Alright - slow progress again, but got turrets implemented on the ships.

They rotate towards and track targets. As soon as a target is designated, the ship starts firing. It should really wait until its within a certain cone so it will hit the target.

Changed the look and feel with a dithered radar type screen, which I'm happier with. The waypoints still aren't quite correct asor I haven't got the ship sprite centered properly.

Next I'll implement collisions / damage modelling.

I'm hoping I'll make lots of progress on Saturday instead of trying to fit this is after work!

Today was a pretty productive day. The player can now enter "bouncy mode" when he touches a star. This means the player continuously bounces for 10 seconds after collecting a bouncy star. Collisions with powerup stars use rectangle collisions initially, and then mask collisions for accuracy. It was surprisingly simple to implement. There is also now a green tinting effect when in bouncy mode. With some sound effects it'll be pretty cool. I also made an enemy character. Basically he just walks back and forth, nothing too special.

Goals for tomorrow: Implement the ability for the player to kill enemies while in bouncy mode. I want to create a sense of permanence by having the enemies' dead bodies left in the level on the ground. We'll see how it looks. I know I say this everyday, but I really want to get the mechanics down pretty solidly before really working on level design. Hopefully, tomorow I'll be done the mechanics. I also want to spend some time experimenting with the camera, maybe adding a delay instead of always being centred on the character.

Github Repo: Bouncy Shoes

So i have been able to make good progress. But have been really busy and couldn't get enough time to finish things off. I have a GameOver condition and stuff put in. I have been struggling to get cocos.menu.Menu to work but ended up writing my own as it didn't match my needs. Things left for dev: 1) Powerups 2) Start Screen 3) Screen Flows. (have to figure out what takes the user where). I spent a lot of time trying to get the art done. I was experimenting various styles. This took longer than expected. Will post Screen Shots soon.

This is a late blog post (and entry), but we have been working since Day 1! Here is a quick preview of Little Bandit!

in these last 2 days I've been a little busy and I could not advance much in my game, so tonight i'll try to move as much as possible

Well, after a slow start, it seems like we've finally gained traction and started in on the game proper! I (JC Sirron) have spent some time consolidating my messy libraries as I've been building the basic engine. I also think (no guarantees here) that I have gotten someone to do some custom music for the game as well. That will make a much more immersive game, because who doesn't like a catchy track while playing games? More posts as the game develops.

Some progress today. Thankfully, making a couple of simple levels made be realise that the game might become 'fun' (or at least challenging) at some point. I also implemented a basic tutorial to explain to the player how to play. There are quite a few different cell types but the tutorial will hopefully dispell any confusion...

Tomorrow will be a day for general all round improvement, and possibly some level design.

This evening I spent a few hours trying to fix shader bugs in wasabi-scenegraph. The lighting model was pretty much unmodified from the hastily crafted shaders from the Pyweek 16 entry, with a hasty attempt at specular lighting added on that turns out to be quite buggy. With these bugs fixed objects in the game can be properly glossy. Naturally I'll merge this work back into wasabi-scenegraph after the competition so that everyone can use it next time around. The shader work sucked up a lot of time but I think I understand it better and better the more time I spend on it.

For example, it didn't take long to change the properties of the sail material so that light is transmitted through the sail cloth, so sails now receive diffuse illumination from the reverse.

Our Pyweek 16 and 17 entries depended on Lepton and in both competitions I've found and fixed 64-bit bugs that have made it unusable when compiled on 64-bit architectures. We have a number of different use cases for particle effects in Bits of Eight that will require lepton again. As a C extension, it has always been problematic for users to install. Our "spectator" team member Sal has stepped up to package my 64-bit compatible branch of lepton: the hope is you'll be able to find a suitable binary distribution for various platforms on the PyPI page.

With lepton in hand, I've used it to create wake and bow wave particle effects, so that at last you can see your ship moving:

We still don't have a complete combat model, but the graphics engine is now looking pretty solid.

More interns were interviewed during the workday, today. A talk was given by a team member, in the evening, and a bunch of us had dinner afterwards. But most importantly, things moved forward in the game.

The basic gameplay has been implemented - the robot can move, and perform actions. The mechanics of this aren't quite right, yet, but it's a start. The art got a repaint, using an historically accurate Apple II palette (thanks Wikipedia), and real bitmap fonts.

Next on the plate are a few missing bits, some beeps, and generally trying to make the game more fun.

I've integrated cocos2d + Pymunk. I am using Pymunk just for collision detection. My progress is still too slow.