I ran out of time, so I guess I’m in the jam now. I probably won’t get very much further than this since I have to work tomorrow, so I’ll just wrap it up and submit tonight.

My original idea morphed a little bit into a “Minimal RPG” sort of thing. It’s not as fun as it looks.

I coded my self into a wall with my original idea so I decided to start from scratch and try to make something for the jam!

I hope everyone had fun with the compo, I know this was one hell of a learning experience for me! Def. joining in next Ludum Dare

So I made the decision to not submit to the compo.. It’s playable, but I need to finish a few more levels!

Vine video of the gameplay: https://vine.co/v/bxHV2qmLe3n

Hit me up on twitter @travisirby I’ve been having a great time on there this weekend… Prob why I’m not finished!

Tags: unity, unity3d

I squeaked in a few hours to write a game this weekend. I’m glad I did; I had a lot of fun writing this in Ruby and Gamebox.
I made more of a simulation-toy than a game, but I enjoy playing it and am happy with how it turned out.

I can’t wait to start playing all the other entries.

Check out Seed Life here

It’s like Asteroids, except without asteroids. It has saws though. You can collect coins like in Mario.

link – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20707

I called it “Minimalia”. I had to write “Minimalia” 600 times while programming it. I hate “Minimalia”…

Get it here: Minimalia

So I didn’t actually finish the game but I did submit what I’d made so far. I lost about 3-4 hours tonight doing some schoolwork. Time I would have used making more levels, equipment, monsters etc. (i.e. making it into an actual game).

The game in it’s current state is like A Link to the Past with only two areas and only two kinds of enemies. There is no goal, you can go from one area to the other and kill green and red slimes.

Screenshot of my submission.

As simple as it looks, there are a lot of implemented features that I just didn’t have time to make assets for.

Implemented features which aren’t actually in the game:

• Equipment – Weapon, Chest, Legs. The character in the game is actually wearing a shirt, pants and wielding a sword, all which are handled as separate objects. There are however no other items to wear so the system is kind of pointless.
• NPCs – Removed them at the last minute because I didn’t have time to finish them completely.
• Stats – Strength, Speed, Intelligence. Currently all of them are just set to zero as I never implemented a leveling system. Except for the slimes. Green slimes have 2.5 points in strength, and red slimes have 5, which makes red slimes hit twice as hard.

Also for anyone who downloads the game and runs it, I apologize for the horrible health bar and game over screen. I was running out of time and I made that in about 30 seconds.  Also you have to restart the game if you die. Sorry.

Even though I didn’t finish I had a lot of fun and once I’m a bit rested I’ll probably go back, clean it up a bit (I’ve filled it with crap code, rushing to make something playable to submit in the last few hours) and then continue working on it, because I actually quite like it. I think the graphic style ended up being kinda nice and very easy to work with. I’m probably not going to attempt an RPG next time though. To much work for 48 hours even for something this simple. Maybe once I’m an LD veteran and a fitting theme comes up I might give it another shot.

Well, good luck with the voting thingamajig everyone! 😀

This turned out to be a very fun and interesting Ludum Dare for me, and I took a very different approach from the past two that I’ve participated in. I had a few ideas for various themes, but nothing for the one that was chosen, of course! So, I spent Friday night just thinking up concepts, didn’t write any actual code until Saturday morning, took lots of breaks, and focused on tweaking details rather than adding features. I’m pretty happy with the result, though I’m not sure how others will like it:

Be Still

Yep, it’s minimal.

I drew the character and other sprites in Paint.NET, built a simple skeletal animation using Spine (which is great, but I had a hard time exporting with clean borders on my images), then put it all together with a mash of Crafty JS and some extra jQuery/CSS bits. Compared to developing in XNA (as I have in the past) this made it much easier to get something up and running and to tweak it quickly.

I think my greatest success this time was picking a VERY simple concept to start with, then spending time on the details and fussing around. Compared to my previous entries, this one has a lot more polish.

Conversely, my biggest lack was content. I could have been more ambitious, spent an extra 6 hours coding, and come out with a deeper player experience. Guess this will have to wait for a post-compo version… Practicing with my tools beforehand would also have been a good idea, but being comfortable with JavaScript and DOM manipulation in general gave me a pretty solid foundation at least.

Now it’s time to play some games, and see what great ideas the rest of you came up with!

EDIT: I made an R2 with the hours remaining in the Jam.

EDIT 2: Here is the timelapse!

Achievement get! Completed first Ludum Dare.

The thingy

Prisma is a color channel-based puzzler.

I didn’t get as many levels in as I wanted to, but I’m fairly happy with it. I had plans for a lot of different triggers, but didn’t have enough time to put them in (probably a good thing, considering the theme is minimalism). This is my first experience with LÖVE, and my first huge anything written in Lua, so I had a few things to shove in my brain.

I also apparently missed the submission deadline for the Compo. I did not realize that was so strict. Anyhow, here’s the entry itself. I worked on it for roughly 34 hours.

Downbloat!

For Windows, just extract and run prisma_r1.exe. Hopefully the world doesn’t blow up.

You will need LÖVE 8.0 on Linux, though it might also work with 9.0 — I haven’t tried. Run love prisma_r1.love, and it should just magically work.

No Mac build yet, sorry! It should be easy to run the .love if you have a LÖVE 8.0 build. Stay tuned.

EDIT: Check out the entry page for links (linked at the top of this post). R1 has a bad README for you Windows users out there, so if you actually want to read it, it’s fixed this time for sure, probably, I hope. Windows needs to get with the times and adopt UTF-8.

• Windows
• Linux
• README (included in Windows zip)
• Source code

Controls

• Move: arrow keys
• Action: space

Other stuff!

I streamed & timelapsed the whole she-bang. Videos from the stream can be found here. I’ll have the timelapse up on YouTube soon.

If you find something horribly wrong (excluding the “boss level”), yell at my Twitter: @komiga.

Now I am going to sleep for weeks.

Phew! That went a heck of a lot better than the last LD I took part in, but it was still a lot of work. I got it all finished within a few hours of the deadline — except for an uncooperative timelapse video — so overall it was definitely less stressful. I thought I’d write up a post-mortem for the process. Hopefully somebody else will find it useful or interesting but, at the very least, it’ll help me get stuff straight in my head.

What happened

I live in England, so I found out about the theme around 6 or 7 hours after it was revealed. I wasn’t particularly inspired by it so I did what I’m guessing almost everybody else did and looked at the Wikipedia article for “minimalism.” After about half an hour of looking around, I decided to focus more on minimalist music than art, since I never really understand art and I’d end up just copying an art style and not thinking about the game.  Minimalism in music is about building up really simple phrases so that they make something, which led me to the idea of building up the player’s obstacles over time. At first they’d be really easy, but then as more of them started appearing at once it’d get harder and harder.

A wall was an obvious obstacle and putting gaps in the wall was an obvious way to overcome the obstacle, so that didn’t take much to come up with. There had to be some way for the obstacles to appear, and I couldn’t really control it very well if I had the player moving through a level at their own pace, so I made the level just an arena the size of the screen and had the obstacles approach the player instead of the other way round. The lose condition was another obvious one: if you get caught in between two walls, you lose.

And that was that! It took about 5 minutes after I’d finished reading up on minimalism for me to come up with the idea (due in no small part to how simple (minimalist!) they were), which meant I was about 35-40 minutes into my time and I’d already come up with the mechanics. I took a quick break to get breakfast and then came back and made a mock-up in photoshop of what the game was going to look like.

It looked sort of like this, except not broken. This is actually a very early screenshot.

I made some quick assets from my mock-up and started coding the game. I used AS3 and Flixel and I didn’t really have any issues with either of them. I only used Flixel initially because the Flashpunk website was down, but I didn’t miss it too much when I really got into coding. Once I’d got the mechanics down it was about midday and I was about 4 hours in. I took a lunch break and then decided to work on some music (I used Ableton Live and the Nexus2 VST); obviously the idea was to have the music be in a minimalist style, so I stuck with a single instrument and a droning bassline with a melody plinking away over the top.

When I tried the music out with the game to see how it fit in, I accidentally lined up the timings of the first few walls with the beat of the music. It had a really nice effect, so I worked on syncing up the entire game with the music and it instantly felt a lot more atmospheric. At this point it was about 5PM and I’d been working on difficult stuff for most of the day, so since I felt as if I had a lot of time to spare I spent the rest of the night polishing aspects of the movement and the graphics. I’d been having a lot of trouble with collisions for a few hours, and it turned out that I’d just forgot to call super.update() when I overrode it, so I kicked myself for the rest of the night.

A shot from the final game. It actually gets kind of zen-like when the pace picks up and you have to be in the zone otherwise it gets a bit stressful.

The second day was polish day! I added nice colour schemes, coded a background fader that faded between colours, cut the music up into instrument tracks and made a rudimentary tracker which looped instruments at the right times (and halved the filesize of the game), spent 3 hours fixing the wall-generation algorithm, then made a win/lose screen, a title/instruction screen (with nifty little keyboard keys that light up when you press the actual keyboard keys) and set them up to fade between each other. Half-way through the day I’d come up with the name “Minima,” and I’m sure I don’t need to explain where it came from, but after a few hours I was getting sick of it and just ran through the tags on colourlovers.com palettes for inspiration. “Crush” came up and it fit perfectly. At first I was searching for another word to pair with it, but I remembered the theme and just went with a one word title. I added the full-stop after the title because it’s final; when you get crushed, it’s the end. It’s very gimmicky but I think it looks nice.

I tried to make the title screen as minimal as possible. Originally it just said “SPACE” underneath the title, but my playtesters (thanks mam and dad!) thought it was part of the title and weren’t sure how to get to the next screen.

After all of that was done, I was pretty much finished. There were some eleventh-hour bugs to fix, but they went away with some hackish fixes, and then I was done. I compiled a SWF, hastily made an AIR installer just in case anybody wanted it, uploaded the background music (the track I’d been using before I cut it up to use with the tracker) to soundcloud, committed the code to a github repo, filled in the submission page and… then sat for about an hour trying to get my timelapse video to render. At one point I restarted my PC, forgetting that I still had the submission page filled out, and had to retype and relink everything. Eventually I gave up on the timelapse and just submitted everything else. Ludum Dare 26 accomplished!

What went right

Okay, so here are the things that I’m glad I did and that I think contributed to me being happy with the end result:

• I didn’t stay up for the theme announcement – if I had, it would have been 2AM for me and then I probably wouldn’t have gotten to sleep for worrying about ideas. I would have woken up later, been more tired, and I probably wouldn’t have had a good start to the first day.
• I focused on the mechanics first – every time I caught myself doing something that wasn’t mechanics-related in the first few hours, I quit it instantly and got back to coding the core game. It meant that I had the actual “game” done by midday on the first day, and left a day and a half for making it a good game.
• I came up with a really simple idea – my typical game ideas are overly ambitious, so I’m proud of myself for come up with something appropriate for the time-scale. The could have come up with something more complicated and barely got it done in 48 hours, but being able to get the game done in 3-4 hours and then having the rest of the time for polish meant that I was actually happy with the end result and not just pleased that I’d done something.
• I didn’t tweak until near the end – so I wasn’t fiddling with optimisations or better sounds or neater graphics or neater mechanics until I’d got the core game (with music and graphics) done. This meant I didn’t get lost in the details without actually making any progress.
• Got some second opinions – I had people try my game out, and they found some big bugs that I had never seen before, and also threw up some UI/UX issues that I’d thought were complete non-issues. There’s a world of difference between the game before playtesting and the game afterwards, and it was all new stuff.

There were lots more little things that went right, but those were the main things that really had a big impact.

What I wish I’d done, or not done (and will, or won’t, be doing next time)

And here are the main things that didn’t go so well:

• I didn’t have any version control – I did have a backup though, since my stuff was on Google Drive. What a lack of version control meant for me was that when I made a big change to the code and then decided I didn’t like it, I had to rewrite it the old way based on memory, and it almost never worked out right.
  
• I wasn’t totally familiar with the libary I was using – this didn’t turn out to be a huge problem, but it did mean that the majority of my time spent coding involved reading through the Flixel documentation. It’s similar to Flashpunk (which I know really well) but just minutely different enough to cause a lot of hidden problems when I assume something works a certain way and it doesn’t. If I could do it again I’d get some practice in with Flixel in the couple of days before the compo.

I think that’s actually all that went wrong. It went surprisingly smoothly, which is great! I would maybe do a stream next time, although it would make me very self-conscious which could really affect my productivity. I could see myself pandering to whatever audience I had instead of getting work done, so… maybe not.

So that’s another LD down. I’m going to be free from university life when the next one comes around, and hopefully I’ll be making progress as a full-time indie developer, so I’ll definitely take part in LD27. Now I need to grab some breakfast and start playing everybody else’s games. There’s no way I’m getting 1700 done in 3 weeks, so I think my target is going to be 500+ so that I can give each of them a fair amount of time.

Good luck in the voting, everybody!

I’m done and this is my game, a game of skill and speed, and a showcase of minimalistic gameplay

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=14274

This was my first LD48, and I gotta say, it was a lot of fun.

I noticed that I had to code way differently for this competition than I normally do. For example, I used way more “magic numbers” in my source, and I put little snippets of code in classes that don’t make sense. I also have huge blocks of “commented out” bits.

But that’s what’s kinda fun about this competition, thinking on your feet, making spaghetti code to fix bugs, cutting your losses when time is running short, etc. It was certainly very exciting.

Now, the game: More than just making a simple platformer, I wanted the game to feel “minimal” in its aura, and not it’s construction. It’s a small, calming platformer-adventure.

Download the .JAR or play the Applet here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=21305

As stated earlier, I did not have time to make a game this weekend. But of course, I’ve been thinking a lot about the theme, and actually the last idea I posted about seemed to get quite a bit of interest, for some reason.

And now, I finally have a bit of freedom, before I go to sleep and then go to work tomorrow, and so it’s entirely possible that I could make something in this last hour or two in time for the jam, as long as it’s… minimal.

Or maybe I should just go to sleep. I am very tired… 😉

“Hey.”

Damn I tired… I finished. I really did. I can even say this is my best LD entry to date. Although as I always bit much more than I could swallow. After all I was trying to make an open world RPG in 48h. It didn’t turn out that way, but it turned out… somehow

Anyway I don’t think I really tackled the Minimalism theme very well. In a way a post apocalyptic wasteland is minimalistic. However the game turned out a bit trippy. And hellishly slow.

There is A LOT I regert I couldn’t finish. The interesting thing is that this time most of the time I was spending working with the resources, not coding. That’s good in a way. It means that my tools are decent. However decent or not I do have a lot of bugs to fix, have a serious look at performance, a start working on the level editor, I mean Tiled can get me only so far.  If I had a dedicated editor I would have done much, much more this weekend.

Anyway I hope you will like: The Islander

That is my reason  for no finishing for the COMPO. I’m sort of standing on a precarious perch… either I let gravity have its way and just fall and not finish something… again, or I could just tank it and climb the sheer cliff of Ludum dare, bloodying my fingers on the thick rough surface of my keyboard, climbing overnight until dawn and settle for the lower peek of the Jam…

or I could play more Monaco…

hmm 😐

So here’s just a link. And a screenshot:

Play game here:

http://dansilber.com/Games/oneBlockyRoom/index.html

Download Construct 2 source file here:

http://dansilber.com/Games/oneBlockyRoom/oneBlockyRoom.capx

I originally intended to submit my game as a compo entry. However, I missed the deadline due to a critical bug fix in the game I needed at the time. Therefore, I am submitting this as a jam entry. My game is called “Color Quest”. Here is the screenshot:

I spent over a day trying to come up with a good game concept that fits with minimalism. I realized that it is very difficult to have a solid game concept in a very short time without having a team. I eventually came up with a simple color changing idea when I played with Unity for few minutes. You can change colors of your cube by simply bumping onto the color cubes with arrow keys.

Here is the link to my entry page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=10243.

Tags: bump, change, color, quest

I recorded a Timelapse over the whole weekend with Chronolapse. Here it is!

You can play my game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=3289

Hey everyone, here’s my entry to this latest Ludum Dare, called Minimum Friction. A platform game, but without platforms. Windows version available, with source code to compile on Linux (or Windows with MingW). Timelapse comming soon, when I have time to make it.

Please click here to find my official entry.

I submitted my entry with 5 minutes left which was a bit too close for my liking. I posted yesterday saying that I wasn’t happy with my game and that I was going to start again, but I decided to continue working on it because I didn’t really have enough time to start again. In the end I’m happy with the result, It’s a bit short but other than that I don’t think it’s too bad.

Click here to play!

See you next time!

‘Lo fellow ludum comrades! Here’s a screenshot of the game I’m trying to finish up for the game jam called simplicity’s sake! In retrospect, the story I tried to couple with this game was a bit ambitious, especially since I didn’t cut out any extra time for it, but, its well on its way to being finished for the world to see. (if nothing goes wrong that is).

Here’s the main protagonist Rubio in “For Simplicity’s Sake!”

Finished my jam entry. Not bad for a weekend on a platform I hadn’t used before.

Try rescuing Dr. Frank Poole from the emptiness of space in 2001: A Space Oculus (requires Oculus Rift).

Controls are somewhat hard. I was going for a QWOP-style control, but I’m not sure I made it fun.

Regardless, a noclip/free mode is included in case you just want to float in space and look at the ships.

That was a bit of a challenge. Didn’t get even close to being able to use the full 48hrs due to an AWESOME TOOL CONCERT, followed by EXCESSIVE DRINKING. That said I’m pretty happy with the result.

Got a timelapse up here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTzC4s0W4ys

The game is available here. http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20671

I tried to do some things I haven’t done before with Multimedia Fusion 2, especially with the lighting model I implemented. It’s not overly technical, but I’m damn happy with the visuals. I wish I had a little more time, then I would have tried my hand at PXTone, since I’m not a musician, it would probably have ended terribly. Need some food/sleep now, and then I wanna get onto voting, just need to work out how that works.

Tags: 2D, bfxr, darkness, LD#26, lighting, MMF2, Multimedia Fusion

This was a really intresting experence, only because this was my very first 3d game but anyway, its done, meet “B0xPa1Nt”

see pretty cool right?

download: http://www.mediafire.com/?6d63wcbo50cqj3b

This marks my third Ludum Dare! You can play my game at ld26.xyrix.org if you wish to verify that this is at least 33% true.

I have to say, nothing in the previous to LDs I did compared to the stress of changing permissions recursively in the wrong directory on my server; logging out; realising I changed the permissions of my ssh key on the remote server and now cannot log back in; eventually deciding, yes, I must put up a new server from scratch; and then having my internet connection cut out for ten minutes. At 2.30am. With the competition closing at 3.00am.

Phew, though! Everything’s up and running, now :-). This marks my first website (I like to use the Ludum Dare as a learning experience). Overall I’m pleased with how it’s turned out, and am glad to have had my suspicions on web design at least marginally confirmed by this experience :-).

Sadly, I think I won’t get much of an opportunity to play and rate the other entries, as it’s straight back to work for the week and then off to Holland for a short break.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did! And hopefully I’ll be participating again in future LDs :-D!

xyrix

Stats:

• Lines of code written: 2,153
• Number of classes: 27
• Image files made: 24
• Unique sprites: 51 (or so)
• Songs written: 1
• Screens: 17
• Coffee consumed: 2 (cups)
• Tiredness: A LOT

Congrats to everyone who finished, and good luck to all those in the jam!

And post your stats too, if you want! I’d love to see them.

Is anyone going to try to play all 1732 entries this year? Lol..

Watch me try to use Unity…Each screenshot represents 1 minute

Starting Saturday at 11pm-6am Sun and from 5pm-7pm Sun (PST)

GUtGD Timelapse Video

GUtGD Entry Page

I’ve literally been on a binge since voting went up and now im gonna pass out.

We got 3 weeks though! plenty of time to see it all!

I sort of ran off the road and ended up in a big fractal ditch… this is arguably not a game but I submitted anyway

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=6835

Hello!

Our game, spaceship builder, will be ready for tonigth. It was created with C++ and Qt.

In this you build a spaceship, right… but you must use the minimum amount of money possible to progress faster and better in the game. Why did you build a ship? To convey animals for a zoo. Yes, it’s a bit strange. Anyway, after building it, you must travel through the space, and your enginner skill will be tested! In this game, you must be able to keep only the essential, only the minimal, to make the best score!

It’s a pretty big project, and we are working on a tuto to make it easier to understand.

Now, it’s time for somme pictures!

(Some spaceship modules)

(Some technologies)

(Lost in space)

And this is the starting menu:

The game features original musics, technologies, score system, explosions, bugs… oups!

HERE is the page

I really failed this one, even if i did submit it.

There was a game breaking bug and other misc bugs. the code is everywhere. It’s laggy. there’s no sound in the windows version. It doesn’t get harder because that made the game break. I finished late so i entered the jam. performance issues.

On the positive side, I think I like this games graphics the most out of all the games I’ve made. and I have a potato in mine. It’s the food crates.

I’ll try and do better next time.

Introducing “a.void”, a Jam game created by five Microsoft software developers.

It is a musical spatial memory game. Collect colored orbs to collect points while avoiding the obstacles that align with the music.

Choose your movements carefully, as the obstacles appear at your previous positions.

Play it here (Unity Web Player)

Ludum Dare page

Tags: action, color, jam, LD#26, music, timing, unity

It’s my first time to enter a Ludum Dare Competition. 48 hours of development is great and fun. Please try out and rate my game as well, the name is Equalizer.

A Puzzle-platformer game that tests your skills how to properly navigate through seemingly impossible mazes. 15 levels are available, and more soon to come after the Ludum Dare!

The game is also created on HTML5, and it’s game page can be seen through this link:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=23106

Lastly, no other plugins required. You DO NOT need a Clay.io account to participate, it’s just for high-scores.

Enjoy!

So, i managed to code an extremely, EXTREMELY simple game over the weekend.
I thought I would have enough time throughout the 48 hours, but because of school and other commitments, I ended up only having a few hours on Sunday night.
Since I had classes and lectures in the morning, pulling an all-nighter was sadly impossible. So I did this lil’ fella up with the little time I had.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=17760

Happy jamming to the jam-jammers! And lets have a good voting!

when I was a kid this sort of image was like crack. it’s so laughable now. stupid kid.

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 --- I - C - E ---- B - R - E - A - K - E - R ---
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(When I get up I’ll do a post-sleep post-pre-mortem-post-mortem, some of this will just be taking some of the prolix and manic text out of my submission page – yay sleep dep!)

That was a lot of fun! (but it’s not over yet..)  I somehow wrote just shy of 3,000 lines of code in 48hrs.  It’s almost certainly 90% ugly horribleness, and I’m not a fan of LOC as a metric of productivity – but it still feels pretty cool.  (If I printed it all out it would take about 46 A4 pages).

Unfortunately, quantity of code does not equal a finished game.  About halfway in (after some sleep) I lost a lot of time to vascilating between confusion at the code I’d added before passing out (that guy was craaaazy) and feeling generally dumb.  But eventually I got it nailed down and was grateful to discover that, whilst I had lost track of what I was doing – the more responsibly-minded part of me had sent me down a tunnel with no wrong turns.  Not to say I didn’t bump my head a few times, slip over in miscellany or mistaken inanimate objects for long-lost lovers..

 What went wrong / right

that one’s for the morrow I think, sorry – they’re my favourite part too.

Tools Used

• Music made in Renoise
• Sound effects in Renoise + Audacity (and Bfxr at the last minute)
• Graphics in ASEPrite, Blender and the system default editor
• IDE/Editor almost entirely SublimeText2 (unregistered)
  • I feel terrible about that, as I finally see how cool it is
• Coded in Haxe with HaxePunk
• I also (eventually) streamed my progress at Twitch.tv

It may not be much right now, but I think after I’ve checked the rules I may enter the Jam so I can see it closer to a working game.

I’ll be uploading post-compo editions to the entry’s page as I go (in about 8 hours or so)

NOTES

(this is just copied over from the submission page to reduce clutter, tl;dr: rambling…)

circa T+05 mins
began writing submission
circa T+20 mins
I’m having a few unanticipated issues with publishing; the .swf
seems to work fine in the standalone Flash player, but not
even remotely in a browser.
I’ve got 20 minutes or so of submission hour to work it out, but
here’s the swf for the time being (same link under “Windows” unfortunately)
circa T+56 mins
Okay, got it to publish. Seems to have odd framerate issues.
Will use my last 3 mins to see if I can suss it out.

Tags: ASEPRITE, Bad RTS, bfxr, blender, flash, haXe, haxepunk, RTS, sublimetext2

Man, look at that, REALLY! look at that!
now, RIGHT now, you can PLAY the awesome and incredible game called IIII!

REALLY, we are not joking, just click there and BLOW YOUR BRAINS!

HERE the web version
and HERE you can download the PC version

just let us know how many awesomeness did you get playing IIII posting a comment down there!
tell us how many was your incredible max score, and how many of these “strange features” (also know as bugs) did you find!

it was our first experience on Ludum Dare, so thanks everyone!

tomorrow is bug correction season, and the game is complete! =D

It’s been a while, but don’t worry; our entry isn’t dead. We’ve been doing a lot of audio recording and even more playtesting.

Here’s an early web build (with Rift support disabled):

Play Auraline

A cool new logo:

I’ve decided to write a quick post about my game, jump. This is the first time I’ve tried Ludum Dare, and I am super happy I got something out at all, let alone something I actually find a bit fun.

I embraced minimalism, as I was never going to get much art in, and used only different coloured squares. I kept my aim super low, just trying to produce a working game.

I struggled with collisions, that probably being the biggest time vacuum of the weekend. Left-right collisions vs. top-bottom collisions on objects took some fiddling, and I think what’s in there now is pretty hacky. But it looks fine and works quite well. The score system is also somewhat arbitrary. I just chucked something in and didn’t go back to it.

The last thing I did was the background colours, and I didn’t really get what I was after with this effect. Still, I feel it gives the game a bit of life, even if the colours are a bit off, and really don’t flow very well. (The screen above doesn’t show it.)

It’s minimal, but it’s a game, and I’m pleased all in all. It was a fun weekend.

My entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20863

Thanks for all the feedback I received from everyone. Its really amazing to get such constructive crits as well as great praise. I captured a little demo of it being played how I envision it should be played. Check it out:

Its been one hell of a ride, but I have finished! Had some great fun with my team; Love you guys!

Our game Polymorph:

Really glad we are doing the Jam again this time. We had a busy weekend, and I found it pretty hard to be motivated to code the game. Regardless, we have pushed thru and now have a working game, although it is still not finished. Will be spending time tomorrow getting it polished and published. Here is how it looks so far.

Movement WASD.

http://dev1.sdngames.com/ld26

[Cross posted from Omiya Games]

Now that Ludum Dare is in judging phases, here are a few tools I found extremely useful…when I least expected it:

Fossil, and its Ticket Tracker

Fossil in a version control much like Subversion.  In fact, it’s commands are nearly identical to SVN, yet has the advantage of a Distributed Revision Control (e.g. offline commit support).  But every programmer knows Version Controls are important!  No, I’m going to talk about a feature that I honestly didn’t expect any use out of: its built-in ticket support.

Ignoring the ugly HTML v1.0 visuals, this thing is just…clumsy.  Nonetheless, I found myself using this over Google Task.  Why?  Well, it loads fast, and I can indicate if I did or didn’t feel like fixing things.

Garage Band…on the iPhone

This is iPhone’s piano. It’s very tiny.

This is iPhone, with orchestral strings, on auto-play.

Life became so much easier, since.

Minimalist art?  Check!
Minimalist rules? Check!
Minimalist goals? Check!
Minimalist levels? Check!

Yes, you start with a cluttered board and have to move the pieces to cancel each other out, so that only the board remains and the “picture” becomes minimalist.

Get it here: Windows/Java

The only platform-dependent part is the LWJGL native libraries, so one could easily modify it for other platforms.  I have no way of testing on them though, so I left them alone.

I was planning to add sound effects and animations as well; to make the rules easier to understand.  Maybe I’ll enter a finished version in the 72-hour jam.  Maybe add more levels too.

Sorry I have not posted any update yet… I’m soloing the jam here’s a little screenshot teaser:

I like making things glow

On the todo list for today: more levels, sounds, music, better character animation and some props and more varied textures to make the levels prettier.

Tags: screenshot, wip

I’ve had to cut most of my game due to workflow and horrible code. Even though I would love to complete this and someday probably will, right now I just can’t. I will be submitting what I have to the jam and I hope it has somewhere close to the affect on people I was hoping.

So I my friend and I who are participating in the ludumdare jam may or may not have bit off more than we can chew. Either way it is slowly moving along it is playable but not a whole lot to it, I guess that’s minimalist. It networks, and you can have as many people as you like on the server. You can shoot bullets, you can hit people with bullets, you can kill people with bullets. I still need to implement a queue for respawning instead of just instantly respawning. I need to add sound effects. Map collision needs to be done, sending the map initially over the network. Kill counter per player. Game over at 10 kills. map cycle. those are my goals but others it’s getting there. I’ll be hosting a server when we finish it, so yea 😛

First Ludum Dare in the bag!

Hey! This is my first LD entry: Pete Hated Circles

As you can see, it was inspired by art of Piet Mondrian.
Made in 12 hours in ActionScript 3 (you’ll need Flash to play). Has some bugs, but hey..

And now a relevant picture for your pleasure:

Tags: final, flash, game, LD#26

Jeez… I never thought the Ranking and playing part, would be  almost as fun as making games. I want to stay up all night playing and ranking but I just spent the last two nights making the game. You guys are awesome Lundum Dare!

Day 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qqS6jMZhs8

Day 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85DSVVzWvvk

LOVE IT!

The first game I tried out already got me! The mood in this game is so awesome.

Tijmentio! Great job man! Funny Game!

I forgot upload yesterday… The game is now up for the jam and not for the compo.

Shame…

I’ve compiled builds of my game for Ubuntu and Raspbian (for the raspberry pi, since I have one sitting next to me). I’ve stuck everything in one archive with the windows version and provided a readme.txt file with it with instructions on how to run it on each platform.

Link to my entry is here 

Hi!

This is my entry, i hope you will finish it, it isn’t going to be easy, but it’s doable…

Many succeed, can you do it? U_U

Play it, comment and vote!

Only a Keyboard

I pick Ludum Truth instead!

Quick question — some people have suggested that I add instructions besides the “game” so you can see the instructions while the playing.  Since that would be adding text to the webpage itself but not modifying the game/application, is this allowed since the compo submission deadline has obviously passed?

Good morning everyone! I just woke up and realized that the links to my game wasn’t working. So, now that they’re updated and ready to be clicked. Feel free to play and enjoy! Thanks for a great time with you guys!

[PLAY HERE]

Woaw, I couldn’t make it to the compo, so I’m now aiming for the jam.

I’ve seen a game really similar to mine, more or less same theme and gameplay. But I think both games will have really different vibes. And I love how the guy handle his vision of it (you can try his game here by the way).

Anyway, I’ve finished the coding part and most of the animations. But my game needs sounds and more art assets. Here is a taste of what it’s gonna look like.

Good morning Ludum Darers (at least if you live in central europe 😉 ),

as I announced last night I want to have a look at the things that went right/wrong during my first Ludum Dare (yep it’s my first and i finished my game! Yeah!)

Let’s start positive and look at the things, that went right:

I was well prepared

I’ve read some Posts about people struggling against their Tools because they were inexperienced with them or they didn’t test if they are all working correctly. As I think it is always a good idea to learn new technologies/tools/libraries I think LD isn’t the best place for it. You are under heavy pressure of completing your game and most of the time there isn’t that much time to put much effort into getting your tools running/learning new things from scratch.

Besides from the technically preparation my fridge was full and I had enough chocolate to survive the weekend without having to leave my dorm.

My game idea was (luckily) small enough to be made in 48/72h OR it was flexible enough to shrink it into something playable 

I must admit the game i submitted isn’t the game I had in mind half way through the first day of LD. There were plans to involve more natural effect that the villagers have to struggle with (changing seasons, wild animals). Luckily with the implementation of the starving mechanic the game went from a pure simulation to a game that made a lot of fun (as you could lose it). So, yesterday evening, I decided to throw those missing things out of my concept and put a point system in place. So you will get points for creating tools (that cost the villagers time that they cant use for collecting food) and for the pure survival (every 10 seconds you’ll get 1 point).

I finished it! ^^ 

I have enough half baked (potatoes) projects that never reached a playable state during the last years, so I am really proud to have a fully working little game. Next to having a finished game, I had a lot of fun during the creation AND I learnt a lot.

Now for the bad sides of my LD Weekend

My code is a mess!

If you look at the sourcecode of my game you’ll easily distinguish between code I wrote before LD Weekend and code created during the weekend. It isn’t well structured, good commented or even well thought through. So it ended in a ocean of straight forward written code without thinking it all through really good.

That leads me to… I didn’t plan properly

Basically in everyday single person projects I have 3 main phases

1. Collecting Ideas
2. Modelling Classes and interactions between them
3. Programming

Unfortunately I left out the second, but really important phase, so that my code ended mostly in a bad condition.

The idea was to big to be made in a weekend

Even if in the “positive list” there is “i finished it”, I only could finish the game through cutting some gameplay elements out of the game yesterday. So basically, yeah i finished it, but also cut about 25% of the gameplay that I originally had in mind.

TL;DR

Concluding I can say I had looooots of fun during my first LD and learnt a lot. It was nice to see streams of other participants or even some people appearing on my own stream from time to time.

HERE is my entry Mimisi (Minimalistic minimalism simulation). Have fun with it, have a look at the source code, take what you need, improve it if you want to… do whatever you want with my game as long as you have fun doing it.

So, since my parents are awesome, I get to stay home from school to do this.

Last night we finished building a few more of the puzzles. This game is really starting to look AWESOME.

It is done! Well, it’s submitted.

I have a feeling I’ll still add some polish (and music) and fix at least one bug I’ve found, but for now, it’s done! So happy I took the plunge and actually took the challenge. Both my middle-schooler and I entered the competition for the first time…and we both had a blast. (His game is called Dye. Check it out!)

I’d love to for you to play and rate my first game, Skware. Especially looking forward to the feedback.

Here’s a time-lapse video of The Making of Skware. I used TimeSnapper Classic to take full-size screenshots every five seconds. Turns out it’s a great way to get a realistic idea on how much time I actually spent. 6,771 images * 5 seconds = 33,855 seconds = 564 minutes = 9.4 hours. I think I need to do a better job of freeing up my weekend next time

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My8lrElCHAw

Thanks again…and good night!

At least one person is able to finish this Final level.

Verification Done .

3rd night of solid LD Jam development going on into the morning. 8:30 AM, teammates off to sleep, roommate already left for work. Having difficulty recalling what life was like before Ludum Dare. Was there ever a time before? Setting alarm in inconvenient location to ring a few hours from now. Intend to pass out on the floor, and get up in time to finish this thing once and for all.

TL;DR. Freaking Game Jams!

Anyway, have a picture. Hope to finish it and 5 more like it, plus a short Norse-inspired tune and some other assorted polish before Submission Hour.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 29th, 2013 at 5:53 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.

So, I did it. Didn’t take the whole 48, more like a chilled 14. It’s called the pretentious apple, 3D maze puzzle game with a control mechanic that was new to me.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22708

Hope you like it!

So LD26 is over and now i want to resume.

That`s what i love about games: your mind is the main game controller. After playing Ludum Lupus some people say wolf killed them, some people say they killed a wolf.

That sounds really interesting while that game has no win\lose conditions – screen just fades after 8 or 10 attacks. And then you think you`ve killed the wolf or the wolf killed you. Your mind is the prism, and for me it is the main thing to play with in my games.

Incredibly abrasive, horridly obnoxious, and awfully putrefying. I am proud to say this abomination is mine! Now sleep, and to let it fester a bit on its own.

See entry here.

Everything is all submitted and what not, and here is a gameplay video

12 hours left, still lots to do and game of thrones to watch. D:

Here’s a 2 v 2 battle, on your side is your trusty steed, sir horse, ‘Pard’.
Pard won’t be at your side from the start, you’ll need to save him first.

And yes, that is a horse wielding a sword.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 29th, 2013 at 6:31 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.

Wow, that was a blast.  It’s pretty cool watching other people play your “game”. So far the feedback from the office has been, WTF? to Huh!?

It’s also very interesting to see different play styles. What happens when stepping into the unknown. Some people blaze away storming into the dark, others take slow, tentative steps.

One Bug spotted so far is the Lifts not appearing to reset on a level change. I’m sure there are more just waiting to be discovered.

Anyhoo, it’s the morning after. I had an excellent nights sleep and the buzz hasn’t worn off yet. I can’t wait for lunchtime to roll on in so I can expand upon this little idea and add a thumping soundtrack and come up with a better name.

Can’t wait for the next LD!

Nick Out.

Okay, so there is only 17 hours left. On the bright side, we have most of the game mechanics set up in one way or another, I’ll be getting some sleep soon and the next few things will be to change the music to something more fitting, getting the main menu into the actual game and making some levels! It’s really not the most fancy game for game design, but it’s definitely minimalist. Unfortunately since we are using physics for collisions, Craftstudio’s HTML5 exporter won’t work for this game. It does export to Linux, Windows and OSX though. So once we are done we will be posting all of those. For now though I’m tired, so here is the Windows version in the zip folder. Just extract it and click on the file with the controller icon.

The name of the game is  ▀ we figured that was a pretty simple yet descriptive name for the game.

Here is some screenshots of what the progress looks like so far.

Here is the basic test level ktiger34 made. He has been having trouble with his internet connection which was problematic for a game engine that requires you to be connected, also important for sending files between eachother, but he eventually was able to get on and fixed a bunch of the problems I was having with animations not playing and getting the overall movement mechanics working. I was able to set up a “Level Complete” scenario, the first few levels will be basic platforming, but I think we can maybe add some block pushing mechanics to add a little depth. The key will be that each level will resemble a pixelated/minimalistic object with some pixels missing. You will need to push blocks to reach higher places, and use them to fill in the missing areas. When you manage to fill in the pixels you win the level and go onto the next one.

We might not really be able to get too much done level wise before the deadline since we had problems getting the game engine working for the first 24 hours. But I feel like what we were even able to do so far on this is quite the accomplishment for us.

There is some misalignment issues on the menu, but those will be easy to fix.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20454227/SquareWIP2.zip

I have a Mac, so focusing on Mac OS X and Web games. I have some advices on rates to give from my 7yo daughter and my wonderful wife.

Don’t forget to try my game: Mini Car Racing!
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=3553

I had a lot of fun making my game Min!

Here are some notes I took while making the game:

And here is a video of me having fun: timelapse

Now to do some voting!

The feedback I got so far tells me that, despite my best effords, it seems to be unclear what the objective of the game really is – so I will try to clearify it now:

You are in this world where everyone behaves “normal”. And you are the only one who has the power to literally move things. By picking up blocks and placing them somewhere else. But the “normal” people don’t really want you to use your power. It makes them suspicious and they will try to stop you (you can see that they have gone nuts by their red eyes).

Behaving like a “normal” guy is easy – just follow these simple rules:

• Walk only on the pedestrian area and use the cross-walk to cross the road
• Don’t use your powers

As you can see you are stuck in a nightmare. The only way to get out is to build the wakeup sign on the correct location. Roam around and find this:

The shape of the wakeup sign

As you can see, a lot of tiles have to be placed there – so go and find them. They are hidden all around the level. Bring them back and put them on the correct place to win the game.

And: try not to attrackt too many mad People!

Mad people … mad people everywhere!

Now that you know how to play the game – try it: Here

Hello again jammers!

Loads of progresses have been made since yesterday (one should hope so with all these hours sitting in front of our screens, right?).

The graphics are mostly finished, as well as the sounds and musics. The battles are slowly becoming playable, with spells, items, and other fancy stuff! We’re also done with the maps’ design.

We’re actually hoping to submit our entry ON TIIIIME! (no kidding)

So, here’s for the juicy previews.

The musics, courtesy of Bastien : follow this link.

A battle’s screenshot :

Our heroes look kind of stoned in front of that big scary monsters. Hahaha.

The admirable credits full of people that worked admirably on this admirable game (and are still very much doing so).

Whoopsidaisies, I almost forgot to include our mascot in one of our posts.

I’m fine, thank you. And you?

Well, whether I like it or not my game is submitted. A lot went wrong, but I think there is something good that can be taken from it still. Anyways, give it a try.

Play here!

Oh and make sure you go right your first play through. Trust me.

I invite you to come and solve the riddle of Minimalisman … A psychopath guru who receives a mysterious call to prosper mind minimalism in its vicinity … by any means whatsoever.
Minimalisman is a game of point and click adventure created entirely of zero this weekend for ludum dare 26 in AGS (adventure games studio)

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22158

So … I know I’m French and as a result most of you are going to imply that I do not even deserve to be addressed for suitable that …
But I inform you that I made the effort to do the basic English to honor him this anglo saxon contest … even if I had to use google translate for it since my schoolboy level language …

So thank you to at least test the game before throwing away and apologize in advance if some bugs translation are felt …

and now the same thing in French if there was one or two here who understand lol

Je vous invite a venir resoudre l’enigme de Minimalisman…Un gourou psychopathe qui reçoit un mystérieux appel pour faire prosperer l’esprit minimalisme au sein de son voisinage…par quelque moyen que ce soit.

Minimalisman est un jeu d’aventure click and play totalement crée de zero ce week end pour le ludum dare 26 sous AGS (adventure games studio)

Alors je sais que je suis Français et que par conséquence la plupart d’entre vous vont sous entendre que je ne mérite même pas d’être evalué pour ça… Mais je vous informe que j’ai fait l’effors de le faire à la base en anglais pour honnorer ce concours anglo saxon…et ce même si j’ai du utiliser google translate pour ça étant donné mon niveau collégien de la langue…

Alors je vous remercie d’au moins tester le jeu avant de le zapper et de m’excuser par avance si quelques bug de traduction se font ressentir…

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22158

 Romuald (Adipson)

I’ve finally finished my game 4 hours before the deadline. I am so frustrated…. I don’t know I am disappointed by my game. But the theme was too difficult for me !

My game : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=14354

I uploaded a video that shows a little bit of gameplay, also shows that I’m not that great at my own game

What went well:

• core gameplay works as intended
• basic randomly generated maps
• loading different room layouts from files
• random powerup items like increased damage

What went badly:

• didn’t have enough time to make interesting enemies, they just home in on the player
• there is only one boss, and a variation of it on floor 3
• although room layouts are loading from files, there are only 4 different room layouts due to time constraints
• made the main menu and game over menu in the last couple of minutes and it shows
• not a lot of content overall

I think the game is kinda fun for a couple of minutes, but these kind of games really only shine when there is hours worth of content.

So although it was a lot of fun developing this small little game, from a gameplay perspective this kind of game was a bit too big for just 48h I think. Next time I will scale back and think about making a game that is fun although its only been worked on for 48h.

Our game, Adventures !inColour is finished!

You must fight potato colour lords in the hope of bringing your precious world back to grey-scale.

Here are some screenshots:

You can get the source code here.

Got it in and submitted!

So far I’ve had some nice comments from everyone, and I am thankful for that.

One particular point people seem to like is the transitions between levels.

For those who haven’t played it, the level is defined by blocks of either 64×64 or 32×32 size, and during a level transition these all fly into the middle of the screen. They are then re-allocated behind the scenes (the green and black tile that make the games logo never get deleted), and explode out into the new level configuration.

This effect is actually extremely simple to do, and for impact to code is well worth your time, so I thought I’d go into how I did it.

For each drawn object in your game, construct their position call something like as follows

#Reset the visual position
self.player.vX = self.cPan * 480 + ((1 – self.cPan) * self.player.rX)
self.player.vY = self.cPan * 352 + ((1 – self.cPan) * self.player.rY)
This is Python, but you could use C# or whatever you like syntatically. What is happening above is we have a global variable “cPan” which is applied to a fixed x coordinate (the centre of the screen) and then the inverse (1 – cPan) applied to the players rX variable (that is “real x”, vX being “visual X”). Separating out the draw and position coords means you can do funky effects isolated from logic. Particular doing it like this allows you to do things like jitter with one or two lines of added code.

So now we have this transformation applied every frame, we can see our drawn position will smoothly animate from the centre of the screen (480, 352) when cPan is 1, to the objects real position when cPan is 0.

I added the following section in my global state update function:

#Visual processing, animations, fades, pans etc
if abs(self.cPan – self.cPanT) < 0.01:
self.cPan = self.cPanT
else:
self.cPan = self.cPan + ((self.cPanT – self.cPan) * 0.1)

Our variable cPanT (cPan Target) is compared to the current value of cPan. If the difference is less than 0.01 set them equal to each other. This provides a nice “snap” effect at the end of the move, and also prevents 1 pixel jittering from making it look messy. If the difference is larger than 0.01, we move cPan towards cPanT by 10% of the difference. Because of this use of percentage, when the distance is large it moves quickly, when it is small it moves slowly, giving us our nice explosion effect.

Lastly, I added a command to my internal scripting system as follows

if action[0] == “CPAN”:
self.cPanT = float(action[1])
if self.cPanT == 0:
self.sound_level_expand.play()
elif self.cPanT == 1:
self.sound_level_compress.play()

The system works by queueing events programmed into the game logic object, and then processing them. Events are a command in the [0]’th array position followed by some arguments. In this case we can have either “CPAN 0” or “CPAN 1”. The script sets the cPanT variable, plays the funky sound effect, and removes the command.

Here’s what my script looks like for the level transition:

“NEXTLEVEL”:[
(0, “MODE NONINTERACTIVE”),
(100, “WAIT”),
(0, “CPAN 1”),
(150, “WAIT”),
(0, “SPAWN_LEVEL”),
(0, “CPAN 0”),
(100, “WAIT”),
(0, “MODE INTERACTIVE”)],

100 = 1 second. 0 = execute this instantly. It’s pretty readable, but it sets the system non-interactive so your commands are ignored, waits a second (you just won, thats your “victory savoring” time), zooms everything into the centre of the screen, waits again, spawns the new level (I should probably reverse these!), zooms out in the new configuration, gives you another second to look at the level before it starts, and then sets the game interactive again.

Cool transitions in a total of 6 lines of code!

Uploaded a development video and the same Gameplay video as before

Website for the game http://magicsheepgames.co.uk/LD.html

It rubs the butters on its skin!

Total sleeps precious: 12h
Time awakes precious: 36h
Longest stretch precious: 27hours

Modelling: 7h
Textures/Graphics: 1h
Animation: 4h
Shiva/Code: 18h
Audio/SFX/Music: 6h

Drunk: Most of the time.
Vomits: 1
Lifespan reduced by: 1 year
Love life: -1
Neckbeard: +1
Insanity conundrums invoked: Over 9000!
Demons summoned: 3

Potatoes tortured: All of the potatoes.

A friend of mine has done a Let’s Play of my game, so if you are unable to play it you can still get an idea of what it is like.

Contains spoilers, so I would suggest not playing until after having a go at the game for yourself (if you can)

Can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln8Gbn2W6OQ

I didn’t want to keep a diary as I wanted to concentrate on the act of creating the game BUT I did tweet.. I thought I would upload my log of tweets over the 48 hours as a record of the process… or my mental state..

In reverse order naturally

 :/

xopsx ‏@xopsx8h

@CliveLindop DONE! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=21374 …

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

It’s here! it’s done! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=21374 … Consider my game released! 😀 #LD48 #goodnightall

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

and finally.. what I will do after minimal sleep for 48 hrs. #LD48 #Bedtime pic.twitter.com/KYRTltLZQ0

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

the Other main character “D” is deciding whether she should shower, change or simply leave #LD48 pic.twitter.com/zE2nUuDvOp

xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

Ad makes Tea in the Kitchen… or at least TRIES To…. “SPOILERS!” #LD48 pic.twitter.com/E5smsUyrMM

xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

In this screen, one of the main characters “Ad”, goes into the kitchen at work #LD48 pic.twitter.com/6P1iJSEnRn

xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

so according to @allornothing_jm I am supposed to be running some kind of campaign. here are some screens! #LD48 pic.twitter.com/piK8cWMKT0

 xopsx ‏@xopsx9h

Ladies and Gentlemen. I would like to announce that my #LD48 entry “Minlife” is currently uploading Thank you for all the support!

xopsx ‏@xopsx12h

last few bits of audio… then bug fixin! #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx13h

#nbaplayoffs and #LD48! What a weekend! 😀 http://sdrv.ms/11v1LnF 

xopsx ‏@xopsx15h

ok, gotta push through this bit.. frustrating hook ups of small issues causing massive bugs. nearly there! #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx20h

WOWOWOAAH! sooo close. Break time. #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx23h

YEYEAH!!! Breakthrough! have a bunch of game that looks good and WORKS! time to finish off the last few rooms and then – AUDIO! #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx28 Apr

in an addition to my #LD48 excitement… #NBAplayoffs are INCREDIBLE tonight! pic.twitter.com/Dcenqz5cgL

xopsx ‏@xopsx28 Apr

Water spawner… check… tree spawner.. check… Running “pickup bobby” matrix #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx28 Apr

Up and back at it! #ld48

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

right, sleep break needed. Couple of hours maybe. Going well #LD48

alistair hope ‏@wannaneeda27 Apr

Keep pushing on!! @Catmoo @xopsx

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

#LD48 oh it is ON! a few rooms into my game and it is shaping up. Time for a cup of tea…. TEA! That’s IT! #putsteainthegame

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

@GameDesignDan yeah, I am all over it!

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

back on track! coming along well now. Just need to hook up some variables and BAM! we are rolling 😀 #LD48

1. xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

lost a lot of work. #doitagainbetter

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

Going Strong, first crash, lost work. #saveoften #LD48

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

#ld48 theme. Minimalism.

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

@GameDesignDan yeah! @Catmoo is too! Just got up

Ludum Dare ‏@ludumdare27 Apr

The Theme for Ludum Dare 26 is: Minimalism #LD48 #GoodLuck

xopsx ‏@xopsx27 Apr

@GameDesignDan you up this late/early for #LD48 right? 😉

Ludum Dare ‏@ludumdare27 Apr

Thirty Minutes!!! #LD48

The goal of Nod is to get a date with a cute girl. Unfortunately, you’re too shy to talk. Instead, you have to nod your head at just the right moments to succeed!

 The aspect I enjoyed the most was designing the XML schema and parsing the dialogue. But the thing I’m least happy about is that I didn’t have time to write more complex dialogue. Right now it plays like a choose-your-own adventure, even though the system allows for more complex scenarios. Still, I’m happy with what I was able to accomplish in very little time (~12 hours)!

Play and rate here.

Why aren’t you playing it already??

Barely a day after submission and already I have a lot of great feedback! Thanks to everyone and keep playing! Here’s second part of the timelapse to celebrate.

I think I’ll continue developing this a bit further before writing even a premature post-mortem. There’s lots of stuff I’d like to implement before I’m willing to declare this project deceased.

Tags: ginnungagap, timelapse

Hi!

This is my entry, i hope you will finish it, it isn’t going to be easy, but it’s doable…

Can you reach the end? =D

My submission

Play it, comment and vote!

Hey !

Remember me ? Probably not, it’s only my second Ludum Dare and third game. The first one was Breeding Cubes for LD24, and the second one was HeartZ made with 3 others during the GlobalGameJam 2013.

This time I choose to reproduce Harvest: Massive Encounter, an already minimalist tower defense game that I enjoyed a lot. I wanted to built a resource management game for a while already, so this LD’s theme was the perfect occasion. Its certainly minimalistic on the inspiration side, but I really wanted to built this one and that was all the motivation I needed.

I tried to reproduce most of the mechanics : rock harvesting, energy production, energy propagation along the nodes (the feature that makes the game very cool and interesting to me) and building construction and functioning using energy.

It’s clearly unfinished and unbalanced, but it’s playable.
Move with arrows, place buildings with the mouse – click on them on the left then on the map (discard with right mouse).

Note that you can not reload the game, you need to exit it and launch it again to reset the level, sorry about that.

Still, I am pretty happy with it. I only worked like 25h on it and lost about 5h trying to fix bugs directly due to my inexperience with the the software and game dev in general.
The good thing is that I feel like I have leveled-up !

It is made entirely with CraftStudio that you can still try for free for a couple of days.
Depending on your OS, you may need XNA or Mono or -I am not sure what- to play.
You can try the web built, but it does not work for me (stays stuck during initializing scripts).

Go Play It

Thanks and GG everyone !

Tags: craftstudio, encounter, Harvest, minimalism, ressources

LD26 – Simple Towers timelapse

Tags: AleksandarDev, Simple Towers, timelapse

I have had a few requests to write something about the game and as I am currently awake whilst the plumbers fix a huge leak in our bathroom, I thought I should take the time to do exactly that. Write I mean, not fix the huge leak.

when I set out to make minlife I thought of a few ideas. These included platformers, decorating games, maze explorers and all sorts. Here is my original brainstorm that I ended up using as a plan-maker (Created in xmind HIGHLY recommended and FREE – http://www.xmind.net/ )

Once I decided to make the focus of the Theme the art style and feel of the game, that allowed me to expand in the mechanics and direction. I very quickly thought of lots of cool scenes I could make with basic props, characters and back drops.

SPOILERS

As I started making the game feel minimal and sparse visually, I realised that there was a twist I could play with the players expectations. By letting the player think that you could only do one thing, (get up, shower in a linear fashion) I was able to play with that preconception in the “driving sequence”. The game tells you that you should “Pick up bobby”  and the result is a little different than most though. Also, depending on how you “drive” (move left or right) this will affect the outcome.

I expanded this idea later at the workplace/studio where I took regular events and made them a bit surreal/special. If you compare the list of rooms on the brainstorm to the final locations in the game you will see I ran out of time to make them all, BUT I did include a lot of them and feel happy with what I have made.

As a side note, a great surprise for me in this process is how people are talking and relating to the characters in the game. The three people you collect are actually three friends I work with and car pool with every day. To hear people who have never met them, discuss what they feel about them is great and hilarious.

for example –

“I picked up bobby! he is great.”

“Simon and Craig arent as cool as Bobby”

There are a few points where the game is a little unstable and strange things happen BUT this has also had a positive outcome. A good friend of mine Oli played the game and found that –

“SPOILERS!” – “If you kill Craig and Simon on the way to work, you enter some kind of guilt nightmare when you arrive at work. It spawns multiple copies of both of them with the objective text laid on top of each other. Mad Lynchian.” – I apologised and explained the bug but got back this reply –

“I loved that moment, I felt genuine guilt.”

“END SPOILERS!”

So yes, I am glad! I love creating games that inspire in some way even if it is the smallest emotion or reaction. A laugh or a gasp. Surprises and the unexpected can totally make a game.

Thanks to everyone who has played the game so far and for all the kind comments and support

Need to resist the urge to build more into it – post competition..

This is Spacestronaut Napper, Signing OFF!

Here’s the game: http://smilingrob.com/ld26/

And the competition link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20689

The Good

* The biggest thing I learned was that it’s ok to sleep, eat well (no red-bull or candy), and do some normal things during the 48 hours.

* I think the audio came out good.  And the song I made was surprising because it was the first thing I played on the keyboard.  When I dropped it into the game the mood changed and made it seem like an art experiment more than a game.  So I was really pleased with that.

* The arrow puzzle controls are really satisfying.  Jumping is frustrating sometimes.  And typing letters would be better if I had time to highlight the individual letters.

* Analytics are built in, I’m tracking how far people get, and their score when they win.

* I finished something, and put it on my website.

The Bad:

* Another major thing I learned was the value spending time on just designing something on paper.  I was really stuck for an idea after the theme was announced, and I just ended up choosing a lame mechanic because I didn’t have time to think of some good one.  If I do this again, I’ll try to think of a cool mechanic first and then apply the theme to that mechanic.

* I’m disappointed that I didn’t spend an hour modeling some quick things to drop on the path besides blocks.   I wanted to have junk flying by to make things seem faster, and have stars moving over your head.  But I got stuck on a few bugs and ended up only having time to make it work.

* Aaron and Alex’s role aren’t really visualized as well as I wanted.  I set the audio to pan Aaron on the left and Alex on the right.  Good guys classically come in from the left.  Alex’s voice was much louder in my mic, so I had to boost Aaron’s character and I boosted him a bit too high.

* The capsule looks lame and beginner to anyone that’s used Unity.  I can model much better things in 3D, but I ended up just modeling some cubes.  So much for practicing UV mapping in Blender last week.

They say your prize is your game.  And I’m very happy to have made something to put in my portfolio.  Even if it’s not great, it’s way better than an empty portfolio and the excuse that most of my work is backend, behind a firewall, and an NDA.

Tags: postmortem, timelapse, video

Hello everyone! I posted a link to a video of my game Quantum Strike yesterday, and I realized that the video was pretty bad quality, so I made a new one! I still don’t know how to put videos in a post, but here’s the link:

http://youtu.be/pj6glKJy4Bc

I hope everyone is having fun with their games! 😀

-Skunkaroony

Lasers and Explosions

Explosions!

Those blue dudes are going at each other

And when youtube is done (in about an hour from this post), there will be a video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRxijnn9R38

The game is finished, at least the minimum requirements for it to be a game. Now is time for polishing to make a better user experience.
And tweak those units so they are more balanced. I can’t believe I’m losing against this stupid AI so often…
Edit: I forgot to post the link! http://bitly.com/SquareWars

Port mortem is where you write what went good and what went bad, right? Well, let’s get to it then-
First of all, here’s my entry- http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=22590
I was going to post it in the compo, but then my computer became crazy and I had no internet connection. It’s sad, really, but looking at my game now, I think it fits the jam better.

What went good:

• In terms of code quality, this project exceeds almost all of my other projects in every aspect.
• I was having fun doing the graphics, even though they’re probably the crappiest you’ll find here.
• I found out that most of the utility classes I wrote months ago, such as Animation and Font, work seamlessly, so that if I when I start new projects, I’ll have all the boiler-plate code already available and know it works. I had fun abstracting code which I usually have to look at the whole time I’m working on my project, so all in all, my framework worked nicely.
• I’m happy with the concept of the game. I came up with it within 10 minutes of seeing what the theme is, and I don’t feel like I could have improved upon it had I waited 5 more hours. The idea fit the theme, was extremely east to implement, and worked nicely throughout the process. It’s not really a good game at all, but that wasn’t the point for me.

What went bad:

• Saturday- us Jews can’t use electronics on Saturday. It meant I had to join when everyone else was already 13 hours into the jam, but this is just a minor gripe. I had lots of spare time.
• I realized, when it was too late to reformat the framework, that the game state framework I’ve been planning for the past few weeks has a flawed core function. It means I couldn’t make a menu screen, a (real) pause screen, or a level editor. This is my next problem:
• I’m already awful at level design, having to code a level every time was just too much. If I’d made a level editor from the beginning, I would probably have made double the amount of levels in the final product, which is a measly 7.
• I wasn’t satisfied at all with the sound effects BFXR generated, so in the end there isn’t any sound in the game at all, which is a shame. For future projects I’ll know to ask friends to make the audio instead of a cheap (but sometimes effective) sound generator.
• It’s the same with graphics- I don’t really care that my graphics suck, but when I started writing the actual gameplay I’d already worked for more than an hour trying to set up the framework, which is way more than the usual for me, and when I got the core gameplay set up, I started working on the basic sprites. Their cruminess, along with the sucky feel the game had in the beginning, got me seriously demotivated. I was even considering scrapping the idea and starting anew, but then I read some posts of people who had done just that and regretted it, so I pushed on, and I’m glad I did.
• I was really shoddy with how I implemented collision detection and other things of the sort, so that adds up to the game total crumminess. I know how to write good collision detection code, so that’s not really a problem for future games.

All in all, this was a really fun experience. I’ll be sure to participate in august, and in the meantime, let’s rate some games!

This is my first game in the Ludum Dare competition, I wanted a very minimalistic graphics and a simple gameplay to stick with chosen theme.

I hope you ‘ll enjoy it.

Noa

Hey,

I just finished my first entry (wich you can play here). Sadly, I had not much time and only worked for about 5 hours.

So, my opinion to the Ludum Dare… It was awesome! Learned much, watched some livestreams by some guys and I finished a game (more or less), even if my entry is bad and i should feel bad.

Well, what went right (The shorter thing first):

* Sound effects. I never really used them before, but now I can’t life without them.

* The theme. At first, I tought it was a bad theme, ’cause Ludum Dare’s are acutally always minimalistic due short time, but it went better than expected.

What went wrong:

* The polish. I didn’t have had enough time to polish my game. Also, it gets boring after some time.

* The cuts. Since this game is a FruitNinja-like, I made the fruits to be cut in 2 halfes. Sadly, every time the same. I planned to cut them off, where they actually were cut-off, like when you drag trough the middle, the part gets split in the middle.

* The menu, I only focused on the game, so the menu and the game-over screen were to simple, wich might be a plus because the theme is “minimalism”.

So, thats it.

Hope you’ll try my entry.

Hi everyone!

Here’s my third LD  Jam submission, MNMLSM!

Went solo this time, and I was actually able to finish it! I was even able to find the time to add a tutorial and lay down a quick guitar-track! Not the best, but its something!

— The game —

Your objective is simple – dump all the things into the water hole before the time runs out. I strongly recommend trying the tutorial first, just to get the basic technique.

The game is a little hard, but 100% beatable, and I hid a few secrets in there too!

—

Had a blast, and I’m pretty happy with the result. By some magical strike of fortune, I had the core mechanics more or less in place already the first night, so I got to do quite a bit of polishing. I have a few more levels lying around if anyone is able to beat the three that are included in the game.

Anyway, here it is!

— POTATO —

Tags: jam, LD#26, submission

Timelapse video capture of my desktop while making Mini Circle Wars.