(Click on the image for a closer look)

Once again, the theme “Kittens” was voted out. *a big sad panda face*. Oh well, the final themes are usually pretty good, so I’m not too worried.

In addition, Ludum Dare has an optional “Timelapse Challenge” where you post a timelapse movie of yourself developing your game. If I can get my webcam working, I’m definitely going to participate in that. There is also a challenge to document everything you eat, using pictures, but I think I’ll probably sit that one out as my digital camera is out of commission.

Post a comment!

Anyways, I figured I might share a few snippets and wisdom that I’ve picked up along the way, so here’s a quick (?) rundown of how to use structs and pointers to create “dynamic” arrays that will resize as you need them.

Right, so let’s suppose you’ve got a struct built that you’ll use to hold some data…

typedef struct {
    char *name;
    int number;
} DATA;

And we’ll also need to set up an array, along with some variables to track how many items are in the array and how large the array is…

DATA    *TheArray;
int     numElements = 0; // keep track of the number of elements used
int     numAllocated = 0; // essentially how large the array is

What’s this? I’m not using []’s to define the size of the array? That’s right. At this point, the array is uninitialized and currently just a pointer. We’ll need to allocate memory for each entry into the array.

So next, we need a way to add items to our array that will be mindful of the fact that it is dynamic. What is needed is a function that will do three things:

• Initialize the array if it is not already initialized.
• Resize the array if more space is needed.
• Add new items to the array.

Keeping that in mind, let’s take a look at the realloc function’s prototype:

void * realloc ( void * ptr, size_t size );

The purpose of this function is to re-allocate memory to a pointer that already has memory allocated to it. Of course, you’ll only want to use it to make memory allocations larger, otherwise you’ll risk losing data. The size parameter is the amount of memory that you want to allocate. And the other parameter, ptr, is where you’d like to allocate it to. In this case, it’ll be the TheArray pointer that we’ve defined above. What is great about realloc is that if the ptr is NULL, the function will act just like malloc. This will allow us to use this one call for both initializing and resizing the array. Check this realloc reference page for more information.

Here is the AddToArray function …

void AddToArray (DATA item)
{
    if(numElements == numAllocated) // need more refs?
    {
        if (numAllocated == 0)
            numAllocated = 3; // start off with 3 refs
        else
            numAllocated *= 2; // double the refs allocated

        TheArray = (DATA*)realloc(TheArray, (numAllocated * sizeof(DATA)));

        if (TheArray == NULL)
        {
            fprintf(stdout, "ERROR: Couldn't realloc memory!");
            exit(2);
        }
    }

    TheArray[numElements] = item;
    numElements++;

    return;
}

You can see that it performs all three requirements listed above.
You may ask, ‘why is the allocation size doubling each time a resize is needed?’. This is done mainly because realloc() can be an expensive call, and if you spend a lot of time resizing your array, it could slow down the execution of your application. This way, it’s only done once in a while. Of course, feel free to fiddle with the initial allocation as well.

Also, be careful when using realloc(), as you’ll need to remember to use the free() function later on to free the memory that you’ve allocated to your program. You’ll want to run this code when you’re done using the array …

// Deallocate!
free(TheArray);

I’ve got a little example available right here:

Download Example - (arrays.c - 1.78kb)

It compiles and runs just fine using GCC, but I haven’t tried it with anything else, so your mileage may vary. Also, a huge special thanks to DrPetter and X-0ut for their help on this subject!

As always, comments are welcome!

Screenshots (click to enlarge)

Take a look at the full results. All in all, I think I did pretty well. Although I did place 19th overall, (out of 50 completed entries) I did manage to get 2nd place in the audio category! Alright!

I played the in-game music on guitar, and recorded it using good ol’ Audacity. For the sound effects, I used DrPetter’s lovely retro sound effect generator, sfxr. If you happen to play guitar, you might be interested in the guitar tab for the in-game music…

spaceReactions in-game song

E---------------------------------------------------------
B-------12~~~-----5/8\5~~-------12~~~---------------------
G------------------------------------------7/9-----5/9----
D----14---------7------------14----------9-------7--------
A---------------------------------------------------------
E-12----------5-----------12----------7--------5---------- (repeat)

Use some light distortion and some tremolo for the best effect 

The development process was a little on the frustrating side of things this time around. I was originally planning on using C for this game, but due to some compiler issues, I fell back to good ol’ Python for development. As my idea for the game fleshed out, I found myself somewhat struggling with some “easy” trigonometry issues, as I hadn’t really thought too much about trig since high school. Eventually I got it all sorted out and working, but it left me with little time to tweak the game for playability issues. As a result, I ended up with a game that is far too much on the easy side of things, as you can tell from some of the comments left from other competitors. Aside from that, I ended up with a game that looks pretty good, sounds great, and I’m very proud of it.

I hope you enjoy it! The download contains both a win32 executable as well as the source py files, so you can play in linux and OSX.

Download: spaceReactions-fydo-LD10.zip - 3.44mb (Win32 / Source)

Oh, and a quick note about this round’s Ludum Dare website, which was developed by Phil Hassey: I absolutely loved the idea of user-creatable trophies that you can give to other users. I received this ever-so-cute “Excellence in Kittens and Planet Destruction” award (shown on the right) from a fellow competitor, mjau. You can see other awards on my Ludum Dare profile page.

My friend (and best man!) Jeff Powers recently started a new webcomic called GeoGuys. It’s a funny little comic about three friends who are “nerds at heart”. I think it’s pretty good, so you should go look at it.

In addition, another friend, Dave Butt (a groomsman at my wedding!) also started a new blog, called d:\blog.exe. To be honest, I don’t really know what’s wrong with his old blog, but I won’t ask the hard questions. He recently became engaged (exciting!) and has asked me to be the Master of Ceremonies at his wedding reception (also exciting!). So congratulations to Dave and Ashley!

Oh also, if you’re into game development competitions, the “Ludum Dare X” competition is starting soon! Dec. 7-14th for Registration and Theme Voting, and Dec. 14-16th at 7pm PST is the competition. Of course, see the Ludum Dare website for more information. For what it’s worth, I’m hoping to take part in the competition (if time permits)

I’ve got a win32 build and sources for non-Windows users (like you cool Linux and OSX guys!)

As usual, it’s under open source licenses, so do what you like. However, if you find a bug, fix a bug, use my graphics in your own project, or have any comments about the game, I would love to hear about it! You can contact me via my contact page.

Most of all, I hope you enjoy it!

In my opinion, the reason we received mostly low scores was because our team’s idea was overly ambitious for only a week of development time. They wanted a full-fledged isometric Real-Time Strategy game, with nearly a dozen races to choose from. In the end, our submitted entry was minimally playable, and players didn’t get to see many of the other races available. It wasn’t from lack of trying, though! The lead programmer in our team actually was sick on the last day from staying awake for too long. Yikes!

After taking the first couple days of Pyweek off to get married, I spent the remaining days working solely on unit graphics for the different races. All in all, I completed 4 races for the game, plus a few extras. On the left you can see one of my favorite units, the “Frostlen Captain”, in action!
You can download the game and take a look at the resources to see them all if you’re really curious. I’m looking into making a nice page for them and releasing them under a free license for everyone to use.

EDIT: I also want to add a quick message to everyone: If you haven’t yet tried Disk Field, go do it! It’s super fun and totally fulfills the theme, too! The game totally deserves the first place it received!

Yes, it’s true. On Sept. 1, 2007, I totally got married to my beautiful new wife, Kristen. Alright!

Both the ceremony and reception were awesome. We’ve got a zillion pictures to sort through (and thank you notes to write), and I’m considering putting up a gallery of some of the pictures. We’ll see what my hosting provider thinks of that.

Anyways, if you’re getting married in Central Alberta, I’d totally recommend the Red Deer Lodge. Very helpful and accommodating! They were really great about letting us use candles and rosepetals, etc. whereas other Red Deer Hotels were either very strict about that sort of thing, or clueless.
(And no, they didn’t pay me to say that, har har.)

It certainly took a while to complete. Some parts were far more difficult than I remember (I hope I’m not just getting old. Eek!)
However the most difficult section of the game (and rightfully so) was the final boss fight, against Zoda. Man, if he even touched you? Instant death for you. That’s badass.

After a bit of frustration (I only used savestates a couple of times, honest! ) I finally defeated Zoda and went on to experience the game’s ending. Though I found the end story to be a little hokey (some of those Argonians look like elves!), I was particularly impressed by the awesome ‘zooming-out’ effect at the very end of the game. Very cool and not something I expected to see in an oldschool NES game. (I made a quick animation of it. Click here to see it, as I don’t want to spoil it for anyone.)

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the game and whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who likes action/adventure games. I mean, who wouldn’t want to kill stuff with a Yo-yo!

Some cool Startropics-related links:

• One of the best Startropics fansites I’ve seen.
• A social commentary on how Chapter 5 of the game is an allegory to American history.
• A very nicely put together page showing the ending sequence of the game after all the dialogue. (spoiler alert)