Play Here

Well, we are going to start from the beginning. I had high hopes about the theme would be Parallel Worlds so I started to do an idea about a game with this theme in my head.

The day 26 came and the final theme was Minimalism. The first thing I did was curse to the people who had voted that theme. The second thing was start to think how can I innovate and at the same time create a minimalism game, but the ideas weren’t coming to my, and magically I remembered my first idea for the Parallel Worlds theme. This idea consisted in a split-screen with two characters who would interact between they. You would have to get the objects in the ground and go changing of screen for kill enemies who only could be killed by one of the character (ok, this sounded better in my head).

So I made this concept more minimalist. The game would have split-screen and two character running forward, each screen would represent the black or the white and this would create a contrast between the characters and the background.

Then, when I had this in my project of Unity, I added blocks who kill you when you touch him. Although this look like a simple thing but this was one of my hardest challenges in the develop of this game, all because Unity not detected any collider. After two hours and almost come to despair I decided restart my computer, and YEAH! THIS SOLVED THE PROBLEM, FUCK U UNITY!, were my words.

Well, the colliders works good, the characters run forward and when they touch a block they die. And has not spent even one day, this is amazing!.

Is time to level design!

The level design was very frustrating, to each block that I put I needed complete the level until that point, and this isn’t easy, seriously, I wanted to hit something!. It took me a lot of hours.

Ok, the day had not finished and I still had time to do the menus. I made it and finally came the time to sleep after 22 hours of work without rest.

The game was complete and I still had one day more to polish it.

The second day was a relaxing day. I did the music and fix a lot of bugs. I still had more of half day more so I started thinking in what could I add to make the game experience more satisfactory, the first thing I saw was that the graphics were very very simples, I knowed that the theme was minimalism but… I love the pixels and my game had to have pixels!, so I set to worked. I did a wall of bricks and some windows and the game now looked like an ancient castle. The problem of it was that the game was now more hard. But fuck, I really loved how the game looked!, so I add a “button” for choose if you want play with textures or without them.

Finally I publish the game when still missing about five hour to finish the compo.

And this is basically how I did feel while I was develop this game for my first ludum dare.

PD: Sorry for my bad english, I’m not a native

Tags: 2D, after, afterthrough, art, feels, funny, game, hard, hardest, ld, LD#26, pixel, pixelart, through, unity, unity3d

Here is a behind the scenes video of the making of my LD26 game: Buggers!

You can play/rate the game HERE

Tags: LD#26, timelapse

Bridge Crosser is now up!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=12839

We had submitted it early (last night), but now have all the builds available, as well as a trailer for the game.

Video Here:

Bridge Crosser – Ludum Dare Trailer

Good luck to those still finishing up their jam entries, and we can’t wait to see what everyone makes.

http://elementalzeal.com

Can you rescue the famous minimalist painting “The Black Square” from the nefarious clutches of Stalin’s censorship dungeon?  Experience the hot Cold War action!

PLAY NOW

Hello Minimalists

we weren’t able to make posts earlier so here we are , we will publish our demo soon , stay tuned

the name of the game is :
”    Life & Minimalism    ”    .

T.T  HQ

Team. Thawra

tldr:   Tools Matter, Sleep, Limit your Content Scope.  Great Success!

The Results!

I went into Ludum Dare with a certain nervous excitement.  I’ve been poking at indie development for over a year at this point, with very little to actually show for it.  I’ve got a bunch of concept documents, a couple prototypes, and a single 2D ‘action’ game to my name.  Ludum Dare is talked about in tones of respect among the indie community; participating successfully seemed to be a right of passage.  Being in way over my head didn’t stop me from signing up for MLG Raleigh as a Platinum Zerg, so it sure as heck wasn’t going to stop me from mingling with the much more accepting indie scene.

Of all the topics, the one I didn’t want to see was Minimalism.  Seriously, how buzzword can you get?  And if you look at the voting, nobody really liked anything…  I think Minimalism won with 330 positive votes, out of something like 4k voters.

After a quick search, I latched onto the idea of ‘trimming the excess’, and also the literary definition that attempts to leave critical parts of main characters featureless so the reader can mold it to their preference.  So, simplification and user choice.  Not a bad set of concepts.  Explicit branching paths is time consuming, so I went with interchangeable component sets.  Then I went crazy and decided to use audio as the core component.  Derp.

I’m not a musician.  Sure, I can sing a capella  choral, and jazz. I play a bit of piano, guitar, and clarinet.  A very little bit.  So that was my first major mistake.  Still, creating audio loops can be less time consuming than other forms of Content, and it did make the game feel unique, so not a terrible mistake… just an awkward one.

Having good tools makes a world of difference.  I built my game using Unity3D, 3DSM, Photoshop, and Reaper with NI VSTs.  This allowed me to inherit a lot of polish with minimal effort.  The down side, of course, being that you have to put a lot of effort into making it look unique.  I spent that effort on the core mechanic (audio tracks), and let everything else retain most of its workflow heritage.  I’m not saying tools are everything, but they made my job easier.  The content generators provided are a godsend.

Learned a lot about 3D object animation; I haven’t used it very much in the past and there seems to be a big difference between objects and humanoids.  Worked out smooth scene transitions within Unity. In general, about 10-20% of my time was spent learning how to do what I wanted with the tools.  20-30% was spent on geometry, and another 20-30% on the audio content.  The remaining time was spent on code, logic, textures, and polish.  That means I should be able to do more next time, since I’ll know the tools better.

Even with frequent commits to SVN, I lost a couple models and audio tracks that later needed to be recreated and tweaked.

I got so wrapped up in the base content, I forgot some details that would have made it more immersive.  There’s no ambient audio, and no interactive sound effects like footsteps, button clicks, door open noises, birds chirping outside, etc.  I had a couple hours to spare at the end, but I was so fatigued I just called it a day.

Near the end, I realized I had overshot my scope, and had to trim off about 40% of the content.  It removed a little too much content for a final version of a real game, but it was the right choice for this specific event.

I slept enough.  That made a huge difference.  I was loath to see the hours go away, but this is a creative endeavor and I have zero creativity when I’m sleep deprived.

I considered stocking up on food and drinks beforehand, so I wouldn’t have to leave at all.  The drinks were a good call… enough coffee and beer to keep me sated.  I skipped on the food, and while having it on hand may have helped a little, the enforced trip outside for grub cleared my head.

Overall, I think this was a great success.

So after many revisions/strip downs/screw it let’s think of something else’s, we’re coming down to the final bit of production.

Music is done and mastered, game play has been tweaked, bugs have been squashed. All and all, it’s been a good week.

Look for Traffic Jam, being submitted by iiechapman soon. We would have a stream up of the final tweaks and a count down, but the stream has been messing with the speed of the game and we want to make sure it’s as precise as possible.

Music will be up online soon as well, if you want to hear music from the game as well as ideas for other games we were going to make this weekend, check out http://soundcloud.com/d_e_t_music and distancetheearthhastraveled.bandcamp.com after the Jam.

Thanks to all! We had a great time, keep your eyes open!

So, i officially took part in LD26. It was a blast.

Such a great experience, i learned much, i had much fun, i was able to make a great game.

And still, one question that remains is.. what now?

Well, i just froze my game on github in an ludum-dare branch and will now continue to develop it.

As i was rather unhappy with the Slick Engine, i will be porting it over to native Java. And then maybe make my own simple engine out of that.

Thats my task for the next ~4 months till LD27.

But in the long term.. i definitly want to switch to go. Maybe i will stop mid-porting and port it to go instead.. we will see.

Take care guys, thanks for your support and everyone who has voted for me, keep voting, keep enjoying all those great games and see you around!

I’m not going to submit this, but here is a playable version of what i made:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41127168/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

I’ve been pretty busy Friday, Sunday, and slept through most of Monday and I’m going shopping soon, so I haven’t gotten a chance to get that far into the game. I was also spending most of Saturday relearning what little Unity I know from a single course I took.

My idea was to make a platformer with minimalistic input. So minimal, in fact, that this game is only controlled through a text parser. I think that this is a clever idea that I could have done more with, but the sheer labor overhead of relearning unity and coding a laundry list of specific textual interactions and building levels was too much for only around 16 hours of real work.

For the next ludum dare, I’m going to try to build up a library of platformer, shmup, rpg and other mechanics, as well as graphics and sound programming to draw on and remix for the theme. I’m also going to give Haxe a try, because I want to try out other gaming platforms. I need to become much more comfortable with Unity.

The goal was to make something though. That was the most important thing for me, so in that sense i did what I was aiming for

What went right:

• The controls, generally worked well once you got the hang of it.
• The idea generation/workflow went through many different iterations before I arrived at the final idea. The original concept was extremely different.
• Art, I use a total of 5 textures in the entire game (1 apple, 2 paper, 1 paper with mouse diagram,picnic table) and the results were pretty good.
• Knives, they were a fairly last minute addition and had a large impact on the enjoyability.

What went wrong:

• Level design was time consuming and prone to error.
• Some levels are still way too difficult.
• Physics in Unity aren’t as robust as I would’ve liked, some levels suffered due to this.
• Creating the rotating pieces was a surprisingly complex and cumbersome process, each piece has a carefully crafted triggerbox that encompasses every element, when elements overlap this was particularly challenging.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22708

Hi all, just a quick post about my first Ludum Dare entry! This isn’t my first time entering a game jam, but it is the first time I’ve managed to “finish” a game for a jam! And it’s an  amazing feeling!

Just want to thank everyone in the community, you’re awesome! Especially everyone that has left comments on my game so far, Very constructive criticism!

I can’t wait for LD27!

Trying to play and rate as many of the entries as possible, many brilliant games.

Here is how my entry turned out..

If anyone wants to try it, it’s here.

dualtagh

Pheeeeee–eeewww!  Done something…  Pretty happy with the game play.  I would really like to tweak the controls but time to release it.

A/D to yaw

W/S to pitch

Q/E to roll

LMB tap or hold to blast.

Windows  |  Mac

You must destroy the anti-matter(purple shapes).  The presence of anti-matter has “quietened” the quantum foam.

Anti-matter seeks out strings.  Then reproduces.

When all strings are converted the game is lost and you start again.

Destroy all anti-matter to restore chaos to the quantum foam.  5 levels so far then it resets.

TIP:  If you can’t find a stray anti-matter particles their presence distorts the quantum foam so look around for distortions then look up.
       

Oh, I guess that answers my question. =)

PS: Shameless Plug:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=23016

=)

and pics!

I just started Java but I wasn’t good enough for LD #26 so I will go in for #27

Almost locked down the final build, adding final touches and intro screen and thats a wrap!

Let me know what you think!!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35270092/Traffic%20Jam%20v5.zip

P.S. There is a READ ME file in the download, check it out for instructions!

Nearly final build

View entry here

Wow, so I think I’m really happy with my submission. I wasn’t even planning on taking part my second time around, but having the JAM really allowed me to relax more compared to my first LD48. The result is a gem which I’m always going to be proud of. The character I ended up going with is Dot Solid. I originally designed him long ago, but his name was Sucre and he was going to go on an adventure through the kitchen as a sugar cube, but this theme really made it possible for me to do more than just sit on the idea. It was a match made in heaven.

The funny and coincidental thing about the game being affectionately titled after Metal Gear is that when I needed an end boss battle, I just ended up combining all the platforming obstacles into a creature that resembles Metal Gear Rex. Serendipity?! I think so.

ENJOY!

Tags: Dot, Metal Djinn, Platonic, Prelucid, Solid

Enjoy

Please, play my game 

Windows, Mac, Linux, and Web version.

Thx for your feedback

Hey guys.

I wanted to ask, if it is allowed if I make more levels for my game, which I couldn’t handle in time due to the limitation?

It is pretty cool looking back over my git commit log thinking that at the very start something as simple as key inputs to move the character on screen didn’t even exist; then 48 hours later or so there was a playable game.

Jellycakes played my game on live stream before at it was a unique feeling seeing someone on the other side of the world spend a little bit of time interacting with something that wasn’t even an idea last week.

It also pointed out a lot of flaws in my game which I didn’t really consider, I think next Ludum Dare I’ll have to get people to play test it before I release it.

Ludum dare really is quite special and I can’t wait for the next one, now back to playing random games.

My game be here.