Here's the Game

Unfortunately I have not added sound but I have work tomorrow and I need to sleep. Here's a link to the game. Download and enjoy.
Gene Pool Defense DOWNLOAD

All the Art, None of the Sounds

I've created all the artwork and some really simple menu screens. The title card and menu screen art are usually my favorite things to do but I have work tomorrow and I really just wanna finish. I need to download and insert all the sound and then I'm done. I believe it's a decent solo jam game. Here's some screenshots.

The desaturated and translucent plant is what your cursor becomes when you're ready to build.

Art Update

Before I started creating the art assets I decided to try the isometric thing out. It was pretty simple to get it going but then when I started doing the artwork I realized it would be 1000 times harder to create rotating flower turrets in an isometric view. So, I went back to the top down view but not after wasting a couple hours. So far here are the sprites I've finished.

I've actually got several of the scarlet puss bombs. They have a 2 frame animation for the legs and they face left and right... I guess that's really just 2 images and their mirrors. You can also see the flower turret and the gene pool.
I have a few more sprites left and then some menu images and then I'm done. I have about 4 and half hours to finish and submit. Here's hoping I get all the art done by then.

Aaaaaaaannnnnnndddddd It's a Playable TAG Jam Game

I just put in a menu system that works. You have to hit start, play the game, and eventually you lose and go to the game over screen. I have one level right now. I'll put in the art and it'll be done. Yayayayayayayayayay!

Took a Break, Solved the Draw Text Bug

I'm not super experienced with game maker. I've used it once before on my 9 Lives demo sprint and haven't used it since then. As a result, I didn't know you couldn't use the "draw" commands outside of the "draw" event. I know it's a simple problem but I just couldn't see it. So I took an hour break, got some caffeine, some Kombucha, and just didn't think about it. When I returned to the game I was able to see it immediately. I only have to put a win/lose state in, put in a menu, and create the artwork (my favorite part) and then I have a functional game. After that's done it's all polish. Here's some screen shots.

Nearing the End

I'm very close to having a functional game. I need to put a menu on it, make it so it has a win/lose state, and indicate how many resources the player has. For some reason I'm having a lot of trouble drawing the resource count to the screen. I really hope that doesn't become a big problem.
The game has a few bugs in regards to bullets that are fired and have no where to go. I'm not 100% sure what to do about them but it's not a game breaking bug so I won't worry about it until later. I still need to make sprites and put them in and would love to make it isometric but I doubt that'll happen. It'd be more prudent to finish the game and polish it before I attempt anything more advanced than I already have.
No screen shots this time, sorry :(

Building Towers and Making Waves

So far I've given the player the ability to build towers and the enemies come in waves... sort of. They come in one wave but the come in a cluster. Now I just need to create additional waves and display how many resources the player has. Here's some screen shots where you can see the player starts without towers and then can build them as the game goes on. Also, you can see my little enemy cluster.

Final Day

This is my final day and final sprint to the finish. I won't have Monday to fix bugs as I'll be at work so the entire game needs to come together today. I'm hard at work and believe I can make a decent tower defense game by the deadline. Here goes nothing.

I Have A Life?!

Today was an extremely unproductive day. I spent the day doing actual life responsibilities and didn't have time to work on my game. I'm gonna try and squeeze as much time in tonight as possible but even as I write this I know that's wishful thinking. I'm too tired. Tomorrow I'll have to sprint to the finish. Ugh, sometimes it'd be better if I could do the game jam for an entire weekend and the whole world around me would pause while I did.
However, on a better note. Here's a screenshot from the latest build. Not much different from my last upload but it'll look better once I put actual sprites in.

So Much To Do Such Little Time

It's about midnight here and I'm just rounding the corner on my first goal. I have one tower that shoots and kills one enemy as it travels along a path towards the goal. The tower faces the enemy when it's within range, the enemy faces the direction it's traveling, the bullets destroy themselves when the intersect with the enemy, the enemy destroys itself when intersecting with the goal. All is right with the world right now.

My next goal is to allow the player to select where he places the one tower and show a win/lose screen depending on whether the enemy was destroyed before reaching it's goal. Then comes the introduction of resources and building multiple towers to fend off multiple waves. I think I'll at least get that much done. Wrap it in a menu system and insert my own art. Passed that I have a lot more game play that I would love to fit in but on a solo jam during which I have work and plans with my girlfriend it might not happen.

Here's a screenshot so far...

Scans of My Design Notebook

Here's the scans of my design notebook so far. I really like sketching and taking physical notes. I always feels it helps the process.

The Real Beginning

I got home from work, promptly napped, ate dinner, and I'm finally beginning development on my TAG game. I've never made a tower defense game before so this will be new for me. I'm also going to try and do something isometric but that may be reaching.

The Beginning of Ivan TAG Development

So my very first arbitrary game jam started last night at 3am local time. Despite having to be up for work at 6 I stayed up until the theme was announced. The three themes we have to work from are "scarletina," "biodiversity," and "anabasis."
I woke up this morning and did some pre work shower brainstorming. I wanted to go with scarletina because of how easy it would be to incorporate color. A game based on such a huge visual indicator such as something turning red could be eye candy. As I thought about it I moved toward anabasis. A simple tower defense game would be within my solo jam scope and wouldn't require anything too extravagant. No enemy AI, no arduous animations, and no collision detection if I didn't want it. The more I thought about it the more I sold the idea to myself.
It takes me an hour and half to drive to work each morning and so the brainstorming continued on my commute into work. I thought about how to break the game down into steps to ensure I came out with a completed game at the end of the weekend. I thought about incorporating scarlet fever into the design. The waves of enemies could be bringing scarlet fever to your city and you must stop them from entering or risk plague. I was pretty happy with that idea. I could incorporate two themes into a game that would be simple to make.
As I pulled into work I had another epiphany. When I think about having waves and waves of infected soldiers pouring into your base I think of Zerglings. I started to think of Infected Terran and how the Zerg relate to biodiversity. Then I thought I could have the player play as native animals to an island that are defending it from these scarlet fever zerg-like enemies. The scarlet fever in this case would homogenize your gene pool (your new base that you'd be defending). This way you'd play as nature defending a literal gene pool from a homogenizing plague called scarlet fever.

The final game concept is... 
Playing as nature, you must plant various shrub, pod, and flower towers to defend your gene pool from the encroaching plague of homogenization called Scarletina.

I'll upload some scans of my design notebook later.