Hi

The other day I found teespring.com. It is like kickstarter but for t-shirts only. This blew my mind, because I think that’s something everyone has ideas for all the time, right? I mean, how many clever t-shirt designs did you come up with last year? Probably not zero, eh?

So this is a call to arms: I want to wear commemorative t-shirts from your ridiculous 48 hour games. I have decided to lead the way with the Mandala Commemorative t-shirt, but I demand that you follow! To arms my fellow game jammers, make memorabilia to please my hipster sensibilities. If you do make a t-shirt, send me a link: I want your game on my chest.

z.

PS I made Mandala! Go play it!

• We didn’t waste any time moaning about the theme, even though we all knew it wasn’t what we were hoping for. We took the theme as a challenge and tried our best to match our skill sets to what we thought would be a fun game.
• We agreed upon a deadline for a game idea. This prevented us from wasting too much time throwing around crazy ideas, leaving not enough time to implement them. We quickly formulated a few ideas, and took a vote. From there, we did a good job planning out what we needed from just a handful of game sketches and quick chats.

• Once we had a plan, we kept a very close eye on our priorities as the project progressed. We did things in the right order, and built up the game in logical chunks.

• No feature creep! We were ruthless on feature creep. Did the game need a particular feature to be a game? If it didn’t, it was quickly culled.

• Our music guy was excellent – with only the smallest amount of direction we got a perfect track in a small amount of time. Easily the single biggest ‘bang for buck’ in the project.
• We worked hard to get a playable build up and running as soon as possible. The game was fully playable on the morning of day 2.
• While we did work hard, we were also careful not to get too stressed. We ate properly, took breaks and had a proper sleep pattern. We knew we’d be more productive this way.

• Unexpected sickness! Our lead coder was hit with a serious migraine on the final day. This meant we had to cut some features that we considered essential. Naturally this was very disappointing, but we’re still proud of what we achieved in the time. The only way to mitigate this is for other members of the team to become more multi-skilled – leading to our next point.

• The original intention was that our designer, Chris, would be able to pick up some of the slack coding simpler ancillary features in the game. However, due to the nature of the game, Chris wasn’t really able to do much code wise in this project. Hopefully in a more ‘traditional’ game, and with more experience, we hope this will balance out in time.

• All of the team were in the same flat in Sweden, except for Chris who is UK based. While Skype, Google Drive and Subversion make it pretty easy to work this way, there are limits. The most obvious example being the limited interaction between Chris and Anton, the artist on the project. If they had been in the same room, ideas could have been conveyed much faster, and it would have given them both more to do during down time, while waiting for critical features to be implemented. Next time, we will make sure to all work from the same location.
• Not enough blogging! After finishing the game and looking back over what we had done – we realised we had documented nearly none of the creation. While this didn’t directly effect the game, it’s a real shame we don’t have more to look back upon during the creation of the game. Next time, we’ll make sure to make much more frequent updates, take pictures and generally contribute to the community at large.

• Not everyone in the project had Visual Studio, meaning one of the coders would have to copy out builds every now and then for testing. The project was small, and this wasn’t a massive hardship. However next time it would be worth the time automating the process to maximize time spent actually developing the game.

Until next time!

/TriBeard

Tags: LD #26

My second Ludum Dare, and a more planned try this time around! So what was different, what went deliciously right, what went distastfully wrong and what would I do different? Lets look at it chronologically. And then by pro and con-points.

The Pre Mortem

The Theme

“Minimalism” – Jod texted this to me on Saturday morning, and as the first thing I say upon awakening, I was not immediately enthused. Quite the opposite… my first reaction was “Really? Isn’t that Ludum Dare by definition? You numbskulls!”.
The next hour and a half I mulled it over in my head a while, and tried to dig into that feeling it was giving me: “Minimalism is bleh, you should try for rich things and worlds!”… and in the end I decided to give that feeling shape in a game. Inspiration through opposition!

The Planning

My last Ludum Dare was marred by the fact that I didn’t finish it. A sound theme, an interesting concept, and enthusiasm does not necessarily a completed game make in 48 hours. So this time around I decided to take one day to build the game, and one day to polish it. (That is as far as my planning goes. Two items, two days. I was quite proud – progress!)

Day 0.5

(A programmer wants to think in binary, and perhaps, if pushed, in decimal. Hours? Silly things.)

So after half a day, I had my concept written down. “Reducing to X”, was a game where you start in a Rich, Lush world and then supposedly reduced a game to one concept, which was given at the beginning. “Death”, “Fear”, “Glory”, “Fun”. You know, dem feels. At the end you would make a screenshot and let it be judged by others.
A bit lofty, unspecific, and rather non-traditional-gamey, indeed. But it was the only idea I had. And it let me play with procedural stuff, which I like.

Day 1.0

Halfway… and halfway the halfway (0.75 day, if you’re keeping track), I was thoroughly displeased with my progress, and the concept in total. “Jod”, I said to Jod, “I think it might be best just to scrap this entire idea.”, quite misanthropically. “Well what is it you are stuck on?”. “Everything.” “Ok, lets get some groceries then.”
We went out to get the necessities of life, and got some noms. “I’m going to see what I have one more time.”, I declared after dinner. Sullenly I poked and prodded my achievements so far, trying to get that ‘Rich world’ going. After a but I got my ‘skybox’ going, I finally had some movement, and color, in my world which I was satisfied with. And a new concept!
Reduction not to a one ‘word’, but just reduction on itself, as something bad. My renouncement of minimalism. Gleefully I added a black floating Monolith to the center of my world, representing that Evil. Ha! I saw an opponent to the Monolith too… The Wisp, a glowing ball of ‘Creativity’, light, color! Happy with my concept and quite optimistic on my chances to finish it, I went to bed.

Day 1.5

Arise and shine! Jod, my co-ludum-dare-patriot, prepared some delicious breakfast, and I set of programming fanatically! I experimented with the behavior of my worlds critters, and how they would behave when ‘resisting’ the player. Progress was being made, but but quite fast. So I looked at my concept one more time and said “What could go, if really need be?” Well I need an ‘end’ so I need to reduce. The player was supposed to have a choice in the middle of the game: Go Minimalist and fully join the Monolith, or go Creative and join the Wisp? Ok, maybe I just do the Monolith part, but I probably will be able to do both! (yeah…)

Day 2.0

I just made a nice “Close encounters of the third-kind gone evil” sound for my Monolith. I look at the clock. Ohhh damn 1.75 day o-clock already?? Ok, so maybe creating ‘two sides’ of everything might take a little bit too much time. Actually, I might not be able to add music. Or get an ending? Or handle all what the player does? PANIC!?
First things first – Reduce! I add walls to the world. I make sure something happens when the player jumps off the edge. I strike all really fancy terrain height-decreasing. Scrap behavior for the Wisp, and for the Big Cube.
Then Playtest Playtest Playtest. I like my white text-in-the-sky, but it might be unreadable at times… with a great sigh I make it black. Not as pretty, but, you know, always readable. Oh, just 2 hours left? I need to balance the player progression real quick! And compile this stuff? Oh yeah that too. A menu? No time. A name, err ok. A title screen? Two lines will do. In short, I needed all the minutes of the night. But it looks nice. Ending on a rush, I look at the clock… 5 AM? Great. Work in 3 hours. Lets take a “nap”, and engage zombie mode…

The Post Mortem

 What went right?

• The engine – Unity3D gave me a lot less hassle than my previous engine, used for LD24, Moai. Ok it is not perfect or non-crashable, but it has docs and heaps of player usage. And a terrain engine I could really abuse for this game.
• The concept – Ok, not exactly what I envisioned, but it does generate a ‘feel’ that minimalism is not a ‘good’ thing. And that was the goal.
• The behaviors – I was really satisfied with how all the critters in the world moved. Powered by the Unity3D physics engine and some creative restricting thereof, they feel wild and random, but structured too.
• The colors – I dig procedurally generated stuff, and picking the right things to make that way, and the right things not to, paid off. No-one will notice the purple trees are always in the same space if the terrain height varies. Giving all critters one color gives consistent identity.

What went wrong?

• The planning – Ok, not as badly as last Ludum Dare, but I really should have started cutting earlier, and place some priorities.
• The music – What music, you ask? And I say indeed. A golden opportunity to give a rich world more ‘body’, pushed to the end and then struck.
• The progression – I did not play the game often enough to have a balanced feel of how long each ‘part’ of the game would last for an average player. Due to last minute changes there I even broke the game by ‘skipping’ a quarter of it, I did fix that in one subsequent update.
• The controls – This is a bit of a dubious one, since I had no problems with them. It was a physics based FPS-like feel. But I see enough people complain to understand that it is not ‘natural’ enough. Maybe I should have added a ‘jump’ option to give the novice player more possibilities to maneuver.
• The name – Seriously, think two seconds more. I did not. It doesn’t fit as nicely as a million other names. And hardly unique.

The verdict?

I am satisfied enough by the end-product, from a realists’ viewpoint. But in the end the players will decide. Will you?

Play : Less is More!

Tags: post-mortem, pre-mortem

www.twitch.tv/jellycakes1

Also if you comment here I may not reply right away, so instead comment in the stream chat!

i love trophies, it’s something that i have decided right now, to love trophies.

play and win my games! make me happy! get the trophies!

#LD26 minimalistherain

#LD24 you are the rain

yesss, i guess i have a fixation for rainy games.

wordhunter v100 in-game

WORDHUNTER is a twin stick shooter (like Geometry Wars) where you shoot at characters. If you get a word together your multiplier rises. Well, that’s it. Two sentences for two days work. I started late at about 12 PM (GMT+1) Saturday. I had the idea of shooting characters early, but three different concepts to make a game out of it. One being a space invaders clone. I choose the twin stick genre and got started. I worked with black squares and a triangle as temporary art. The explosion was done by hand in Gimp because I wasn’t happy with the results of explosion-generators. Spent some hours with my girlfriends Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Got at coding again at 12 pm. The stress was building up and my head started to tell me that I could just quit, but I wasn’t going to quit as I had a working prototype at that point and I NEEDED to finish. But no game over event, no high-scores, menus or music. I started with the menus, trying to get them right at the first time (which I did), then the game over event. After a (late) lunch I wanted to compile a demo for play testing  That’s where the terror started. I used Slick2D before, in other prototypes, but I did never reach the state to actually export a game. In that moment, high-scores were cut and the music fell a bit short. I was aiming to enter the game at 12 pm (because I had to work on Monday) and entered it at 2 am I guess. Cooled down a bit after that. Viewed other submissions and finally got some sleep. I’m happy with the result, well, if you get over that fact that it get’s too hard too soon. And the hit boxes have a slight (8 px) offset to the right. And words are hard to get. But well, it was my first time and I loved it. I already fixed a lot of bugs for a release the next days on my website.

What went great:

• I had a Slick2D  template ready
• Used OpenMPT, Gimp & sfxr before
• Some experience in game writing from a couple of prototypes/demos
• Went out with my dog a couple of times to get fresh air and free my mind – That helped a lot
• Setting myself a deadline was good
• Trying to export a play testing demo was a good idea

What went no so great:

• Exporting – You should figure out what you need and have to do BEFORE entering a contest 😉
• If you need pixel explosions – do them by hand. Don’t try out 3 different generators for nothing
• I thought my idea was small enough to get everything done – it wasn’t. Next time: Start small – Use the time I have left to add stuff.
• I had to cut some stuff in the end: High score lists, better Music, more types of enemies and better balancing of waves.

For the next time:

• Take Monday off
• Get to bed early on Friday and start directly at 4am

Thank you for reading and enjoy the game. And if you liked it, rate & visit my website soon for a better version

PLAY WORDHUNTER NOW!

Tags: 2D, LD#26, post-mortem, postmortem, screenshot

It was a fun weekend, and I’ve not done something like this before – some lessons were learned –  and relearned, including but not limited to remembering to save often.  I lost about 2-3 hours due to crashes and not having saved backups.

I think I also probably misinterpreted the theme somewhat, having played 40 of the other entries now-  some people really grasped it, having the chance again I’d probably do something less complex and throw in more levels.

Getting too hung up on game mechanics like wall jumping  meant I didn’t have time to do additional levels or polish.

I didn’t do a timelapse as I hadn’t figured out how , but I uploaded some of the stream showing the construction of the project , sound and graphics.

TL:DR  Click to play :

Press the six key on the title screen for a bonus surprise.

“B0xPa1Nt: The Adventure” The full version including:

15 new gamemodes planed.

Multiplier

level editor

mod support

over 25 new story levels planned

15 new toy-box maps and modes planned

Cool new shaders

AAA mode, explained on blog.

http://ecoolsagamedev.wordpress.com/

PLAY :: RATE :: TIMELAPSE :: WALKTHROUGH

Minimalism exposes the essence of a subject, through eliminating all non-essential forms…

Essense is an atmospheric serene first person “puzzle”. Really cool for a relaxing moment before going to bed.

In this post-mortem, I’ll try to explain what things of the development process made me mad, what made me sad, and what made me glad.

I Suck At Making Levels

Yeah, now I know. Usually I don’t play puzzles, so it was a real challenge making one. I was trying to figure out good puzzles to include in the game, levels that would be fun to play. I guess I didn’t chose well, because…

Levels Are Really Hard

I think it’s a problem of communication. I wasn’t able to find an effective way to communicate what the puzzle was about. Sure, you have to grab the red cube, but what’s the mechanic of the level? That and some difficult controls (which I modified now), has led my game to be almost unbeatable.

Power Outages And Plain Bad Luck

I guess the world didn’t want me to participate in Ludum Dare. I have gathered a list of things that happened to me this weekend:

• 3 power outages of about 2/3 hours each.
• Computer broke the first 3 hours. I had to waste 2 hours fixing it.
• Laptop has temperature issues and I couldn’t use it to develop at all.
• Internet went down for about 3 hours.
• One of the outages corrupted my Unity project so I had to start again.

Lot Of Time Testing

If you watch my timelapse, you will find that I was spending lot of time testing my game. That surely was one of the reasons why my game is difficult: the more I tested my game, the easier it was for me, so the more I increased the difficulty.

But why I tested it so much? Well because the atmosphere was really cool so I played lot of time to hear the music, read the messages, etc. That’s because I was…

Not Organized At All

So I had to make lots of things, but I couldn’t make a list like my previous Ludum Dare. I don’t know why, I just didn’t think it was necessary. So I wasted a lot of time working on the atmosphere first (I had the music very early on), and not much time in the mechanics.

Unity3D Editor

So one of the wonderful things about Unity3D is that you can extend your editor to make custom tools. I created tools for the logic puzzle and the jumping puzzle, which allowed me to modify them quickly.

Parser

For creating the blocks in the dodge level, I made a parser that reads a simple script, describing how the level should be created. Then Generate creates all the blocks in the corresponding positions.

The first letter correspond of where the block will be coming from, North, East or West. The second letter correspond of what position the block will have, Left, Center or Right. If there’s an X at the end, then a Checkpoint is created instead. The special letter S is speed, and O is offset, both followed by a number.

Visual Handlers

For the logic puzzle, I needed something to tell me how was the level being connected. I figured I could do it using the Handles class, using a white arrow indicating a floor that turns on another, and a black arrow indicating a floor that turns off another.

Visual clues helped me know what’s happening. Click to enlarge.

Unity3D Pro Effects

So with Unity Pro it is really simple to add fancy post-process effects. I added vignetting and reflection, which lot of people told me it was really cool looking. I was about to add more effects, but that wouldn’t be minimal.

Easy Way To Make Music

I used Paul Stretch along with Audacity to remix a version of Four Seasons of Vivaldi. It was an easy and hacky way to have a beautiful dreamy music. I also was worried that it would be against the rules to remix a song, but I asked in #ludumdare and it was ok.

Tags: 3D, final, LD#26, post-mortem, postmortem, unity3d

It’s been almost a week after I’ve finished the game, so I’m posting on the things that I like and what I don’t like from making the game… Maybe out of boredom.

What went right:
1. Output of the audio
I really got surprised on the output of the audio, because while testing the game, I’m starting to like my own music made with FL Studio. Well, sounds made with SFXR are just easy but also awesome. To be honest, I really suck on composing music and this was the first (serious) music made by me to use in a game, and yeah… 4 short-loops that is. After years of using it and get frustrated on my past outputs, those music used for MinimalFive is a sign… And I’m seeing that a lot of people who played and heard the audio likes it too… I thank for those people who commented the game in terms of audio, because I never expect to have those kind of output even I’ve composed (and even modifying them) for just 2 days.

2. Effect of “Minimalism” theme
Before the theme was announced, this theme was one of my expectations… Because as I read the themes, I got a lot of ideas when I saw this theme… Not just because of simplicity, I also love trying different art movements for me to see my games in different looks… And it did worked out like how I expect at the execution of the game in terms of the graphics. The effect of the “Minimalism” theme also made me go random… It goes like some random gameplays and some random texts (Yes! This was out of boredom! xD), and I made them as simple as possible… And I was glad that some people get the game and also some even finished it until the end. Thanks to some simple instructions I’ve typed in the game.

What went wrong:
1. Laziness at the 1st day and summer class
I got some advantage when it comes to the time, since the theme announcement here in the Philippines is at 10am so I probably have a lot of time to think and sketch the ideas and somewhat far before I sleep so I stay awake for hours and hours until night. But unfortunately, laziness just hit me… I knew it when I keep on just looking around or just chilling for hours (well, I took breaks, including on eating, breakfast, lunch and dinner… for just an hour) which made me wasted a lot of time. And I also expect to finish the game before Monday because when it comes to my studies, I started to get even lazier on game development and instead doing my studies (as a Multimedia Arts Student at college)… All of this just caused me to cram and stay until somewhat 1am at the 2nd day… And yeah, I was sleepy when I was at class LOL…

2. Limitation of Construct 2 (Free Edition)
To be honest, I hate the 100 events limit on Construct 2 (I’ve used this to make the game)… And that’s the only con that I want to say on this game making software. Anyway, after finishing the 4th game, I only have a very few events (I think around 10) left before reaching the limit. And this made me think that I might not put that shooting part because of it but I don’t want that to happen because for me it will be a boring game all-in-all without it. So I’ve spent an hour to short some events so now I have around 15, and tried to do the shooting part. I wasn’t apart of my expectation of the output but I think I made it simpler than what I expect, but still… It’s wrong for me to change the idea because of the software’s limitation, even around the last hours before deadline…

Conclusion:
I therefore conclude, that I’ve made a simple game even some things gone wrong, I still learned to be conservative. It was still fun making the game and not to forget mentioning this, on the first day, I’ve worked this game outside my home… At Starbucks and at School (thank God the guards allowed me to get in because I just left Starbucks to eat lunch but when I get back all the seats were occupied), and that gave me an experience of a Ludum Dare outside home haha. It was fun after all… And, I also conclude to myself that I’m getting a hang on composing music, for that I’ll learn and practice more and more on it 😀

Oh yeah about the game, I’ve entitled it MinimalFive because it has a guy who thinks of 5 mini games to work on, and it was visualized in minimalism… Weird isn’t it?… xD

That’s all, oh and for those who want to try it… Here’s the link:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=2043

And I also uploaded the short-loops used in my game (I might make a longer version of those music, if I get more motivation) if you want to hear them:
http://toadietechnika.bandcamp.com/

Thanks for reading…

Tags: postmortem

Hey I made some changes to my LD26 game. It’s a bit easier.

Check it out here:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/616819?updated=1

Ok guys, it’s time to do a first small post mortem after that Ludum Dare 26

I’m proud of what I’ve done during this week-end, not only because I finished what I wanted to do, but because few month ago, I was already working on a shmup like the one I did. The main problem was that the main logic and a shitload of programming errors. No inheritance at all, bugs, optimization problems, etc. I worked something like 4 or 5 month on that crap before giving up. So doing MUCH better during only a week was a personnal challenge for me. And I did it!!

Now, about the 48hours: I learned some usefull stuff, like using states in the main class to now the progression in the program ( like if I need to display the main menu or run the gameloop ), or like thinking a lot about the text structure I’ll use to create describe the levels. There’s actually only 2 levels in my game, because the structure made the creation/filling of the levels something horrible and I lost a LOT of time doing that :/

I know there are still bugs in the game, but with the base I own now, can think again about doing my danmaku ( and doing it for windows, linux and mac ).

So, that Ludum Dare was a great experience, for the second time I did it, my game was really better I know I’ll do the LD27 😀

And for you:
A video of the stage 1 of Minimal Shmup:

Don’t forget to follow me on twitter I’m now working on the linux “LD” version of it And after that, I’ll work on the REAL danmaku

I have looked all over the site and I can’t seem to find how to change your profile picture. Could someone please tell me how to do so?

Text adventure is still under development

Currently done :

– Bug fixes for most browser.

– A most readable source-code.

– List of available directions.

To do :

– Fix the backspace “bug” … if someone has an idea on how to solve this problem, thank’s

– Edit the last part of the code ( “take” command ).

– Add auto-completion and history.

– Add some events.

– Add a real goal.

– Add a lot of rooms and items.

Don’t hesitate to try the compo version and to add your suggestion.

Thank You.

Never be frustrated by difficult games again.

have a pleasent parent friendly minimal gameplay experience.

we at W.E.T care so you dont have to….

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=19384

After my game was released, some users were reporting crashes. I found  memory leak and fixed it. Users of chrome were still reporting crashes.

A couple hours ago I discovered that Unity was failing to export the web version of the game because of some issue with templates. My laziness in not manually copying the new game over ruined many player’s experience. I am deeply sorry.

The game is fixed now.

I have written my postmortem for loot run. The link is http://blazinggames.blogspot.ca/2013/05/loot-run-postmortem.html

Quick summary for those who don’t want to read the article:
What went right – Keeping to the minimalism theme
What went right and wrong – Text and the garbage issue
What went wrong – 150ms keystrokes.

Let’s play of Minimal Theory!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osAkY-CJ_Pc

http://ecoolsagamedev.wordpress.com/

the trailer will include:

Dubstep

lens flare

360 headshot no scopes

shaders

and some extra stuff.

I just published a postmortem about my experiences developing Hell Hole for LD48 this past weekend.

Ludum Dare — Hell Hole

The thing I am the most proud of, coming out of this weekend, is that I finished my first game.