December 2008
Lith is the library I will be using to develop my entry. It is a simple wrapper to Direct3D 9 (written in C++) and some GUI and other utility classes. It also includes tlib, another library that provides a string class and various collection classes. Download it here (Updated 7 December 2:45 PM NZDT to fix a bug with closing files opened for reading)
I have also created a scratch program that displays an empty window. Download it here
Download Frog Rescue (Release Candidate. Requires Windows and DirectX 9)
T + 46.5 hours
Frog Rescue is now in release candidate phase. I'd like to add some better AI for the cars but there's probably not enough time. So unless I can add any more stuff this will be my final version!
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T + 45 hours
Frog Rescue is now officially in beta! I have added a high-score to the game. I've also fixed a couple of bugs and made a title screen. There's probably a few more changes I'll make in the next three hours if I get the chance...
T + 33.5 hours
I now have the capability of printing numbers, although I have only drawn some digits so far so they don't show up properly yet.
So I've managed to get a playable entry with time to spare! I'll spend tomorrow polishing it up, but for now I'm going to bed.
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T + 32.25 hours
My game is technically playable! Although it's probably a bit boring at the moment at least until I add scores and tweak the gameplay balance in terms of car speed and numbers of things (cars, frogs and roadblocks).
You can now add roadblocks by clicking on a horizontal or vertical road. I freaked out for a bit when I realised I had no easy way of converting the mouse cursor co-ordinates into game co-ordinates for the roadblocks, but I managed to solve it in the end.
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T + 28 hours
I now have cars! I drew one of the car sprites by hand, and I used my camera to take pictures of some toy cars that I had for the other two. Next I will implement frogs being run over, then hopefully some gameplay.
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Also, this happened outside my house just after I put new batteries in my camera:
 I'll probably use this picture for my title screen. Thanks anonymous idiots! :) |
T + 21.75 hours
I have improved the road generation and implemented camera controls (move the mouse to the edge of the window to scroll, press A to zoom the camera out). Also the frogs disappear when they get past the roads.
Also, I discovered a bug in the Lith library where I was calling FlushFileBuffers() in the CFile destructor and throwing an exception when it failed (which it always did if the file was opened in read-only mode). I'm not really sure why I was doing that, so I just commented out the call.
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T + 8.5 hours
I have implemented the beginnings of roads. And now I'm going to bed.
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T + 7.5 hours
So my idea is to have frogs crossing a network of roads and you have to set up roadblocks to stop cars from running them over. So far all I have is jumping frogs.
 Screenshot of jumping frogs. |
 You took a day off work for this? |
T - ~1 hour
I took some pictures while waiting for the compo to start:
 Obligatory desk photo. |
 Obligatory cat photo. |
 Perfect weather to stay inside coding. |