a raygun, but might add bombs or other attacks if time. Some special "get-out-of-jail-free card" player abilities will be included in order to give the world generator a bit more slack 

As well as finding the required ship parts, there will (hopefully) be secret bonus items that unlock different endings.
 
If I get time, there might be some sort of hunger/resting/foraging/camping in order to sate my lust for roguelike game mechanics.

Main procedural thing is the world, extra things might be enemy types and pickups.

Some early screenshots in a few days, hopefully!

Looks and reads like it will be really great! I have a similar-ish procedural adventure project on the go but it's not eligible for entry since I started it months ago (and your screenshot is much slicker than anything mine has produced so far  ).

If you're interested in maze generation, I found this page really useful: http://www.astrolog.org/labyrnth/algrithm.htm

Check out the various lists of maze properties and operations as well as the algorithms.

I'm in! Will post a thread for my project shortly. But first....

I have a question. Can i use art and|or music ripped from other projects or sources on internet? Or i should find an artist to participate in this compo?

I have a similar question. I'm primarily a programmer too - How much is it permissable or indeed expected to take bits and pieces of code (and maybe a few sprites) from some of my other (unfinished) projects?

I've never entered one of these compos before so don't really know what the unwritten rules are. And if there are written rules that apply, I'd very much appreciate someone posted a link and optionally calling me an idiot.

Thanks!

Installing now - looks like my kind of game!

I laughed so hard I couldn't see the words I was supposed to be typing. Quality!

Yep, http://sourceforge.net/projects/catrpg