LD26 April 26–29, 2013

This months Mini LD is up for grabs!!!

Good news everyone, we have a winner…


winner

johnfn

The stage is now yours :P

People included in the draw: (1) Patacorow; (2) Arowx; (3) puzzlem00n; (4) Jorjon; (5) johnfn; (6) 7Soul

To determine the winner, a !dice 6 was rolled in #ludumdare IRC on thursday june 13th, at 6pm GMT, and a 5 was rolled. The following people had entered less than 4 LDs and were not included in the draw: kddekadenz, mohammad, jaydenB, ditto, carrymove.

11

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 9th, 2013 at 4:00 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.

HelkeGames update!

logo

Here we are with a new post after the AWESOME Ludum Dare 26!
I want to let you know that HelkeGames is now on GameJolt (website maybe i’ll use to host my upcoming games and projects!).
Check Earth Defender on GameJolt!

For further information here are some useful links!

 

Tags: Earth Defender, game, Ludum Dare, updates

Adding a Post-Compo version? Help!

So… about one month and a half after the end of LD26, I have started working on a post-compo version of my game. I finished a first version of my post-compo, but I can’t find the “edit my entry” button.

So, is it possible to edit entry pages after the compo is finished to add information about a post-compo version? Am I missing something really obvious here?

Thanks!

Tags: help, post-compo

Comments

Puzzlem00n
11. Jun 2013 · 16:36 UTC
You just have to remember the link! I don’t recall what it was myself… Let me see…
cricklewood
05. Jul 2013 · 14:57 UTC
I’m glad I found this post through a Google search. Thank you.

WhatUpdate #3: HAPPI BIRTHDAIZ 2 M3!1!!

Hello there, its Mohammad again, and something quite interesting just happened just before the summer is going to start. Lets count them off.

NUBAH WOOONNN!!!!!!! I got a ARDUINO MOTHA BOARD!!!!!!! w00t, GO ROBOTS!!!! Feel free to see my projects and my code on youtube. oie_LxXdqgMIIUfq

NUMBAH TEEWWWWW!!!!! IMA GONNA BEE W00P1N SUM BUT WITH MAH INVERT MINI (Haters gonna hate)(Yeah, I know it has nothing to do with video games, nothing here does, just keep reading and I’ll satisfy your Indie side.)

oie_Lj1IVaTOC3jC

NEMBAR THHREEE!!!! IMA GETTING A POOL (Table NO JK A R3AL POOL)(Yeah now I’m just pissing you off. Well I did promise you Indie stuff. *Inhale* Ok, here we go)

Ahem. Number Four. I will be putting my posterior into thy stall and reclining as I observe with demonstration of tho Mini LD with thy chairman hosting this collaboration by (JhonFN; For Puzzlem00n Only), and actually resuming thy participation of spawning interactive media and comical memorandums. As for that, it seems this post fills the haters quota for “NOT SPAM”. Now I may hit post.

Minimal game in x86 assembly

I took part in Ludum Dare #26 with a minimal DOS game written in x86 assembly. Though I couldn’t finish the game within 48 hours, I got some really nice feedback, also I saw some more potential in the game, which eventually inspired me to finish it after the compo. :)

The game is now (somewhat) playable. It has a HUD which shows your health, how many treasures you collected, and how many monsters you killed. Also, the field is randomly generated, and if you leave the screen, you get a new field (as if you left the previous one). Also, whenever you kill a monster (or you get killed by one), a random name is selected from a list of races – some of these races are shout-outs to various indie games I love – I suggest all the referenced games for everyone to check out. 😉

Some added awesomeness to this game (which I’m really proud of) is that it’s OS-independent: though it runs natively under DOS, it doesn’t actually require DOS to run. To prove this, you can actually write the binary image into the boot sector of a floppy (and possibly other bootable storage media) and then you can directly boot your PC with it. The binary is exactly 3 sectors long, and it contains a boot code which loads the rest of the game if it’s booted by BIOS. Since the game only depends on ROM-BIOS calls those are available in all IBM-compatible PCs since the 80s, the game will run without a traditional operating system – in other words, technically the game will function as your operating system. 😉 (Though I can’t prove it, theoretically this code should run even on the earliest IBM PC model, as well as on today’s PCs. Though I’m not entirely sure that all BIOS functions I used were available since the very beginning.)

Originally I intended to include a readme.txt file for the program, but I found the source code itself is quite self-documenting. So just read the source code and you will find all information you need. (I advocate the “code is design” philosophy anyway. :P)

We must admit, this game is rather a computer science experiment than an actual game. It’s not very fun, I must admit. 😀

You may get the updated game here:

ASM source
ZIP package (contains the source code and the compiled .COM file)

Basically, I had two motives to make this game. One is nostalgia. I remember having fun times reading one of Peter Norton‘s books on assembly programming when I was 13 or 14 (that was like 10 years ago) while others were learning how to get girlfriends. Then during high school’s carefree times I started to work on a hobby operating system I called ShitOS, which would have been entirely implemented in assembly – I was very far from finishing it when I gave it up ’cause I had to realize I don’t have enough free time to work on it. The other reason I made this game is that I think assembly is totally awesome! First, it even looks awesome, I’d totally decorate my walls with it! Second, it does great to the programmer’s soul. To master assembly, you need to understand how the computer works on a deep level, which is a de facto requirement for all good programmers.

Anyway, possible that I’ll develop this game further whenever I get this assembly-fever again. 😉

New 3rd Person Action Game to be Released! (maybe)

Hey, Ludum Community, Rob Productions here. For a while I’ve been working on a third person action game, just to test out if I could do anything different then my usual first person stuff, and I started to see potential in this. The “test game” was actually coming along very well, introducing many new challenges and concepts that really pushed my programming skills to advance. I started looking at my previous works and at my current project, and at other games around the web, and I realized… this project is professional enough to be released! Like, for actual money!

I’ve been doing a lot of research and planning on getting this game released, and I think I know how to start. Details on the release and the game itself are still super-secret, but here’s a hint on the name and concept of the game:

Hint1

Let’s see if you can figure this one out! 😛

Also, if there’s anyone out there with any experience releasing a game, I’d really appreciate some tips on getting my game publicity and hype during the preorder and pre-release stages! What’s the best way to promote a game and make people want to buy it?

Thanks and Happy Gaming, Ludum Dare! P.S. I’ll be sure to release some free stuff for those of you low on funds 😛

Tags: game, javascript, progress, release, unity, unity3d, update

Comments

13. Jun 2013 · 21:17 UTC
I have no experience whatsoever, but I’m sure a good number of Twitter followers and constant tweeting would help. The best way to accomplish this is to follow a ton of people and wait for them to follow you back. (Not all of them will, of course, but this can’t hurt.)

How (not) to fail a game release

A few weeks ago, I officially published a game on Clay.io , a site specially for html5 games. Here:  http://spinturret.clay.io/ .A nice thing about Clay.io, other than the useful api, is that they can host your game even before you publish it to their game collection, so you can check if everything is okay.

How I messed up, is that just before publishing, I mimimized the script, and changed the generic api script for one with only the features I used. And there is where I made a mistake.

Instead of doing   clay.gamekey=”spinturret” , I kept the clay.gamekey=”YOURGAMEKEYHERE” .

Because of that, the api didn’t work, so I couldn’t keep track of how much people played, and they couldn’t submit their scores to the leaderboard :(  .

The built-in leaderboard was I feature I really liked with clay.io, and it suited my simplistic game alot. It was supposed to be an important feature, so people would try to beat each other’s score.

Anyways, Clay.io does some promoting for the newest games, features them in their newsmail and stuff. If my game would have not been broken, I would have probably had some users interested for longer. Moral: always wait 24 hours after your last change (be it minimizing) before publishing your game. If you want absolutely someone to play it, you could go ask your Facebook friends, or maybe not.

Then, to my next point: my promotional image.

People judge by the cover, so yeah. What it looked like when I published it:

Promotional1

It seems pretty amateur, right? It’s just a screenshot.

But now:

But now I worked on it a bit and updated it, it looks like this:

Promotional4

 

Much better, right, much more professional. If I had this image when I had released the game, I would have probably gotten more players.This time, it’s not a screenshot, but an image entirely recreated in Gimp and Inkscape.

(Now that I compare both side to side, I think that I should at a speck of orange to the bottom one. I’ll maybe do that.)

Moral: screenshots and promotion art are really important, since it would influence how much people would get to your game in the first place. So you should have them nice and beautiful when you publish a game.

Anyway, in shameless self promotion I declare: go play my game at http://spinturret.clay.io/ !

Comments

15. Jun 2013 · 14:24 UTC
Just some advices:
15. Jun 2013 · 22:48 UTC
Thanks for the tips! I hadn’t heard of Clay.io before but it seems to be a pretty cool place for HTML5 games.

Bridge Crosser Released!

Our entry to Ludum Dare 26, Bridge Crosser, has been turned into a larger project due to popular request.

 

Bridge Crosser Promo

 

The game now boasts over 15 levels, with new environments, better optimizations, and new features.

The game trailer can be seen here: Bridge Crosser – Release Trailer

 

Bridge Crosser - Tornado

Promotional art for the full release of Bridge Crosser!

The game can be bought from our site here: elementalzeal.com/ourGames.php

Tags: bridge, chicken, crosser, physics, pig, platformer, release, trailer, weather

Finally got my Arduino!

Hey guys check out my setup video showing me off and my brand new arduino! Can’t wait for the infinite possibility!

Sorry its so short, I went insane trying to embed it.

ASCII Warriors

[ ASCII Warriors demo page ]

Making a Javascript framework for ASCII games!
There’s not much to it yet, but you can yoink it here on Github!

Comments

16. Jun 2013 · 06:46 UTC
That’s amazing!
16. Jun 2013 · 19:49 UTC
Wow, pretty cool! I’m guessing there’s no way to “Insert Coin,” but I don’t care, those effects are awesome to stare at.

S.W.A.G., a student game

Hi everyone.

I’m working with a bunch of friends (including LD fellahs Pereubu & Toki) on this game called S.W.A.G.
It’s a retro FPS about the 90’s, street crediblity and rap music.

Here’s our prototype, have some screenshots as well (and a trailer at the bottom of this post) :

  

 

The game is developed for the french student contest Hits Playtime. It ends tonight, and the projects that gathered the most facebook likes on their page will be selected for the finale.
The point is, we need some right now. Yup, I’m definitely posting it here because we are desperate for likes. So if you feel like it, any like or share would be appreciated ! :3

 

TL;DR : a cool game, for a french contest, in need of facebook likes to be selected for the finale tomorrow.

Thx & lov’y’all !

Intergalactic Bar Billiards v1.1

In response to feedback I’ve made the following tweaks to my game:

  • the cue guideline is no longer locked while aiming
  • the cue guideline now has a chevron pattern to show direction
  • you must click a button to spot the next planet after each shot (this prevents a player from finding the perfect spot and sticking there.)

You can play the updated version here: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/10575019/

Title Screen

Game Screen

The original entry is here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=11312

Comments

19. Jun 2013 · 12:04 UTC
Incredible sound.

Transmission System Operator 2013

I thought it might be fun operating electric power grids, so I made it a game.

There’s a demonstration video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1D7k9OCFn0

You can download the game (it’s totally free of course) here:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/xvbkrbabp3si1v8/Transmission_System_Operator_2013_-_Alpha.zip

It’s still in alpha. I’d be happy to get some feedback. And bug reports :D.

Here’s an in-game screenshot:

java 2013-06-16 23-55-19-41

 

I’ve heard great things about LD and I am definitely gonna participate in the next one.

Comments

goerp
17. Jun 2013 · 16:42 UTC
If you like making things like this, I think you will fit right in.

There are so many different types of games and game makers you will certainly find people who will like (and give feedback on) games like this.
zzForrest
19. Jun 2013 · 11:33 UTC
The game is too zoomed in for me. You might want to fix the resolution or something, because it’s unplayable for me.

Android Games – We made some!

With the up-rise of smartphones, a humongous market for game development has opened up.

The team here at Ion Programming has decided to catch up with the times and move into the area of Android game development.

So far we have made two basic games which are worth a look.

 

Space Dodger

Dodge the asteroids and space junk as you pilot your rocket through the vast expanse of space, earning points and leveling up as you go.

Space dodger can be found here.

 

975840_449904398439515_740990637_n

 

How Do I Simply?

This perplexing puzzle game will have you busy for hours. The aim is to change all of the tiles to red. Sound easy? You sure? I don’t think so.

How Do I Simply? can be found here.

983340_449904408439514_1195744818_n

My no entry for LD26, still too slow to coding, next time!

I started to work in “No Time To Stop” near the Ludum Dare 26 and my idea was enter with it but unfortunately no arrived with enough gameplay, still i’m to slow to code :S

At first the game was made using a 16 color palette with a resolution of 120×80 and scaled later to 8x, all very minimalistic, here the first game style.

 

Now my idea is try to do something more colorfull with shadows/lights and glow but keeping the 8x pixel-art, here a screenshot:

No Time To Stop

 

To see the game in movement:

 

Some info about the game:

Resolution: 960×640
Genre: Arcade/Platformer with some logic/puzzles
Platforms: Win,Mac,Linux – Android/iOS – OUYA and maybe GameStick
Engine: Multimedia Fusion 2

 

For complete info you can check the official website or if you want to follow the development check the Tigsource Devlog .

And a few days ago the game was uploaded on Greenlight 😉

 

And well I hope code more fast for the next compo or at least enter some fun-playable!.

Tags: android, arcade, gamestick, iOS, linux, mac, no time to stop, ouya, platformer, retro, videogame, Windows

PackSciences now entering in the Jam Competition

I’m proud to announce that I’ll submit a game on Ludum Dare.

Maybe, I’ll try to make a game on LD#27 but that’s not sure.

3 conditions are needed for me to do this :

  • First, only if Game Maker Studio is allowed. In fact, I’m not THAT good at coding; so I’ll use Game Maker Studio
  • And, the theme must be inspirating. If I don’t like the theme, I’ll do some bullshit.
  • Finally, I need time to make this game.

Hope you’ll like it.

Comments

zzForrest
19. Jun 2013 · 11:28 UTC
1. Game Maker is fine. No problem. Just make sure that you publish it in a way so that everyone can play it.

2. The theme is flexible to your interpretation, so if it is “You Are The Villain”, there are many ways to make a game out of this.

3. 2 days, while sounding like a short period of time, is plenty. As long as you remember to get your sleep, eat plenty of snacks, and spend most of your time working, you will be fine.

Artist(s) Wanted!

Hi my name is Skylar. Me and my friends are developing a game for the Ouya. The game is an arcade RTS where you command a sqaud of 5 Mechs through multiple campaigns each with their own objectives and story, told through a series of  levels. I am programming the game, Jeff is the writer, and a few other people will be helping build levels. I estimate that I’ll be done coding in 2 weeks and the game itself will be completed in about a month.

But after a few weeks of development I finally realized that there are only place holder graphics. oops…

So I am looking for a decent graphics artist. Someone who can make good 64×64 tile sheets.

The style I want to see is “Vibrant Colours” but “kind of gritty”.

 

Email me at Skyllartor@gmail.com if you’re interested.

Thank you!

New Action Game to have Climbing! (And another hint)

This game, as always, started with the typical “fly up a wall” climbing system. This worked fine, but I knew I wanted to allow the player to reach higher places. I started doing some research and it turned out the best method for a climbing system was triggers — invisible “hot spots” that detect when the player is inside them. From that I was able to detect when a player was near a climbable object, and then disable the entire movement controller and hand over movement to special custom-made climbing controller. The details from there get a bit complicated, but so far this character is the most complex I’ve ever done in a game, with (right now) 5 layers of collision boxes, 3 state controllers, over 20 animation matrices, and more than 60 basic animations. I’ll do a more detailed write up (and maybe a video) about development once the game is announced. :)

And finally, here’s another hint on the title and theme of the game, to keep you on your toes:

Hint2

Remember you can follow me on twitter @RobProductions : https://twitter.com/RobProductions

You’ll be sure to here more development news soon!

Happy Gaming, Ludum Dare <3

Tags: progress, unity, unity3d

I finished* a project!

There’s something slightly sad about the fact that that’s a rare enough occurrence with me that it merits its own post here (especially in the midst of about a billion successful LD entries by others), but the truth is, without Ludum Dare, I probably never would have had the idea for this in the first place, much less actually attempted to act on it, so a big thank you goes to the community at large.

As for the project itself, it’s this thing:

EDIT: The game itself can be downloaded from here (Win32-only, but is known to play nice with WINE).

*(To be fair, it does need a second round of polishing.)

I made a meaningful game

I decided that the app store needs more meaningful games.

This is why I decided to create Enjayed: a game about the multiverse.

It’s a puzzle game that looks like it’s just about moving boxes, but it’s not.

It was inspired by Corrypt.

Here is the iTunes link.

 

Comments

19. Jun 2013 · 11:44 UTC
Any more information? You only told us what it’s not about, not what it’s about.