Well, my game is done in less than 2 hours… It even is pretty fun.

I had an interesting time this LD. I made two demos of different games and completed neither.

First, “Catch the Apples” was a remake of one of the microgames from the original WarioWare, but expanded into its own game. For reasons that should be obvious, this turned out to not really be worth the kind of lovely art I had in mind for it.

The other game was “Plink”, a shmup with geometric graphics and very simple gameplay. I wound up running into my natural weekend laziness and then technical problems (my laptop has been freezing randomly lately ) so I couldn’t finish it in time for the jam.

I gained something, though. I gained the knowledge that I can get something working, and that doing so is the most important part of this process. I have a habit of getting lost in boilerplate and features that I don’t need yet. Part of that is a tendency to put off making artwork. I’m starting to make artwork much more promptly and actually get the thing working in a timely manner now.

I have a game in the works which I will sell on Flash Game License. I’m more confident than ever that I can finish since I’ve been reminded that I can actually make a working game.

I might have failed to finish this LD, but I got the knowledge that I can actually do this. I proved to myself that this doesn’t have to be a pipe dream.

I wish I had finished, of course. However, I can finish my current project instead. It’s a pretty nice project that will hopefully work out well for me.

Peace, love, and hope,

– Henry

MY TWITCH:
http://www.twitch.tv/oliviosarikas

Worship Potato King!

After several dull prototypes (#1 minimalistic tactic game, #2 minimum postapocalyptic racing) I decided to make minimum reason game. Results are impressive. Many people around the world worshiping Potato King without any reason. I think this is great success. Potato King loves you!

I’ve finally finished an LD after many many failed attempts. So ill relish it a bit by making a post mortem. You guys were right, finishing a game in 48 hours is something to be experienced. Also, It powers you up in ways you don’t realize. Anyway to the topic.

What went right:

– Theme: Minimalism at first seems like a hard theme but, if you think about it, it’s prefect for game jams. As the hours dwindle away you essentially keep slicing and chopping away whatever you had planned until you get something that’s just right. Also umm I got away with my scrawl pixel art again haha.

– Game Engine: Flambe with its component system really makes for some fast development times. That is, if you survive the learning curve ;D

– Level Design: I had no time to make a stage editor nor time to figure out how to use Tiled or Ogmo Editor. So I actually coded each brick piece by piece, row by column. After adding a few blocks I usually playtest it, so I was able to make each of the 3 stages totally workable.

What went wrong:

– Difficulty: I am really sorry about this haha. With every iteration of the map I kept moving things around to maximize the jumps and such and kinda forgot that I was making it really really hard. I made up for it by stage 2 but I reckon many people will give up by stage 1. Sorry again :<

– Resolution: I coded the game on a widescreen and totally forgot to optimize for smaller screens. I wish I can say I ran out of time for this one but umm really I forgot.

Well that felt really good. I hope to see you guys again next LD  /

My game can be found here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=2817

Well, since it’s my first REAL Ludum Dare entry, I can say everything went in other way than I expected. At first I was like “Oh yeah, we’re going to finish in 3 seconds”, then “Oh gosh we are not going to finish this ;_;”, fortunatelly everything went okay in the end.

I’m really really proud of this game, it showed that my team can actually do something if we are devoted and if we put a bit of effort and my teammates did, an epic job.

So what are the good things:

• Graphics – I think they really fit for the minimalism theme, and it makes the game look like a retro game which might be interesting to continue
• Audio – Cleary, our composer has talent, and I really like what job he did there.
• Levels Aspect – Well, I designed the levels myself (except for last one), and I really suck at that, but I did something, I think, I hope. I am a bit dissapointed; I wanted a bit more complex levels, harder…a bit and a bit not that empty.

The wrong stuff:

• The bugs – well a game without bugs is not a game, but  I am pissed off because I think I could actually fix this.
• The time – Parents, school, everything was against me there, luckily I could finish in time but I wanted more levels and stuff.

In conclusion, this was an amazing experience. At first I hated minimalism as a theme, I hated it much, but now I love it because it showed me how great can be a minimalistic game. Cleary I won’t abandon this game and I’ll update it in the future.

As someone noticed to me, colour blind people can have problem with my game, especially with the water tiles, which are very bright. I was thinking to make them dark blue, but first I wanted to ask help to the awesome ludum dare community: someone can give me advices? I want to make a post-compo colour blind friendly version. Thanks to all!
My game

If you find my game: Steam-Cube too difficult? you can see the walkthrough here: video.

Me and my mates, we finished our game Dream Island. It is a trippy experience we created using excerpts of some of our dreams and putting them all together on an island.

We are very happy what came out because started as a general idea of putting dreams together and finished with… what it is.
So the jam is success (YAY) for us.

Our jam entry is right here

We were streaming our work which can be found here:
FREEZX
Xiperius
Nekk1
Siginami

We have a need 4 sleep. cya m8s.

Warning: The language used in this post is intentionally retarded.

It’s been two days since I posted the game, so I thought it might be time to write a post-mortem about it.

You can find the game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=15476

And here is the timelapse:

This was my second Ludum Dare , and my first compo entry (I participated to the 24th, but posted for the Jam).

I was expecting this LD to be awesome, and I was not disappointed. Making a game in 48 hours is definitely awesome.

So, here’s What went right:

• The graphics: I’m usually more of a programmer than an artist, but this time, it’s like the opposite happened: while I was having a lot of programming issues, I managed to finish all the sprites I was planning to do, animate the 3 versions of the player, even make a little introduction, and all of this in -relatively- no time (1 hour for the player, 2 hours for the whole tileset, 1 hour for the intro).
• The level design: In my last LD, I ran out of time and could only make four levels for my game. This time I made 9, which was what was planned. I also wrote a pretty useful level management system which allowed me to directly import Tiled level files (.tmx format). This saved me a lot of time, because Tiled is very efficient and fast, comparated to manually entering CSV values in a file…
• The early programming:  I am starting to get pretty familiar with the tools I used for the development (C++ with Allegro 5). Indeed,  I  wrote the level management system, the basic gameplay mechanics and the renderer by midday.

And here’s What went wrong:

• The time management: I posted my game 5 minutes before the deadline (which was 4 a.m for me @_@). While things were right on the saturday, sunday was a totall mess.
• The music: I’m terribly bad when it comes to music composing, and this time there was no exceptions: I did not even manage to create a correct music for the game (But I did not have a lot of time for this, also).
• The late programming: My code on sunday was the most buggy and unstable thing I had ever made in my entire life. I wasted at least 2 hours trying to fix Segmentation Faults, Level loading problems, collisions problems, etc…
• Dealing with the theme: Minimalism did not really inspire me as a theme. I was tempted to make a game with minimalist graphics, and minimalist sounds, and say “Hey, look ! This game is all about minimalism!”, but after a LOT of brainstorming, I finally came out with this Reducing player’s capabilities every 5 levels thing, and this background story.

Once again, I really enjoyed making this game, and I’m looking forward to participate to the next edition !

Tags: final, LD#26, post-mortem, postmortem, timelapse

Finally, I have time to post about my game.  The theme and I didn’t get along for the first 30 hours, so I made the difficult decision to trash everything and start again.  I ended up making a physic game using only 3 colors.   I’m actually pretty happy with how it turned out (a first for ludum dare).

The goal is simple; get the circle to its home (the square with a circle cut out of it).   The levels are not particularly difficult (except for maybe one or two).  The real challenge is using as few shapes as possible.

A Simple Circle

Play it here

If you beat all 25 levels, you’ll see your total number of shapes used on the main screen.  My lowest score is 70.

I hope you enjoy it.  Long live Ludum Dare!

Are you playing Ludum Dare games? Are you drinking? Could you be drinking? (whether you should be is another story)
Either way, consider this as a metagame with the added incentive of alcohol! Happy boozing!

Please don’t take this as an offence, it’s intended only as a lighthearted parody. If you’re interested in remixing or adding to the rules, the PSD can be found here!

I’ve updated the Linux build of my entry Tulip, so that most dependencies (glew, glfw, openal) are statically linked.  I’ve also removed a dependency on glibc 2.14.  This means that more people should be able to play it on Linux without having to install extra libraries!  (You still need 64 bit Linux though.)

My interpretation of the rules is that such updates are allowed as there are no changes to the game itself – it just runs on more systems now.

P.S. my top score is 74.95s.  Anyone beaten that?

Hi =D

Let me introduce you COLOR TREASON!
You’re a red cube and you have to go through the world breaking the cubes.
You can break the color cubes, but you have to follow the order indicated in the series list,
the list is on the top of the screen and it shows which color is next.

You can play it from a browser.
Greetings form Colombia =D

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22433

Hi folks, I just uploaded the linux version (32bits) of my little weird arcade game. So now the game can be (hopefully) enjoyed on windows, mac and linux.

Note: I don’t have a 64bit box so the 64bits version will be delayed a few days the time for me to install some 64bit distro. *

Have fun!

Play Cottonhead here

DOE / LD26 / POST MORTEM

Hi everyone, so here we go, time for the Post Mortem. My game is called Doe and playable here :

Doe – Web/Flash

Just to set a bit of background on the LD26. I’m a 3d artist in my everyday job and I code as a hobby on my spare time. This 26th edition was a good opportunity for me because my last finished LD was the 23rd and since the beginning of January I jumped to C#/XNA, then on C++ where I started my own 2d/3d game engine a few weeks ago. So I got back on AS3 with the idea that I would work better now. We’ll see that in the conclusion.

Here’s a quick breakdown on both days:

Saturday: I wake up with a theme that I completely dislike at first, but there you go, huge brainstorm. Some ideas started to flash and pretty quickly I had a “universe” in mind. Then ideas for the gameplay, it was enough to start coding. By the end of the day I nearly had the 3 first levels of the game set up which was really cool. I was able to play it with decent length and different mechanisms.

Sunday: That day was much longer than I thought, the game was running well but the last level is more “story-driven” and even if it’s really short I used a lot of time. And it’s far from what I imagined. But still I managed to finish the complete gameplay elements something like 12 hours before the deadline so I had more time than usual to work on better graphics, make music, menu screens and all of the details that seem endless.

So, let’s conclude:

WHAT WENT RIGHT:

• Coding: As I said earlier, I work now on C++ so getting back to AS3/Flashpunk was a breeze. Had to recall a few stuff but the game never suffered of any major bug or problems. The code structure began to “fall” somewhere in the middle of Sunday where I did a lot of temp/dirty stuff to be fast and not change previous code. So I could have been much cleaner on this side but I still managed to move forward without getting lost.
• Concept: I guess the theme is hard to find inside of Doe, we’ll get to that later, but the brainstorm started from that word anyway and I’m really happy with what came out of it. The whole universe that I imagined is in the end much bigger than what is exposed in the game. So that leaves me with a new story inside of my head and something that could be crafted into a bigger game. On the other hand it also gives the result a new dimension. My previous games in LD were usually boring because the mechanic was simple and repetitive (every time it’s better in my head but can’t do it in 48h), here it’s I believe more interesting and it’s not just one mechanic but more that fit inside of the story.
• Prototype approach: It seems obvious to work this way, but as an artist I always like to do a bit of art. I can’t stand to work with just shapes. I did it anyway this time for the simple fact that I had a lot to code to get the full game even without art. That leaves me room afterward to make the whole graphic overhaul. I’ll come back on this on “what went wrong” also.
• Art: It greatly comes to the fact that I worked on a prototype first, so I was able to have the full game and be less stressed about taking time to make cool graphics music and all.

WHAT WENT WRONG:

• Theme: As I said earlier, the theme is kind of blurred inside of the game. What I wanted to express is the story of a man that want to fight minimalism with his dreams. And as he is seen as an enemy he is kept captive by the order in charge of the society and is prevented to dream anymore. It’s a metaphor on my creative process for this LD, I disliked the theme and was horrified to see a lot of people going with Mondrian art (like, really). So I wanted to get away with that, so as Doe. But I think I failed into telling that side of the story, maybe because I ran out of time, maybe because the scope of the game is too little and didn’t want to have too much text.
• Narrative: A bit like the previous point, I do believe that I’m still bad at telling stories. Not just the theme, but the complete Doe story, and the universe. The two soldiers chat at the beginning is an example. I love how game like Bioshock tell you the story with an indirect way, and it looks easy but in the end I’m no writer and it feels. You have to pick the right words without being too direct. I still have plans on story driven game so I’ll definitely train on this part.
• Prototype approach: I told you it was wrong also. The dark side of the approach (to me, on this LD) is that I was out of any planning. I managed to finish the game, but at some point I started to go off and wanted more and more and more. The final version for example miss a lot of sound effects, because I tweaked music, I tweaked graphics, etc. I missed some kind of structure or time fractioning to advance in a better way.

Stay tuned, the dramatic conclusion to this epic weekend right after a new screenshot !

CONCLUSION:

Doe leaves me this bittersweet impression that it can be more, but in my artist work I always feel this way. It’s disturbing and sometimes frustrating but that also the sign that I’m interested in what was made and know that I can progress on my skills. My two previous games were bad, I was happy to complete something, but they were hollow and I was able to recognize that as soon as I published them. I think this time Doe shows something more, it looks more like a game. To me, it’s also the result of what I explained in the beginning of this long text (is there anyone still here ?). I was more confident in my coding skills and it really felt like something I know well with art, that moment where the tool starts to fade, when you know it and you can stay focused on the game itself. It’s the first time I felt that and it’s amazing. Last but not least, I’m working on my own engine and it was great to get out of it a little bit and come back on another library, Flashpunk. It helped refocus on my own work, see what are the strong points and maybe the weaker one. And it gave me that real motivation to work on it as much as I can to be able one day to craft an LD game with it.

Thanks for reading, hope you liked the game and see you next time !

(if you haven’t played it yet, let me give you the link again : Doe – Web/Flash)

Alex

Is there a decent way to parse for android games so I can review while ‘working’? Conversely, link me your android games!

Steve’s antics are “weird but funny”, which suits me perfectly fine!

As a first time ludumer I really was surprised by a lot of things. From the friendly Ludum enthusiasts, how well the honor system functions, the energy it takes to push on without a break, to the value of just pushing on when you start to doubt your original concept. Just having a finished game is such a great feeling.

Things that worked for me:

• Finished ideas, storyline and assets first probably saved me a lot of stressing. Clear goals are great!
• Coding a warmup game saved me a lot of api documentation browsing.
• Embracing the theme in a way that works for me made it fun and interesting. I think the game still honors the theme in it’s own way.
• Preparing a timelapse for posterity sake. Setting up Chronolapse only took a couple of minutes and the video looks great (Blogging it later, check my review page for a preview).

Things I wish I knew before I started:

• Post-Ludum, you’re not done! Keep your energy up for the day after to promote your release (screenshots), rate games, blogging, etc.
• The submission hour. Would’ve saved me some stressing at the end.

I hope you guys enjoyed yourselves as much as I did.

If you have a moment, Give ‘Steve Can’t Zen’ a try!

Daan

Tags: Steve Can't Zen

Watch me here:
http://www.twitch.tv/oliviosarikas

Also plz rate my game:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=21762