Well, this was my first time participating in LD, and it was awesome. I’ll be sure to participate in future events, maybe even using Java with some kind of library like LWJGL, instead of Construct Classic.

I got rank 67 overall in the 48 hour competition, and I’m very happy with that for my first entry. I’m pretty proud I was expecting to rank only in the top half, so I was very pleasantly surprised.

One thing I’ll be sure to think about for future entries is making the game feasible and appetizing for people to complete in full. Many of the games I played I liked, but I just grew impatient and quit because I decided I didn’t want to invest that much time. I think many people understandably did that when playing my game, because it was fairly long, and very tedious/repetetive. That’s definitely something to think about; I think you want your players/judges to see all of the content/levels/graphics/etc you put into the game.

Also, I think I’ll make it a goal sometime in the future to learn how to use some kind of music-making software like FL-Studio, and learn up on composing music as well. I found that even a simple soundtrack really benefited a lot of games I played.

I enjoy playing and making 2D platforming games for a few reasons. One of which is that I can get pretty impatient, and in those games you are pretty much always jumping, dodging, shooting, etc. so I’m always kind of engaged. maybe in the future I’ll try to make a different genre. There were many simple neat games I saw that weren’t platformers.

I got around to playing about 55 games I think. I could have played a lot more, like twice or 3 times as many, but I was just feeling lazy this end of summer. Ah well. I gotta get out of that mindset – I’m moving to my college dorm this Saturday! 😀

Thanks to everyone who played my game!

We have the … FIFTH POSITION concerning the humor !!!

Our friend Spotline is the FIRST concerning the audio, congrats to him!

Our friend Ilod did pretty well also (Moche FTW !).

And our friends from Rift of time also!

Congratulation every body!

I can’t even tell how happy we are! Watch out, we’ll do best next time! No i understand more what the Ludum Dare is about. I feel bad, because i haven’t played a lot of your games. But i’ll do best next time! See you guys in December :3

The Fromagist was simple, but I appreciate everyone who posted and commented on my entry. I really only had a shot at the humor category (graphics? audio? What’s that?) and with my Java chops getting a bit stronger every day I think I can bring something more like a real game next time around. Also, I hope to nail the theme a bit better too.

I’m at work, and can’t write too much now but wow… top ten in the humor category. I’m humbled, I would’ve been happy in the top-half really.

Also, thanks to everyone who made a game I played – there’s some amazing stuff out there, and many talented people/teams that produce so much so fast it makes one’s head spin. I can’t wait for #25 and hell… maybe the mini LD too… it actually sparked an idea immediately in my brain for a ‘not-game’. We’ll see.

For now, just thanks and gratitude all around. I couldn’t have had a better intro to Ludum Dare. You are all the best!

-ABP03

I decided to make a post-compo version with the new skills I had no time to add in the 48h compo version.

In this new version, beetles will be able to fire missiles at their opponent or teleporting in their back to avoid bullets. There’s also a mutilate skill for blewing some legs off and burst of missiles as well as seeker projectiles. Ice shards slow down their target and cannibal can gain life by eating the bloody spots on ground.

You can play this new version on kongregate and save your armies there, so you will not have to copy-paste DNA code anymore.

Thank you very much to everyone who rated my game generously enough to make me reach this #5 position.

Congratulation to every winners of Ludumdare24 and congratulation to everyone who learn something by sacrificing those 3 days on the the glorious altar of video game making !

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012 at 10:20 am and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I’m not sure how, but I somehow missed almost all of the games that ended up in the top 50.

So much more playing to do now; can’t wait.

Congrats everyone!

Hi everybody !

So I’m a bit disappointed  about the results of my game…

Even if lot of people like my game’s music, I’ve reached only 2.94/5 points in audio… What ?! To my mind, this is a bad result. Very bad. I spent a lot of time creating the music, and only 2.94 … that’s not cool for me.

But… How were the results calculated ? I guess this is not a simple average of all votes…

So. I don’t know if I would participate to another ludum. I’m really disappointed…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2012 at 1:24 pm and is filed under LD #24. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

It appears that a lot of games have not received scores in any category at all – at first I thought it was due to having 0 coolness, but I then noticed the same for a number of other games with a reasonable coolness %. Are more people rating N/A than usual, or is there another reason for this? Either way, it’s pretty disappointing that what seems like hundreds of games have not received a score at all. I think the ability to see individual ratings needs to be brought back – not necessarily in the old list format, which would be huge now due to the popularity of LD, potentially make voting less anonymous, and bring back the old all-1s/all-5s complaints, but perhaps following hamster_mk_4’s suggestion in the comments on the results post, which is to display the number of times each score from 1-5 was given in each category. Even if a game doesn’t get enough non-N/A ratings to be counted in the main list, they should at least be able to get some score feedback.

Hello fellow Indie-Devs! I wanted to post and let you all know about a Project I am working on called “The Monster Factory!” Now I know that the not-so-glamorous life of an idie dev constitutes a thin wallet with barely enough money to scrape by and buy the next can of Mountain Dew that fuels our efforts… but I am not asking for much! The Monster Factory is a project I am doing to raise money for the Gift of Adoption fund.  A righteous endeavor, no? I am using Fiverr.com (not sure if that was a good or a bad idea yet) to facilitate the purchases, so the price for a monster is $5 bucks.  Out of that $5 fiverr.com pockets $1.00, I pay myself $3.00 (Working for 3-9 bucks an hour here… nothing glamorous!) and $1.00 goes to the GoA fund.  You also have the option to donate an extra 5 or 10, all of which goes to the GoA fund.  So if you want a monster draw for anything, please check it out! You then own the little guy and can do whatever you want with him! Got a pixel video game character you want me to draw? Got a character you wanna see in my style? Or do you just want to adopt a little monster to then in turn help donate money to the Gift of Adoption fund because you have a golden heart inside your little indie developer self?

What you get as a result is a high res image with a transparent background (Hell, if you want the .fla source as well id give it to you! I just know most people would not know what to do with a .fla) and you get a YouTube video of me drawing your monster.  Kinda cool right? Here are a few examples of what I have done so far:

(Click on them to link to their YouTube videos)

Thanks for your time! Check out the project here:

The Monster Factory Project

There seems to be quite a few of them – no score in any section whatsoever, even with a number of comments saying they played and liked the game. I know that I’d be really disheartened if this happened to me. Is this a bug, or just a lot of people decided to comment without voting? What is happening?

EDIT: Where does it say there is a 12 vote threshold? I had no idea, neither have I been told in ld 22 or 23. It’s not mentioned in the rules.

Hello again, all, this time around for LD, I made a first person puzzle game called “Project ‘E’ “. This was a first for me: I had never made a puzzle game before. I’m so used to actiony games and combat games that I actually made the music a little too extreme 😛 Anyways here’s the game:

PLAY

If you want to see how I made the game, watch this ACTION PACKED TIMELAPSE:

My game also got reviewed by Raw Media!

RESULTS! (Drum Roll)

Okay! So overall not bad, getting 100 – 200 rankings. This was a lot better than last time, but not quite as good as LD22. Here’s a chart for ya’ll:

Alright so looks like audio and mood are definitely my top categories! (Which is good because that’s what I work on the most) Something I definitely need to work on though is the graphics. Art styles have DEFINITELY been IMPROVING on Ludum Dare, and I need to get up to speed with mine 😀

Happy gaming, Ludum Dare <3

CLOSING THOUGHTS

MAKING A PUZZLE GAME

MY WORKSPACE

KITTENS

Tags: final, hq, post-mortem, timelapse, unity, unity3d, update

We finally found time to complete our LD game! \o/

We only had 2 out of 4 gameplays at the end of the competition, but we decided to finish the game anyway, so there it is!

A timelapse from Carduus will be posted soon.

To those who rated our game despite it being incomplete, thank you!
We managed to get in the top 10 in Humour and Graphics, which we find a bit crazy for an unfinished game…

Anyway, we hope you will enjoy it, and don’t hesitate to give us your feedback!

Here are some screens of the 4 different mini-games :

Oh and there’s also a Drunk Mode…
Will you find how to activate it? ^^

Oh, so the voting has finished… Let’s look at my result ! With comments !

• Bronze Coolness 67% : Hey, so 1 rating!=1% Because I have rated about 45 games….
• #76 Overall 3.63 : Woooooooo … OMAGAD I’M 76th on 1406 GAMES I’M …
• #77 Fun 3.51 : Having 133 kittens trying to kill is fun.
• #86 Humor 3.16 : Oh yeah. Kittens . They do everything for you !
• #152 Mood 3.10 : Uh. I though It was impossible to make a moody game with humor, apparently I was wrong.
• #161 Audio 3.06 : Uh, again . Just using autotracker-bu and bfxr can give you a good rating . (But I wish I was better at SunVox) .
• #275 Graphics 3.17 : The graphics were simple pixel-art, and apparently, it worked .
• #364 Innovation 2.86 : Ok, it was just another rogue-like, after all .
• #647 Theme 2.09 : Oh. I think we have here my main failure , and here is why :

• Take your time to find the idea .
• Don’t make personal libs if you are fast, it’s too easy -> not fun.
• Try to be better each time at each points. If you are bad at graphics, try to be better at this .

Tags: 133, ignoring the theme, im in, post-mortem, results, theme, tips

—Please ignore spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.

Its been almost a month since the LD24. I did  not finish my project because i broke under the pressure of time and quit half way through because what I was trying to do was a bit much and to advanced for me. Discouraged and sad I stopped programming for a few weeks.

School started and I made a promise to myself that I would straighten my life. Starting with school, I decided to do correspondence courses(Basically home school) for the classes I failed last semester because I only had one important class at school(English). So now I’m half -way through Science 10 in less than a week, next I just have to upgrade my math from apprentice ship to Regular math 10 and next semester I will be able to take Pre-cal and physics.

Once School got fixed, I decided to fix my social life. I wont really go into details, but I have been talking to an awesome girl the last few weeks and I hope that goes well.

And at the bottom of my priorities there was programming which is what I’m looking into right now. I want to Program it is one of my favourite things to do. So I started programming again. I also came back on the site the first time since the compo and seen mini LD37… that looks confusing as hell, so, I figure that I’m better off going for the October challenge instead. I have an awesome game Idea and have been looking for an excuse of sorts to do it.

I’ll make another post in a week when the compo starts. For now I’m going to do some preparation  (Story & sound).

buh bye. cant wait

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-37/?action=preview&uid=6685

So! I’m making a multiplayer game! Where you have to register!

So. It’s my first time making anything online. I’m using Construct Classic. I can load data from the web (Dropbox :P), but I have no idea how to update it there.

Problems:

1. Dropbox-based server can only be updated from my computer. Yours won’t be able.
2. The information you pass to me must be secure. At least username and password.
3. I came with an idea of YOU making a dropbox file, where you will pass me whatever is needed. Including username and password. Again, security. I don’t know Dropbox well, it seems you can privately give me files using it.
4. I don’t think I’ll be able to make an automatic information reciever in time. I can at least track which files were updated, but I’ll have to read them manually. It can be in the post-compo thought.
5. Graphics. The not-game I make requires TONS of graphics. I’m not sure if I will need any help, but if I will, is there someone who can draw with computer better than me and willing to help me?
6. I just thought that no password is okay. Because everything you do (until there is an automatic reader) will pass through me, and I can see if you are the owner of the profile. But there will be no privacy this way (But the kind of game I make doesn’t suppose privacy).

So… You are not forced to help, but the quality and user-friendliness of my game will be dependent on the amount of your help.

Hello,

Few days ago I saw the Mini Ludum Dare #37 announcement, and started to think about whether to enter this and what not-game would I make. I had two topics on mind:

• My miserable life. Kind of an egoist topic, but nowadays I’m dealing with quite unpleasant issues. For example, recently my work schedule has been changed so that now I have significantly less time for software development and recreation, and to be honest, I don’t take it so easy…
• Asperger’s Syndrome / Autism in general. Maybe this topic would be more valuable than the egoist topic above, but the problem that I had no idea what not-game could I make out of it. I was thinking of joining forums to ask for ideas, but before I could get around to it, I’ve got more and more ideas for the other topic…

In the end, I decided to do the first topic, mainly because I feel like doing it, and currently I don’t really have motivation to do the other. So I’ll live out my egoism.

Actually, I’m not even 100% sure if I’ll do this. Maybe I’ll get up tomorrow and I won’t feel like to get into it, and so I won’t do anything in the end. Anyway, I have an other project which I should get on track with, since now I can only work on game development at weekends, and I’m being several weeks late with that.

By the way, this would be my first Ludum Dare entry of any kind, ever. Let’s see!

I’m in for the miniLD.

I’m going to be naughty and disregard the theme. Both of them. 😉

My game will be an arty platformer about a girl navigating through a forest to get… somewhere. I won’t spoil the ending that I have in mind.

It will use a limited palette, as well.

– Henry

“I’m in!”

Idea -> GTFTSTG: Go the Fuck to Sleep the (not) Game

Based on the hit book, this not game focuses on the nigh impossible goal of getting a baby to go to sleep. It will be a very ambient point-and-click adventure with interactive items and random events (if there’s time). I’ve only got Saturday to work on it, but it will happen. I would also like to officially announce as per the rules that I will be using many Creative Commons photographs and sounds because all the graphics will be photos and the sounds will (hopefully) be realistic. I also may reuse some LibGDX tutorial code because I’m still learning the engine and will not have much time.

Tools:

LibGDX, Gimp, Audacity, Eclipse, Github

Let’s rock.

Well, I’ve been thinking it over for a while, but I think I’m in for the MiniLD.

I’ve got a few ideas brewing, but in general, I’m not quite sure yet.

Anyways, time to challenge myself to make a personal game with some time-dependent elements in 24 hours or less!

…or just take the liberty of the submissions being open for a little while longer…

Who knows!

EDIT: I’ll probably be using Game Maker 8.1 and GIMP, maybe SFXR.

-Matt

Well, looks like it’s gonna be my first mini ludum dare (or a ludum are in general).
Will have something to do with time, some ideas:

-Gunner at day, ninja at night

-Mine at day, fight in the evening, hide at night

Tools:

Unity3D – Game Engine

Blender – 3D Modeling

GIMP/Paint.net – Art

sunvox-1.7.2b – music

SFXR -sound effects.

I’m In

I’m be working on a simulation of adaptation (featuring a chameleon-like mechanic) along with secondary “time” feature. In my mind I have weather/temperature being a factor.

Not Game Theme

There will be no win condition, and therefore not be a game. It will be a growth simulator of the character(s) based on some environment factors and user decisions/choices/skill. When the end condition is met, the character is “released” into the environment (possibly encountered by other players?), and the player is prompted to create a new character.

Time Theme

I’d like to have the environments be representative of different locations worldwide, and their current weather/temperature. This would remove a random generation component (which would otherwise be used), and instead base the encountered environments on real world, real-time events.

Resources

I’ll be using Unity and using my existing C# WebCam wrapper.

I may be using a REST server (Zend PHP) if the “time” theme requires third-party APIs or data persistence. This will be utilizing a REST framework already in place and ready for Unity apps to extend.

I will probably use Inkscape for a bit of character art and Gimp for some textures.

I will probably not have time for audio, but may try to reach out to an interested party to contribute for background music.

I had a lot of problems with the original idea. And what I aimed for was too much. So I’m going to make more offline version of this game.

Cons:

• Less interactiveness.
• Partially rewriting the code.
• Possibility to cheat.

Pros:

• I’ll be able to finish it.
• More user-friendliness.
• Shall fit the “Real time” theme.

The not-game still will be online-related, but the data will be saved offline.

Almost forgot to make this post. Need to get back to programming asap, so I’ll be very quick.

Again using same tools as always. Unity, wings3d, gimp,  paint.net etc.

Making a not game about a garden. Maybe some gardening stuff. Im using my old project for this, so it has some already made stuff like a statue, frog (with AI and animation), grass texture, brick texture, lighting.

First of all, I describe the not-game I’m going to make.

Setting

You are a ~23 years old guy who works at an international company as a sysadmin, earning ~130 000 HUF a month. The goal is simple: save ~150 000 HUF for a usable computer which the guy could use for software development and playing games. But there is a twist!

• The guy can’t start saving for the new computer until he repaid his student’s loan (~300 000 HUF).
• He must pay the bills and give money to his mother, father and sister for all of them are unemployed; and of course, he has to pay some services for himself.
• By the time, several events make the guy’s salary to decrease, but it will never increase. If you find a way to play the game really well, your salary will lessen accordingly.

Practically, you should never be able to win – or if you do win, then many years have passed and your achievement will become flat. Just like in real life. 😉 Good luck! :p

I’m trying to approach this topic in a satirical-sarcastic way, and I really hope I’ll succeed in this. Some previous experiences showed that even when I intend to be sarcastic, I still end up being too bitter. But my trust is in the medium, then – hence “not-game“: it’s not a requirement to be games & joys.

Gameplay

You go to work all days and do several tasks. These tasks might increase or decrease your demotivation, depression and hunger. Of course you should keep these levels low. The lower your demotivation is, the more tasks you can do. At the beginning of each month, you get your salary. I’m thinking that a time flow should be increased so that you take one week or month at once, but I’m not sure if I’ll do that.

Art style

N/A.  Nah, seriously, I can’t do art, so expect some really primitive figures and a lot of text. Most likely, my game will be Deliberately Monochrome.

Tools

I use FlashDevelop to write ActionScript code. Most likely, I’m going to reuse some classes from my other game, MegaFillers Flash, which is not released yet. These classes help me to create panels, menus, buttons and other controls quickly and easily. You can download them here. (Some of them have depedencies which I can’t publish for they are too specific for my upcoming game, such as the GameContent class.)

Not sure if I’ll be able to make it within 2 days, considering I’m slow like hell, and I should finish my other game too – glad it’s only a Mini Ludum Dare which allows me to be late. 😉

Got an idea that meets both themes for this mini challenge, or at least my interpretation of the themes. It also focuses on my biggest weaknesses so even if my entry is a failure I will be accomplishing something at a personal level. The game will be written in Flash as ActionScript the later is still faster to develop in than JavaScript. For me, Flash professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.6 are the tools to use for Flash development with Flash pro also being adequate for my art needs. While I don’t absolutely need the starling framework, it will be used. Audacity will be used for sound editing. I am in the PST timezone so the challenge is already 7.5 hours in so I had better get started! Good luck everyone.

Hello there again devs, I am back to ask yet another question.

One of the reasons why my Ludum Dare entry totally tanked- other then my first entry tanked and so what I submitted I really made in 5 hours instead of 48- was that one needed python and pygame to play it. Most of the comments were about how I should have made an executable and to not use python. Therefore, I pondered upon it, and since I was looking to learn a new language or two anyway, I decided the best course for my coding future would be to expand my portfolio, so to speak. I was looking into different programming and scripting languages, all kinds of libraries and engines, and came across a cute little game engine called Love 2D. From what I could gather, Love 2D was a completely open source game library and engine that used Lua as a scripting language. I thought that that was kind of cool, and I was attracted to Love 2D. I have had previous experience with Lua, but I’m not sure if it even counts. 3 years ago, when I was even younger, I played this online game called ROBLOX. ROBLOX was a game-making game- that’s the way I’d put it- a sandbox/ building game that even had Lua scripting built in. I thought it was pretty cool. I had also seen via skimming through some Ludum Dare blog posts, that quite a couple of us devs had used it in the compo. I just was interested in how good Love 2D was, if you had any problems with it, advice on where to look for documentation and tutorials, what Love 2D is capable of, etc.

Just wanted input from the game jam community ‘is all.

In the spirit of not-gameness, I’m going to go with the most not-gamey thing I can: A very linear interactive story. I’m tired of making real games, and tired of programming, and tired of wanting to make a game with an amazing story and not having enough time for story. And besides, I didn’t have much time to prepare a code base, and well, I’m just more likely to succeed in Twine.

The only time I ever used Twine was in a short little escape game for a language arts project last year. It turned out pretty cool. So, wish me luck. I’ll figure out what the story is as I write it. That’s the cool thing about writing.

We are a team of three making a not game. Here is a screenshot :

Nope, this character is not a game dev. This game is about office, zoom and space.

Have fun everyone.

Tags: progress

Quite happy what I accomplished today. You can carry stuff like bushes, frogs etc. There’s very nice ambient voices around. Controls are smooth and lighting looks good.

Tomorrow have to design the terrain and add more items etc.

So I have this grand idea, the life of a middle-schooler, with random events, and the world flowing in real-world-ish time, where you’d actually have to go to school and sit in class for so many hours, and all, and you could close the game and come back after school and it’d be dinner or something.

But I realized that that’s a bit overly ambitious, and I’m not sure if I can do it justice in the time I’m given (after losing most of the day, I have like 7 hours-ish until the compo is technically over, and only a few days after that, I think, until the end of submissions).

So I think it’s back to the drawing board, but if I can’t come up with anything else really soon, I’ll probably attempt it anyways.

I’m making a small asynchronous not game thingie. Currently there’s no interaction with others.

Try it here: garbos.itu.dk/worlds/test.html

Well, yeah, this is what I’ve done during the first day – the three meters. Actually, I set up some classes to use and wrote some internal data structures, so it’s still a little more than the meters. After all, I worked only a few hours on this game today, which is far less than my intention. I should seriously do much better the next day. I’m a very slow developer, and I don’t have enough experience yet.

I’m (probably) in for this miniLD. I’m trying Unity for the first time so I’m not sure I will be able to finish my not game.

My idea:

Seems that I will make a game where the player walks in a dark forest by night with only a flashlight. Strange noises and shadows scheduled.

If anyone knows Unity: Can you help me to understand something strange with lightning? Why some far trees are lighten up while the floor is not lighten up as far?

Hello everyone and welcome to my Dev Log for Mini LD #37. This is the first time I’ve tried to participate in a Ludum Dare of any kind, so wish me luck! Here’s my plan: I’m gonna make a game that is both a “Not Game” and which uses Real Time. I’m gonna shoot for both themes at once! The game is called Bus Stop. Guess what you have to do? That’s right, you wait for the bus.

The game will begin by picking a random time for the next bus to show up, and display “Est. time till next bus: XX minutes!” Then you leave the game running until that time. If you click the button when the bus is there, you get the “You got on the bus!” screen. But, if you don’t pay attention to the game, then you might miss the bus and get the dreaded “You missed the bus!” screen.

Thus far I’ve got the game to import and display the time of day, and I have timers working, and I’m setting up the game engine. Then I just need some photos for graphics. I think I’ll take them myself. Or, I’ll take a photo of a bus stop and make the characters and vehicles cartoons, or pixel art. Shouldn’t be too hard.

PLANNED FEATURES:

-Exciting real-time action!

-Amazing photo-realistic background!

-Random bored character animations!

-Traffic!

-Leave it running in the background while you check your Facebook!

When reading the announcement for this miniLD I know what I had to make. It is a not-game about my weirdest moment on the toilet.. The day I lay knocked-out because I putted to must pressure on my bowels and brains and the brains shut down for n amount of time. I have no clue how long I was out. This all happened because I was recovering from active Crohn’s disease. I written more about living with Crohn’s disease and you can read it on this blog.

Here is the result from day one:

I am not done with the logica. I hope to finish it soon. Also, I don’t know if it works in IE.

It’s interesting how the idea of making a “Not Game” for this Ludum Dare, made me think in something practical that I will be able to use for future games.

I was trying to understand how different parameters would affect the physics of a ball in a game. I.E>: What are good values for elasticity? What is torque and how it affects an objects? How would a massive gravity would make a difference against a small one?

This program lets you experiment all this physics rules and learn from it. I hope someone finds it as useful as I did!

Here is my not-game peon simulation thingy!

Tools used – Eclipse/java.

All graphics are generated in game.

Thanks to notch for the pixel method!

Hope you enjoy!

Screenshots:

Download link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5vqno1x8pkps5vr/Sandbox.jar

I’ve seen another Ludum Darer’s entry for this Mini Ludum Dare, “A bad day on the toilet” by Thurig, which is basically a defecation simulator. Although it’s a little weird, I think it perfectly fits the not-game theme, and I wish good luck to the creator! (Ever since I’m a Drawn Together fan, there is little crudeness that can surprise me.)

Since I’m in a story-telling mood, I tell what this entry has reminded me. In my country, there was a video series, “Rossz PC játékok” (“Bad PC games“) which criticized commercially released games which were really bad. (Pretty much like the Angry Video Game Nerd.) At the end of the episode which introduced the game, “Scooter Pro“, the video’s creator, freddyD, has told a few thoughts about how pointless he finds that there is a simulator for such pointless sports like riding a scooter. Then he listed some ideas for similarly pointless games, and one memorable example was the “Hardcore Nose Picking” simulator. 😀

I was actually playing with the thought of creating an actual game based on the idea, in which you could sell the snot you mined to the creators of “Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing“, which they would use to make the wheels of those trucks so sticky. 😀 (If you don’t get it, in that game, the trucks can park perfectly on vertical surfaces.) I could have used this idea for this Mini Ludum Dare, damn!

Nah, get back to work! I made some progress with my entry, but I seriously doubt I can make anything playable for the end of the day. Especially because I need to get to sleep early, for tomorrow I’ll be in morning shift (yuck!).

“Progress is slow, but I’m in it for the long haul.”

I’ve committed about 6 of the 29 hours that have elapsed so far to this project. It’s coming along nicely, and I believe it’ll be complete. Although it will be scaled back from my original vision, both themes will be present, along with the featured mechanic:

This non-game does not use mouse or keyboard to play. You will use the webcam to control your character.

My initial tests are excellent, and it’ll be what I polish up and test on Sunday.

Themes:

The “board” represents locations in different timezones (-12 UTC to 12 UTC). The color selection is semi-random. The possible color selection is based on if it is night or day in that timezone, and then some light/dark influences are added based on the closeness to midnight or noon.

Each hour that you open the app, you should see a small change in the day/night border (obvious transition between blue and green/brown). If you open it with a larger window (6-12 hours), then you’ll see a huge shift in the colors.

More to come tomorrow.

It’s not a game it’s a benchmark, click image to link to entry’s page.

Didn’t think I would have a none-game to enter this weekend then after someone on the Unity forum mentioned performance of their scene I thought why not do a Unity benchmark!

I get 3600 on my ageing pc, what’s your cube mark?

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.

It’s done, and it’s not great, but that’s life.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-37/?action=preview&uid=5267

I think it was the 42nd submission! O.O

Got sabertooths in. They start the chase from further than the deer start the running, but they are still visible when they start chasing you, and they run slower than you, as opposed to the deer that run faster than you. If you get caught by a sabertooth, it’ll kill you and cause the game to reset.

I also added a way to get back to the cave, and fixed the day part of the day/night cycle (sunrise/sunset worked, but I typed something wrong and day was night :P).

Onto level design and interactivity!

-Matt

I know it’s a bit late, but just posting to show the results of http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=14205!

I got #26 in the graphics category, which for me was huge ( even tough I was so close to the top 25!!).  I never thought I would get such a nice ranking, tough I confess I was expecting it to be the best rated category in my game.

#137 overall is great for a first LD game! Thank you so much, I promise I will be here in December, this time with a web game and not so horrible music 😛 Great community!

Here’s the game I put together, didn’t get to do all I wanted to do, but the basic idea is there. Ambient light will change depending on your time of day.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-37/?action=preview&uid=17113

Caveman Not-game Download

Alright, so it’s sort of done. It works, it has some interactions, and I’m not really sure where to go with it now. If you’ve got an idea, leave a comment.

Oh, and you’ll notice that I included all the images, sounds, etc. Yeah, I figured I’d package it all up.

And since I’ve been fighting with sounds to behave right, don’t stand on the gray pedestal thing too long or it’ll crash.

Mostly, I’m wondering if it really needs more for this jam, or if it’s sort of good where it is. It’s only the first day I’ve been working on it just yet, though, so I’ve got time to implement stuff tomorrow if I can come up with anything, or I like an idea posted here.

Oh, and arrow keys to move, Spacebar to throw your spear, walk over your spear to pick it up.

-Matt

When we say “post-mortem”, we mean “whatever we want to say when we finished the game”. This time, it’s really post-mortem.

I failed to finish my MiniLD #37 game.

What went good:

• Idea: in my opinion the idea was awesome.
• Interface: Construct is very good for games like this.

What went bad:

• Experience: the game started from the experiment. It was my 1st (if not less) time doing anything web-related.
• Engine: I have no idea how could I make it using Dropbox. Dropbox is an one-side door.

What I learned:

• How to download data from the Internet.

I think I was right doing it. Because MiniLDs are made for (or suit excellent) experiments.

I think I’ll have a rematch when I’ll learn more. But for now, my project will stay calm.

And here is an extra! You can download the demo-version of my game! (Username is “Test”, no password).

If you really want, you can ask me for registering you. Saying an username and a password.

We managed to finish our MiniLD “A New World” yesterday night. It’s a bit crazy, but we sticked to the original ideas we had, and implemented almost everything, so it’s pretty awesome. (edit : the link http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-37/?action=preview&uid=14514 )

Give us some feedback

Also I’ve just played Ditto’s “Let nothing wear you down” and it’s very very very cool.

You know what this is? Look carefully:

Yeah, that’s a weird haired dude pissing on an alien. But it’s also much, much more than that: it’s McPixel, a game developed by fellow Ludum Dare veteran Sosowski being sold on Steam!!! Wait, let me say it again: it’s on Steam! STEAM!!! Here’s the link, go see for yourself (and while you’re at it, support one of our colleagues and buy it!)

This game was originally created for Ludum Dare, then Sosowski gave it a real polish, added tons of content and submitted to Steam’s new Greenlight system (for everyone living in a bunker, it’s a new ‘popularity evaluation’ system that Valve put in place to detect promising indie games that aim to be sold on Steam, basically based on ‘how many likes the game gets’). And McPixel is the very first game to actually be added to Steam through that new popularity method. It all started here, right here where we stand, in the Ludum Dare community! How great is that?!

There are no words strong enough to describe how FUCKING PROUD we are! I’m sure someone who’s actually important in the LD community (maybe Sosowski himself) will announce it here with a better explanation, better English, better wording and useful links. So Sosowski, in the meantime we’ll just leave you with our humble encouragement message:

Congratulations, best of luck with sales! We’re really proud, and I’m sure I speak for the whole community on that.

Gabriel and João Pedro – aka Pixel Cows 
@pixel_cows

What will probably be the final release of my Ludum Dare 24 entry, Karyote is now up on my server.  It’s quite a bit different, and much improved, compared to any previous versions which you may have played, so I encourage you to give it a try even if you’ve played the game before.

HTML5 Final Version

Windows Final Version

The Windows version is definitely the better of the two. The HTML5 version has some limitations with color blending and the hit detection has a bug due in GameMaker HTML5’s sprite creation which causes the collision mask to not be set properly.  So play the Windows version if you can.

If you like the game or have any feedback to give me, please drop a comment here, or over at csanyk.com

Thanks to everyone who played!

As fate will have it, some unexpected situations got in the way over the weekend and I wasn’t able to get any work done on the Twine story. Literally, all I added was the start screen and the beginnings of a first page. Normally, I’d just finish it during the week, but of course, I have the October Challenge to prepare for (which my relatively silent partner and I are very psyched for, by the way.)

Sometimes, it seems like I can never myself for MiniLD’s. I just don’t always hype myself up for them like the real things, I guess. Oh well. I have a lot of stuff to do this week if I’m going to commit myself to making a commercial game in a month. At least we already have the story and basic design set! Anyone remember Lifezone?

P.S., does anyone have any decent instructions on getting a business license and other stuff you have to do to sell a game? Most things Google brings up expect me to know a bunch of technical terms. Unfortunately, I’m technically just a kid, and I’ll probably have to do it all under my parents.

Play Caveman.

So, I finished. I’m not sure it’s much of a game at all, let alone a not-game, but I managed to come up with another idea and finish the game. And throughout all of it, I managed to keep the awesome 50×50 resolution.

Anyways, here’s a small post-mortem, done through bullet points:

– I didn’t have enough time to work out all the technical stuff. I was trying to add some more life to the world, which is what the birds are for, but I didn’t have the time to come up with some good ideas.

– I only spent like 6 or 7 hours on it in total. Out of two days, I only worked 6 or 7 hours. I probably spent at least half of it working out all of the details of the real-time system. I only worked when I had new ideas and all, so it makes sense, but it feels a little lacking in time spent, and the game probably reflects that.

– For some reason, the “pixel-perfect” collisions weren’t exactly pixel-perfect. I have it set to do pixel-perfect collisions, but the caveman keeps catching on things at the borders of his invisible box.

– I’m not sure how much of a game or a not-game it is. It’s not much of a game. Just explore 4 small rooms and then return to the cave and it’s over, pretty much, but at the same time, I feel like it’s too much of a game to be a not-game. I started out thinking “YEAH! I’m going to have a ton of ideas for not-games!” Nope. Not good ones, at least.

-Matt

I finally uploaded my entry for the Mini Ludum Dare #37 – it’s a 3D model viewer with a game-y museum atmosphere. I reused the music my brother made for “The Sun Is Deadly”, and the texture are all created with images from cgtextures.com.

The Modeleum is pretty empty right now, I only uploaded three characters I made some time ago. They are in the “Characters” section. You can submit your own 3D models (OBJ format, if there are textures they must be JPG or PNG ).

Tags: MiniLD, model-viewer, Modeleum, not-game

During weekdays, only have limited time to work on the game, and I doubt that I’ll manage to finish it until Friday. Regardless, I’ve uploaded some minor updates during the last days. Just check it out! Now the motivation vs. energy system works, you can get into submenus, and you can actually finish a work shift and go home. But you still can’t go on to the next day, instead, you keep looping in the last phase of your first day.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to implement the proper looping mechanics tomorrow and I can finally start to write the game content – and then only polishment would have left. Well, it’s tight, I don’t think I’ll be able to finish it, but I keep working on the game and share updates of it.

Oh boy, where to start?

Well, I guess an image and a link is good:

Note that there’s a HUGE WALL o’ TEXT here and an even bigger wall on my submission page but you shouldn’t need to read any of it.

Like I say over there, my very-lofty intention was to make a raw, wild world that users would build from the inside out. A wild land into which a community could band together and start making goals and rules for itself. Admittedly, it has a long ways to go, yet. I’m drawing on many inspirations here; I feel like I have to give a nod to jplur right off the bat.

I’m abondoning the 48-hour framework in hopes that this can maybe, possibly, be lovingly crafted and molded into something that will complete the October challenge. I’m favoring a direct-to-the-public, pay-what-you-will approach (because I hate ads).

For LD24, I wasn’t really able to participate during the actual competition, which really pissed me off at the time. I decided to just post up what I had and dedicate myself to perfecting the post-compo version. Something really interesting happened during this process – I was able to actually respond to feedback and shape my game from something that was getting pretty bad reviews, to something that people seemed to actually enjoy playing!

This is a big deal for me, because it’s the first time people seemed to really understand and enjoy my gameplay. Yay!

So, with the hopes of being able to complete the October challenge, I’m trying to take receiving and implementing feedback to the next level, because the player is always right!

Players can press ‘b’ and leave feedback from right within the game. It’s totally anonymous, too. This is in contrast to the feedback you get on the LD site, which is almost always positive. (LD IS essentially a popularity contest, after all)

Only positive comments are really not helpful, so I wanted to give players a totally anonymous way to slam my not-game if they don’t like it. Because I will need to know if nobody likes it!!!

In addition to incorporating feedback, I’m hoping to incorporate anything else that lets players change their environment and experience, especially things which will give a sense of “multi-user continuity.”

I want it to be a multiplayer experience, even though, let’s face it, you probably won’t run into many other players at this point. To that end, I’m going to add a bulletin board in the game and — I need to think of some other things as well.

Well, what you waiting for?

I successfully did not make a game.  I did not, however, manage to make a not-game.

Looking forward to the October challenge!

If you’d like to share a resource or opportunity, post a comment below or send a tweet to @mikekasprzak (or if you prefer e-mail go here).

Opportunities and Contests

• PC (Windows) – Ultrabook and Windows 8 App Innovation Contest – Pitch your Ultrabook Game/App idea and win one of 300 limited edition Ultrabooks filled with Sensors (touch, accel, GPS, etc)! Then make it and win one of 50 cash prizes ($1000) and potentially one of 8 larger cash prize ($10000, $20000)! Pitches due October 24th and ASAP (early)!
• Mobile (BlackBerry 10) – $10,000 Guarantee – RIM guarantees all quality certified apps (that earn over $1000) will earn at least $10,000 their first year. RIM pays the difference.
• Mobile (BlackBerry 10) – Free PlayBook and Marmalade BB license – Free 6 month Marmalade BB license and PlayBook to publish an app for BlackBerry. C++ or HTML5.
• PC, Mobile, Web – Independent Games Festival – Highly regarded Independent Games event with cash prizes, due October 17th! ($100 Fee)
• Web (Flash) – Epic Flash Game Contest – Build Player.io Multiplayer Flash Games with Micro-transactions and win one of 10 Cash and CS6 prizes. Due February 18th
• All – Sellbox – Sell from your Dropbox or Google Drive Account. Deal: 1% Fee! *NEW*

Launching Soon

• PC (Win8/WinRT) – Windows 8 – Integrated store. Launching October 26th! ($49 year)
• Mobile (WP8) – Windows Phone 8 – RTM was Sept 14th. Estimated launch November 2012

Marketplaces (Mobile)

• Mobile (Apple) – iOS App Store – iPhone, iPod touch, iPad ($99 year)
• Mobile (Android) – Android Marketplace – Android phones and tablets ($25 Fee)
• Mobile (Android) – Amazon App Store – Amazon Fire Tablet (First year free, $99 year?)
• Mobile (BlackBerry) – Appworld – PlayBook Tablet and BlackBerry 10 phones (SDK)
• Mobile (WP8) – Windows Phone 8 – TBD
• Mobile (PS Vita, Other) – PlayStation Mobile – Target the PS Vita, Phones, Tablets with C#

Marketplaces (PC)

• PC (Win8/WinRT) – Windows 8 – Microsoft’s Integrated Store ($49 year)
• PC (Mac) – Mac App Store – Apple’s built-in App Store ($99 year)
• PC (Linux) – Ubuntu Software Center – Selling Linux Games (Guide)

• PC (Windows & Mac) – Steam Greenlight – Community voted PC Distribution ($100 Fee)
• PC (Windows & Linux) – Desura – PC Game and Mod storefront with a Steam-like client
• PC (Windows) – Intel AppUp – Windows and Ultrabook Apps
• PC (Windows) – Indie City – Indie Games portal from Blitz Games
• PC (Win, Mac, Linux) – Indievania – No Cost Indie Game Portal (just Paypal fees)
• PC (Win, Mac, Linux, Android) – Gameolith – Download store with many options

Marketplaces (Web)

• Web – Chrome Web Store – Sell content to Chrome browser users ($5 Fee)
• Web – Firefox Marketplace – Mozilla’s Web Store (Preview)

Portals w/ Ad share

• Web (Flash, Unity) – Kongregate
• Web (Flash) – Newgrounds
• PC (Windows) – GameJolt
• Web (Java) – Static Void Games

Licensing/Sponsorship

• Web (Flash, Unity, HTML5) – Flash Game License – Put your games up for auction

Payments

• Paypal – Old Faithful
• Amazon Payments – Payments powered by Amazon
• Google Wallet – Payments powered by Google
• BMT Micro – Long time favorite of many PC/Shareware authors
• Google IAP – In App Payments by Google
• Sellbox – Sell from your Dropbox or Google Drive Account *NEW*

Hardware Surveys

• Unity Hardware Survey (Q3 2012)
• Steam Hardware Survey
• Android Hardware Survey

Resources

• Photon Storm’s HTML5 Game Sponsorship Market Guide
• MakeGamesWithUS – Tutorials and assistance for making iOS games
• Pixel Prospector’s Indie Resources

October is nearly here, so it’s time to kick off for October Challenge 2012!

The October Challenge is a special Ludum Dare event I started two years ago. More and more people are making games today thanks to Game Jams and events like Ludum Dare. And more and more people talk about selling games, but don’t do it. Well, it’s time to start doing it. Put simply:

Finish a game — Take it to market — Earn $1

That is your goal. That is the October Challenge.

Disregard all the usual Ludum Dare rules (no restrictions). Finish any game you previously made during a game jam, something else you’ve been working on, or heck, something entirely new. Your goal, if you choose to accept it, is to not only make something, but to finish it and do everything necessary to start earning money from it. That’s all. No specific rules or platforms. Make good on that goal or promise to start selling games.

Finish your game before November 1st, and submit it to your respected market. That is the challenge. And once you earn your $1, you’ve done it! Easy as that. You’re now a pro.

I’d like to invite everyone to share resources and discuss markets, business models, advertising, and anything related to making that $1. I’ve collected a list of marketplaces, vendor services, and even some opportunities you can take advantage of over here:

October 2012 Resources and Opportunities

If you need a place to start, you can check out this guide I wrote for our first event. Selling games isn’t just finishing it, but there is often paperwork and fees to take care of, and those take time. Do them early to make the most of your time.

Also, do share your progress on your upcoming game with us here on the site. I’ll be opening a submission form soon to collect a list of completed games as they happen.

Keynote Invitation

What’s a Ludum Dare event without a keynote? On deck for the 3rd October Challenge event is Breakdance McFunkypants. Check out what he had to say here:

I’ve posted a few FAQ answers in the comments, so look below. Good luck everyone!

Tags: keynote

October challenge is comming (it’s on ?)!

I’m going to participate and actualy if I succeed at collecting 1$ it will be my first dolar earn from making my own game. So very excited about that!

In short, game I want to finish and publish is AniTower:

Which will be kind of generic Tower Defense.

Main platforms/devices that i want to focus on are:
– Android/Nexus 7/Tegra devices
– Apple/iPad
Optional:
– RIM/Playbook
– PC (Paypal)

So in general i’m shooting for “tablet” market.

Idealy, I would like to finish game till 15th of October and spend rest of the month creating advertisement materials and then .. advertising.

Tools i’m planning to use:

• Shiva 3d – Engine
• Blender 2.53 + Vray thanks to http://vray.cgdo.ru/
• Photoshop
• Logic Pro 9
• After Effects

Ok, that’s all. Wish you good luck guys. October will be awesome!

So, a couple of months ago, I started work on what I hope to be my first iOS App Store release. It’s called A Blob Well Done, and right now it looks pretty ugly:

That said, I’m working with an artist now, and I should have a much nicer looking screenshot by Monday! It’s sort of RTS, but the units (Blobs) are generated in stats and appearance by what ingredients the user puts into them.

I told myself I’d finish this game before I started anything else. I hope that wasn’t a lie.

I’m not sure… The idea of not working directly on The Journey of Eko for an entire month is kinda scary, to be honest… But I admit I’ve been having a lot of fun working on a Singularity post-compo version for the last weeks! Here’s how it’s looking now:

For those who don’t remember, here’s what the LD24 version used to look like:

In short, what I did from a graphics standpoint was importing assets from The Journey of Eko, and adding some shaders and particles. And of course removing the silhouette look.

As for gameplay, I did a new combat system from scratch, now based in directional sword slashes and combos. For those familiar with Smash Brothers Brawl, it now plays somewhat like a fast Ike (“We like Ike!”). I’ve also focused a lot on visual feedback for the fight.

I was very, very impressed by deepnight’s Strike of Rage. If you haven’t played it yet, you definitely should! He was able to pull off a great, professional level look and feel for his beat-em-up in only 48 hours, it’s really freaking amazing. I played it over and over again, and decided I would implement some of his ideas in Singularity’s combat – specially particles and camera shake. Deepnight, sorry for reverse-engineering your animations aesthetics – that’s the price you pay for being so good! 😀

Anyways, the game that used to be Singularity is becoming quite decent now. I’ve been further developing it initially because I wanted it to be all it could be without the LD time restriction; then I continued because it was serving as a decent prototype for The Journey of Eko’s combat system. Now I don’t know the reason anymore, I think I’m doing it just because it’s fun!

So, I thought: maybe I could turn this “Singularity / Journey of Eko crossover” into my October Challenge game? I could work on it for a month, get some experience on actually trying to sell a game, and get community feedback that could then be directly applied in our main project. Or I could just stop working on Singularity and get back to the ‘real’ Journey of Eko. Ohh, cruel doubt!

Tell me what you think! And while I can’t decide but can’t stop improving my sword combat prototype either, do let me know (tweet to @pixel_cows or something) if you are willing to receive the most current build to test / provide feedback. It will be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

Gabriel
www.pixelcows.com

And I’m in. I’ve been off-and-on working on a small avoider game in Haxe for the past week or so, and plan on taking it to success on the Google Play store. It’ll also probably be on Kongregate too, because, hey, cross platform.

Anyway, that’s my goal. Good luck to everyone who is participating!

Hey, I made other games later and published to the markets, now I will expand the business lines and use more markets.

The game is called Egypt: Hack & Slash, it’s in dungeons and crypts inside Egpyt, mummies, demons, orcs, skeletons,…slay them all!

Tools:

• Shiva 3D
• Blender
• 3DS Max
• Maya
• Photoshop
• etc

Tags: 1, challenge, dungeons and crypts, egypt, game, hack & slash, money, october

well…a game that lets you build a star….close enough

We’ve got a central idea to work around and we are really motivated to succeed this challenge. Actually we think that we’ll make a great survival game. Follow our progress at this link http://dwaarphdevblog.tumblr.com

*edit, I had to change the link to our blog so this is the right one

This may be just the push I need. Why would I pass that up?

Plus, if I succeed, I’ll be a whole dollar richer!

Anyways, no idea what I’m going to do yet, but I’m in.

-Matt

the game to be ported/published shall be the last LD entry, Chicky And The Cats: Dorobou Neko! In fact, I uploaded a lite version already in BlackBerry AppWorld to hunt for comments

the full version shall have a level editor, wayyy more levels and several other game modes

Also, if you saw PoV’s post about how to start: i also plan to take part in the Marmalade thingie because you GET A FREE PLAYBOOK! for the fun of it 😉

Good luck to everyone!

I’ve been lurking around for some time, idling or reading around about game development, but no more, this challenge is exactly what I need to stir things up. Therefore I’ll be making a simple action game with RPG elements while abusing procedural generation. At least in theory 😀

Since I’m terrible at drawing I intend that even your character, monsters, weapons and abilities be created using PGG (Procedural Generated Graphics).

For this I’ll be using:

• Flash Develop (Actionscript 3)
• Music/Sound I have no idea 😀

Any hints and tips are welcome ^.^

Last year I released my puzzle game Captain Backwater on Windows, Linux and OS X. To be honest, it wasn’t very successful. But a lot of people told me the gameplay would work well on touch devices. So one or two months ago I started to port the game to iOS and Android. Now with the october challenge in mind I will bring it to the market THIS month.

I’m using MonkeyCoder which is a great cross-platform-language, that I like a lot.

For the monetization I decided to go the freemium way. It’s possible to play through the whole game for free. But to unlock the later levels the player need to collect coins. So if he has to less coins to unlock a level he can either go back and play for more coins or can buy some via In-App-Purchases in the shop.

Finally, here you can watch the old trailer of the desktop version, but the mobile port will look very similar.

If you want to join the “beta-team”, feel free to join me on Tesflight: http://tflig.ht/VTMHhq

Allright, I’m really pumped for this. I got a basic idea, some mechanics and a monetization concept. One problem is, that my graphic card is currently quite broken, so I hope this gets fixed soon so that I can get into overdrive.

Basic idea: Audiovisual game with emerging Web technologies (Web Audio API and WebGL). I know, it somehow limits the audience to Chrome Users but on the other side it might attract peoples/blogs to look at the tech and what’s possible.

Basically there are multiple stages (at the beginning maybe just two), each in a distinct musical style (probably the first two will be Chip Tunes and Acid Techno) and a distinct visual style. On each stage there will be some mini-games (each about 2 minutes) which will have it’s own musical patterns/melodies. Visually it will be a blend of club visuals and gameplay. Think along the lines of Bit Trip Beat. Both visuals and music react to the gameplay in different ways, so each time you play the game the song will be different (I’m thinking about an export option, to export the audio of a replay as mp3). Achievements will keep you playing but off course you need to sigh up with Facebook first.

Monetization: Google AdSense first, later (and if it really works) In-App purchases for additional content. I also got some other ideas but I will first concentrate on get the game running and attract enough folk to earn some $ with AdSense (already got my account running and producing some $ on YouTube, so at least this is not a problem).

So, these are the basic ideas. If nothing works at least I’ve tried out these two techs that I wanted to try out for a long time :-D. So, let the games begin.

Hi there, everybody!

I’m excited here. I’ve refined my concept just a bit and came up with this: A remake of the GBA-era Castlevania games in HTML5.

I’m going to market it on Flash Game License, which is taking HTML5 games now.

It’s going to be really cool, I can tell you that right now! 😀

– Henry <3

With the October announcement just behind us, I’ve been looking at three payment processors. Paypal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Payments. Deciding between them is extremely difficult, and information is sparse. All I want to do is release my game as donationware, nothing fancy.

PayPal:

Paypal has it’s problems. That being said, it has the easiest way to do what I want it to do. A neat little donation button that I can just paste into any old website (more on that later). No bank accounts required, no complicated payment options, no funny math on monthly paychecks. I’ve used them before for other things and they’re alright. But the question remains, are they worth using when I risk all the money I’ve made.

Google Checkout:

Google Checkout, like other Google services, has a motto of “Don’t be evil”. While I have no doubt that it’s not perfect, they don’t have the reputation of PayPal. I’ve used Google Checkout a few times, and it’s pretty good. Unfortunately, they require a website that you own the root directory to (no xxx.no-ip.org/xxx.bitbucket.org domains). How you are payed is delightfully unclear, and I’m continuing to research this for what I can get. Furthermore, the whole setup seems to be configured towards selling physical products, which I won’t. I’ll simply be charging $5 for the same download that everybody else gets for free. On top of that, there is no Pay What You Want setup, like there would be with the PayPal donate button.

Amazon Payments:

Amazon Payments is run by the same people that run Amazon Inc. I have no doubt that they know how to process a lot of money quickly and efficiently. The “one click payment” option sounds pretty good for what I want, but hardly anybody uses them, and as such, there is even less information than on Google Checkout.  Amazon does not have a PWYW button either.

Conclusion:

PayPal has been in business the longest, and knows just how to make a deal, sell goods, and pay people. Unfortunately, they also know just how much they can get away with, so using them is a gamble.

Google Checkout seems to be a decent payment provider, but they are fairly new to the scene, and as such, there could be some bumps going down that road.

Amazon Payments is unknown. While they have a great deal of experience selling things, they are unproven in the indie sector.

Of course, this is just donationware, I don’t need download links or DRM or anything of the sort. I’d have no idea how to even begin on website development anyway! If any of you have used these, or have ideas on what to do, I’d appreciate all of your advice.

…maybe I’ll just take bitcoins instead

Tags: amazon payments, compo, google checkout, october, october challenge, oldtopman, payment processors, paypal

Hey, remember when I said that McPixel is coming to Commodore 64? Well, it is!

And I’m going to use this month to make this happen! I am going to misinterpret the simple 3 points to my disadvantage! Here’s the plan!

1. Make a C64 game!

2. Take it to a flea market!

3. Monetize!

Wish me luck! It’s been some time since I made something for C64!

I’m in!
I start from scratch, and alone, but I have time and motivation!

Been thinking about this for a long time, but now is the time to make it.

Island Warfare is going to be a massive multiplayer web based game where people battle over islands.

Sign up on the website for email/rss/twitter development updates.
Cheers,
Rob

I recently (as of last week) made my first sale of a game which I build with impactJS, ported to android with cocoonJS and then uploaded to the market. The entire process took me less than a week, I did however have some minor problems with the cocoonJS port.

If you want any help during October wtih ImpactJS or CocoonJS and android (I don’t have an Ios device yet…) Then I am here for you and your questions.

Usually I am lurking the #impactjs IRC on freenode on the weekends and week nights (eastern US time)

Just send your questions to my twitter if I am not in IRC http://twitter.com/stalkjimmy 

If it is impactJS related post in the impact help forum so your thread can be used as reference to future people.

Thanks a ton for reading this and GOOD LUCK!!

Here´s a little Screenshot of my current stage:

It’m my first time meeting the October challenge. I don’t think I will participate, but hey, it sounds really cool! I imagine markets having over 9000 games in October every year. And wondering why.

I am neither familiar with markets, nor with online payments at all, but I will at least try to do something cooool. Who knows, maybe I’ll succeed? Although I never made a serious game. (Wait, I have something to start with. *Thinks over some evil plans*)

Good luck everybody!

Hi, how’s everyone doing?

I don’t know it this could be considered to the October Challenge since I started work on this some days before but here’s the post any way.

This was a different week for me. It’s been a long time that I had the chance to work on a small prototype or a 48H competition because of my other work so I decided to stop for a couple of days and do something else.

Also my cat’s been quite sick, and between the Vet and taking care of him, working on a fun project gave me more time do everything.

Since I love shump games I decided to do one. The idea is simple, you are in a arena with your ship and you just blast enemies away.

Initially I worked around 6-8hours on this back in August but had to drop it because of some much other work I had, so it wasn’t until this monday I grabbed it again.

I decided to make the game for iOS because it’s easier to make prototypes there and I can carry them around everywhere, playing them, to see if they are any good.

Actually the first 8 hours where quite productive and this is what I had after that time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sfxpNnfoZQI

So during these past 5 days I polished it a little, grabbed myself a notepad and hand-drawn everything. It’s not much artistic, but I’m not a designer.
Had a few problems with iOS 6 due to some deprecated stuff but in the end it all fall into place.
Also some tweaks performance-wise on the Engine where made since with a lot of stuff on screen things can get out of control pretty easily specially on these portable devices.

iPhone 5 just came out and I even took the time to add support for those extra pixels, actually I just increased the viewport, no scaling.

I probably named it poorly but it’s Puwang.

Also added some Leaderboards via Gamecenter and as I write this I’m starting to receive some feedback of the early beta builds I sent to a couple of testers. So ff people like it I intend to release it on the App Store.

If you want to participate in the beta test use this link: http://tflig.ht/SRB5aP

Hey now that the October challenge is upon us, I thought I would share the story of the my October challenge from last year.

I started on “Planet Minesweeper” way back in February 2010, for a Mini-LD that I never finished. Over the next few months I poked at the code a little but every so often but didn’t really do much with it. Then for the 2010 October challenge I resolved to finish the game. As you can see, it hadn’t progressed very much past the first prototype.

Unfortunately my strategy for Oct. 2010 was to “Add a bunch of stuff to the game” to complete my vision. I literally had a Campaign mode planned! I wrote a script for the cutscenes. Cutscenes! For a minesweeper game! How insanely stupid is that? YEAH I KNOW!

So, needless to say, I didn’t finish the game. It crawled back into hibernation. Not to say that I didn’t work on it, but I just kept messing with it instead of going towards a focused goal. Fast-forward to October Challenge 2011. By this point I had a bunch of cool artwork, awesome musics from HyperDuck Sound Works, and the game itself was totally playable. It just wasn’t finished.

I was determined to finish it. This time I would adopt a new strategy. That strategy was “DON’T ADD FEATURES JUST FINISH IT”. This served me well and I worked my butt off.

Unfortunately, I failed again. I did not make a dollar in October 2011.

But all was not lost! I rode the momentum that the October challenge and kept going. I switched to a new strategy, “CUT EVERYTHING YOU CAN”. Working through the next month, and in early December 2012, the game was finished. After a week or so waiting for apple to approve it, it went live in time for the holiday season.

So did I make a dollar? I did. I made just over $1000 so far! That’s almost as good as Minecraft, right?

And the momentum continues. Last week I knocked out an update to support the new iPhone 5 screen, we’ll see if that makes a difference with the hordes of new iPhone 5 owners. I’m also playing with the idea of releasing a free version so people who like ads and stuff can play it.

So even though I failed (twice!) with this October challenge, I ultimately finished a game and  released it and made a few dollars.

So, TLDR i would say here’s what I’ve learned from these Octobers:

• If you’re trying to finish something, CUT CUT CUT features. You can always save them for an update.
• Don’t have a campaign mode.
• Stop adding stuff. Prove your game works first, then add stuff to it.

I accept the Ludum Dare October Challenge.

I have been working on a game for a few weeks now and I want to see it published.

I am building a sidescroller-adventure-physics game. I do not have a name yet.

More details and some screenshots will come in the following days.

Tags: 2D, android, game, october challenge, physics