Our game, Adventures !inColour is finished!

You must fight potato colour lords in the hope of bringing your precious world back to grey-scale.

Here are some screenshots:

You can get the source code here.

Got it in and submitted!

So far I’ve had some nice comments from everyone, and I am thankful for that.

One particular point people seem to like is the transitions between levels.

For those who haven’t played it, the level is defined by blocks of either 64×64 or 32×32 size, and during a level transition these all fly into the middle of the screen. They are then re-allocated behind the scenes (the green and black tile that make the games logo never get deleted), and explode out into the new level configuration.

This effect is actually extremely simple to do, and for impact to code is well worth your time, so I thought I’d go into how I did it.

For each drawn object in your game, construct their position call something like as follows

#Reset the visual position
self.player.vX = self.cPan * 480 + ((1 – self.cPan) * self.player.rX)
self.player.vY = self.cPan * 352 + ((1 – self.cPan) * self.player.rY)
This is Python, but you could use C# or whatever you like syntatically. What is happening above is we have a global variable “cPan” which is applied to a fixed x coordinate (the centre of the screen) and then the inverse (1 – cPan) applied to the players rX variable (that is “real x”, vX being “visual X”). Separating out the draw and position coords means you can do funky effects isolated from logic. Particular doing it like this allows you to do things like jitter with one or two lines of added code.

So now we have this transformation applied every frame, we can see our drawn position will smoothly animate from the centre of the screen (480, 352) when cPan is 1, to the objects real position when cPan is 0.

I added the following section in my global state update function:

#Visual processing, animations, fades, pans etc
if abs(self.cPan – self.cPanT) < 0.01:
self.cPan = self.cPanT
else:
self.cPan = self.cPan + ((self.cPanT – self.cPan) * 0.1)

Our variable cPanT (cPan Target) is compared to the current value of cPan. If the difference is less than 0.01 set them equal to each other. This provides a nice “snap” effect at the end of the move, and also prevents 1 pixel jittering from making it look messy. If the difference is larger than 0.01, we move cPan towards cPanT by 10% of the difference. Because of this use of percentage, when the distance is large it moves quickly, when it is small it moves slowly, giving us our nice explosion effect.

Lastly, I added a command to my internal scripting system as follows

if action[0] == “CPAN”:
self.cPanT = float(action[1])
if self.cPanT == 0:
self.sound_level_expand.play()
elif self.cPanT == 1:
self.sound_level_compress.play()

The system works by queueing events programmed into the game logic object, and then processing them. Events are a command in the [0]’th array position followed by some arguments. In this case we can have either “CPAN 0” or “CPAN 1”. The script sets the cPanT variable, plays the funky sound effect, and removes the command.

Here’s what my script looks like for the level transition:

“NEXTLEVEL”:[
(0, “MODE NONINTERACTIVE”),
(100, “WAIT”),
(0, “CPAN 1”),
(150, “WAIT”),
(0, “SPAWN_LEVEL”),
(0, “CPAN 0”),
(100, “WAIT”),
(0, “MODE INTERACTIVE”)],

100 = 1 second. 0 = execute this instantly. It’s pretty readable, but it sets the system non-interactive so your commands are ignored, waits a second (you just won, thats your “victory savoring” time), zooms everything into the centre of the screen, waits again, spawns the new level (I should probably reverse these!), zooms out in the new configuration, gives you another second to look at the level before it starts, and then sets the game interactive again.

Cool transitions in a total of 6 lines of code!

Uploaded a development video and the same Gameplay video as before

Website for the game http://magicsheepgames.co.uk/LD.html

 

It rubs the butters on its skin!

Total sleeps precious: 12h
Time awakes precious: 36h
Longest stretch precious: 27hours

Modelling: 7h
Textures/Graphics: 1h
Animation: 4h
Shiva/Code: 18h
Audio/SFX/Music: 6h

Drunk: Most of the time.
Vomits: 1
Lifespan reduced by: 1 year
Love life: -1
Neckbeard: +1
Insanity conundrums invoked: Over 9000!
Demons summoned: 3

Potatoes tortured: All of the potatoes.

A friend of mine has done a Let’s Play of my game, so if you are unable to play it you can still get an idea of what it is like.

Contains spoilers, so I would suggest not playing until after having a go at the game for yourself (if you can)

Can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln8Gbn2W6OQ

I didn’t want to keep a diary as I wanted to concentrate on the act of creating the game BUT I did tweet.. I thought I would upload my log of tweets over the 48 hours as a record of the process… or my mental state..

 

In reverse order naturally

 :/

 

xopsx ‏@xopsx8h

@CliveLindop DONE! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=21374 …

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

It’s here! it’s done! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=21374 … Consider my game released! 😀 #LD48 #goodnightall

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

and finally.. what I will do after minimal sleep for 48 hrs. #LD48 #Bedtime pic.twitter.com/KYRTltLZQ0

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

the Other main character “D” is deciding whether she should shower, change or simply leave #LD48 pic.twitter.com/zE2nUuDvOp

xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

Ad makes Tea in the Kitchen… or at least TRIES To…. “SPOILERS!” #LD48 pic.twitter.com/E5smsUyrMM

xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

In this screen, one of the main characters “Ad”, goes into the kitchen at work #LD48 pic.twitter.com/6P1iJSEnRn

xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

so according to @allornothing_jm I am supposed to be running some kind of campaign. here are some screens! #LD48 pic.twitter.com/piK8cWMKT0

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

Ladies and Gentlemen. I would like to announce that my #LD48 entry “Minlife” is currently uploading Thank you for all the support!

xopsx ‏@xopsx12h

last few bits of audio… then bug fixin! #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx13h

#nbaplayoffs and #LD48! What a weekend! 😀 http://sdrv.ms/11v1LnF 

xopsx ‏@xopsx15h

ok, gotta push through this bit.. frustrating hook ups of small issues causing massive bugs. nearly there! #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx20h

WOWOWOAAH! sooo close. Break time. #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx23h

YEYEAH!!! Breakthrough! have a bunch of game that looks good and WORKS! time to finish off the last few rooms and then – AUDIO! #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx28 Apr

in an addition to my #LD48 excitement… #NBAplayoffs are INCREDIBLE tonight! pic.twitter.com/Dcenqz5cgL

xopsx ‏@xopsx28 Apr

Water spawner… check… tree spawner.. check… Running “pickup bobby” matrix #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx28 Apr

Up and back at it! #ld48

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

right, sleep break needed. Couple of hours maybe. Going well #LD48

alistair hope ‏@wannaneeda27 Apr

Keep pushing on!! @Catmoo @xopsx

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

#LD48 oh it is ON! a few rooms into my game and it is shaping up. Time for a cup of tea…. TEA! That’s IT! #putsteainthegame

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

@GameDesignDan yeah, I am all over it!

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

back on track! coming along well now. Just need to hook up some variables and BAM! we are rolling 😀 #LD48

1. xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

lost a lot of work. #doitagainbetter

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

Going Strong, first crash, lost work. #saveoften #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

#ld48 theme. Minimalism.

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

@GameDesignDan yeah! @Catmoo is too! Just got up

Ludum Dare ‏@ludumdare27 Apr

The Theme for Ludum Dare 26 is: Minimalism #LD48 #GoodLuck

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

@GameDesignDan you up this late/early for #LD48 right? 😉

Ludum Dare ‏@ludumdare27 Apr

Thirty Minutes!!! #LD48

 

 

The goal of Nod is to get a date with a cute girl. Unfortunately, you’re too shy to talk. Instead, you have to nod your head at just the right moments to succeed!

 The aspect I enjoyed the most was designing the XML schema and parsing the dialogue. But the thing I’m least happy about is that I didn’t have time to write more complex dialogue. Right now it plays like a choose-your-own adventure, even though the system allows for more complex scenarios. Still, I’m happy with what I was able to accomplish in very little time (~12 hours)!

Play and rate here.

Why aren’t you playing it already??

Barely a day after submission and already I have a lot of great feedback! Thanks to everyone and keep playing! Here’s second part of the timelapse to celebrate.

I think I’ll continue developing this a bit further before writing even a premature post-mortem. There’s lots of stuff I’d like to implement before I’m willing to declare this project deceased.

Tags: ginnungagap, timelapse

Hi!

This is my entry, i hope you will finish it, it isn’t going to be easy, but it’s doable…

Can you reach the end? =D

My submission

Play it, comment and vote!

Hey !

Remember me ? Probably not, it’s only my second Ludum Dare and third game. The first one was Breeding Cubes for LD24, and the second one was HeartZ made with 3 others during the GlobalGameJam 2013.

This time I choose to reproduce Harvest: Massive Encounter, an already minimalist tower defense game that I enjoyed a lot. I wanted to built a resource management game for a while already, so this LD’s theme was the perfect occasion. Its certainly minimalistic on the inspiration side, but I really wanted to built this one and that was all the motivation I needed.

I tried to reproduce most of the mechanics : rock harvesting, energy production, energy propagation along the nodes (the feature that makes the game very cool and interesting to me) and building construction and functioning using energy.

It’s clearly unfinished and unbalanced, but it’s playable.
Move with arrows, place buildings with the mouse – click on them on the left then on the map (discard with right mouse).

Note that you can not reload the game, you need to exit it and launch it again to reset the level, sorry about that.

Still, I am pretty happy with it. I only worked like 25h on it and lost about 5h trying to fix bugs directly due to my inexperience with the the software and game dev in general.
The good thing is that I feel like I have leveled-up !

It is made entirely with CraftStudio that you can still try for free for a couple of days.
Depending on your OS, you may need XNA or Mono or -I am not sure what- to play.
You can try the web built, but it does not work for me (stays stuck during initializing scripts).

Go Play It

Thanks and GG everyone !

Tags: craftstudio, encounter, Harvest, minimalism, ressources

LD26 – Simple Towers timelapse

Tags: AleksandarDev, Simple Towers, timelapse

 

I have had a few requests to write something about the game and as I am currently awake whilst the plumbers fix a huge leak in our bathroom, I thought I should take the time to do exactly that. Write I mean, not fix the huge leak.

 

 

when I set out to make minlife I thought of a few ideas. These included platformers, decorating games, maze explorers and all sorts. Here is my original brainstorm that I ended up using as a plan-maker (Created in xmind HIGHLY recommended and FREE – http://www.xmind.net/ )

 

Once I decided to make the focus of the Theme the art style and feel of the game, that allowed me to expand in the mechanics and direction. I very quickly thought of lots of cool scenes I could make with basic props, characters and back drops.

SPOILERS

As I started making the game feel minimal and sparse visually, I realised that there was a twist I could play with the players expectations. By letting the player think that you could only do one thing, (get up, shower in a linear fashion) I was able to play with that preconception in the “driving sequence”. The game tells you that you should “Pick up bobby”  and the result is a little different than most though. Also, depending on how you “drive” (move left or right) this will affect the outcome.

I expanded this idea later at the workplace/studio where I took regular events and made them a bit surreal/special. If you compare the list of rooms on the brainstorm to the final locations in the game you will see I ran out of time to make them all, BUT I did include a lot of them and feel happy with what I have made.

As a side note, a great surprise for me in this process is how people are talking and relating to the characters in the game. The three people you collect are actually three friends I work with and car pool with every day. To hear people who have never met them, discuss what they feel about them is great and hilarious.

for example –

“I picked up bobby! he is great.”

“Simon and Craig arent as cool as Bobby”

There are a few points where the game is a little unstable and strange things happen BUT this has also had a positive outcome. A good friend of mine Oli played the game and found that –

 

“SPOILERS!” – “If you kill Craig and Simon on the way to work, you enter some kind of guilt nightmare when you arrive at work. It spawns multiple copies of both of them with the objective text laid on top of each other. Mad Lynchian.” – I apologised and explained the bug but got back this reply –

“I loved that moment, I felt genuine guilt.”

“END SPOILERS!”

 

 

So yes, I am glad! I love creating games that inspire in some way even if it is the smallest emotion or reaction. A laugh or a gasp. Surprises and the unexpected can totally make a game.

Thanks to everyone who has played the game so far and for all the kind comments and support

Need to resist the urge to build more into it – post competition..

This is Spacestronaut Napper, Signing OFF!

 

Here’s the game: http://smilingrob.com/ld26/

And the competition link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20689

The Good

* The biggest thing I learned was that it’s ok to sleep, eat well (no red-bull or candy), and do some normal things during the 48 hours.

* I think the audio came out good.  And the song I made was surprising because it was the first thing I played on the keyboard.  When I dropped it into the game the mood changed and made it seem like an art experiment more than a game.  So I was really pleased with that.

* The arrow puzzle controls are really satisfying.  Jumping is frustrating sometimes.  And typing letters would be better if I had time to highlight the individual letters.

* Analytics are built in, I’m tracking how far people get, and their score when they win.

* I finished something, and put it on my website.

The Bad:

* Another major thing I learned was the value spending time on just designing something on paper.  I was really stuck for an idea after the theme was announced, and I just ended up choosing a lame mechanic because I didn’t have time to think of some good one.  If I do this again, I’ll try to think of a cool mechanic first and then apply the theme to that mechanic.

* I’m disappointed that I didn’t spend an hour modeling some quick things to drop on the path besides blocks.   I wanted to have junk flying by to make things seem faster, and have stars moving over your head.  But I got stuck on a few bugs and ended up only having time to make it work.

* Aaron and Alex’s role aren’t really visualized as well as I wanted.  I set the audio to pan Aaron on the left and Alex on the right.  Good guys classically come in from the left.  Alex’s voice was much louder in my mic, so I had to boost Aaron’s character and I boosted him a bit too high.

* The capsule looks lame and beginner to anyone that’s used Unity.  I can model much better things in 3D, but I ended up just modeling some cubes.  So much for practicing UV mapping in Blender last week.

They say your prize is your game.  And I’m very happy to have made something to put in my portfolio.  Even if it’s not great, it’s way better than an empty portfolio and the excuse that most of my work is backend, behind a firewall, and an NDA.

Tags: postmortem, timelapse, video

Hello everyone! I posted a link to a video of my game Quantum Strike yesterday, and I realized that the video was pretty bad quality, so I made a new one! I still don’t know how to put videos in a post, but here’s the link:

http://youtu.be/pj6glKJy4Bc

I hope everyone is having fun with their games! 😀

-Skunkaroony

Lasers and Explosions

Explosions!

Those blue dudes are going at each other

And when youtube is done (in about an hour from this post), there will be a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRxijnn9R38

The game is finished, at least the minimum requirements for it to be a game. Now is time for polishing to make a better user experience.
And tweak those units so they are more balanced. I can’t believe I’m losing against this stupid AI so often…
Edit: I forgot to post the link! http://bitly.com/SquareWars

Port mortem is where you write what went good and what went bad, right? Well, let’s get to it then-
First of all, here’s my entry- http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22590
I was going to post it in the compo, but then my computer became crazy and I had no internet connection. It’s sad, really, but looking at my game now, I think it fits the jam better.

What went good:

• In terms of code quality, this project exceeds almost all of my other projects in every aspect.
• I was having fun doing the graphics, even though they’re probably the crappiest you’ll find here.
• I found out that most of the utility classes I wrote months ago, such as Animation and Font, work seamlessly, so that if I when I start new projects, I’ll have all the boiler-plate code already available and know it works. I had fun abstracting code which I usually have to look at the whole time I’m working on my project, so all in all, my framework worked nicely.
• I’m happy with the concept of the game. I came up with it within 10 minutes of seeing what the theme is, and I don’t feel like I could have improved upon it had I waited 5 more hours. The idea fit the theme, was extremely east to implement, and worked nicely throughout the process. It’s not really a good game at all, but that wasn’t the point for me.

 

What went bad:

• Saturday- us Jews can’t use electronics on Saturday. It meant I had to join when everyone else was already 13 hours into the jam, but this is just a minor gripe. I had lots of spare time.
• I realized, when it was too late to reformat the framework, that the game state framework I’ve been planning for the past few weeks has a flawed core function. It means I couldn’t make a menu screen, a (real) pause screen, or a level editor. This is my next problem:
• I’m already awful at level design, having to code a level every time was just too much. If I’d made a level editor from the beginning, I would probably have made double the amount of levels in the final product, which is a measly 7.
• I wasn’t satisfied at all with the sound effects BFXR generated, so in the end there isn’t any sound in the game at all, which is a shame. For future projects I’ll know to ask friends to make the audio instead of a cheap (but sometimes effective) sound generator.
• It’s the same with graphics- I don’t really care that my graphics suck, but when I started writing the actual gameplay I’d already worked for more than an hour trying to set up the framework, which is way more than the usual for me, and when I got the core gameplay set up, I started working on the basic sprites. Their cruminess, along with the sucky feel the game had in the beginning, got me seriously demotivated. I was even considering scrapping the idea and starting anew, but then I read some posts of people who had done just that and regretted it, so I pushed on, and I’m glad I did.
• I was really shoddy with how I implemented collision detection and other things of the sort, so that adds up to the game total crumminess. I know how to write good collision detection code, so that’s not really a problem for future games.

 

All in all, this was a really fun experience. I’ll be sure to participate in august, and in the meantime, let’s rate some games!

This is my first game in the Ludum Dare competition, I wanted a very minimalistic graphics and a simple gameplay to stick with chosen theme.

I hope you ‘ll enjoy it.

Noa

Hey,

I just finished my first entry (wich you can play here). Sadly, I had not much time and only worked for about 5 hours.

So, my opinion to the Ludum Dare… It was awesome! Learned much, watched some livestreams by some guys and I finished a game (more or less), even if my entry is bad and i should feel bad.

Well, what went right (The shorter thing first):

* Sound effects. I never really used them before, but now I can’t life without them.

* The theme. At first, I tought it was a bad theme, ’cause Ludum Dare’s are acutally always minimalistic due short time, but it went better than expected.

What went wrong:

* The polish. I didn’t have had enough time to polish my game. Also, it gets boring after some time.

* The cuts. Since this game is a FruitNinja-like, I made the fruits to be cut in 2 halfes. Sadly, every time the same. I planned to cut them off, where they actually were cut-off, like when you drag trough the middle, the part gets split in the middle.

* The menu, I only focused on the game, so the menu and the game-over screen were to simple, wich might be a plus because the theme is “minimalism”.

 

So, thats it.

Hope you’ll try my entry.

Hi everyone!

Here’s my third LD  Jam submission, MNMLSM!

 

 

 

Went solo this time, and I was actually able to finish it! I was even able to find the time to add a tutorial and lay down a quick guitar-track! Not the best, but its something!

— The game —

Your objective is simple – dump all the things into the water hole before the time runs out. I strongly recommend trying the tutorial first, just to get the basic technique.

The game is a little hard, but 100% beatable, and I hid a few secrets in there too!

—

Had a blast, and I’m pretty happy with the result. By some magical strike of fortune, I had the core mechanics more or less in place already the first night, so I got to do quite a bit of polishing. I have a few more levels lying around if anyone is able to beat the three that are included in the game.

Anyway, here it is!

— POTATO —

 

 

Tags: jam, LD#26, submission

Timelapse video capture of my desktop while making Mini Circle Wars.