I’m pleased with how my game MISSILE RIDER turned out. I was going for a challenging control scheme with lots of room to experiment and improve, and I think that plan worked out pretty well. It does seem slightly more challenging than I expected… which I’d say is a good thing… though I haven’t been able to beat that Yir guy yet…

I used Unity and the free 2D pixel framework RagePixel, which I highly recommend for jams. It does feel a bit janky sometimes, but the speed at which you can create and animate art is fantastic. I ran into one major problem with it during the jam, which is that moving the camera around messes with the way the pixels are displayed. I wanted to be able to ride rockets in an area larger than the screen, so I spent a large portion of saturday making the world move around the player to simulate a moving camera.

I had a bad bug (might still have it, but haven’t been able to reproduce any longer) for awhile that was caused by clicking the PLAY button on the main menu screen (since removed). It called the exact same function as hitting spacebar did, but for some reason starting the game with the button messed up my camera system. Probably gonna try to stay away from Unity GUI buttons in the future… I would have discovered the cause of the issue sooner in the jam if I myself was actually using the PLAY button, but I was just hitting spacebar to start every time. Guess the lesson is to make sure to… test things… that players will do…

Not sure what’s up with the frog guy… I wanted someone to yell tips and instructions at you instead of a boring real tutorial… a frog just seemed right at the time…

Since my biggest regret is that I didn’t get time to make the clouds not look like big white turds… overall: good jam.

Oops, too big !

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2012 at 3:11 pm and is filed under LD #25. 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.

So, I’m done and dusted – first LD is completed, and I’ve built my first game in the process.  I’m immensely proud, but also a little sad – I made some real rookie mistakes, and I think I could have produced a far, far more polished game with ten or so more hours and a little more motivation.  So instead of the traditional post-mortem, here are what I’d tell my pre-LD me, if I had the good fortune to send him an inter-dimensional time-travelling message.

1. Learn your weak areas, and focus on them

I did this mostly right – prior to LD, I read a few tutorials on creating good programmer art, and those were invaluable.  Sadly, I didn’t also realise that I didn’t know the first thing about making music, so had to figure it out as I went along.  I lost a fair few hours figuring out whether I wanted to use SunVox or not.

2.  Define your mood early, and stick to it

I knew pretty early on what I wanted from The Fix – the feel of 1940s New York underground boxing, with black and white pictures, quiet piano music, and a small crowd.  What I hadn’t really figured is that I really don’t have  the skill for that.  I can’t draw boxers for crap, let alone make good piano music.   Had I taken that into account, and gone for a more cutesy aesthetic, I would probably have ended up with a far more coherent game with fewer stick figures.

3. Think of which features you’re willing to lose

Early on, think about what’s core to your game, and what’s superfluous faffing around.  Think about what you can lose, and what you need to implement – and get that done early.  My game would have been massively improved with a rudimentary betting system, but I was just so out of motivation 2 days in that I didn’t get it done.  That’s a huge shame, in hindsight.

4. 48 hours is actually  damn long time

I assumed, like most people do, that I might fail LD because due to running out of time.  I was nowhere near that happening – 48 hours is a huge amount of time for a basic game.  What’s far more likely to kill you is burning out and running out of motivation.   So take some time off: go outside and enjoy life.  I spent all of Sunday morning outside with my girlfriend, and had a really, really productive afternoon.

I think that’s all for now.  If you’re reading this and considering jumping into LD, then the most important tip of all is this – don’t worry too much.  Enjoy yourself, build something that works, and finish it off.  There are plenty more jams in the future.  I’ll definitely be back for another

Tags: pygame, tips

I’m surprised with the sheer amount of .NET entries. Me likey

Overall, i think it went pretty well.

The game is complete, although it’s lacking a lot of features i planned, the music begins to grind on you after a while and the sound effects are simple. The art however is pretty good, and considering for the first 5-10 hours i had no idea at all and restarted 3 times. I think I did pretty well, I wanted to add more features to the boss battle, but that didn’t end up happening. The game can be found here. It’s quite hard to beat as you have to conserve and collect ammo. This is my second Ludum Dare, but i think my first one probably went better. You can play my first one here.

Hello, this is my first blog post during #LD 25. We had a lot of rush and not time for reading the blog or post something. Sorry
The game is finished! It’s a classic game, nothing revolutionary but I think very fun to play. We have finished the game yesterday and today I have added a global score board (!!) and added more fun!

The game is: Destroy everything  before they kill you! Very simple with some humor like Goats.

There isn’t to say so much about the game, just try it and have fun!

SERVER

This was my first time in trying to make an online score board and I don’t know how but it works! I have used XML-RPC and I managed to compile it under Debian and Windows. So the server is running on my little Raspberry PI and the game on your machine Windows.

This is the server, where all your scores are located

We are really happy on how the game turned out. Some screenshots here:

You can download the game from here

This entry was posted on Monday, December 17th, 2012 at 3:35 pm and is filed under LD #25. 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.

Never make sequels of previous entries. This never turns out well. And I’m not even finished right now. -.-

Well with my game CORRUPTIONEXE (or CORRUPTEXE whatever you prefer) done for this I guess it’s time for a postmortem.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=18652

I decided to work with Game maker: Studio for this, I’ve used Game Maker 8.1 quite a lot before this and I decided to try Studio because I assumed it was pretty much the same, but those small differences kinda affected the time it took longer time to do some stuff because of the differences.

I started out with no idea at all what to do, I expected “The End of the World” as a theme but because it was the theme I really didn’t want I was caught unprepared idea wise and it took a half hour to start and 4 hour later I changed completely direction on it all.

I succeeded in making a decent tune for it and even if I haven’t used sfxr I got some ok sounds from it.

In the first day I got the title screens done and I was ready to make some levels

However after finishing a level I pretty much burned out, I got sick of the idea and hated working on it and couldn’t come up with much more to do with it so I added the stuff I scrapped at the start in the game and a goat and called it a ending.

The Good:

Creative Idea, I haven’t seen any other with the same/similar idea at this ludum dare (yet)

Visuals are pretty good considering how bad I am at

The bad:

The ending, It’s just plain weird….

No real gameplay, I couldn’t get an idea what to do to challenge the player and still make sense with the game logic so I just let the player go nuts instead

Well, next Ludum dare I make sure to start with the gameplay first because that’s what I really find fun to work on in games.

Tags: ld25, post-mortem, postmortem

Hi Ludumers and Readers!

This was my first Ludum Dare, and I really enjoyed it although, it was hard to stay awake after a 18 h session :P.

Before the start, I precisely examined all of the themes, and after seeing the results of the earlier voting rounds’, I expected the ‘End of the World’ to be the theme for LD25. I successfully missed the start with 1 h, but when I saw the theme, I was a bit confused. No idea came into my mind. I have written down something for this theme, and started to build something on it. After the first session, which was 12 hours long, I wrote code that made no sense.

After sleeping, and having dinner, my motivation was over 9000 (YES! NINE THOUSAND!), and did a 18 hour session. It was my first game, that I finished, and I am really proud of myself for achieving this. It is a really good feeling…

My only problem was with the sounds. I could get some nice effects from bfxr, but I wanted a nice music, but I didn’t have time for it.

I wanted to achieve some kind of pixel graphics, so I just scaled up the smaller sprites, and got some nice characters 😛 I’m not a good pixel artist, and animator, but I made my best with the knights. I know, the gameplay scene should be much better, but I wanted to focus on the gameplay..

Maybe it is a bit boring to play, but when I play with it, I feel that it’s MY game, and it makes me feel good. I think if I ever need motivation to make games, I’ll just start Knight Wrecker and play thru it. Only if I can 😛 After the 20th wave, it is really hard 😛

I really feel that I learned a lot, and it made be a better programmer, even if the code is very ugly, and using variables like a, or sss, or I don’t know what I wrote

I have implemented the food finder (little triangles on the screen) to show you where the people are.

Music reacts to game by jumping to exciting chorus when a man is close.

The shark now eats and animates.  The food goes down over time.  The score goes up and you get 50 for eating a man.

Not sure where to take it now.  Was thinking levels, and a bit of strategy to make sure you don’t run out of food (or you die).

Here’s a pic.

Well this was my first ludum dare, and suffice to say, things have not gone well, at all.

Firstly i was busy all day Saturday, and only came to the theme late in the evening,

which then took a few hours for me to think of something not particularly inspired.

(I was actually suprised to see the next day how many people had thought of similar ideas to me.)

I drew some really rubbish gfx to get started, and then started to program with SFML 1.6 which i’ve never used before.

A few hours later i had switched to SFML 2.0 because it looked like it had better input handling.

So i had to change quite a bit of code because all the functions had changed.

Then when i started adding sound effects i was dismayed that you have to include a 2mb+ dll just to play sound with SFML 2.0.

So then i downloaded BASS lib, and spent a while figuring out how to use that.

Then by the end of the night i was feeling drained and was starting to develop a killer sore throat.

Cue the next day and i am feeling like cr*p, with the worst cold of the year, so i spent most of the day in bed feeling sorry for myself.

Anyway, i did a couple more hours programming, then threw in the towel feeling really lousey.

Realising that i’m not going to finish in time, and actually making games in a really short time is not actually that much fun, especially when you are feeling ill.

Here is the results of my few hours work… for what it’s worth.

I wanted to write a post-mortem today for my compo entry, but I am still very tired so I’ll do it another day

I’ll just present the game instead. So let me introduce you to…

Crime in the City

Crime in the City lets you play a villain whose dream is to control the city. Hire a team of baddies and send them sow chaos in the city !

The game plays like an asymetrical card game, it works like Netrunner. You build a deck of bad guys, launch raids and the other side will try to stop you. The other side is mainly cops and a super hero, “The Dark Cape”.

This was a big project, probably too big. I didn’t have time to work on the graphics at all, so the art stayed prototype art. I only had 20 minutes to do the music. And no goats ! I had a nice idea on how to add one though… I’ll tell you about it on the post-mortem.

The bright side of things is that the game is fully functional and actually quite fun once you get it I hope you’ll like it anyway !

As for me, I’m going to get some more sleep, so that I’ll be in good shape to play your games tomorrow !

Here’s my postmortem of DinoBurgers:

TIMELAPSE: http://youtu.be/mg7LQC7Z0P0

What went well?

• Gameplay: some friend playtested/gave feedback
• Making music with Famitracker and FL Studio
• Not using content generation! (sfxr etc.)

What went not so well?

• I had to study for my finals this weekend!
• Time: I really ran out of time, so there is not much extra content…
• NO GOATS

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=18984

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem, timelapse

media=”screen”

h1, h1 a, h1 a:hover, h1 a:visited, #headerimg .description {

1. text-decoration: none;
2. color: white;

Tags: css, h1, heading, hidden text, white-on-white text

You can see the timelapse of making “Mr. Cylinder”

Built the video! Here it is!

First time actually seeing a timelapse of me working, pretty sureal O.o

Thanks for the fun guys!

Because there are many doubts about BGE, Blender Game Engine, I decided to make a “review” about. Please understand that I just made one game with it, and made it without directly working with python, so it may be a lot better using it.

So, “Is it worth work with BGE?” to answer this question, first we have to understand how programming in Blender works. Blender has a system called Logic Bricks and their functionality is simple.

We have the sensors, that say what will trigger the action. The Controllers that are the condition that will say if the action will happen, and the Actuators that are the action itself. Beginning, middle and end, looks pretty straight forward doesn’t? And well, they are indeed very simple to understand, so I can say that anyone, knowing or not how program, can use Logic Bricks, being maybe, the simpler to “program” 3D engine currently available.

But this simplicity comes with a price. One of the biggest problems with Logic Bricks is that they are too simplistic. Because they are design with the logic “beginning, middle, end”, you can’t continue the logic after the end without make some tricks, making your logic much larger and complex.

Another problem is that you can’t use native variables, like object position, nor manipulate them directly, having to use python or tricks for that, making simple common tasks like make an property equal to another, overly complex.

One good thing that I have to mention is how smooth everything looks. The graphics are nice, the movements are fluid, everything looks and feels good. Because Blender is free, maybe be a cheaper option if you want project shadows in your game. Also, Blender have a truly awesome shader editor, enabling pure artists to make their own shaders.

A big issue when you finished your game is how you going to distribute, because, even with Blender Player, the people who will play your game will still have to have Blender installed. * There are alternatives to this, even making a functional web-player, but they are still being develop.

So, the main question is, it is worth making a game with BGE? And my answer is: it depends. First, I must say that is very simple to represent what you thinking with it, making a great prototype tool, but going beyond and make something that is suppose to work in some way is hard. Therefore, what I recommend is, watch a tutorial, try it out, with some hours you will already get it how to make a game with it, and if you don’t liked it, just wait a little more, there are many developers working and improving it, it will be better someday.

*I have been informed of people who got Blender Games to work even without Blender installed, but also, I have been informed of people that couldn’t play the game until they installed the newest version of Blender. I had searched for an answer but nothing definitive. Maybe it work with just python installed, if I find something more about, I will update this.

Tags: BGE, blender

After 3 LD’s submitting nothing of my own, contributing only to group submissions, I finally got my own game in. However, given the quality of the game it really should have been done in compo time. I just didn’t sleep well and was frustrated for hours by tiny problems. The persistence of these problems was largely due to a lack of architecture in the code. If everything had been separated nicely with systems communicating via events, that being the approach I favour, I might have been able to construct a robust game without errors. With the limited duration of the compo in mind I rushed in, and made an absolute spaghetti of it that I could only begin to untangle in Jam time. The tools were all well known to me, so I could have used them much better.

I am however happy with the  effort I put in, even if it could have been better directed. I was pleased with my initial concept, which was supported by what I feel is the best LD theme ever, once you discount the moral, narrative element and consider role reversal of existing game designs. That is at least where I saw potential in the theme.

I look forward to trying again next LD and doing better. This has rekindled my enthusiasm for rapid development.  I also hope to rewrite this at some point and extend it with ship AI as an exercise.

Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t have time to livestream during programming, but now I’m about to stream whilst playing video games made during Ludum Dare. So if you want me to (try) to play your game live, be sure to say something in the chat! (Be kind, its my first stream…)

http://www.twitch.tv/gravity_games_interactive

I’ve held off on writing this because I was waiting for reviews and issues to come in so I’d have something to post-mortemise about.

I have been sat here most of the afternoon playing and rating games, whilst reading the ratings on my own game in case things were broken.

Actually, nothing is broken apart from Audio – which is the usual story with HTML5 games even in these days (sadface), so I uploaded a fix that on platforms where it wasn’t going to work, that audio could at least be disabled (it was only generated fuzzy noise anyway).

Lesson learned there, TEST ALL THE BROWSERS

What else have I learned? Well, I actually finished my entire game by the end of Saturday, by doing the following things

• Using an engine so I didn’t even once have to worry about collision, pixels, rendering, etc
• Focusing on the game, rather than art or sounds
• Keeping my features to the bare minimum and making sure there was an end-to-end experience in place

Following that, I spent a few hours when I was tired

• Making some art
• Generating some sounds
• Playing and noting the things that annoyed me
• Getting other people to play it and noting things that annoyed them

The next day was solely spent just making the game fun to play

Yes indeed, after spending about 8 hours building the game, I then spent about 8 hours in the following loop

1. Play the game
2. Note down what wasn’t fun
3. Think of a way to fix the problem raised by #2
4. Implement the fix for the problem raised by #2
5. Goto 1

It seems to have paid off, as the reviews being written are favourable indeed, my favourite being

“Easily gets into my top 3 of LD25! Keep it up!”

I am strongly encouraged by this as a note of the things I have learned at past Ludum Dares and now cannot wait until the next one where I might try to be a bit more ambitious but still try to “finish the game by the end of day #1” as that really seems to be the best way forward.