Real life interfered, so I wasn't able to get much done. Still, you can now fire, and destroy rock/trees. You can also lose the game, via running out of water or wood.
Version 0.02

The game story is simple.. you are a mischivious guy who loves adventures. You get into a highly protected area with a steam powered wood cutting machine and cut down the trees in that area. The cops are really pissed off and thats' the thrill you get... :D you are given challenges.. like collect 500wood and trap 3 cops ..and if you complete the mission without being caught.. you win :D Once you are done with the challenge.. you must escape from the cops for which you have to get into the steam powered get away train :D

Hi,

I guess it's time to unveil some information about our game. Basically, it's going to be a train game, and as far as genres are concerned, we're aiming for a arcade-logical crossover.

Let me explain: the player will be presented with a railway network, with trains going from one station to another. Lots of them. Player's task will be to guide the trains, by setting switches and semaphores, so that trains get to their destinations as fast as possible and with no collisions!

If we're able to design some crazy levels, I'm pretty sure that the game will be quite enjoyable. :-) I'm going to post some music and first screenshots soon!

My game seems to be about killing sharks now. There is now basically a stream of sharks that come at you and you have to shoot them. I will add some more enemies, such as the sailboat I had in the mockup screenshot. Currently I'm trying to fix the code so that the waves aren't such a kludge that they are now. I will probably try to make the waves a core thing to the gameplay mechanic, so that you'll have to take advantage of the height differences to reign victorious.

Uh oh, so apparently 1. train physics are pretty complex (read: cool), and 2. my physics is a bit rusty... time to blow the dust off the olde textbook!

Steam rises, hits a cold surface and condenses, forming a water droplet which runs along the surface until it falls, bounces, and hits the hot plate, vaporising instantly into steam, which rises... Conservation of energy!

i hate twisted. i want a library, not a framework. I can write my own darn framework.

Well, so far I've only really managed to spend a couple of hours on my entry, and pretty much all I've achieved is completely scrapping the original idea, as the more I thought about it, the more work it was going to be to get something I'd be completely happy with in a week. So, I've got something new in mind which I think is going to be much more achievable, but can always be enhanced in whatever time I have left. All things being well, my current target is to have the basics down by tomorrow night.

I had a lot of trouble coming up with an idea that I liked. Everything I came up with was either too boring, too complex, or something that has been done before. That's not to say that my current idea hasn't been done before, as it is an old school side scroller, but I hope I can make it different enough from other games that it's still interesting. The idea here is basically that you're operating a steamboat on the wide open ocean, trying to avoid any hazards and fighting some enemies. The mockup I made is pretty flat, so I might go with something like in games like Double Dragon or Battletoads (which actually had the toads operating some water scooters), so I can have some more interesting maps. In the mockup I made there's not much yet, but there's the player's steamboat and an enemy sailing ship. Other possible enemies would be mines, birds, and perhaps a dieseld powered boss battleship. Some abilities that I've been thinking for the ship are jumping, diving and charging (demolish sailing boats by crashing into them). I'm probably not giving it guns, because that's boring. More on the game as I progress. Currently is mostly just an idea, which might be bad because it's already the second day, but it's not too complex, so I'm sure I can manage it. :-)

I spent the weekend in London which meant that I've only just found out the theme for the challenge. I'm now at work and it'll be at least 6 more hours before I can get home to start work. :-(

Fortunately the chosen theme was by far my favourite option so I've already got a well thought out plan for the game which should give me a good start.

My tactic seems to be quite different to most people - I'm going for a simple game. It's only 2d (a recreation of a classic game but with a twist) and no AI or other hard stuff to code. I'm hoping that the extra polish I'll be able to give my game will give me the edge over these fancy-pants 3D, multi-person team games.

I couldn't imagine trying to work in a team with people I've never worked with before, over the Internet, and under such a strict time constraint. Still, if that's the way people want to work then good luck to them! I'm happy by myself :-)

Targets for today:

• Write design document.
• Create initial graphics.
• Get game framework running.

Available time: 5 hours.