Finally got this done. 34 hours, and 10 minutes down to 16 minutes. If you want to play it yourself: <click me>

Tags: timelapse

I wrote a little crawler that scraps pretty much all of the data for each entry of ld26 (compo and jam). I provide a simple search-interface and an API if you want to do data analytics. The search interface let’s you do simple keyword search in the title and description, filter by user, filter by link label (e.g. web, desktop, etc.), and other fancy things. I’ll provide info on the API tomorrow, to tired…

I wrote this for various reasons. For one, i wanted to know how many entries are using libgdx. I also wanted to be able to track comment count history for individual entries. My gut feeling is that one can predict the winner of LD48 within the first few days of voting merely based on the comment count. Finally, i have a little research project going on where i’ll try to rank LD entries based on various characteristics, then evaluate the ranking with the actual voting results.

In any case, maybe this is useful to someone else as well. Source is available here (JSoup, Jersey, JQuery, Bootstrap).

PLAY THE GAME HERE

Happy Gaming, Ludum Dare!

Tags: timelapse

What went right

I did it! I actually completed a game. I’ve tried making Flash games in the past but always stopped short for one reason or another – and that was my biggest motivation for joining LD, to complete something, and I did that! The fact that it only took a weekend is icing on the cake.

The environment. I used to be a Flash developer in the past but never tried doing anything outside of Flash Pro – after preparing for this competition by reading some game tutorials, I decided to try building something with Flash Builder. FB gave me very few problems and as I expected it was infinitely better for making games.

The concept. Midway through the development I sometimes wondered if the concept I came up with (a puzzle game with awake/asleep mechanics) was good or not. But after I had the mechanics in place and the code that let you interact with things I started to feel that this type of game has a lot of possibilities that I only scratched the surface on. I’d definitely like to make this into a fuller game at some point.

What went alright

My coding. I never really ran into any difficulties while writing the code – no showstopping bugs at least. The only real problem I had was realizing that I was basically trying to write the mechanics for an adventure game from scratch. I figured I’d spend 12 hours writing the game engine and could use the rest of the time to make the game levels and to add to the presentation. Sadly it took about 25 hours to get the game engine in place which left me with only about 10 hours for everything else.

What went wrong

Graphics. The graphics are ass. I thought I would have enough time to make sprites for my character but ran out of time. The rest of the graphics are way below of what I feel I can make. I even came to a stunning realization that I had no idea how to make good looking floor tiles – also I did not understand how tile systems work in games at all.

Presentation. Just another thing I didn’t have time for. The game just kind of sits there and doesn’t do anything to bring the player into the world. I wanted the things in the stage to do things when the player interacted with them – the sink should spout water and make a continuous sound when you turn it on, the toilet should flush etc etc. I also ran out of time for sound and music; having the game be absolutely silent is very unappealing.

Time management. This being my first kind of game jam of any kind, I figured right off the bat I would have to submit to the jam and not the competition. Even with that though I am not sure I spent all my time correctly. Going out drinking with your buddies is probably something I do not need to do when given only one weekend to make a video game from scratch. I also spent like an hour trying to figure out how the UI should look – only to keep changing it during the course of development.

What I am taking away from this

Game development is fun and extremely challenging. I feel like the next time I do this (and there will be a next time), I should come into it more prepared. I am already familiar with my environment to a degree but I would like to have bare-bones code templates for basic games like side-scrolling with jumping, multi-directional overhead scrolling, adventure, scrolling shooter, etc. Maybe this is a bit against the spirit of the competition but I think how interesting a game is can be how it plays with and makes changes to those engines. I also need to learn how to make pixel art and should probably mess around with some sound generators.

In the end I think getting better at game development is just a matter or doing it until you are good, just like anything else. With more practice I think I can improve on things like time management and presentation.

www.twitch.tv/jellycakes1

Tags: cakes, games, jelly, jellycakes, LD#26, livestream, stream, video, video games

Do you want to become mankind’s Messiah or a strident Singularity that wipes out the Earth?

Voted best game of competition that allows you to resurrect your wife and then eat her!

Time for Ascension!
Play Online Now

Please join me today on my stream for the follow up around 6:30 pm PST (-8 GMT) on 5/1/2013 an hour and half from now.

I will play your Ludum Dare game or one requested, just as I did during previous Relax Streams and follow up during next day.

Tags: #26, game, games, LD#26, live, Ludum Dare, Ludum Dare Relax Stream, play, Relax Stream, stream

Besides being the premiere minimalistic puzzle platformer featuring a spherical protagonist and submitted by a user whose name begins with “c” and ends in “ahman,” my game MIN(Ball) has a per level high score system.

Looking at my server access logs, I realized the game makes a database access at the end of every level.  A little filtering later, BOOM!  A plot of showing how far players get in the game.  In case anyone likes data, or funny looking plots, I thought I’d share the results:

1May2013

I’ll try to update this picture daily.

2May 20183

* Astute observers might notice more people beat level 9 than level 8.  How could that be?  Well, someone beat level 9, then decided to play it again.

3May2013

7May2013

Daily updates might have been a little over optimistic.  Especially since the play numbers have started to level off.

Data, of course, begs for interpretation.  Most people wash out on Level 4.  Is that level too hard?  Does the difficulty ramp up too quickly?  Is Level 4, about 5 minutes into the game, the typical LD review time?  Or am I looking for trends in more or less random noise?  I’m very curious to hear others’ input.

Cheers!
Cahman

Tags: analysis, data, graphs, ramblings

i feel bad for you, it was awesome, we did a live lets dev. join tomorrow, we might add bullets and stuff. seriously, it was fun.

Ludum Dare 26 Entry – NightCap.  That’s our game.  You can see it HERE<—  And by “see” I mean “Play” of course.

(originally posted on www.shuddahaddalottafun.com)

I sit, eyes focused on the once pristine white mac keyboard, now soiled by ramen noodle juice and finger smudges.

It’s hard to describe my feelings after this experience.  Perhaps I’m still too close, having yet sorted though all the data in my head.  I think an even balance of the pride and satisfaction creating what we did, and the disappointment with the things that didn’t make it, or just bugged out for whatever magical ‘the world is against me’ reasons caused the feeling I have.  But this is jumping the gun…  or shark… or shark guns… what about the beginning.

Our background is in video production, sketch comedy.  Video game development is an entirely new venture for us.   When it all boils down, Ludum Dare, although incredibly challenging was probably the best way for us to start.  It forced us to learn new programs, technics and theories for game dev that otherwise we would’ve been very slow to get into.  We started with the warm-up weekend, making a game about a penguin that throws corndogs (may very well be a WIP still).  On the Thursday before the Jam, we finally had a build where you could move the penguin and throw a corndog (with some minor bug issues including Infinite CornDog Syndrome).  The head hits the table.  How do we make a game in 72 hours?

Infinite CornDog Syndrome. yeah, it’s my indie prog rock band. We’re kinda huge in Europe.

Our start times are 9pm and 10pm, our team living on the east coast and the mid-west (US).  We started a skype with a third team member (Drew… Oh by the way, I’m Alex (programmer/music).  This is Mikhail(art).  Nice to meet you.) who we knew had a busy weekend ahead, so we wanted to make sure we got his involvement in the idea phase.  Eagerly we wait, shaking with anticipation of what creative juices would be… juiced… from the inspiring theme.  Refresh.  What’s the theme?  Minimalism… Minimalism?

… Shit.

Who’s idea was that!?  We were so excited about doing the LD, then the theme was announced, and we didn’t care anymore.  It just didn’t inspire us.

Side Note:  Before when I said video game development was an entirely new venture for us… I lied.  Well, slightly.  It is a new adventure for us, just not for me.  I’ve made one game before, and it was a minimalistic platformer made with GameSalad.  I chose to make it a minimalism style game from the beginning because I knew I didn’t have an artist, and I wanted to be able to say, “yea, no, it’s supposed to look like that.“ I didn’t want to do another minimalism game.

We started the Google image search, trying to find ideas and art that would inspire us, but not much luck there.  There was inspiration to be found in our skype meeting however.  You see one of us, and we won’t name names, apparently thought that the human body turned beer into oxygen, making it necessary to drink a lot of it.  So the idea started to get thrown around.  How about if you are drunk, and when you drink things become simpler and more minimalistic, making it easier to get around?

But we really didn’t know how we would go about doing that; it seemed complicated.  Moving on.  Idea after idea was pitched, but none of them were really games.  They were art styles, themes, but not gameplay ideas.  So we went back to the drinking idea.  Let’s do a bit of that…  then do a game.

Initial concept art. Step 1.

After 4 hours, we had an idea and a plan to make it happen.

Saturday morning things seemed to go well, getting a temp character in, and the flow to change drunk stages.  But then it seemed like issue after issue.  Player spawned super high off the ground. Drinking animation wouldn’t play.  Player location wouldn’t stay correct between scenes.  But I’m sure all of this is common in game development, and this is the middle of the story anyway.  Who cares, what’s important is the beginning and the end, so I’ll skip to that.  The end… we already did the beginning…

blocking out the scene… tehe… get it?… cause they’re blocksohnevermind…

Sunday is done, we are at work on Monday, and there is still a lot to do.  I left a couple hours early from work to start doing music and sfx.  Luckily Drew was around and able to do the VO work.  By the late afternoon, we were pretty aware of what was and was not going to make it into the game.  After cutting out some art, a puzzle, we were ready to upload it to the web and call it a day.

I fink, I shuld drink summore…

Then we realized audio was missing.  It worked well in the engine, but when publishing the game, they disappeared.  I fiddled with it for about another hour without any idea what was wrong, and finally called it a day.  Go to bed.

In the end, of course we are disappointed in the incomplete art and the missing audio clips.  That audio really tied the room together.  But what we did was pretty awesome; we made a game, beginning to end.  We took a theme we hated and created an idea that wasn’t just squares and circles.  Mikhail made some great art, even though he’s never done pixel art before and didn’t have any sort of drawing tablet.  He’s going to be doing more pixel stuff in the future.  Count on it.  I said Count!

So where do we go from here?  Well you’ll want to continue down this road and take a right at the Old Creek Mill.  If you pass the schoolhouse, you’ve gone to far.  What?  Oh the game stuff, right.

Will we complete NightCap?  Well, a bit early to say, but if we don’t we will still take a lot from what we learned with us.

Will we do another Ludum Dare? I think most definitely we will be joining you lot again down the road… but not past the schoolhouse… that’s too far.

What about that penguin game? You mean, “Corndog Tuxedo”… we’ll see… we’ll see.

I want to thank everyone for playing the game!  And the comments, they’re great.  You all have a wonderful day.  Guns Up!

Tags: jam, LD#26, LD72, post-mortem

Come to my livestreem i will be playing and rating games. Just post your games in the chat and i will play it! www.twitch.tv/ecool377

Hiya folks. This is my unfinished and late game, pksl. Even in its current state it is quite fun!

Use the arrow keys to collect pixels before they reach the origin!

What’s the highest score you can get?

http://arcade.xandorus.com/pksl/

Tags: gameblaster64, minimalism, pksl, rocky1138

If you found the screenshot provided was a little un-enticing, here’s a screen shot beyond the gag intro.

Click here to play.
Controls:
WASD – Move
J – Hold to attack
K – Jump

Cat’s out of the bag on the joke anyway.  I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as it was a blast to make.
Thanks for all the encouraging comments so far.

Do it guys, I will also be streeming the games here www.twitch.tv/ecool377  Watch your game be rated.

 http://www.frivgame.co

Frivgame.co is one of many sites are good games to play online.

As soon as you enter the website, you will find a variety of games with different genres. It would be very easy to you can choose a favorite game to play.
Above the bar menu includes: new friv games, most games friv, friv 3, Juegos Friv … On the left is the game categories to choose from: Bomb games, shooting games, adventure games, puzzle games, strategy games, girl games, dress up games and more.

Just click on the image of each game you will immediately be redirected to the page and start playing free; www.Frivgame.co has the advantage that many other sites do not have the game. Nice graphics, games load faster, games genres with about 10,000 games.

All games are in www.Frivgame.co be done with Flash, so you need a browser that supports this program, no matter what version of Windows using the www.Frivgame.co it is one of the best sites in that game, as the collection is extensive and interesting game, so it is highly advisable to visit.

http://www.frivgame.co

Tags: friv, friv 3, friv games, Juegos Friv

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 2nd, 2013 at 1:03 am and is filed under LD #18 - Enemies as Weapons - 2010, LD #00 - Indirect Interaction - 2002, LD #01 - Guardian - 2002, LD #08.5 - Moon, Anti-Text - 2007, October Challenge 2012, Uncategorized. 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.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Danielpotter/3299625

This is my first Ludum Dare competition entry that i created on Scratch. I tried to make the game with an interesting interpretation of minimalism, so i used the definition of minimalist (a person who favors a moderate approach to the achievement of a set of goals) as a basis for my game. You play as the Minimalist in a seemingly normal platformer with very difficult or impossible levels. You must think of simple ways of beating the level with the least amount of work involved. You may attempt at beating the levels like a normal platformer but to win you must think outside of the box!

Hi Dare devils,

I’ve just release an OUYA port for my Ludum Dare #26 entry.

I myself don’t haven an OUYA but I’ve been told everything works besides the music.

Hi everyone ! Leon speaking,

We have so much fun at the game jam taking place in Kawenga, a very cool place, hosted by passionate people, making regenerative and lovable nourishment. And the jam results are pretty exciting ! We will keep working on the game when we will get time.

About the Team

• Adrien Albertini, Developer
• Aurelia Binetti, 2D Artist
• Hannes Delbeke, 2D, 3D Artist and ‘codeling’ (hannesdelbeke.blogspot.com)
• Leon Denise, Developer, 3D Artist (poly.gonum.free.fr/)

About the Game

Atom That Matters is about controlling with only the mouse movement a physic body in a zero gravity space with physic elements that influence each other.

The camera orbit around the player body, and give him a continuous force in the forward direction. The player explores an environment filled with “floaters”, physic objects that you can grab.

Those two features, player’s control and floating object’s behaviours, were the main goals at the beginning of the jam. We interpreted the theme in the game mechanics, minimizing inputs. Minimize game design means that the basic game experience must be fun already even if there is no real goal. We spent a lot of time doing development and research about ideas and the space context has been chosen to make things easier. But we interpreted physic behaviors like crazy scientists making space experiments.

What happens in the game? Camera leads the player body, lightly influenced by nearest planet and sun.

Floaters are attracted by 3 forces leading to: the sun, the center of all planet positions and the nearest planet. When they are in player’s region, they have only one force applied, leading to the player. This may change in new prototype.

The torque of the object create variations and participate to the good looking physic behaviors.

The player’s goal is to minimize his resources. It was meant to fit in the theme, but we can say it’s fun to get objects. In early prototypes where graphics were abstract, resources accumulated by the player were orbiting physically around the player and it was pretty easy to lose weight. So a decision have been made, and we choose to snap objects on the player.

In the space context, random trashes and the fact that you can glue them, seems like a good and ecological thing. And those who already played Katamari Damacy know how much it feels good to grow by rolling. Player’s goal may change in a post-compo version.

For the aesthetic part, artists couldn’t minimize their desire and work on minimalist details.

A handmade parallax skybox sculpture by Hannes

The project really encourage us to develop further the two main features, certainly in an abstract aesthetic, because wild painters like Hannes doesn’t appears from tall grass. And abstraction allow us to make more game design decisions.

We’ll keep you in touch if we get time to make a post-compo version.

To play the game :

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22982

Thanks for reading, playing and making games!

Many many thanks go to Kevin Gadd for implementing panning support in JSIL, despite my feeble and failed attempts at implementing it myself. And not only doing it, but doing it in three days! You can now play Conversion in Chrome at least. It may work in Safari (I do not have a Mac to test it on). It does not work in Firefox.

So for anyone who skipped this amazing(ly short) audio experience because it required Windows and XNA, go rate it now! Unless you’re a diehard Firefox or IE fan who refuses to use any other browser, then, err, have a puppy.

Tags: port

Logos from first LD day, second LD day, final compo release and post-mortem release respectively

Haven’t played yet? Give it a try ^-^

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=11711