Thanks to some really appreciated feedback and also some unfinished business of my own, here’s the postcompo version of squarespace!

• the game content is pretty much the same as original compo version. 
• major performance improvement 
• major collision detection improvement (it’s harder as a result!) 
• in-game help system improved 
• can now pause the game  
• various other bits of tweak and polish 

Please submit your ratings based on the original compo version.

Web! | Standalone! (Java – Platform Independent) and a slightly updated Play Guide (PDF)

Skware was my first game written for Ludum Dare. In fact, it was my first game ever!

I enjoyed building it so much that I’ve decided to continue working on it in my spare time (nights/weekends). Getting feedback has been great (though I’d love more) and so I’ve begun to organize my next steps. I’m using Trello to list the remaining work. Here’s a picture of where I think I’m headed

Thanks to all who’ve played and rated my first game. It’s been a great experience!

Tags: LD#26

Released a post compo version of my game Kriok
It is also my attempt to finally complete the october challenge.

It has some minor changes and a few more levels than the compo version.

Tags: android

I survived another Ludum Dare.  Me and about 10 other programmers went to a museum, ate pizza, drank soda, engaged in other unhealthy activities (actually I did mostly DDR:Max2 until we found DDR:SuperNova, but those were the healthy options, other popular options were playing Battletoads), and after 48 hours, showed off our results to each other, the founder of the museum, and a couple of other interested onlookers.

I was highly disappointed I didn’t finish.  But I scrambled to get it done, and I submitted it in its unfinished state.  As many people commented, I could have easily finished it up on Monday in the Jam time frame, but really I’ve got stuff to do Monday and after marathoning all weekend the last thing I want to do is keep working on it.

I submitted it, and I also wanted to take another look at its state.  My first commentary on this game is that I had no idea the direction it was going, from start to finish.  Well, at some point, I had the idea it would just be a collection of simple puzzles, something people would likely go through once to say “oh hey that’s cool enough” but highly unlikely play ever again (unless except they got bonked off of level two and wanted to retry to see the rest of the game).

What went right:

• People seemed to like it.  This surprised me, as it seemed to me that there was no game at all in this.  No really, you like this?
• For having no plans, just laying stuff out, for just experimenting, everything went better than expected.  I started thinking minimal: “what could be more minimal than a cube on a plane?” But then I thought “well there has to be something this cube wants, why not a sphere?”  After the sphere puts up the sign, well, there should be a castle that the princess is in, right?  And it just flowed from there.
• 3D models.  I don’t know if my skill in using Blender just went up three levels since the last time I used it, but I had no problem making assets in Blender and with “all those cubes” in Unity.  I mean, I don’t think I’ll be winning prizes on polycount.com any time soon, but considering that my usual experience with Blender starts with “how do I use this thing again” and ends with “well I guess that will do if people squint…”, I was quite impressed with myself.  Of course, last time I was quite impressed with myself on graphics, the commentary was that the graphics were horrible.  I guess that is more a commentary on how confident I am in my graphical ability than how good they really are.

What went wrong:

• I didn’t finish it.  This fact bothers me a lot more than it should, but I guess that’s personal.
• Camera.  I kind of liked the Grim Fandango-esque of camera movement, but it really didn’t behave, in almost all situations.  I spent more time on it than I should and still got frustrated.  If anyone has hints on how to deal with the camera in Unity I’d appreciate it.  I was trying to use the default third person cameras controllers in Unity (Assets->Import Package->Character Controller, then delete everything but the Camera scripts) which I thought would be better than rolling my own.
• More bugs.  Most of the bugs I noticed but kept adding more stuff with the idea of “well if I take time to fix bugs, I won’t finish”, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as I did if I didn’t just give up on camera, inventory, upside down signs, and other issues.
• Difficulty.  I had intended to make the key a little harder to find, or just harder to find than the door (the idea is that you find the door and castle first).
• Blue on black text.  This looks good in a web page, but a few people who didn’t get the game from Ludum Dare and thus didn’t read the commentary that you could play the text adventure without the rest of the game literally didn’t see that there was a text adventure on the wall.
• Sound.  What sound?  I had great plans to add sounds all over the places, at least feedback sounds for when you pick up/drop/bonk in to things/etc.

Random commentary:

• I’m glad that everyone has enjoyed it, and this makes me want to rate everyone’s games so I can get a rating too.  When I was being mopey and just thinking that I should just push this off a cliff, I thought “well good, I don’t have to be playing all your games and coming up with ratings”.  But now I kinda want to be rated, because others have indicated appreciation, and I wonder if I pull off enough ratings, even if I don’t get top marks, maybe it would it be worth it.
• On that note, LD #26 has produced some awesome games!  Normally it’s a chore to rate games, but I’ve played several games that were quite fun and I didn’t just play them to rate them!  (Despite this I think I have only played and rated about five games.  I promise, I’ll rate a few more!)
• Popular culture references:  There was a post on here on ludumdare.com ranting about games using popular culture references.  In this game, I blatantly steal ideas from the Atari game Adventure (including the title!) as well as referencing Super Mario Brothers “I’m sorry, but the princess is in another castle!”  I think this, plus text adventures, pushed “happy memory” buttons in some gamers.  One person told me that if I had just made a 3D implementation of Atari Adventure he would have given it top marks.  I don’t know how much bump this gave my game, but I suspect some.  To be honest, the whole Adventure theme came when I made that castle and I thought “hey, that castle looks quite a lot like the one from that old Atari game”, and I replayed it to remind myself what it was like.
• Finishing post compo:  I think the only reason I would do this is to feed it to my onegameamonth account, which is looking pretty dismal with only a game finished in January (but, eh, three unfinished games since then?  I was doing better than this last year, without any 1GAM toys).  It’s probably true that it will take another day to finish to what I had in mind for LudumDare, but I really don’t think that I will take the time to finish this.  If I do, I will likely spend a little more time on it and add more Adventure-ish things, such as larger wrap-around mazes, additional castles, and a carryable bridge.  Some of which might be very hard in Unity.

Once I get past the initial disappointment of not finishing, this was an awesome Ludum Dare!  Thank you to everyone who came down to the MADE and worked on their adventures with me!  (Hey I should rate those, since I’ve played them all, that would give me an additional six games I can say I have rated.)  Thank you to the MADE for pizza and soda!

Also, since everyone else is posting their favorite games, I might as well too.

Looking for love – by Filth And Money – made with me at the MADE!

Gods Will Be Watching – by GreyShock – I can’t believe this was made in a weekend.

Ah, the satisfaction of doing something that actually makes you proud. I learned this the hard way, when I attempted a more complex game with Ludum Dare 25. I was not in a mood for it and already after day one, I was considering tossing the towel into the ring. But I carried on and delivered a broken prototype, that left a nasty feeling in my gut that I just wasted a weekend for nothing.

However, lessons were learned from that, and thus this time I made sure I would only make things I truly enjoy and that are focused on my strongest sets of skills. I wanted to aim for something rich in mood and story, that had a cinematic feeling to it, or as it turned out in this case, a sense of theater play. So a quick rundown of how the weekend went about.

Day 1:
Got up to read the  theme. Thought about it for a while, and the remembered an old idea that I have had before. Started setting up a base template to work upon for an hour. Then I went out into the nice sun and weather, since we were having a spring cleaning that weekend. Then in the afternoon, I started working on the game. My main goal was to set up all the game mechanics within the first day, so that the second day would be focused entirely on content, which really payed off.

Day 2:
By somewhere around afternoon I guess, all mechanics, graphics and music had been wired up. For the music, I know from previously Ludum Dare that it is not my cup of tea, so I put something together with www.jamwithchrome.com and left it at that in order to save time for creating content.So now it was time to create the actual game and storyline. It hit me as brickwall and I didn’t know where to start. Luckily I did what would turn out to be the best choice I could have made. I sat down and wrote a walkthrough.

Yes, that is correct, before the game was even made, there was a walkthrough for it. But this was going to serve as great reference when I started coding the logic for the game and knowing what would happen at every sequence. So I made a silent placeholder dialog consisting of “…” that could be invoked of every character. And I then  began to code all the logic with the goal of matching it completely with the walkthrough and all the scenes that was supposed to happen.

Having it then done, a writing marathon began, as I wrote lines of dialog for 4-6 hours straight. The code structure made it really simple to add in dialog and replace the placeholder. So it was quite a magic moment when I first played through the game, now that all the dialog had been added. It took me 20 minutes just to get through and proofread everything. So the game was more or less complete with 3 hours to go. I used another half hour or so for some final tweaking and then it was finally done and ready for the compo!

———————–

So that is how the weekend went about. Now, before I do a quick summary of what went good and what went bad, I would like to talk about a few things.

One thing that I put great emphasis on, was to make the game and story completely free of any gender and racial bias. That is, you can not tell anything about the characters besides their manners and personality. This made some of the sentences tricky, but nothing that couldn’t be worked around. Why I did this, was that I felt it was necessary in order to prevent any form of stereotypes and prejudices. Otherwise, there would be a high chance that it would have turned out a white male (as I am) or perhaps a white female. By conceling the characters, they would be guarded from any type of preconception from my side.

I also made sure to heigthen the words that was important to the game world as a way to enforce them and give them a more heavy weight to the player. By repeating them over and over in a sort of honory manner, they will eventually start to live as a higher concept. This also came about, as all the actors and probs had a static place and associated Hymn, further rooting the very nature of the game for the player.

Lastly, everything was intentionaly but in a high abstract form. My idea was that this game should be able to translate completely into a real life theater play. And thus, for example the name of the characters sounds something you would read of a theater program where they list the cast. It also gives more power to the player, as they will have to use their own imagination of what the different concepts mean and what is going on.

So to round off this postmortem, let’s do the traditional list of good and bad.

What went good:

• Making something that were in my right domain, focusing on my strongest skills
• Complete game mechanics day 1, only make content and minor logic day 2
• Having a complete design document, in my case a walkthrough. This made it possible to write all the logic without worrying how it all would fit together. Also it made me focus better, since it made me ignore any branching paths and other things that I was planning for at first.
• Working with Html and Js, as I could find bugs and both fix them in the code and at runtime. Otherwise I would have to start all over with the playthrough every time a blocking bug showed up. Now I could just hotfix it in the DOM and Js and just carry on.
• Using bitly to get nice statistics of how many have clicked the link to my game =)

What went bad:

• Since I was using css3 for animations, there was some trouble timing it with the javascript. Which in turn made the pacing for the game a lot slower than it should have been. Since it was such a long game, it was hard to get the flow and pacing right, as I was mostly busy patting myself on the back for a good job this time =P
• Did not use the remaining time to polish the game more. This includes the timing as I mentioned, but also to add some sound effects and animated movement that could have helped set the mood even more.
• Missed putting the toggle button for the music at first, which I knew from the beginning that I should have done.

All in all, I am extremely happy with this entry. It makes me look forward to how much I can improve next time =)

Check out the game here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=13137

Tags: postmortem

A reminder that I’m live-streaming at on 11:00 pm, Eastern Time!

Edit: Aaaaaaaaand we’re live!

Note that I’ve setup a public Google Docs spreadsheet to list the games I’ll be playing. If you want yours played and rated, you can comment the URL to it below and I’ll add it in, or post it directly on the spreadsheet!

Tags: Let's Play, livestream

At long last I have a web version of I Know Nothing up and running for anyone that wants to check it out! Definitely use Chrome as your browser.

This is my first game and HTML5 has been somewhat of a pain to deal with but a great learning experience. Alas, WebGL saved the day in the end for the primary issue at hand, namely performance.

Next up: a trailer. Stay tuned.

Out of 100, here’s my favorite web games (and their task):

Orbicular (Aim and dodge)
Aranami (Rotate)
Root Route! (Navigate)
Less is More (Simulate)
Mind the Gap (Optimize)
You Must Escape (Memorize the maze)
Potato Dungeon (Swipe)
Join (Navigate)
Leaf Me Alone (Explore)
Gods Will Be Watching (Manage)
Flight Time (Orbit)
.MONDR (Dodge)
The Lamp (Seek and avoid)
XYZ (Rotate)

And here is Duncan and my entry:

Right Side of the Road (English)

So I’m well on my way to getting sick of playing games… at least for a while. Here are eleven good games I’ve played, in randomized order, out of just over 150.

A – infernet89

A game with no instructions that does not need any. You get the simple joy of figuring the game out as you go along.

Placeholder – mtrc

That bug that you can’t quite catch… just make a comment in the source code and move on. It’s the experience of game development.

My Peculiar Car – brantkings

Wacky and simple gameplay, with a fusion of sax hits and comedic automobile design that just works.

I Know Nothing – MathiO

Simple gameplay focused on exploration and obstacles that are organic parts of the terrain.

Hexzilla – Bernhard

Strategy game that’s very addictive. My high score is 4537 credits, on wave 404. It’s all about building redundant shield generators behind a double layer of turrets.

This Is Not A Minimalist Game – Volute

A polished puzzle platformer with a great twist at the very end, and some sharp dialogue in the middle.

# – Kitch (not pictured)

A minimal arcade game that gets a lot of mileage out of some great sound effects.

T.O.M.B. – Knighty

Wicked puzzle platformer with an array of tricky but well-designed levels. I can’t beat it, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

Prototype (Jam) – OnlySlightly

Another game that evolves as you play.

The Epicly Short Adventure – JaJ

A platformer with no repeating tiles: each area has its own complete set of artwork. The final boss is a real treat, and it even has multiple endings.

X PRESS (Jam) – Pitoum

I’ve never had a game give me instructions so many times. Guess which button you have to press in this game…

Bonus challenge: find the artwork…

How many games can you find that feature artwork in Piet Mondrian’s style?

How many games in LD26 feature Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”?

I know, a lot of people propose to start with a playable prototype and set up proper gameplay as fast as possible, but I noticed something during the last jams…

…the longer the time advances, the more tired I am, lacking in concentration (obviously). Additional, starting with gameplay always led to overestimate myself and therefore coding and bugfixing until the end, rushing some graphics here and there. So as the timer expired, I always had a game which was, respective gameplay, not finished, and had not that art I wanted to make.

So this time I made it the other way around – and (I think) it worked in terms of “I am satisfied what I made”. If it plays or looks good, is truly a different kettle of fish (wow, the dictionary spits some funny things out… “this is a different kettle of fish” is in german something like “this is written on another paper”  : D).

At first, I made the background and the different areas where the player can walk on and implemented the generation of the map, the highlighting of areas where the cursor is on as well as other (graphical/interface) stuff, but no resource management or the player’s movement.

Grasslands, forests, mountains, lakes and snowy landscapes.

Afterwards, icons and tooltips were made and implemented, showing some dummy values in the game. The graphics and interface as well as some very basic programming stuff took the first day.

Hunt for food, draw water, chop wood, stay warm and find the resources (fishing grounds, herbage and ores).

The fear of not finishing the game and the case, that I have actually only one day to make the programming of the gameplay, forced me to decrease the graphical amount which therefore limited the complexity and amount of the gameplay. I did not changed graphics or added some during the second day, so I totally could focus on making a game based on the graphics. The result was a lot of time for bugfixing, playtesting, balancing and such stuff.

On the other hand, there are some things in my framework (on top of XNA) which need too much time to program (implementing the interface, the areas for click and hover events etc.). Additional, I really need a particle library…

Okay, this post mortem was somehow short, as I focused only on one aspect. Did you have a jam where you started with the graphics at first? Worked it or was it a fail? Let me know!

You can play my game right here!

Tags: post-mortem

This entry was posted on Monday, May 13th, 2013 at 3:57 am and is filed under LD #26. 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.

I just wanted to let people know about the enhanced version of my game I just uploaded. It’s an abstract game where you use shadows to orient yourself and go through walls to escape enemies.

You can play Shape of shades here : [PLAY]

Tags: enhanced, flashpunk, haXe, haxepunk, screenshot

Hey guys.

I could compile a “compo” version for windows. Also added post compo updated versions for mac and windows, and a video with both versions in action. Everything here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22219

Things I plan to do before writing a post mortem:

– Add lifes and perhaps continue

– Add a scoring system

– Some enemies won’t kill pato loco – he’ll just get damage (use the energy bar)

– Add a new enemy (I made a dog sprite – I want him in the game). Maybe I’ll make a hunter sprite if I have time (pato loco is a duck… a dog and a hunter seems to me his natural foes).

– Ice stage.

– More stages.

Things I won’t do anymore:

– A water stage (did the sprites, but I won’t be add anyways).

– Keys opening doors.

I wonder if my game is the best looking one of this contest ^^ In fact I have good-looking water, nice ice, moving clouds and more 😀 For it’s graphics the game is pretty small, too – the Windows&Linux version together is 16,6 megs big! And the derivate of  Sauerbraten I use grants relatively good performance.

Shifting away from the technically aspect.. Gameplay-wise, it focuses on exploration. You’re an explorer on an iceberg, who wants to get famous by discovering things. Theoretically, the chances to find something on a small iceberg are minimal, but practically.. who knows..?

Jump in your boat and move to the isle.

Don’t forget to vote after your journey has ended.

Hi there!

I’m glad to announce that, after lot of work, a post compo version of … is now available! It has more levels, more awesomeness and completely new graphics, look!

It will be released on Kongregate and Newgrounds in a few days. But before play the beta here while it’s still hot! Any feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome. Do not hesitate to drop me a tweety-tweet!

Of course my original entry can still be played here (100% shameless). By the way reading the comments I do believe that there are not a lot of folks that found the super secret level available only in the compo version. As a motivator, here is a sneak peak at it:

Mr Potatowesome FTW!!

The first one was so fun, I’m live-streaming again! this time, it’s on 10:00 pm, Eastern Time!

Like last time, I’ve setup a public Google Docs spreadsheet to list the games I’ll be playing. Feel free to post a comment with your game’s URL on this post, or directly in the spreadsheet!

Tags: Let's Play, livestream

I forgot to make an announcement but I add a post compo version, the game is the same, it’s just more pleasant to play!
(And by the way I now rated more than 20 games ^^)

(a beautifull gif with an awesome quality ^^’)
——————————————————-
Update:
-more user-friendly controls
-faster (the 48h version is a bit slow)
-improve a little bit arms modelisation & animation
-add a few sounds
-add an end scene
——————————————————–
Hope you’ll have fun!

Jacques le lezard
@jacqueslelezard

Theme:

I liked the theme, I felt this was the perfect theme for my first ludum dare compo, once I finally understood it. I am sure everyone had a glance at Piet Mondrian’s Compositions, I know I did. At first when I hear the word minimalism, I think of either Bomberman or Mario shrinking down to size or as I used to call the “teeny- weeny disease.” So I felt I should research the term a little more deeply. The words that really hit home when I read it on Wikipedia was, ” simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.” so I felt my game should live on that statement.

The idea:

I was mostly inspired by Piet Mondrian’s Art. You start in pure blackness as a black box and you strive to come out of the dark and “make something of yourself.” So you then navigate through the darkness somehow then come to some simple obstacles or compositions that are preventing you from escaping.

Design/Mechanics:

The first level/area is based on the composition by Piet Modrian’s Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red. The mechanics would work like so: Blue colors would transfer you from white area to white area, Red areas would be elevators lifting you up from floor to floor and Yellow/Green would transfer you to a different area. I wanted to have top down camera at first centralizing the black square/player, but midway through I changed to a third person camera. I designed my levels based on those mechanics. I wanted to start in darkness so I needed a way to be guided through, so I then found my answer for Audio. I used as few sounds as possible making only four files that would be the only sound in the game and I wanted to make the most out of the sounds as I could. I needed to plannout my repeating level assets better.

Programming

I have been working the model-view-controller shown to me through Unity3D by mbakr . I think it has been working quite well usually I think I run into trouble figuring out my static variables, but with this method it helps me keep my static items organized with the get and set methods.Towards the end of the compo, I think I got a little sloppy just throwing scripts on objects that may have been better set on the player/controller or thought the model itself.

Audio

I enjoyed doing the audio. Being a bass player in the past, had me really enjoy making the music. I think for next time I might even try recording my bass amp through some audio recording device. It was my first time bring sound and programing it in Unity3D as well which was awesome and easy. Audio sets a mood for sure.

What when wrong?

Guiding the player or Instructions/ Tutorials, helping guide in the darkness. Spending to much checking ludum dare site and twitch.tv which could have been used on more designing/brainstorming time . I think interpreted the theme minimalism to an extreme, by adding to much minimalism to everything, including the instructions which really threw some players off (see images above for something I should have done). I did not want to change it during the compo because I felt it was probably going to take adding a tutotrial/learning section. I think I may have spent a little too much time in Unity3D with level design. Better planning of levels with repeated assets can go a long way.

What went right?

I feel I definitely got the theme right . Finishing the game went right. Whenever I hit any “road blocks” I went back to my sketchbook replanned any problems that I had and at the same time came up with more ideas. Using the sketchbook was nice and I plan to do it more often instead of sitting there thinking in my computer chair.

Conclusion

I felt I got a real crash course on getting a game out before a deadline which I have not really done before. With this theme I think I got “off the hook” designing some assets which usually takes up most of my time. I feel as though this was my warm-up to ludum dare, because when I look at some of the other entries, they don’t need to be so theme concentrated. I received great value in my feedback for navigating the player and feel the next experience won’t leave any aspects open for interpretation.

Play it here:

Box’s World

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20551

I have corrected two bugs in my game.

I will to do a post compo soon.

The new version!

With less than 7 days to go until judging ends and well, because pretty much everyone else is doing it, here’s my top 5 out of over 100 games rated so far:

F*** this job

(Follow the) Line

You must Escape

Super 1 bit Space Arena

The Sentient Cube (Game has unfortunately been taken down as of 14/05/13 but it’s still in my Top 5)

The Special Hidden Gem Award (Courtesy of the Rating Rescue Rangers): A Trigger Darkly

And finally, insert shameless plug of my game here.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 13th, 2013 at 5:22 pm and is filed under LD #26. 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.

So I finally did my post compo. The only thing left is to add the music that I made. But I’m lazy, so I think I’ll leave it.

What has been changed:
Added sounds (which mostly were created during the compo)
Added difficulty
Changed version in about menu XD

Well that’s pretty much it. You can find the entry here.

You can also see a speedrun (of the original) here:

Or you can see the timelapse:

Tags: post-compo