Phew. I didn’t get everything I wanted to do with the game done, but it should be a reasonably complete experience. You can play it here! Now I think it’s time to sleep.

And here we go, a blog-post about my entry!

Burglary

Explore the premises. Evade the guards. Pick locks.
Steal the treasures! And the escape with them.

Burglary, an action/stealth game about stealing from
the rich and giving to those needing it: Yourself.

Visit the Official Ludum Dare Submission!

Play the game on Kongregate!

View a gameplay video on YouTube:

Used libraries/tools:

• My Base Code
• FlashPunk
• TileLighting
• Punk.Transition
• Sound Effects were made with Bfxr
• Music was made with the lovely autotracker-bu

Tags: compo, final, flash, flashpunk, ld25

Play online

We have SPACE GOATS!!

I finished my first game and entry ever. Though I’ve been interested in making them for a long time, I found this to be the perfect incentive to relax (huehue) and create after two busy weeks of schoolprojects.

The idea I had for my game was some kind of roguelike shmup like BoI, with game mechanics like Hotline Miami, where you can aim freely with your mouse and have very fast-paced action and quick encounters. You get a reward/upgrade for clearing the whole level, which consists of multiple rooms just like in BoI. The story would be in the theme of this LD.

Though the game I entered is mostly a yet not complete engine, and less a game, I still feel proud. I’ve probably spent 20 of the 40 hours I’ve been awake and working this weekend on implementing the geometrical rotation of everything in the game, and actually got it to work. It just feels nice and fluent.

I made a level with goats but I didn’t actually make an image of a goat, so I didn’t get that in the game as of yet.

Other things I don’t have yet:

– Multiple room layouts

– Room transition

– Sound

– Upgrade system and other content. Etc…

Also, it sucks that I don’t have an executable, I wasted an hour on trying to make one, but my .exe (I used pygame2exe) searched for all my resources in the .exe itself and didn’t find anything so that pretty much sucked. Hence the title of this article.

If you need to install Python and Pygame to play it, I advice you not to. I’ll post the further development of my game here and will eventually have an executable that you can use, and an actual game.

Good luck with the compo/jam and I’m eager to play your games.

Willow

Sort of. More screenshots. Right now we’re in the final push of adding in all the details of the game. Level design, sound, music, story boards, etc. But here, have the instructions screen and main screen! You’ll notice I redesigned our logo to match the “Memex” theme a little more. (Also please don’t mind the sloppy cropping in the first shot. That’s what happens when you’re tired and hungry.)

Jamming to: TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me

With less than 22 hours left to go on the Jam, I’m almost there! This is my first time doing a Game Jam, and am learning that it’s probably a bad idea to try and to a Game Jam in C++ >.<. In the past 50 hours I have completed the mission editor, and slowly pushing my way into the gameplay. It’s looking pretty good that I’ll be able to finish by the end!

Bombardier has been submitted for LD48!

I wish I had another couple hours to polish and balance it, but I’m still pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished for my first time.

In Bombardier, you drop bombs on cities, upgrade your bombs, and try to kill everyone before that pesky Super Goat can rescue them. 

Congratulations and good luck to everyone else who just toiled for the last 48 hours to create a game.

In Empire Reclaimed you play as a race of conquerors who have returned to an empire they abandoned centuries ago. Command Cortex Transport ships and deploy your fighters to decimate cities.

Linux build available too!

Tags: linux, unity3d

Well, that was fun! My first Ludum Dare, and actually my first jam I’ve ever entered with the clear intent to finish. Though I’m having a lot of fun checking out everyone else’s entries, I may create a future post about the development process on this game. It’s not a perfect product, but I’m satisfied with the result. This is something I wouldn’t mind polishing and developing further, into a more content-rich game.

There are a few things I wish could be improved in this edition, but I suppose that’s for a future post. It has a win condition – can you discover it?

Time for another post.

The editor ist done so far. It needs just some little tweaks. It’s possible to create maps, define rooms and place events, which of course are editable and will resemble things like enemys, sprites and engine-related stuff.

Gameplay starts to get shape, but there is no fun at this point. Colisions with walls are done and its possible to win a level by collecting all collectables and getting to the exit-zone.

We have an intro with pictures, handdrawn by Niki and some shitty sounds for picking up items. Walking also makes a sound, which isnt as bad, as the others. Maybe the most important thing is the perfectly working cheat for unlocking all levels^^

Tomorrow we will add fancy graphics for the main menu, the in-game-worldmap and the surprising ending-sequence. Hopefully there will also be enough time for some music. Finally the gameplay has to be concludet by implementing the enemys, so that there will be a possibility to lose a level. Maybe then the fun will kick in 😀 Maybe…

Have some pictures of the updated editor an an in-game-screenshot. Not much to see, though.

Good night everybody.

Well, this has been an interesting weekend. Not only did my programmer buddy left me, but today I get up and my artist says it’s not good for her to  march on either. I tried to do a little bit on my own, but I just didn’t have it any more. I was also gonna try to program a small back up game on my own, but I couldn’t focus on that either. So I regret to say that Team Jam is no longer and not submitting anything to the jam compo. I’m not sure what went wrong. There’s no who’s fault is it either. But it doesn’t matter. What I really wanted to do, was work with a couple of other skilled people over a weekend for fun. Which I did even for a little while. So, what did I get done? Well, here’s a room placement, thing to paint with:

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/f442a9dd450a2716e91461e0f4d3faa7

The idea Super Villian Con was I think to build up a convention center only for villians and keep it secure. So you would of had to build up your meeting spaces, add on to the starter convention hall with various rooms. And then you had to build unique features to attract different villian types. All within a time limit. After the limit, your base would be attacked by super heroes or spies trying to shut you down. You’d fail or succeed depending on how well you’ve build up your base defenses. I would have at least liked to have gotten people running around in there, but again, I just couldn’t work on it. Oh well. Hopefully I’ve learned something for the next jam.

Later’s and good luck all!

I still have the rest of the day and night to finish my game for the Jam.

Here’s some works in progress.  Screen snap showing “Mr Toothy”

The player will play Mr Toothy and eat as much as he can, while avoiding fishermen, rocks and getting “beached as Bru”.

Also here’s some music based on “Jaws” that I wrote.

http://drewfx.com/ludumdare/MrToothyChorus.mp3

I’ve first started coding this weekend I think (it’s all in Python). Before that, I did learn in a mostly structured manner, but this LD has kicked me in all the beginner’s places. Either way Rotten Robber is playable, with a villain hero who’s a downright scumbag too.

you can play ROTTEN ROBBER in your browser (just not IE or browsers from yesteryear, basically).

As a robber without much ethics, you’re made to choose between killing hostages in the banks you rob to get the safe combination, or just trying to crack them by guessing the combination. Except the more you wait or the more you kill, the more likely the cops are to show up. Lucky for you, the cops can be escaped, but most importantly they can kill and/or capture you crew, making future profits on bank robberies higher (less sharing). And if you shoot your captured crew before they talk, the fear you inspire will grow. Which, seeing as the whole armed robbery business is known for quick turnover, can’t be a bad thing on a business card.

BS, I felt it was important to make this game is choices and consequences, so as not to just be gratuitous bloodiness. Nothing with having fun with that in a game, mind you, it’s more of a momentary reserve I guess. Somehow, with the Newton massacre on the news, I couldn’t bring myself to go for a completely evil game logic, so I tried to balance choices with outcomes so that the villain gets retribution for the stuff he pulls, and then some. And so, sorry, but you might just have to die more than one way if you play.

So I coded 7 (8?) different endings, and I’m fu*{ed if I know whether they can all actually occur with the current balancing. Not being able to debug fast enough is my big frustration here (and balancing took a hit as a result). Also I guess I went for something too complicated, which is ironic considering that I am much more cautious about programmer’s time when I’m just being the game designer at jams, and now that I was the programmer, I completely overloaded myself. Still, it’s playable, though without any art whatsoever. It’s developed in codeskulptor, which was probably not the most adequate tool in use this weekend. However, since this is the tool with which I learned Python on Coursera (awesome awesome awesome class, if you people around you looking to jump into OOP, this is great). So, that’s enough yapping for now, good night / nap everyone, and here’s a little graphic sweetness:

(I pretend this is a UI and not a glorified debugging console btw)

All player units are complete!!!

I’ll try to make a video today!

Thought I’d post more art progress, since my programming progress is CRAP. (Isometric is hard. Maybe only because math is hard. Maybe only because I’m lame.)

Anyway, at least I’m not the only one complaining. August just said “If we ever do this again, the protagonist is going to be made of paper bags.”

Here’s some sweet spikes.

http://ludum.atrodo.org/

I just finished up the main mechanic of the game.  Each round a weapon is up for grabs.  In traditional MegaMan style, the villain boss has a new weapon to use, and if the hero defeats the boss, he gains that power.  So, each round, black is given a new weapon. If the white is defeated, black gets to keep it, but if black is defeated, white gains it.  And right now black always wins because white is an idiot.  Which is my next task, to make him a challenging idiot.

1. Get the engine setup
2. Make a black and white boxes for the two characters
3. Setup terrain generation to have a playing field
4. Create sprites for sword attacks
5. Give white a stupid ai
6. Give white and black health and health bars
7. Setup multiple rounds
8. Create guns with the physics system
9. Create special weapons
10. Add gaining and losing guns
11. Give white a better ai
12. Polish

So I let my AI roam my procedurally generated maze. Check the video!

Tags: AI, maze, video

I don’t have enough time to model the dargon and characters, but 2D art seams good enough for this game.

It’s my first time to embed story and some dialogs in the LD game entry (I’m not a native english speaker).

Hope you enjoy this little game. There are 4 levels in it, try to beat my high scores!

Entry Page

I finished, but I’m not happy with it. Lets call it a failed experiment.

To better illuminate this, lets rewind a bit.

My first Ludum Dare was LD19. I went in with a framework I barely knew and a set of balls made of pure steel. As someone who had spent a lot of time in the game dev world, I knew the thing I needed to succeed was a microscopic scope, so I did just that. I started with the very core of the game and worked outward. It all went very well. By sunday morning I was effectively done and had over 10 hours to polish and add features. The game shipped with all kinds of neat stat tracking features and generally felt very complete. It even had menus!

LD20 was more of the same. With a LD under my belt I went in with more confidence, but the same approach. The result was a similarly well polished Shmup with leaderboards and bosses. I focused on the elements that my LD19 entry failed at (mostly the sloppy controls) and again walked away very satisfied.

LD21 got a bit more ambitious. I went with an idea I initially wasn’t sure how to code. Google came to the rescue and End Of Line; my best rated/personal favorite game came to life.

LD22 was missed due to a job interview (I still tried, but couldn’t get power on the flight which was during the middle of the compo

For LD23 I went for the jam. Knowing I had an extra day, I went fancy on a rotation mechanic that ended up being a complete nightmare to code. It went OK.

Totally missed LD24.

Which brings us to now: LD25. On previous LDs I’ve always been more or less feature complete at the halfway mark, so the second half is adding features and polish. I wanted to see this time if I could start with a much more complex idea to start with. Instead of taking the “start small, work up” approach, I wanted to try the “Start big, trim to size” angle.

The compo started at 6pm friday here. By 1am I was pretty sure I’d cocked up.

I had, at this point, coded the core idea. I had a spaceship that you could equip modules to, with energy/armor/shield systems. But I was beginning to realize how complex this was going to become. There were a lot more interactions going on that I’d originally anticipated, and it was looking to be a mess of code. However, Saturday was a long block of time, so I soldiered on.

I hammer through Saturday and before I know it it’s 3am and I’m still a LONG ways from even having victory conditions. At this point I know things have gone sour. It turns out slashing scope is a lot harder than adding to it. When your core gameplay relies on all these little features, you realize that cutting them gimps the gameplay rapidly. You’re left trying to pull weeds from a desert; there’s just nothing to remove.

Sunday. 7am. Alarm going off.

There’s a loud voice in my head screaming “turn off the alarm, go back to sleep, you’re not going to finish”. That voice is beautiful. It’s music.

But no. If I quit now I’d have wasted all this work. I begin to quietly wonder how many “5 hour energy” drinks is too many. According to the bottle: 2. Now you know.

I had one goal at this point: Finish. Any feature that hadn’t been at least partially implemented and wasn’t gameplay critical was cut. This sadly ended up really murdering the “fun” since the enemy spawn patterns and waves ended up getting gimped pretty hard. However, 2 minutes before the deadline, I’m literally hammering out the last bugs in the fitting window.

So here we are. It’s done.

However, the game itself isn’t important. It never is. LD isn’t about winning, it’s not about making the best game of them all, or even making a good one. It’s about learning; and I just got a fantastic lesson on scope. I picked up the idea knowing it would be a wonderful test of just what the limit is for a 48h compo; now I’m pretty sure I know. LD26 is right around the corner, then I’ll get to take a remedial course and see how much I’ve really learned.

tl;dr version: Start small, build up. Never the reverse!