Eric here! I thought it might be interesting (and maybe helpful for me to keep track of what's happening) to write a quick update on the progress we made last night.
The theme for Ludum Dare 31, "Entire Game on One Screen" kind of baffled Colin and I at first. We met on Google Hangouts at 8pm (right as the theme was revealed) and proceeded to spend an hour tossing ideas back and forth. We tried to think of other games that could possibly fit into the theme (Buster Bros., Super Stardust HD, Clu Clu Land) and pulled up some Youtube videos.
Super Stardust HD caught my attention for a fair amount of time as I never had a chance to play it when it came out, but I've been loving Geometry Wars 3 recently so a twin-stick shooter seemed like an attractive idea. While entranced by the chaos, Colin and I discussed ways we could make a twin-stick shooter that was unique...and not just a clone of Geometry Wars. Good question, Colin.
As my attention shifted back to the Super Stardust video, I noticed the player was embroiled in a boss fight with a weird snake-ish robot thing. As the boss curled around the player, I noticed the ends of the snake looked familiar. They looked like flippers.
"What about a pinball game?"
Colin was into it.
"What if the ball can shoot, like in a twin-stick shooter?"
Oh yeah. That's it. We had our idea.
I opened up Construct 2 and began working on a crude prototype while Colin fought with unsigned Java plugins on his quest to play weird old NES (Pinball Quest) and SNES (Ultraman Battle Pinball) pinball games. Eventually he gave me a rough outline of a pinball course and I was able to mock it up in Construct and have a place for the ball to zoom around.
After a few hours of work (and this outdated, but still applicable pinball tutorial on Scirra's website), we had the rough beginnings of a pinball game! I gave the ball some firepower and called it a night.
Now I'm well rested and ready to roll (pun intended)!
P.S. How do you like the attached music track? It's a short sample our special musical guest Reid Turner gave us a few days ago. I'm glad it still fits our idea so well! Reid has a busy weekend full of other musical commitments, but he's planning on expanding this sample before the end of the jam so we'll have a great soundtrack to go along with Colin's fantastic art. Be sure to like his Facebook page and let him know how much you dig his stuff!