Needs more stars…

I almost didn’t enter but I really wanted to do this theme so I’m going ahead with my (not) game which has you identifying constellations in a star-filled sky. Possibly with a meta-narrative thing going along with it. Will be a bit dry otherwise.

Tags: Flixel

This is my game Loss of Control made for the MiniLD (theme “Not-Game”). It is less a not-game, more not a game – just a trial to make my art skills better and implementing it with XNA (checking out a particle system etc.).

What happens on the screen isn’t previously rendered. There is a background-image for the room. The lamp has an own graphic which is moved as well as the light on the floor. The two guys have own images too (if I had the time, I would animate them…). Even the clock’s hand is done by rotating a small line instead of animating the clock (it makes absolutely no sense to implement it on this way : D). Additionally, yellow particles are applied.

The background-music is done via iNudge, graphics with Gimp and programming with XNA (Visual Studio Express C#). I used a personal library (GB2D) which I progress on from Ludum Dare competition to competition.

You can play… ehm… watch the game here.

Phew. After an incredibly long day yesterday, I have finished. I only had yesterday to work on my entry, so I hope you enjoy:

Check it out here!

This game was made entirely with Creative Commons photos and sounds as promised to help create the most life-life annoying baby that won’t fall asleep ever to appear in notgame form. Go forth, and experience parenthood!

I forgot about the “I am entering the contest”-post.. Well, here it is! I’ve been working on my game for the whole weekend now, so I’m hoping this still counts!

About the game:

I am making a depressing game about a man taking a walk in the woods behind his house. I have a friend who makes the music for me, so a big shout out to Albin Isidor Eriksson!

Here is a screenshot on my current progress! Good stuff, good stuff!

Hello fellow Ludum Darers!

I joined the Mini LD at a slightly late hour but anyways, here is my submission about entering the contest.

This is my very first Ludum Dare ever and for it I got together a pretty dull idea about polluting flowers. It’s a not-game after all. The game itself is already accessible because it didn’t take long to get make it intact. Or maybe I’m just lazy as hell.

Please play and rate Phlowers here!

Phlowers screencap

I’m still hoping to make something a little more serious before the october challenge, but this at least is finished (well finished enough for me).

I like the first words of the game so I’ll post that as a screenshot.

I haven’t played any other entries yet, but some look pretty interesting!

Here’s mine:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-37/?action=preview&uid=14225

PS: the sound is done on a Commodore 64!

A few hours ago I finished my entry. I had a great time making this weird game. Altho it is a weird game, it does have meaning for me. It is my first Javascript game.

What went not so well:
– The first versions of the game did not work with Chrome.

What went well:
– Everything I did not mentioned above.

I would like to thank Metaldemon for pointing out the bugs in Chrome, Ratking for hosting and my son for helping out with the sounds and feedback.

You can find the entry here:

Hey Guys,

this is my first appearance and I’ve heard I should say something like “I’m in!”.

Phew, good!

My game is already uploaded but far from being finished…

For a long time i wanted to create a console-application which is able to compute my input. Plus some stats + some graphics and it’s a game!

…I mean a not-game.

I wasn’t sure about this theme, I guess  it’s something you can’t play, or something which doesn’t  rewards  you for your decisions.

I sticked with the second one.

My goal was it to create a good mood with ASCII-Art, may some animations and a world to explore (but with no fun ;)).

Long story short, this is my final work. I worked on this for 8 hours. And I’ve learnt something about time-management and finding realistic goals.

At least my implementation of the console is something I could use in later works, hopefully in a real LudumDate.

My Entry

Worked hard whole weekend for this. Maybe not as much than for a regular ludum dare because I finished about five hours earlier than before. I used the not-game theme. This is meant to be a relaxing experience. You can carry stuff and design your own garden or do what ever else you want. You can interact with frogs in many ways. Put your headphones on, play full screen and relax!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-37/?action=preview&uid=11043

I am in the PST time zone so I still have another 10 hours to work on my game. Here is my current build. The game is functional but none of the graphics have been completed yet so it doesn’t look like much. It is a rhythm game except that the player creates the music and “dance” steps. This is done in real time, though there is an editor that the player can later access to fine-tune his/her level. Because the focus is on the creation of the music/dance and not on playing the game this fits the no-game theme.  The game is at http://blazinggames.com/action/misc/ludumDareMini37.php for those of you who wish to see the early build (if any).

I must admit, my idea was way too ambitious for 48 hours – this is something I learned. If it would be a major Ludum Dare (not Mini), I would have already booked the failure. But this is really just for fun… (though major Ludum Dares are also for fun, so…). I’m glad that the submission form will be open for a week, because I still have a chance to submit the finished game.

This is what I’ve done so far:

You can “play” this unfinished game here.

The finished game would be divided to days and months. Every day would consist of time you spend at home and time you spend at your workplace. You can do different actions at both places. You get your salary at the beginning of each month, and then you can spend it for bills and repay some of the loan. Actions would cost time, and the time you’ve left for the actual day is affected by your demotivation, depression and hunger levels. If these levels are high, you’ll have less time, but if you manage to take them low, you win some additional time.

It’s 0:00 o’clock in Germany and the miniLD game jam therefore officially ends here for me. But in order to give more people the chance to create something and submit it, the submission form will be open until (at least) Friday, Sept 28th. Just be awesome and creative! Updating your submitted entry is also allowed until then.

So far, we have 30 entries! I am so proud of you all! I didn’t know what to expect regarding the amount of entries with such a complicated miniLD, but now I am relieved that some people really liked the themes and dedicated several hours to it. Thanks!

Awkwardly, I didn’t have energy this weekend to create an entry myself, but at least I got some interesting ideas that I will develop further some time.

So I’m working on a point & click “adventure” titled The Call. As you might guess from the name and the included screenshots, it’s about working in a call centre. It’s actually just one specific call, but it’s such a common call for me; a relatively mundane request that is actually fraught with all kinds of complication.

There is no winning The Call.

These screens are technically mock-ups, as they aren’t fully implemented in-game. In an uncharacteristic twist, I completed art before even touching the game’s writing or programming. I was originally going to do this in Adventure Game Studio, but I’ve never used it before and I found it very difficult as a first-timer to make something non-standard with it. So I’ve refocused for Flixel… at least this way the game will be playable in a browser.

I’ve only got a few hours left to write, voice, and program this sucker, so there’s a real good chance I’ll miss the deadline. But who cares? I’m actually having fun making this piece of crap!

It’s a not-game about the future of videogames, and the core of what videogames are, and such. Play it. Think about it. The meaning is up to you.

I ended up spending way too much time on it than I wanted, especially as I have serious exams coming up, but I’m pretty happy with the result. Especially graphics. Check out that dithering, man. Dithering. Woah.

Tags: cool people read tags, flash, future, instant gratification, MiniLD, MiniLD #37, not-games

EDIT: OMG I said game instead of not-game.

Things are going swimmingly for my little “real-time not-game”. The animations were the hardest thing to code because most of the code is just timers. You can actually get on the bus now, so tomorrow I can just polish things and add some fun stuff.

When you start it will give you the estimated time until the next bus. If you are there to click the button you can board it, otherwise the program tells you that you missed it. It will have random traffic go by. The following are mostly things I will add if I have time.

TO-DO:

-Add a Real Time day-night cycle

-Add random pedestrians and/or people who wait for the bus with you

-Add more random vehicles

-Add more sounds

-Character animations

-Mute button (your guy puts in headphones and won’t hear anything, including the bus)

Also I have pics!

I plan to have all graphics attributed to myself. I took the photo, I drew the cartoons and I traced a photo of a bus.

That bus stop is like 3 blocks from my house.

Hey so I finished my not-game about picking constellations in the sky last night! It’s only a small thing but I’m quite pleased with it. Explore an accurate representation of the night sky while listening into a couple’s idle conversation, you dirty voyeur you.

Click to go to the entry page

Tags: Flixel

Well, I finished with about half-an-hour to spare but there is a lot more I want to add to this game. I think the game has a lot of potential and hope to spend more time with it in the future, but then I have a lot of other projects that also interest me. I do plan on working on a postmortem of this game which I will post on my development blog in a few weeks. I enjoyed myself and think that working with music (my biggest weakness when it comes to game development) and dance (another weakness) was worthwhile.

So I scrapped my other idea. I want to do that at my own pace another time and do it true justice with a lot of random events.

So tonight (like 2 or 3 hours ago), I (finally) got started on a new idea for a game, based on a caveman.

I’m not really sure where it’s going yet. The fact that I want to do a not-game is pretty restricting when it comes down to it. It really shouldn’t have anything that resembles gameplay, which is really making this difficult.

So far, I’ve got a day/night cycle (basically just an overlay that’s either visible or invisible based on the time of day and a sprite that changes from a sun to a moon and back again) that supports sunrise and sunset, seasonal textures (one set for spring/summer, one for fall, and one for winter) and rain for the spring to differentiate it from the summer and snow for the winter. I also have a cave with a cave painting and a fire that’s currently out.

Here are some pictures of all of that:

Your humble abode.

Winter at night.

Fall at night.

EDIT: Finally got a pic of the sunrise. Decided to wait until it was time for it.

Fall sunrise.

And then I have a caveman that throws a spear in an arc, and has to retrieve it if he wants to throw it again.

Oh, and there’s some really horrible level design exhibited there, too. 😛

From here, I plan to add a sabertooth tiger, a deer, and maybe something like a raptor. And then I’m not sure at all. Once they’re in, should I make it so you can hunt them? The monotonous task of hunting day by day? Is that not-game-y enough?

Guess we’ll have to see where it goes from here.

EDIT: Did I mention this is all done in 50×50 pixels?! Super-low res ftw!

-Matt

So after getting a random burst of energy, I decided to put the deer’s AI in.

It’s a deer! And spring showers!

It’s not perfect, but it’ll definitely work. The only issue is that it can get stuck at the bottom of the map (though still visible and mobile). I’ll have to work something out.

Right now, the deer will cautiously watch you, and then run away if you get too close.

Oh, and also shown in that screenshot is rain from the spring settings, as well as the spring tileset. I decided to fast forward time 7 months to see what it looked like. 😛

Onwards to sabertooth tigers!

-Matt

Actual Submission Webpage

I have to admit it’s pretty simple. However, I got it working almost exactly how I envisioned it, so I’m pleased!

Source and other files are available.