Alright, I'm late, and this will probably double as my progress for this week, but here we go:

I'm quite unhappy with the rate of my "progress" and the direction the game is going in, but meh.

I got a lot of shit done today. Blarg.

Humiliate all you like but I'm in the middle of exams and will have them for two more weeks

Nice shadows Char Car

Skimmed the rules and I think I'm still fine to enter.

This has basically been my life for the past couple months. I'm calling it "Abysmal Hora."

Establishing shot

Close up

Coins

Falling

I've said it before in my blogs- but motion is so important to getting a good idea of the game. If anyone can recommend screen capture software for Mac that won't lag Unity… let me know.

Dear diary,

I now believe there is a god.

Kilin

Updating the participants list with Jake and Polyman. About time we got a Unity game in here.

Also:

First of all, it is a consecutive three week penalty. Second, it wasn't intended to punish people for things that life throws at them, it was simply meant for those who are too lazy and can't be assed to open up their game file once a week and make a single change.

I'm just gonna put this here and pretend that I'm already accepted into the completition because I'm 2cool4rulez

The very day that I decided to check what the prices were on mobile development for Unity, Unity made mobile development free. So, because I abhor using Java, I got right to work on turning this idea I had on paper into a real tangible thing with Unity. At least, as tangible as something digital can get.

So, my list of changes this week is actually a list of changes of all time. Here's everything that's happened to Regions ever, chronologically:

-I made floaty rectangles! They float around really nicely and I will probably base the entire visual style off of this floatiness, because it's really easy to implement and looks cool. I learned how to generate meshes via scripts in Unity as a byproduct.

-I made it so the game can generate rectangles based on a 2d array of numbers! This is super important, because that's pretty much the entire game right there - I'm sure as hell not going to make 100 different scenes with every rectangle manually placed.

-You can drag paths on the rectangles, but only sometimes! In other words, I made the basic game mechanics actually function. Here's a screenshot of path-making in action:

Aren't puzzle games just fascinating?

-Levels are read from files! Eventually, I'll be able to stick a whole bunch of text files into a folder and let the game figure it out.

So what needs to happen between now and the launch?

-Winning levels

-Transitioning between levels

-Menus of many varieties

-Make lots of levels

-Music and sound

Note that graphics isn't on this list, since this game's graphical style is basically going to be a Metro interface that's had a little bit too much to drink.

Another really fun part about this development process is going to be the fact that I'm spending the entire month of June in Germany, meaning for an entire month I will only be able to think about the game, not actually developing anything. I'll probably try and get everything that isn't "Make lots of levels" done before then, or at least as much of it as possible. I can develop quickly, and the game isn't too terribly hard to make, but I'm still a little apprehensive about it. If worst comes to worst, I'll end up just not being a part of the bundle and releasing a little bit later.

I think I am going to join in late to the party, not because I actually expect to get it completed, but because I need a reason to get off my arse and make some progress on something

I will be attempting to at least get the level generation and basic engine of my roguelike done. so far it consists of a drunken walker cave generator that places start and end points and possible positions for items

as previously stated, this is more of a motivator than a competition, so I feel like I should still be ok to join in

the generator in its current state

it runs pretty slowly, it takes about 1.5 seconds to generate each level, on my computer which is fairly high spec, the player will not want to wait this long between levels, roguelikes tend to be best when there are not really any breaks in decision making time.

it is also very hard to control how the levels will look, it is almost purely random.(there are variables to control the straightness of tunnels, but anything high enough to be noticeable looks very unnatural and fugly) there is also a variable to control the roundness of the level as a whole, however making the level round also makes it very small. the default settings will also generate single round chambers from time to time.

there is an erosion variable, which I quite like the effect of, but again, due to the near complete randomness of the generator, it is hard to tell when the smoothness comes from the code I have written, or just pure luck

start and end points (red and green blocks)

potential Item/enemy locations(each will have a percentage to contain a certain type of item, or none at all, which is more likely, and the specific item will be decided by a dice roll and a variable for the "value" of a level, which is calculated from several factors such as depth, and (in the future) how hard that chamber is to find or get access to, due to monsters, traps, hidden doors, puzzles etc.)

I plan to do some sort of cellular automata simulation on the item positions to clump them together more and get them in the center of smaller rooms

there is currently no way to save levels

I made a quick test of a character walking through the levels and colliding with blocks, then generating a new level when they reach the red block.

one promising method for speeding up the level generation (well, speeding up the time the player notices that the game is generating levels) is to generate in small segments while the player is actually in the previous level. this would be much easier if I choose to keep a turn based system, because the level generation does not need to wait for the player to make a turn.

yeah, so it is all just Ideas at the moment, I have a lot of pages of notes about this which will probably help.

oh and I also have the plan, and pseudocode notes, to smooth the level out and create sloped walls. if the game follows a grid based movement system, this will be purely aesthetic, but if I go with zelda style movement (which is what my test was done with) then the player will be able to walk into these slopes and slide along them(kinda)