Forgot I made a Snowballs Chance for Ludum Dare #28 - http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19148487/LD28/SnowballsChance/SnowballsChance.html
It’s a turn based survival game with Gnomes and Zombie Gnomes in a winter garden.
Another hour spent on collecting and processing graphics, creating a simple background scene and throwing together a quick image mockup of the game Santa’s Rocketing Christmas Drop.
Obviously, the presents will need to magically shrink down a bit for the chimneys. Actually, I think maybe I will make them magically get pulled into the chimneys as they scale down.
That’s all the time I have for this today. Now, I am gonna check out the Christmas games in the posts above! =)
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Cool game. Strangely addicting! I never made it past this level in the screenshot. Tried many times but I always ended up killing the Grinch and a Gingerbread (?) man along with him thus failing the level.
Very interesting choice to tackle for such a limited amount of time. I got my butt kicked but it was fun moving around and throwing snowballs at them. I am guessing a person needs to focus more on building up a snow fort. I sent my two little dudes out on a scouting mission and ended up engaging a horde that kept running out from the right side. Pressing onward I saw a little doorway in the wall. I also noticed there are igloos and other structures scattered around the map.
Not sure what you are NOOOOOO-ing about. So YEEESSS! I am glad most of the graphics are ready. Hate that part. Such a waste of time but is needed of course. lol Anyway, next time I can start on the real work of bringing it to life through programming.
$1500 worth of egnogg? You’re mad! D:
Is possible to pass every Level. Can prove it here, keep caution Spoiler.
Stay tuned for the Update on 1 Dec. 2014 for Android and Webplayer Version.
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Managed to put another 5.5 hours in on the Christmas game Santa’s Rocketing Christmas Drop. Including the time spent collecting and processing graphics and making a mock-up screen that means…
I have sunk 8 hours into this thing so far:
9.5 hours … updated the behind-the-sled thrust FX, implemented the gift dropping and redid the background. Don’t expect much in the way of graphics. I am no artist and that is why I am using free clip art for most of the graphics:
14 hours… Yep last night I spent 3 and 1/2 hours implementing collisions for the house roofs and chimneys and the associated interactions. Of course, needed to implement a little magic for the presents entering the chimneys. Then I spent 1 more hour this morning fine-tuning the chimney collision zone, the roof collision interaction and the presents entering chimney process. The game is starting to shape up.
Total time now at 17 hours… Hard to imagine I spent 3 hours bringing the “cardboard cutout clipart” reindeer to life but that is what it took. Of course, I had to draw the snowball too, forgot to do that previously. And then tweaking his movement. And then tweaking his throw rate. And then tweaking his projections of where the player will be based on current velocity. Then tweaking the actual snowballs animation during flight. Yeah… it all adds up. No collisions in yet.
Total time now 21 hours. Was too busy yesterday with the holiday festivities (had a great feast and excellent time hanging out with family btw) but I managed 4 hours on the game today! =) Tonight I implemented the collisions between the snowballs and the Sled and the snowballs and the Presents along with the interactions of course. Also tweaked the sled snowfall and thrust graphics slightly, added the new snow effect for the snowball impact and tweaked things in general a bit here & there across the project. I’ll need to adjust some things at some point because it will be quite challenging to deliver all of the presents if the reindeer throws snowballs this often and this accurately:
Total time now 24 hours. Tweaked some of the object graphics and redid the background. Graphics take such a long for me to do and end up mediocre in the end but I try. Updated the collision detection & interaction (aka physics but of course I am not using the built-in physics system) for the snowballs and the sled, snowballs and presents, the presents and the house roof, and the presents and the chimneys. Updated the Santa & Sled impact and recovery states to more clearly communicate what is happening. Basically, just a lot of tweaking this time around. It feels pretty solid now so next session I will be pushing forward. Getting close to being able to wrap this thing up:
Total time now 25 hours. Tweaked some stuff a bit more, worked on the house images (bugged me that the original clip art had the lights on, everyone is supposed to be sleeping) and the background a bit more. No more graphics work on this stuff. Except maybe when the game is done. I am not sure if my updates are making it look better or worse. But I have many options created at this point that I can swap in at the end:
Total time now 27 hours. I wasn’t sure how title screens and such were done in Unity. I almost went ahead and did it all one scene. Then I realized hey I bet I can make a separate scene for the other screens. Did some quick searching around and yep I found you sure can. So, that made it easy. Anyway, spent 2 hours reading about scenes, Application.LoadLevel and such (I never realized scenes could – and are supposed to be – dragged into the Build Settings oddly in my other Unity projects I never did that and all worked fine probably because I only had one scene), creating a SceneManager and then implementing this title screen. So far, only the Start button actually does anything which is obviously… takes you the to actual game.
Total time now at 30 hours: Yes, I actually spent another 3 hours on the title screen. Of course, that included the About and Credits screens too. Added a decent little parallax snowfall. Those are easy but add a nice touch I think. Anyway, here is the 5-hour title screen. Woo hoo! lol It actually looks much better when everything is in motion. I also got the domain and a new web hosting account for my new GarsGames.com website. Nothing there yet but that will be my future home for games stuff.
Total time now at 36 hours: I invested 1 more hour into the background. This is definitely much closer to how I wanted it to be. I won’t spend any more time on it unless I decide to add some more distant trees. I spent 2 hours designing the text images for the status display at the top of the screen and the Level Introduction text.
Then I spent 3 more hours implementing the level data for the number of gifts to deliver (actually broken down per house but that is not implemented yet), the Game Manager to know if the Level Intro is active (fading in the text, displaying it or fading it out), the game is being played, etc. So, now you can clear a level and advance to the next. The Status Manager to handle the display at the top. That is now live tracking presents delivered, how many remain to be delivered and how many have been missed.
Basically, this was a major push forward toward the finish line. There are now two reindeer but the first level is easy with only 6 gifts to deliver. That will help players get some quick success:
Keep clearing levels and ultimately you will reach:
38 hours. Last night I spent two hours on the game. Increased the size of the stats at the top. Also made the Missed counter blink red when a gift misses a chimney and is lost. When the player can only miss 1 more gift the counter stays red. Also created the image for the black smoke pouring out of the sled when it crashes to the ground. And then sits there a few seconds with smoke pouring up from it before looping back to the Title Screen:
40 hours. Tonight I spent another 2 hours on the game. Created the graphics for the You Won game state. Coded up the effects of them sliding on the screen. The GarsGames.com text fading in & out a few times and then the game cycling back to the Title Screen:
You can check out the current W.I.P. here.
Controls are implemented but the gifts do not collide with anything yet.
Santa (you) flies across the screen in his new Rocket-powered sleigh. One of the reindeer looks on from below.
Title Screen Controls:
Move focus up to next button with Up Arrow or W
Move focus down to next button with Down Arrow or Z
Press the currently selected button with X, Space or Enter (or Return as Unity calls it old school style)
Game-Play Controls:
A and D or Left and Right arrow keys move left and right.
Left Shift, Space or Right Shift drops a Christmas present.
No need to worry about vertical movement. The high-tech sleigh automatically handles vertical thrust as needed to keep you in the air.
Perhaps the best thing about this game is now all who play will know, once and for all, just exactly where snow fall comes from!
Loving the work! I’m working on a Christmas game myself, I was wondering if you had any extra time to help out? Maybe we could set a team up and get a good idea going! 
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Glad you are enjoying the progress on my Christmas game. It’s just a lighthearted project. Very glad to hear you are also working on a Christmas game. I am surprised more people aren’t into making some holiday games!
I think it is very cool that someone here actually wants to team up. For the next several weeks though I really don’t have much free time. I have a 2 to 3 hours per night and have a platform game (my main project), this Christmas game and am collaborating with another person on another game. Although he is doing most of the implementation work on that one at least so far.
I doubt I’d really work all that well with most other Unity developers to be honest. I don’t really do things the Unity way. I find it a lot simpler to just code things up myself like the physics, animations and so forth the way I have been used to for a long time now instead of learning yet another engine / api’s way of doing these things. So… where most people probably just drop an object into the scene and let Unity systems handle physics, collisions and so forth I write a lot more code to those things. Just what I am used to and prefer.
No problem, I’m looking forward to seeing your progress though! 
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I’m working on an Xmas game as well, it’s gonna be like Frogger, but in 3d, but it’s gonna be more to it than just getting to the other side…
But you’re a reindeer not a frog lol.
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I wish I would have thought of that idea ^ x_x
So i’m thinking, how about we start up a Big Holiday Game Contest with a nice prize?
Which one? Mine?
Yeah I would like the contest idea :)…
@robbyunitas and @N1warhead_1 let’s see some screenshots or even better a web player! Help to encourage some holiday game dev spirit around here! 
@N1warhead_1 that is a cool twist on Frogger!
Looking forward to the end of this workday. Tomorrow my holiday break begins! Tonight is collisions and interaction for gift hitting house roof, ground and going in chimney.
It’s an Android game, but I’ll post a quick photo :)… I’m trying to keep the classic Frogger feel with graphics quality.
Right now the game is just called Deery, I’m to busy to come up with a proper name LOL. Just tried to make it sound like Frogger LOL.
(But sense it is an Android game) the joy sticks just don’t show properly on GameView in Inspector, but they show properly on device LOL.
I’m making this a bit different than Frogger though, yeah you’ll have to go to the end of the level, but guess what, on some levels, you’ll have to go all the way back to the middle of the map or something to get the last present santa lost… Which is the Pink thing in the image, I’m making it where people have to think to get the objective, not just run jump and get it lol.
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Hehe, I’m trying. I don’t think I’ve slept very much as of late Game designing is just so fun!
@N1warhead_1 , Yeah I love the idea, and I love that you’re changing it up a little bit. Makes it more original and adds a nice twist to it. I can’t wait to play really, since it’s been like ten years since I’ve even played frogger haha. If you need any help let me know!
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I’m keeping it simple with my game.
You have to dodge massive snowballs all the while dropping presents into the chimneys of little deserving children. A missed chimney or being hit by a snowball takes a life.
No pressure
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Awesome idea and excellent presentation. Mine will look junky in comparison but it will play well I think. I can control that part. Graphics nope. Looking forward to playing it. Hopefully a web player version!
Everyone making all of these games for cell phones I don’t get it. Web player makes it easy to share with everyone instantly.
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I agree. For instance, the new Candy Soda Crush game was a webplayer game first, then once it got enough feedback, they then put it on phones.
More people should do that to gain feedback, popularity and free marketing.
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