Seriously – all these posts are get me super excited. Not excited to stay awake though; 6am is a little past my bedtime. Up again in 3-4 hours to review with a clear head.

Today finally got warm so I reviewed my ToDo list in the computer graveyard:

I managed to add some of the features I wanted to:

And it has a whole start and end thing going (slick, I know):

Well anyway, keep up the awesomeness while I’m away and good luck to everyone.

Love,
Mezzo

Gamers think video games are innocent and pure. BUT THEY AREN’T.

Really, and we made a video game about this : play these evil video games contaminating the tiny children out of the schools. But beware, the ESRB and PIG institutes are watching for you ! Try to spread the plague of violent video gaming before they get you. Get your video game on the hall of fame. Will you be the most evil plague ever created on earth ? Finally, a video game about being a video game. Aren’t they the best villain ever ?

Tags: jam, preview

Well I’m definitely not submitting the game to the 2 day compo. Although it is “playable” I don’t think it’s really polished enough and this is my first Ludum Dare so I wasn’t super prepared / staying up all night.

Here are the things I’d like to get done today:

-Daisy Art

-Monkey Dizzy Animation

-Learn how to properly do particles

-Difficulty Balance

-Win Lose screens

-Add some sounds

More work. Actually, not all that much work. I have Okami and Majora’s Mask to play here, people.

This is a 48h competition and we only have time for so much soo…From now on I’m not adding any features, only tweaking and polishing.

Check it out here!

So yeah, I finished it, finally… I don’t have much time to work more on it, so I’m releasing it as it is. I just hope that next theme will be better… (since I didn’t really liked this one)

Thanks for everyone who at least checked the livestream! Sadly, it was empty most of the time. But there are still video archives around so… yeah.

It’s starting to look pretty good 😀 I really wanted to do some voices for this game but my microphone is pretty crappy

At least it’s a good reason to buy a better one next time!

Another test build here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20089037/web/ld25/index.html

almost finished!! time to polish!!

It’s rather late in the project and I’m just encountering quite the short coming for the libraries that I’m using.  Fizzy abstracts away quite a bit for the collision detection, plus there’s not a lot of documentation on it.  How my game currently works is the edges of the screen have static walls on them to prevent your player from going out of bounds.  Asteroids spawn off screen and pass through.  Currently the only way that works is if the asteroids are kinematic bodies.  The bullets were going to be dynamic, but because they spawn where the player is they could bounce into infinity and break the game if they were dynamic, plus they too would bounce off the walls if they would work anyway.  So I tried making them Kinematic because then they wouldn’t be effected by the player, but wait, the asteroids were Kinematic as well so the bullets and asteroids would never detect collision with each other.

I went and looked into a way to fix this, all I needed was a way to allow one-direction/side pass through for kinematic/dynamic collisions as well as a way to ignore certain dynamic/dynamic collisions.  Sadly, however, Fizzy blocked most of that kind of access, or so it seems, so I can’t get bullets working at all.  There’s only 7 hours left, and this problem is way too big of one that I want to solve, so I’m just going to post one last screenshot and bid this competition farewell.  It was a nice run

Since the competition started, I have started 3 games. The first two were utter crap. I guess there is such a thing as lucky number 3 because my third game is somewhat entertaining. Basically you are the villan and have the ability to malform the world. Every level has at least one moving block. This block with go in one direction till it hits an obstacle taller than it, in which case it changes direction. You are trying to lead the blocks to their death in a block of opposing color (red <> blue). Anyways, I’m having a lot of fun with it and think it will make an ok first Ludum Date entry.

Okay, so it’s playable… few (many) things left to do though, see list at the bottom.

Some notes along the way.

These “Things” spawn on platforms, walking somewhat randomly. You need to get them into the Evil Machine to replenish your evil energy.

You control them (a bit) by flipping the platforms, and making them fall through.

You can also push them along the top of the machine using the “Pusher”.

If the Things get away from you, they’ll jump onto new platforms and new rows of platforms get created as they jump. You can scroll up and down the platforms using the wheel / touch scrolling.

Remaining as essential:

– game over / restart & in-game restart

– bigger hitboxes & rotate in direction of side pressed

– occasional spawn on top rop

– evil meter as bar that falls

– bonus for multiple kills

– bounds on camera scroll

– prevent more than one press on pusher, calibrate pusher

– instructions screen / start / restart screens

– attach gui to screen edges not from centre

– sort out double accelaration post jump or fall

Some things to do to play with the playability (a few of the above will affect it though):

– speed of evil decrement

– speed of things

– spawn rate of things

– flip walk direction when catapulted — e.g. if direction of body changes, face to it through rotation

And some polish stuff that I almost certainly won’t get time for:

– machine mechanics and evil meter

— play an single tween everytime something dies?

– offscreen indicators

– click and drag controls

– use pfx / liquid / something for evil meter

– scoring == evil energy accumulated (energy depletes, but score is totalled)

— deaths

— missed opportunities

— “score” — multiplier (no missed opportunities) * deaths * amount squashed at a time

I went into the competition, because I’ve always wanted to do one, but I saw it only a few hours before it started and wasn’t prepared for it at all. So I’ve been busy the whole Sunday and don’t see a chance in finishing simple half of what I’ve had in mind with in 6 h.

But I’m not really sad/depressed/down/etc. for multiple reasons:

• I already kind of knew, that I won’t have the time to finish it.
• I had quite fun while writing the base code.
• I’ve seen some weaknesses of mine and will try to improve them in the future.
• I had a great weekend apart from doing only one half of the LD.

Congrats to everyone who already finished or will finish their game and happy voting!

Tags: unsuccessful

Well, I got something playable at least. However, it’s not fun. It doesn’t even approach fun. But with the limited time left I could either keep beating this dead horse, or work on sound and graphics. So I’m going with graphics and music. Here’s the latest playable if you want to try it:

LD25 Evil Lair

All right! Off to go polish this turd.

Finished the music and the gameplay, will go back home to submit and sleeeeeep

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2012 at 5:23 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.

Hi all. I hope your LD is going well. I love a lot of the stuff I’m seeing from so many people!

I was perusing one my directories as I prepared to do some more coding today and I noticed my desk/food photos that I never posted. Better late than never, right?

That’s the snackage I went out of my way to get for LD. A lot of it remains which is a good sign.

Oh, and here’s my extremely messy desk…

And since I was late, here’s the latest screenshot from our Jam game. We are still missing most of our art assets, but music is done and gameplay is coming along quite well.

You play as Cinders the Bear, an enemy of Smokey the Bear. He wields a flamethrower and burns down the forests to get to picnicking humans to devour/incenerate

I’ll be streaming more of the development in an hour or two at http://www.twitch.tv/syncarn. Feel free to drop by

My game is going pretty badly.

I hope to get some sort of working progress in the next few hours.

Currently all I have is a ball avoids other balls and tries not to run into walls.

I guess it’s not that bad of a game mechanic.

Hopefully it will work okay by submission time.

-Nilmrots

I’m bowing out. Way too much other stuff (planned and unplanned) going on for me to spend much of any time on this, sadly. Here’s what I did get out of my work so far though:

• Learned more Citrus Game Engine stuff. 
• Have a template class for a character with a melee weapon. Fun!
• Lots of camera experimentation…
• Played with Sprite Sheet and Starling integration.

Maybe next time, all! Here are some pics of this most terrible work:

Sprite Sheet generation for the killer snow-man.

Configure the Missile class in Citrus to behave like a melee weapon!

Killer snow-man attacking some yellow placeholder art…

In my country sunday is a working day so I was busy today. But I still made some progress which you can check HERE.
The code is getting extremely messy and bad, I’m already having a headache from reading it, so I ain’t gonna add much more, maybe a win/loss screen and levels with more enemies (heroes).

Good luck to all those who are still coding 😀

Also I’ve got

Spent a lot of time thinking about the AI. Here’s what I think is my best shot:

(do this every time a new piece is chosen)

Repeat for each column and rotation possible:

-Apply r rotatiosn and move piece to x column as fast as possible

-Compute the resulting board

-Store the sequence of moves and the amount of points (inversely proportional to average column height and directly proportional to number of lines cleared)

Choose the sequence of moves that gives higher points.

This will miss all scenarios where the best move involves going to one side and then back below another piece. It will also require one move per y drop or it’s gonna look very ugly.

Wish I could’ve come up with something better but I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get this working under a 16MHz processor in the few hours I have left.

Close to the end, but all the basic stuff is working now. Fell into the same old trap of aiming just a little too high, and spending too long time on silly implementation issues(damn you, quaternions!). Now to implement the actual gameplay..

Tags: foodphoto, ld25, screenshot

Woooo. Got some more turrets. Actual things to avoid. Looking like this could actually be fun.

Gonna have the turrets be placed randomly and have a higher chance the more time crystals you pick up. Also speeding up the actual projectiles.

Next Goal: Time Crystals

Tags: cocos2dx

Well, well, well…

Ahem, so, no screenshot this time, but I’m happy to report that the gameplay is 100% in.

Meaning winning/losing conditions are in and everything. Still, a lot of things on my plate for the remainder of the time. Here’s my to-do list :

• Redo the graphics for the notes scattered around
• Fix 2 random crashes occuring while generating the world
• Redo the main character sprite
• Redo the tileset
• Figure out why the (only) sound effect I have doesn’t work
• Package (hahaha)
• Add some more variations
• Balance everything
• Properly handle restarting, or at least exit gracefully when winning/losing

This is not really in the order of my priorities, but it’s not far.

I’m afraid I won’t have time to add fitting music however, which is a bummer. Or I might go the Dwarf Fortress road and quickly record a solo guitar tune. We’ll see.

He’s got my sack o’ gold

Withdrawal is done.

PLAY IT HERE

Screenshots:

Lots of goats this LD. Here’s another one

Some crazy progress. 😀

95% done. All that’s left to do are a few levels and maybe a victory screen.

I’m quite satisfied with the result so far.

All 16 places have some flavor and story related. I don’t think I’ll be able to finish in time but this will be at least fun. I’ve got over 400 lines of human readable text on my class responsible for texts in game.

I never thought I would enjoy this much making a text-based game. Placing all these puzzles and unique events in game is so damn funny. 😀

I’m writing every text into my unity’s console so I still need some class to throw all texts into my screen. I’ll just replace the Debug.Log() for my method once its done anyway and it should work.

Lads,

Eurydice can jump!

Code is about to be finished.

TODO list

– Code a timer

– 37 levels to make

– Graphisms

– Sounds

In the last two days we were too busy (and too unprepared) to report any progress. But now we have some progress, and we decided it’s time for a progress update.

We’re a team of four people – programmer, artist, level designer and 3d artist. Our tools are Unity, Blender, and Adobe PS.

Our game is set in a small open world, where you’re the Little Red Riding Hood, cute blond-haired girl, waving to people and gathering flowers during the day, and murdering them and serving Satan during the night.

The game is about stealth, which is a key to successful hunt. Day/Night cycle plays important part too, since it restricts you in killing and preparing to kill.

Modelling is ~60% done – several types of victims, main character, many props.Art is ~40% done – it’s one of our weakest points in terms of time, since every texture drawn by our artist takes good amount of time before it gets polished and ready.

Coding is ~60% done, day changes, people live their small lives, girl crouches behind them.

Environment is ~50% finished. Many regions are prototyped, like the city, or farmer fields.

Among the planned features is upgrade system – flowers are traded for a better weapon. Goats may also play an important part, but that’s a secret atm

Some features probably won’t make it – but we’re still proud of what we already achieved. Stay tuned for more updates!

P.S: Screenshots, of course!

P.P.S: Zombie team drinking coffee.

4am here :D. Submitted my work though it is not really completed , but I guess that is what I get from procrastinating in the afternoon.

Good luck to those still working hard =).

I kind made… something. It’s called “BIOMINT” [WebGL] – wherein you play a mining giant who just want to earn a living. To earn this living, you send out probes around the globe which detect the presence of valuable minerals. You can then blow up the earth, to uncover the red goodness. Once you’ve found some treasure, create a mine and the till the earth bare!

Only includes about 20% of my intended gameplay mechanics – and implemented verrrry poorly. If you can figure out what’s going on, then hats off to you  – but that’s what you get for deciding to try out 3d for the first time in your life…. DAMN YOU POLAR COORDINATES!

PLAY IT NOW!

So it looks like I will manage to get something running on time…

Here is little teaser:

6 hours left…

I have 14 polishing points… sound… and 2 removed features on the list…

Back to work!

As it turns out, my mouse took and broke this weekend. I got a new one but alas, my original game idea is too large to be implemented in such a short time! Therefore, instead of trying to create some pathetic entry, I’ll work on another game I’ve been neglecting due to stuff – Environmental station alpha! Pardon my rudeness but there were greater forces at play here.

Or rather has been done for 5 hours now.. I gave up in the middle because I couldn’t find motivation to work on it anymore so I just made a quick ending to it… Still that ending contains a goat so it’s not all bad

Day 2 Timelapse

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

Tags: timelapse

as expected, yesterday was a total wash. starting again now.

i’ll see how far i can get in 6 hours, otherwise I’ll just drop down to a Jam entry

Looks like my entry won’t be completed in time! My plan originally was to make a TMNT-ish Beat Them Up game, but it turned into spaghetti! My next plan, and the one I worked on the longest and hardest, ended up turning into a visual novel inside Love2D! I still have the entire story to write, and it will not be finished before the end of the compo. I could probably come up with another game idea that could be made in the next 6 hours, but I’m completely out of energy, and I’d rather reflect on my experience of this weekend.

And wow, did I learn a lot on my first Ludum Dare!

• I have never done any sort of creative writing on my own. This weekend I spent less time programming, and more time inventing some characters, drawing a map of the city, planning their daily routines, and more! It was fun, and I’d like to continue to improve in that area.
• I have never tried making music on my own. Even though they were garbage, using LMMS to create the lazy 5-second loops was still fun! I’d like to get to a point where I can create something useful and enjoyable!
• Sleep really did help a lot. The first day I stayed up way too late, trying to get a good start, and the entire project ended up being garbage! Not having sleep isn’t entirely to blame, though. I’m still not that great a ‘grammer… yet, and I sort of rushed in there, creating a very messy situation! The next day when I had sleep, I was a lot more focused. I had a nice breakfast, and snacked on some good veggies. The possibility of creating a game without action came to mind, and I started work on what became the tiny game demo we have today.
• I recognize my weaknesses, yet I see them as only an opportunity to improve! It’s time to learn C! Then I’ll try C# or Java? I don’t really know but hey, let’s just go!

Also, in addition to learning all that nice stuff, I feel extremely motivated! Before the Ludum Dare, I was creating nothing and just letting the days pass. Now that I’m finished with it I can make any game I want, and want to! I could learn something new, learn to make music, too! It will all be fun, I’ll never be done, so many new areas to explore, always learning more!

Check out the unfinished game!

Obamapology’s out.

Lower your expectations 😀

Hey ! First post here ! Daylz and me are working on the Jam !

Here’s some preview Daylz is still programming so, I let him do and I show you those

Well, the UI is almost over, I’m working on some animations, that’s a first time, and that’s fun :3

Owww, don’t cry, darling, don’t cry, it’ll be over soon !

See you ! Keep up the good work, all of you ! That’s great !

I had never made a visual novel before, but for a first time, I think I did pretty good. There isn’t a whole lot in it, just a few buttons and a character I drew in Gimp. At least I got the entire thing working and I’m happy.

I hope next time, I can make a better game (that is if there is a next time).

Enjoy! I’m submitting right now.

the Visitor is compled!

View the entry here for Download and Source:  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=15547

In ‘the Visitor’ you take control of an alien that has secretly invaded a spaceship.

Nobody is suspicious of you because you managed to steal a spacesuit.

Your mission is simple, cut the oxygen supply of the spaceship and watch everyone die!!
But beware, humans are radioactive for you and the spaceship weapons have sensed an intruder.

Are you a bad enough alien? Prove it!

Tags: Visitor

The biggest possible carrot

So I havn’t had very much time to work but I should still get this done for the compo assuming no more interruptions. This is what it looks like so far. It’s very close to functionally complete, hopefully I’ll get some time to pretty up the graphics and add sound.

As far as I can tell, I’m done with my first Ludum Dare Compo. I will make my way home then work on putting together a timelapse and uploading my game, ready to submit.

As you can see from the first screen I now have a nice introduction that displays the first time you play – also here’s an example of the lighting I mentioned in my previous post.

It’s a game you really have to see in motion (the particle effects are gorgeous), so I hope somebody checks it out!

Was fun guys, and best of luck to everyone still working

I had to start over twice now because the games were too frustrating and not fun at all, and I’m not sure I can make it even for the Jam.

I’ve resorted to a breakout game (Where you have to drop the bricks on the Player) and I doubt IT will even be done.

But, I’m still trying.

In case I don’t finish, here’s what I’ve learned :

– Have a better plan next time

– How to export the .JAR without any hour long messing-around-with-it-to-make-it-work.

– Have a better plan next time

– How to double-buffer

– HAVE A BETTER PLAN NEXT TIME!

Anyways, the scrapped games were : A game about the process of capturing a princess, and A Dungeon-Keeper-like tower defense.

Time Lapse

With only six hours left I’ve just eaten up my dinner, which although samey to last night I changed it up a little by chopping up gherkins in the pulled pork while I heated it

The game is going well, just finished off all the art assets, now just re-aligning everything and fixing my remaining bugs, which hopefully I’ll smash all of them!

And to give an idea of my upcoming game here’s a little snippet

Tags: foodphoto

I finished my game! Actually… this is not a game. This is an interactive story. But I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks!

PLAY CLOSE MY SIDE

Hi,

i spent almost 20 hours total working on my game and im finnaly done.

i wanted to do some more things but i had to stop and do some real life stuff

it is my first time releasing a game and i think i’ve done a good job with it,it is also my first attempt to do pixel art.

it was awsome to work on this game and i cant wait for the next ludum dare

Threads. When you least expect you got two trades playing with same data.

With 5.5 hours left, all there is to do is level design and polish! The game is coming along well.

Also, my little brother is my playtester, so I assume that if HE can pass the levels, anyone can!

Less than six hours left…feeling the heat.

But yeah, I’m done with programming, sound, and polish.  I could submit the game now and it would play out and not be hideously ugly or broken.  At least, that’s the hope.

I just need to add more content, really, in the form of art and writing, and that’s pretty realistic I think!  Even if I just got one more large level or a couple decent-sized ones I would feel happy with submitting the game.

Victory screen, I don’t know how to art

I’m going to stop writing now and finish this mofo

And this time, my game DOES have a goal: get as many points as possible in this evil-arcade game!

here’s the [linky]!

I would have added a goat, if I had had more time… Well, better to put the sprite here than let it dissappear (RHYMES!)

goat loves you forever

Hey all,

Hope all is going well with your games, this is our first post, sorry for being late ‘in the day’ but we wanted to make more progress before we blogged.

Firstly let me introduce us,

Im Rob Yates (programmer, art, design, audio)

My glamorous partner in crime and brand new to game development is Katrina Reynolds 😛 (art, design)

We decided to go with an evil xmas villain theme similar to the grinch. The blurb goes like this (working progress): 2D run around, steal presents, load up and drive your evil sleigh, unload it at your lair, avoid police patrols and stalk santa’s trail. The ultimate goal is to be the best xmas wrecker(% grade awarded).

Heres a screenshot of our current progress:

Also we loved the goat theme so we designated the creature pulling the evil sleigh to be a goat, check out his awesome pixelness 😀

Heres our progress:

• 2D Character movement with animation
• Village level graphics
• Vehicle
• Steal presents
• Unload present to vehicle
• Unload vehicle to lair
• Police patrols
• Santa deliver presents
• House level graphics
• Lair level graphics
• SFX and theme music
• Menu system
• Polish(fun stuff like more xmas decor and snow)

So theres a fair amount todo but were confident, see how it goes

Oh yeah!

So, I made some decent progress. I have the bare bones of a game in which you place enemies in an overworld to try and defeat the hero in RPG combat. Here are some pictures:

Trouble is, after the hero defeats all of the enemies in a desert battle, the game crashes, and I’ve spent all of my development time today trying to figure out why, to no avail. If you still want to try what I have, crash-ridden as it is, the executable can be found here and the source code (Gamemaker studio) here.

Good luck to everyone else, and I’ll probably see you next Ludum Dare.

Edit: I MAY have discovered a workaround. Better crunch like hell!

Tags: crash, give up, you are the villan

Finally, my jam game, Invade, is done! It’s a game about invaders from space invading earth invading their minds invading yours. It’s not that good and my code is CRAP, but, well, it’s done. I hope I can review better games than mine. I know I’m a day early, but that leaves tomorrow for more testing (actually I’m GLaDOS).

Play it here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/607822

This is V signing off for LD #25.

Woo I think there is a game here. Crystals have been added. They vary depending on how many you have. Time to get some nicer sprite for the main person and add a title screen.

Next Goal: Title Screen

Tags: cocos2dx

So here is an “antagonists” creator

Some action

And hey! There is even a menu!

Now the hardest part… making it playable oO

This weekend has been the worst possible for ludum dare, as today was the first time I properly got development up and running.

However game concept is somewhat ready and I think there is a possibility of getting something playable out by the Jam deadline

At least as done as I’m gonna be able to get, here’s the project page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=7263

And the final screenshot of the menu:

Also:

5 hours before the deadline, but I have to work tomorrow, and I didn’t get any sleep yet (5AM now). *Sigh*

Well, the game is mechanically done, and I think I did a nice job graphically as well. I added some music to the opening and closing screens. It is autotracker music, but much, much better than nothing. The opening screen has a small animation, I hope you like it!

There is a bunch of stuff that I wanted to make in this game, but didn’t had the time to. A better coder than me could probably have done these on time too. But so far, I’m happy with my entry.

Now it is time to sleep a little, and get ready for the rating marathon! Whee!

Go play my game

Tags: java, pacman, submission

I thought this was a nice way into the last 5 hours (hopefullly less for me).  Lots of bugs to fix & but most of the base code works!

Tags: dev screen, goat, the villain'S dream

Yup, I’ve just finished adding background with parallax scrolling made by my friend and added some simple SFXR sounds (music will be added tommorow). There are now more buildings in the background (they are different from each other).

ToDo:

• Winning and losing the game
• Menu
• “Animal Hunter” game mode (if I’ll have time :P)
• More obstacles
• Powerups
• More superheroes to defeat (I don’t know if I’ll be able to do something creative here, but we’ll see :))

Screenshot:

Parallax scrolling!

http://1337.pro/Shared/LudumDare/LairDefense_v0.7z

I’m using the half functional game engine code from my last entry/attempted entries, hopefully that won’t disqualify me (although since I’m making the game for Android, there’s basically no chance I’ll win anyway, since it’s kind of a hassle to try the game on your phone/tablet even if you have one)

Done so far:

– Menu

– Story

– Sprites

– Rendering code

– Input handling code

Not done yet:

– Gameplay

– Victory conditions

Chances of completing on time:

LOW

Been up for almost 24 hours now, with 5 and a half hours left before the submission time of my first Ludum Dare.

Quite happy with my progress on the game inspired by the work experience kid that was at work last week.

I have to implement a few more good guys, and win/loss conditions, and then I’ll be at submission stage..!

The game in it’s current form can be found here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/79467350/AngryAngus.swf

Instructions and a short background story are in the game…

This being my first post, I feel I should include a few extra bits and pieces…

I went with Flixel to make this game, as the whole dev environment was already set up on my work laptop.

I have used sfxr to make some sounds, and have plans to put together a small music track with

musagi, both found here: http://www.drpetter.se/projects.html

Yea, made it to the end. phew…. Now i’ll try and make some sounds and then Submit!

/ C

I had so much fun this weekend – late nights, inspiration and community.

This also marks the 12th game I made in 2012 – thus successfully completing the 12-in-12 quest. Feels so great! I love my life.

Presenting: PATHOS – A tragic love story and pathfinding puzzle game. PLAY IT HERE!

The brave Princess Pea is on a quest to rescue her one true love, Sir Mushroom.Torment them by building a labyrinth. Can you drive the lovers apart without making it impossible?

Art Credits: Johannes Sjolund, Luke Mehl, FantasyMapMaker, and Piotr Pawlowski. Grateful thanks to the artists above and everyone who participated in the LPC at opengameart.org as well as the Ludum Dare and #onegameamonth communities.

I wrote this game using HTML5 (javascript) using canvas. I’m not using any game engines – this was so simple I just did it from scratch.

Levels were designed using TILED editor‘s export to JSON data. If you’re looking for a great open source level editor for your games, I highly recommend Tiled.

The maps are done in two layers, one for background tiles like grass and flowers, and a second that represents objects that can block pathfinding.

There are 5 levels that you can select from on an overworld fantasy map, with a bonus level that is randomly generated.

This is a turn based strategy game that uses the a-star pathfinding AI algorithm as the base mechanic. Two lovers are randomly placed in the terrain and your job is to spawn new walls in such as way that instead of walking closer to each other for a tender reunion, our intrepid lovers are driven farther and farther apart.

The strategy here is that you can’t make it completely impossible for them to reach each other.

This means that it is GAME OVER if you create a labyrinth in which the two lovers are unable to eventually reach each other.

Why? A true villainous spirit (you) wants to have them never lose all hope – to never give up – but to experience the heartbreak of a love that is just out of reach.

The sound and music is handled bySoundManager2, which uses an invisible Flash sim for compatibility but could use HTML5 sound if it exists. Once browsers “just work” with mp3s I’ll enable this setting.

You can choose to start from any of the six levels. There’s a sandy desert island, a twin rivers bridge level, a lava-filled underground volcano, a grassy lush island and a haunted crypt. Finally, I threw in a basic random level generator for a tiny bit of added replayability.

I hope you like it! I had so much fun making this. Thanks to the Ludum Dare community for being so awesome.

I’d like to flesh out this game engine to build more complex turn-based-strategy games in 2013.

I personally prefer a more cerebral, thoughtful, non-twitch game these days. As 2012 progressed and I found myself getting caught writing games that were technically easy to code (shooters and platformers) I started to come to the realization that I would never generally want to play these kinds of games. I grew out of them decades ago.

Why make the kind of game you wouldn’t want to actually play? This is why I expect to focus on puzzle, strategy and RPG genres in 2013 as I embark on my second year ofmonthly game-making.

This kind of game also lends itself very well to mobile and cross-platform design. Though people have tried to make platformers and shooters on mobile, on-screen joysticks and touch controls on twitch games are frustrating and unsatisfying.

Low-end phones and tablets also struggle to keep up with rendering. I prefer to focus on the kinds of games where I don’t even care what the framerate is.

Turn-based strategy was made for mobile. It works on old computers. It is perfect for busy people who have a coffee in one hand while riding the bus. For relaxing after a long day. There’s enough stress and gunfire in the real world – I want me games to be relaxing, interesting and challenging – like a game of chess or a great novel.

The next step in the development of this simple game engine is to port it to run on my phone using either phonegap or cocoonJS.

If I get enough response from playtesters (please rate and comment upon my game on the Ludum Dare website!) then I will flesh it out into something more complex; more levels, more balancing, additional mechanics. Perhaps even a level editor.

It all depends on whether “it sticks.” This rapid game development technique I’ve enjoyed this year lends itself very well to playtesting. You quickly prototype a game in a weekend, release it to gamedev friends, and see which ideas resonate with others.

This is a valuable technique since many devs find themselves spending an entire year (or more) on a game before letting others try it. Only then do they discover that perhaps their game isn’t going to sell well, or was in need of tweaks to the gameplay.

Creating a dozen prototypes a year is a great way to “throw a whole slew of ideas on the wall” and then find out which ones stick.

Those that do are deserving of further development time and polish.

I think a great idea for my next year’s gamedev would be to work on bringing 1 game out of every 12 I make to fruition. To build it up to professional levels in the hopes of a public commercial launch.

The rest are “incubators” – brainstorms. Mental exercise. A way to hone my skills. To learn new things. And to have FUN! That one reason alone makes them worthwhile – the rest is icing on the cake.

If you’d like to try your hand at rapid game development and prototyping, I warmly encourage you to check out the initial I’ve started called ONE GAME A MONTH. I pitched the idea to a few people on twitter last week and the thing exploded.

The response was more than enthusiastic – it literally went viral. We’ve had over a thousand people sign up.

Your new year’s resolution: join www.onegameamonth.com in 2013! Earn XP (experience points) and achievement awards for doing what you love: making games.

Tags: McFunkypants, postmortem, screenshot

Here it is:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=14551

The real funny thing is that I just found out there’s another game called “Earth Destroyer” in the Compo. lol 😀

My personal objective now is to have my own Earth Destroyer ranked better than the other Earth Destroyer ( j/k, we are all in this for the fun, not for the competition :D)

Sadly, it took me way too long to develop my game, and its current state is quite unfinished; it doesn’t even have enemies yet.

I might be able to finish it if it wasn’t for the fact that I have school tomorrow and a test…

And on another note, I think i’ve caught a cold.

Perhaps I will be able to finish it tomorrow, or some other time.

It has been great fun though, and I will definitely compete in the next LD and perhaps some mini-LDs.

I just submitted my entry. It was the first Ludum Dare I participated but I’m very satisfied with my result. The game lacks some final polishing and balancing but I’m too tired to do any more productive work. The saddest things: I didn’t manage to include sound and also my goat is missing

So what did I learn from this? Well most important I need better graphics skills. And I noticed that I lost too much time randomly surfing the web so I guess for the next LD I’ll just shut down my internet connection. And finally I learned that I need better preperation. So for the next LD I’ll try to get the friday and monday off of work to compensate the sleep.

That’s all folks!

Here’s it is:

Bomb Time!

and here’s a video of me playing it:

http://youtu.be/M638DK_-DyQ

I’ve thrown in the towel, too much stress and misery working on my game and that’s not really what LD is all about for me. I’ve still submitted what I’ve done in all its unfinished glory, click to play.

I thought I’d reflect on the experience as a whole and write a post-mortem on what I managed to complete. I’ve learnt a lot, which is always a bonus, as a result I don’t really consider it a failure. The game wasn’t complete for a number of reasons: I bit off more that I could chew (simple mechanics != simple programming), was using unfamiliar software and an unfamiliar engine (due to reasons out of my control) and, amongst other things, I’ve not been very happy with my working environment.

What went wrong?

Working environment : I’ve been working on a laptop with a fairly low resolution screen, without a desk and therefore without second monitor, mouse or graphics tablet… first world problems. It is surprising how less efficient I’ve been working with much less screen space and trying to produce art assets using the touchpad of my laptop. I knew it would be a problem but I didn’t realise how much time it would take up. Other environment-related issues included not getting enough decent food in the house, I’ve been living off what little I could scrounge from the cupboards (cue takeaway). Being comfortable and having the right set up is important when trying to churn out a game in 48 hours.

 Art pipeline : Getting artwork from GIMP through to FlashPunk is a smooth process but not an immediate one, as it was when drawing directly into Flash. I’m also not familiar with GIMP, add that with trying to draw with the trackpad and the additional steps involved in getting an image (most with multiple frames) into the game, and it became quite a time sink. I did actually enjoy working with the GIMP (at least it installed… I’m looking at you Photoshop), I think there is a potentially good pipeline there but I need to make sure I’ve got the right tools for the job and just practice to become familiar with the software.

No level edtior and an unfamiliar engine : FlashPunk seems pretty great to be honest, it works well and is smooth. However, I spent a not insignificant amount of time looking stuff up yesterday. As I mentioned above and in a previous post, Flash CS5 (my tool of choice for making games… because I’ve used it to make games before) and Photoshop CS5 wouldn’t install on my laptop. I’d used FlashPunk and FlashDevelop to make a snake clone a few months back and they were both free, so I went for those as I didn’t really have a choice if I wanted to take part. Coupled with that I made the board and positioned all of the game entities using code, I hadn’t had the time to get a level editor sorted nor develop the code to parse a level file.

What went right?

FlashDevelop and FlashPunk : Although I mentioned being unfamiliar with FlashPunk as an issue, the engine itself performed admirably. I initially thought about writing the game from scratch with just FlashDevelop but in spite of the problems I believe that using FlashPunk was a good idea and I achieved more than I would have otherwise (if I had just coded an engine from scratch in FlashDevelop). FlashDevelop is a considerably superior IDE than I’m used to as well. Overall, thanks to this combination, coding was much faster than usual. The main thing holding me back in this area was a lack of experience and a sloppy attitude towards structuring the code towards the end, both of which can be rectified.

Deriving mechanics from setting, story and theme : By far one of my weakest areas in designing games is working out the mechanics, what exactly the player is going to be doing. Pretty essential for creating a compelling experience. I’ve found that I have a hard time working from gameplay-to-setting and a much easier time when working from setting-to-gameplay. So in this case, once I knew who the player was inhabiting, where they were, what genre I wanted to work within etc… then it was much easier to start developing the gameplay. My biggest weakness this time around was not being specific enough and pinning down the core mechanics that I wanted, I left it all in my head and it was inevitably too vague and I floundered after getting tired and stressed.

Working on the interface as a whole : To develop the artwork for the game I (eventually) set up a new file in GIMP that was the same resolution as the game and began to work on drawing the interface as a whole (on different layers, grouping into layer folders etc…). I’d then cut out and extract the individual elements into their own files. Although hindered by the issues noted above I enjoyed the process, it helped to get the artwork done and resembles the way that I’d work in Flash (although that is much more immediate).

What would I do differently?

In an ideal world I’d try to implement the following suggestions but, of course, I didn’t implement the suggestions that I made last time…

• Design : I’d drill down from character and setting to game mechanics and be more specific about the gameplay that I want to implement. Once I have a list of the key gameplay features then I could use that as a to-do list and try to get something playable up much more quickly. In LD 24 I had a crude but playable game by the end of the first day which I could then refine, this time by 17:00 on Sunday I still didn’t have a game which could be won or even lost. A very simple example would be as follows: I know the player will be an out of luck goblin (setting), they want to control their local dungeon (goal), how will they control it? By hiring minions to fight for them (mechanic). From there I can get more specific, how will they hire minions? A trading system, giving gold and resources for creatures, where will they find minions? Collecting cards from dungeon lairs, traders or finding them scattered throughout the dungeon and so on. Although, this time I did have the setting and genre which helped, I left the gameplay too vague.
• Programming : The programming went well this time, it was messy in places but nothing compared to LD 24. Thinking in states right from the beginning helped immensely to structure the code (although breaking states down into sub-states would have helped as things became more complex). Creating display classes that managed numerous entities and just presented a simple interface outside of the class was also an effective technique. As was nagging myself about DRY. Two major issues were: ignoring feedback and transitions, and not separating the UI code out into a separate class (I just fudged it all into the main game class). If there is a next time then I’d like to: warm-up with the tools, get some base code (preloading, buttons, sounds, template classes for the main elements, level loading etc…), a config class (key variables were scattered in different classes making playtesting and refinement hard work) and base code to simplify adding in different transitions (pop-ups fading in and out or sliding around, delays and tweens) and more elegantly handling player feedback (buttons pressed, disabled interface elements, damage taken, stats changed etc..).
• Environment : Making sure I’ve got decent tools for the job, if I’m using a laptop again then an extra monitor is a boon, as are a proper mouse and my trusty graphics tablet. Being comfortable and prepared can only help, right?

Okay, so this wasn’t my best game development experience but I’ve learnt from it and that’s the most important thing. I hope the rest of you get on better and get your games completed, good luck! All the best.

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem

Just finished up my crime simulator, Micro Mob, and submitted it to the competition.

I wrote a more detailed liveblog as I developed it on my blog -> http://www.bytesizeadventures.com/blog/ludum-dare-25-my-liveblog/

You can view, and more importantly play, my entry here -> http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=17895

I also recorded a timelapse which I hope to share soon

I did it! My first LD entry has been submitted. It is a game in which you try to win, but not by too much. As an Evil Overlord, you don’t want the Hero to ruin your plans, but you don’t want him to die either, because that would spoil the fun! More on the submission page.

That was most intense coding I remember ever having done. Towards the end I had to start heavily cutting corners. There are so many global variables and redundant checks, and so much duplicated code that I don’t ever want to look at the code again 😀

I had some time to spare but was too exhausted to start implementing anything – testing my game is pretty tedious. So there’s no sound, no starting screen, and most placeholder art is better than what you see in the game. Still, I completed what I set out to do – to create a game with many AI controlled agents and player only having global control over their behavior.

I feel I was very lucky with the theme, planning the game took only about 15 minutes. And I even managed to include a goat!

If he didn’t have a cute (but deadly) pet goat, he wouldn’t be an Evil Overlord. On the left, you can see Igor and Dmitri, trusted associates of the Evil Overlord.

The game is controlled by giving orders to your minions by choosing one of three available random choices. There are three levels, at the end of each level there are special choices.

See you in next LD!

Tags: goat, pygame, python, SuccessStory

Forgot the goat! (also an anarchist)

Still time to upload an updated version.

(I know it looks like a dog… 😐 )

Yay! After tearing my hair out for an age I managed to get particles working.

Now that I know how to do it, it should be nice and easy to slip in the rest. Or at least I hope!

ToDo List:

• Add particles
  • Dead plants
  • Dying troll
  • Sun lighting up
  • Links from flowers to suns
  • Blooming particles
• Fading in and out screens
• Redo Sky
• Redo Sun
• Potentially add the weed-whacker power-up
• Add animated flower roots

a big goat… 

Finally finished and submitted my game, you can check it here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=14490

So hi guys!

I finally finished my first ever LudumDare main event!

Even tho I didn’t really like the theme in the beginning goats helped me a lot and I came up with an idea pretty fast.

So, what went wrong?

1. Framework – even tho I knew monogame still doesn’t have all feature that XNA has, I found some really limiting in my development.

2. Second day – I awarded myself with 3 hours brake to play football with friends and I broke my toe! NEVER stop coding during LD!

What went right?

1. Time – I was even quite surprised how fast I managed to get things done! My game is far away from being something complex, but yeah, I’m satisfied with that!

2. General idea – Said it before, I got an idea pretty easily and it was a part I was the most afraid of.

3. Food

4. Sleep

Well, another Compo fail… but another Jam entry… tomorrow!
Right now, a demo with 5 levels, some collision bugs, no sounds.
With 24 more hours, I think I will add 5-10 more levels (in a carpathian forest and a foggy London), some sounds and a decent final screen.
Download link== https://www.box.com/s/9n9bbd56c4i7apqa28vt

2.30 AM in France, so time to sleep!

PS. some infos about how to play:
– arrows to move
– X to start the game
You have to open gates pushing levees.
You can change your character (you’are Nosferatu, a vampire but also a bat, a rat or a wolf), walking on the red skulls.

I’ve begun final mapping for my game (which is now pretty much a puzzle/rush game), and should be done with hopefully an hour to spare. Here’s a video

5 hours to go and a big TODO list.

uh oh

So, we’re 5 hours before the deadline, which means I should have already posted screenshots and everything, but I’m not at home, which explains why I’m completely disorganized!
I’m using:

• Javascript: CraftyJS
• Geany as editor
• The GIMP for graphics
• LMMS for music

And here’s the much needed screenshot:

Better graphics than usual!

Got the goat in-game!

Alright, 5 hours left and i know i won’t be done in time, but hey, that’s ok! This weekend was a lot of fun and i will continue to work on my game afterwards 😀

And i’m really looking forward to testplay other project, i saw so many amazing ones!

So things that changed since last post:

– I added the third and last mode, green, which let’s you move a lot quicker but you have no guns and you’ll get more damage. Good for traveling though

– I added a new building, the HardDrive! When you hack the harddrive, you get +1 to our max trojan capabilities.

Hacking the hard drive

– Added Trojans! You can place trojans now on nodes to tell them which one they should harvest. Nodes give Data over time which will be used for new skills. Once you assigned a trojan to a node, it will gather data and bring it over to it’s hard drive.

Unlocked hard drive with floating Trojan

Placing Trojan

– You need to unlock buildings first before hacking them! Any building that is grayed out is inactive.

As always, current build can be found here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1658875/Infected/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

Made most of the artwork now. Just need to do some event cards. I think pixel art and boardgames could be a pretty neat combination, two lovable anachronisms.

Mockups of what it will sort of look like when I print things out tomorrow. Gonna have to enter it into the jam in order to ensure that the rules work right and I have a physical copy.

Images!

Level 3

There’s a screenshot of level three. You can’t really see the player, since he’s hiding in the shadows.

As far as progress goes, I’m nearly done. I need to create a few more levels at least, and then apply a bit more polish to the game.

Progress this morning is going good, I have most of the bugs worked out, and probably the final graphics. Now its onto sound, music, and then to wrap everything up.

Part 1 of the live stream:

Lunch:

Part 2 of the livestream, and the last part, will start soon on my YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Ythmevge

Tags: foodphoto, progress

We will probably have a working game for tomorrow !

This game is a space shooter for starters.
But … YOU create the map that OTHER people will play.

Builds nasty and evil maps, and then players will lose and you will win money !

Build nasty ships, upgrade it, and you will be out there ripping money off the other lunatics buildings bases !

litle hint : all the interface is designed to also work on phones, tablets and other small devices !

And a litle screen for the road !

I think I used every available calorie of energy my aging body would let me.

Kind of wish there was an “ambition” category.

Best entry yet? We’ll see.

To all the others who’ve successfully completed their compo entries:

To everyone who didn’t make it… I’m sorry your parents didn’t raise you better.

Where’s George’s entry?

Tags: shit talkin champion, winning

You remember when I said that I was out? Yeah, of course you do..

Screw that!

HERE’S MY GAME!

(made in 2 hours)

(DISCLAIMER: This game may contain goats.)

To all the people who’ve done a game: Great!
To all first-timers who’ve done a game: You. are. awesome.

It’s been an awesome weekend. 😀 Unfortunately, I attempted something far too big, and so while I’m really pleased with what I have, there’s no actual goal, or win/lose condition. Then again, I’ll probably continue working on this after LD finishes.

I’ve added sound effects and the last few animations, fixed the last couple of bugs I came across, and put in a spectacular menu screen:

Ah, isn’t it truly beautiful?

Anyway, it’s 9pm, and I know I couldn’t get much more in here, so I’m done! Good luck to everyone still working furiously on their games. 😀

Game page is here.

Tags: done, menu, screenshot

Now I have the game almost complete.  All I have to do is touch up the explosion animation, fix some of the AI bugs, add one last enemy, and add an end – game animation, then I’m done!  Also, I kind of have to get an account to post downloads to…  Well that will get fixed in time.

This is my goat. It’s pseudo-3d due to the segments scaling and flipping.

Achievement Unlocked

Finally the game is done, now it’s time for polish and tying it all together in a pretty package.

Epic battle between the evil goat and on of the furry four!

but there is still much to do before the deadline, looks like an alnighter…

stuff to do…

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=8723

I’m too tired. This game have some bugs, and not so epic, but i like it. And now,  finally, i fall into the arms of the bed! Good luck everyone and may the force be with you!

Tags: fuckeah, ld25, screenshot

things don’t look good at all, I got no sounds whatsoever no menu, a lot of balancing to do, and the cutscene wich is really important in my game

Anyway, even if I don’t finish it, I’m still pretty damn happy with some of the stuff I came out =D

I managed to create the whole thing, just this weekend.

I am shattered now, so I hope you enjoy.

I uploaded the file to Newgrounds.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/607825

Tags: cs5, fantasy, flash, magic, RPG, trading cards

Implementing the AI of my last post wasn’t nearly as hard as I figured it’d be.. and not very slow either. It’s likely that a more complete AI is possible!

Here’s what it does:

(do this every time a new piece is chosen)

Repeat for each column and rotation possible:

-Apply r rotations and move piece to x column as fast as possible

-Compute the resulting board

-Store the sequence of moves and the amount of points (inversely proportional to average column height and directly proportional to number of lines cleared)

Choose the sequence of moves that gives higher points.

Minimizing average column height is a bad idea after all. It ends up chosing to stack high towers to keep some columns really low and loses the game very quickly. I’ll try throwing in more criteria and see what happens.

Submitted my entry for my second LD. First one was really fun, this one was even better, LOVED the theme! Totally unexpected, I was sure it’d be End of the World (it sucks by the way).

My original idea was to make a cop-thief chase game in a randomly generated city. To avoid messing with content generation I moved underground, using the parisian’s southern bank as the scenario. Thought about using the nothern bank, since it’s a lot bigger and the train network’s a lot more complex, but in retrospect I’m glad I didn’t. Took me HOURS to create this scenario.

The game’s more of a strategy game, with heavy balance issues. Same problem as my previous entry, I really need to work on my balancing skills. Tried to create some shortcut to improve gameplay, didn’t help much.

Rive Gauche

I’d love to see this game use the entire subway network with mechanics that’d actually make it fun. Excited for LD26!

I’ve now uploaded the game “Pirate Scum”.

It’s not really a great game, but it is quite enjoyable. I mean, for me at least.

What you do is basically collect treasure around the world, and every time you get one treasure box or destroy a town with your cannon, a Navy ship appears randomly.

There’s a highscore “system”, and you try to beat it with your highly encouraging words from your beloved captain.