so this was my first LD and I’m rather satisfied with the results. I wasn’t expecting too much but I was hoping to break into the top 100 and it turns out I did !

Highlights in my ranking include#45 in fun and #74 overall. Every other score is rather average, my game’s worst ranking being #459 in innovation. One small disappointment was my theme ranking of #371 as I felt using “minimalism” as a gameplay mechanic was a good idea, but oh well, I’m never very good with themes. 😛

I was glad to see a lot of constructive comments about my game. it seems the main gripe with the game was the controls and i can get behind that to an extent. some also complained about the difficulty and, again, I can understand that; I’m terrible at balancing things.

One thing about rating though is that apparently some people don’t like using “N/A” ? I mean BLM ended up #247 in humor even though there is *none*. no dialogues, no story, no nothing. I find that kind of demeaning to the people who actually put effort into that aspect of their game. but aside from that, no major complaints. 😛

at any rate this was fun and I hope to do it again next time !

Howdy, My name is Ethan (ENP) And this is my minimortem of Minimal Theory! er … Minimal Mortem! 😛

A big thanks to sirfireknight and thatonefunnyguy for voice acting!

And another big thanks to all you lets players and gamers for being such an awesome audience!

Pre Ludum dare 26 :

I began before the timer approximately 3 hours before configuring the UDK engine perhaps to late as there are allot of UDK based bugs and issues in the game now *Lack of an original loading screen / Options*

UDK primed and all the game types set it was about 30 minutes away from the theme announcement. I am on NecessaryGaming.com / Twitter / Ludum Dare and a few other social media sites preparing to post updates and announcements. I have no plans for voice acting and have contacted no one as of now for lines. I am also conversing with developers on the ludum dare IRC.

*Notch announces his attempt in the ludum dare later not completing a game but a trippy animation*
*SoS begins preparations for a C64 port of his game later called Ponk!*

—

*ENP is having dinner preparations and has successfully re-codded the essential parts of UDK*

Ludum Dare 26 Day 1 :

The theme Minimalism is announced the site is down due to traffic I panic … then remember to check my email. 1 message was in the inbox with the theme I sigh of relief I will start immediately.

I begin to conjure up an idea of a game designed around the minimalism of human thought and experiences in an environment + Limited understanding the idea of a thoughtless test subject was preferred due to a nerdy love with portal hence the similarities.

The goal? :

Design a game with minimal aspects and puzzles quick and short though visually appealing with the ability for people to quickly play and take joy in.

I coined the phrase or title Minimal Theory in correlation to the spectrum of visual thought being limited the fact that you were even in the experiments to begin with itself being up to perspective. Ever wonder why there was a chair in the title menu and at the end? In effort to play around with perspective in the most minimalistic way I simply chose to give an unanswerable question in about the length of 10 minutes.

Minimal Theory is announced on twitter and several other places the following are the first screenshots :

About 4 hours have passed.

Day 1 continued as constant level design bickering over kismet accuracy and level design detail, I went on to do a livestream however it was not saved and the footage was lost .

Miniaml Theory was developing a new element horror … I added this to test out what I could do barely trying to create an eerie scray environment … It worked flawlessly.

I slept at 2am, beside me my laptop cooling my face and warming my bed.

Ludum Dare 26 Day 2 :

Progressive level design leads to this iconic screenshot 😛

I am going to skip a bit here at the end as allot of it was just confusing code bugs and level design issues however it progressed nicely.

Until …

I ran out of time!!!

though all was good 😀

There was an extra few hours for submission time THANK GOD.

I was able to submit the game without a hitch and quickly get people to play it / rate it.

Aftermath :

Minimal Theory has over 450 downloads! And that’s only what I can count through my mirrors!

The game has a Mac release and is currently awaiting Desura publishing approval.

There are a ton of great lets plays to check out on youtube as well!

The game preformed exceptionally in the competition!

Whats next? :

Minimal Theory : The 48 Hour Edition is done and over with however I would love to come back and explore the concept after I have completed my other 2 projects.

Minimal Theory will have a bigger release sometime in the future … one you sure as hell can look foreword too.

Thank You For Playing

Created for Ludum Dare!
Developed with the UDK in 48 hoursLudum Dare Game Page 
If you make a lets play feel free to post it on our page!There will be 1 final update to the Ludum Dare version of this game this week that will cover more sounds and a little level design after that I will begin wrapping up the demo for Nightmare: Among Shadows.Thanks for playing and for all the support!

OVER 400 DOWNLOADS (LD+IndieDB)

Hello all! I had heard of the Ludum Dare a while ago, and finally decided to participate… well I’m making a game for the Mini Ludum Dare #42, but still, I’m excited because it’s my first! I’m writing my game in python and using Tkinter for graphics. I started learning python a little while back, and thought I was ready to make a whole finished game… well I now know that was a mistake seeing as I keep getting stuck on everything I try to add. However, with my problem solving skills, and lots of help from friendly forum-goers, I seem to be able to sort things out.

Anyway, this wasn’t a real update or anything, I just wanted to let you all know that I’m excited to compete with you, and am looking forward to the many Ludum Dares to come.

Thanks.

-baconbot

So the results for LD26 are out and I must say, despite some of the obvious faults my game had, I was pleasantly surprised with what I got so without any further ado, here are the results for my entry, Only One Shot:

Ratings

Anyway, according to bvanschooten’s percentile maths, I’m actually in the top 14th percentile for Theme and top 17th percentile for Innovation out of all rated Jam games.

Strongest Category – Theme: Minimalism was probably an easy theme to interpret so no problems here.

True Strongest Category – Innovation: Now this one I can definitely be proud of as a lot of the positive comments on my game were to do with the core mechanic of my game.

Weakest Category – Humour: Wait, what? My game hardly has any humour 0_O

True Weakest Category – Graphics: I’ve probably said this before so many times during the rating period but I’m more of a coder than an artist and I can’t even draw to save my own life but regarding the theme, I just sorta lucked out.

Category which took me by Surprise – Audio: Apparently bfxr and a few randomly placed squares in Otomata somehow managed to get me a 3 in Audio.

Category I nearly managed to break through – Fun: Was only 0.02 away from 3 stars and possibly making top 100 for fun.

Overall, I would say not too shabby for my first Ludum Dare. I’ll try and possibly make some time over the weekend as I’m pretty busy at work during the weekdays but I might start on working on an improved, fleshed out, post-compo version of my game.

Finally, a big thank you to everyone who rated my game and gave nice comments about it and to everyone who submitted an entry of course.

See you in August for Ludum Dare 27 😀

Tags: results

Thanks to Emscripten, you can now play my game in your browser with a bloated 10MB download over HTTP, awful framerate, and NEARLY ONE SECOND of sound lag… on Firefox, and absolutely NO sound on Chrome!

Hell, I don’t even KNOW if it works on Chrome, but here we go:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/32094129/em/rebellion/em.html

Let me know how badly it works!

I’m simply stunned at getting 20th place in compo results; even more so at 25th for graphics and 48th for audio (seriously I wrote the music by banging notes out on a piano at random until things sounded right).  I want to thank everyone who played my game and gave such wonderful feedback.  I’ve taken you comments in to mind and have started working on turning this entry into a full game.  I have a long road ahead of me, but with such wonderful people looking forward to it, this journey will definitely be worth it!

This is amazing, Ludum Dare is on Yahoo news! You are currently being viewed by millions of people.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013 at 9:27 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.

A post-mortem for Minimal Force. Barely wrote it.

Another success! I`ve improved in 6 categories, and didn`t go down in another 2. I have 3 categories with not less than 3 points, and no categories with less than 2 points. Only 3 categories are worse than average.

• Audio: I`ve beaten 78% entries without making lots of effort. I used sfxr for sounds and Abundant Music for music, both are generators :P.
• Humor: Well, I didn`t involve much humor, but got a good rating. It seems average humor is very low (indeed).
• Fun: My first entry that`s actually fun. I just used a simple idea, and people enjoyed my game.
• Mood: I think most mood was caused by music, but I also made some story.
• Overall: 3 overall? Great job! I think I this time I succeeded.
• Innovation: I had to sacrifice innovation to gain fun. And I didn`t regret it.
• Theme: I think I could do better. I just quickly took the best idea I had, though I wanted to think some more.
• Graphics: Though graphics are low, it`s better than  previous LDs. I think I learned how to draw on computer.

Well… I feel kinda squeezed now. I already started making a game for MiniLD, because I think I won`t do it in one weekend. And I need to make sure I`ll make a game this month.

Click here to watch my VLOG!

Wanna try the game? Click here!

The results are in!

I am actually pretty happy with my results, coming in 416th place amongst a community of very talented individuals. Considering this is my first Ludum Dare, and the second game I’ve made, I think I did not bad at all. This, along with the comments I got on my game have definitely inspired me to make more games, and I will definitely try to take part next Ludum Dare.

Ratings

My strongest category was humour. I am pleased with this because I did put in quite a bit of effort in writing the dialogue, and including funny easter eggs. Second was fun, which I am again very pleased with. Because my game is an action-arcade type game, it should focus on the game mechanics and being fun to play. I went with the decision of making the game short, but very difficult to play. I personally prefer this decision, but I’d bet that if I made it easier with more progression, I think I could have scored quite a lot higher in fun and overall. How well I did in graphics surprised me since it was just some quick programmer art thrown together. Innovation did extremely poor, but that is understandable since I didn’t really put any groundbreaking mechanics or anything into the game.

Something I am really disappointed with was how badly I did for theme. I personally thought that it followed the theme really well with minimalistic controls and gameplay. I guess people had more of an expectation for minimalistic graphics though, so I will definitely think about the theme more next time.

Overall, I am very pleased, and will use the experienced gained to try to do better next LD!

Wanna try the game? Click here!

I haven’t written one of these in a while. I’ll talk about the development of my Jam entry Extruder, my guidelines, the future, and my thoughts on the Ludum Dare site.

Focus / Goal

I try to do something new in every LD to keep myself engaged (my fifth LD). This time I decided to make a game that runs on many devices, using HTML5 (Desktop, Smart Phones, Tablets). I have a bunch of experience with web apps, which was useful.

I also bought a train ticket to Berlin, to visit the Amaze Indie Connect and then work on my LD entry at the Berlin Mini Game Jam which took place on the same weekend.

Because I could only take my ~10 year old laptop with me, I had to prepare for creating only a very simple game. I was lucky with the theme pick this time!

When the theme was announced I wanted to make something with the least amount of rules, but greatest amount of depth. The usual ideals are Go, Conway’s Game of Life, and the Mandelbrot Set. Of course, it’s very unlikely to stumble over something as interesting as those. And how would you even become aware of the true depth in 2 days?

Development

I spent my first day at the Berlin Mini Game Jam, a monthly jam held by friendly and encouraging people who allow you to work on your Ludum Dare game. This was my first Ludum Dare jamming together with other people. Though the room was pretty cold, due to the entrance door being wide open the whole time, it was still a fun and very motivating experience. Especially because after a couple of hours (twice that day) everyone presented their creations. That really pushed me to not waste too much time brainstorming and to get some gameplay going as quickly as possible. I tried out two other concepts before coming up with the extrude mechanic. The basic gameplay was working by the end of Saturday.

That day I got some feedback from people at the Jam and from some friends and family members. There is something about seeing someone playing your game in person. You can feel it when they are bored and confused, and why that is. It’s very helpful and makes internet comments look incredibly shallow. Attending the Amaze festival the day before also helped put things into perspective.

Everybody jammin away…with their coats on. Photo by Lorenzo Pilia

Day two wasn’t all that productive because I was still with family and then had to travel back to my hometown. On the train I made a couple of brainstorming sketches though. Because of the lack of time I decided to make it a Jam entry.

The rest of the development was mostly about polishing the controls, making more levels and implementing the toggling walls. At first I made all levels slowly by hand in the code. Then I adapted my level editor from LD23 to speed up that process. If I had done that earlier, I’m sure I would have come up with more interesting levels. I had more ideas for mechanics, but yanno, 3 days don’t last forever.

Audio was smooth sailing as always. I tried to make the music not too distracting this time, which can easily happen with puzzle games, in my opinion.

I finished with half an hour to spare. All in all this was the most relaxed LD for me so far, which is maybe thanks to the theme. The way I stressed out in previous LDs was unhealthy.

HTML5 Games?

As mentioned before my game runs in the browser using HTML5. Why did I go for it?

My previous games were made with Java+libgdx/lwjgl, it worked out okay, but for some the games didn’t run (on Macs). Also nowadays you have to click through a bunch of dialogues before the applet starts. Seems not all that great for something like Ludum Dare. Also you’re mostly limited to the desktop.

Then there is HTML5, it doesn’t have the greatest performance, but you can make small games. Nobody needs to install anything, it runs right away, and if you’re doing it right it’ll even run on phones and tablets. I did that by writing myself a tiny lib that handles inputs, scales the viewport, and lets everything update at 30fps (my 3Gs and old Thinkpad could still handle that). Variable framerate would have been better, but I’ve never really written a game using that.

Because the game is basically a website, you can use Google Analytics to get stats on how people play it. I made it so the site sends an event to Analytics every minute, so I get a fairly accurate approximation of how long people played the game. I also send an event when people finish the game. Though, I’m not sure if that message got always send in time to the Analytics servers, because players might have closed the tab too quickly.

Audio support isn’t the best yet, so I kept it simple. You can’t be sure that music loops won’t have gaps. That’s why I made the music fade in and out at the beginning and end. One problem that I noticed too late was that audio isn’t working in Firefox. I must have used the audio tag in a way that isn’t supported.

HTML5 is not perfect but it worked out well for this LD.

Feedback

The feedback I got was mostly positive. A look at the graph below reveals that I got my best scores this time. Maybe it’s a bit related to being a Jam entry compared to the previous entries (all compo). Also I was fortunate enough to place #1 in Innovation(Jam) – tied with shiprib’s “Mind The Gap”. Their entry received way more votes than mine. This makes their final score more of an achievement, because ratings usually go down with an increase in votes.

Best feedback came from my brother: “Why do you always make depressing games?”

In the feedback I could see that there weren’t too many hickups. I tried to make this game easier than my previous ones, because the difficulty was usually a gripe for players. It got a little bit too easy though…so easy that it started to feel like work for some? I can understand that though, because the earlier levels are maybe too obvious.

Despite being a bit too easy, the controls weren’t communicated well enough. Though the intro screen had a hint how to navigate, it didn’t click for everyone. Multitude who played my game on his twitch stream struggled a bit (few others I showed it to as well). It’s nothing big, but I dislike these types of confusions when I play a LD game.

An interesting observation is that some players put their finger directly on the active block when extruding, thereby blocking their view (makes it harder). It takes a while for them to break that habit. Also not everyone understood that it’s completely turn based, wrongly interpreting the toggling walls to be timing based.

Puzzles are supposedly easier when you move in small steps. I found it to be fairly amusing to watch when someone carefully moved one unit at a time down a long distance only to run into one of the toggling walls – swearing and then restarting the level. It makes me almost think that it’s not needed to enforce larger extrude steps, because it’s something you will arrive at naturally.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback!

The Future of Extruder

It doesn’t seem like the stupidest idea ever to continue working on Extruder. But I’m not completely feeling it. Maybe I’ll do some more prototyping and see where it’ll take me.

I think the great idea/gameplay-element isn’t there yet, but the general direction seems right. I like that it’s turn based and how it works with touch and mouse. Also that it’s all contained within a small square.

What I’m taking away

Feedback is great, especially when the player is sitting right beside you in person. It’s way easier to sense their confusion, boredom, and excitement – you get that thirst to offer them something more interesting. So get more feedback while you’re working on your game, invite some friends over, go to a jam, or whatever.

Be more productive. You should be really quick at exploring new gameplay ideas. Gameplay should be the core of your entry, otherwise it’s hardly a game. So further try to optimize your workflow with regards to that.

The current Ludum Dare won’t make you that much better for the next Ludum Dare. I doubt that somebody can grow all that much in 2-3 days.  It’s the rest of those 4 months that really count. LD just shows you where you are right now.

My Personal Guideline

Here is my updated guideline, for what I think a dev should aim for in LD. Of course there are exceptions.

• Minimize effort for audience to start playing (installing is super annoying)
• No waiting for the player
• Communicate controls and objective well
• Good controls
• Intro and ending
• Don’t expect players to play longer than 5min
• Push for lots of creative, personal ideas and originality
• Try something new every time
• Make preparations beforehand (mostly related to the new thing)
• Don’t brainstorm or paper prototype too long
• Try to make the theme the heart and soul of your game (I struggle with that)
• Quickly build what’s neccessary to explore the gameplay space
• Get lots of feedback while you dev – best if in person
• Rate lots of games
• Most importantly: learn and grow in the time between LDs

Ludum Dare Website

I think the best thing that happened this LD were the live streams. Those where people played the submitted entries. It was somehow the most relaxing way to learn about games that I hadn’t tried yet, and also cool to see them play my game. These streams seem like a good form of feedback. Which makes me think, what if video playthroughs could be as easily posted as regular comments? Currently it’s tricky to find the right spot in those long stream recordings.

I still don’t like the LD site that much. It’s confusing, and awkward. I’m sure the visibility of many games could be increased by a redesign.

I also thought about the rating/playing process. It feels like it can be optimized. On the Indie Connect I tried out SoS’s DIY Arcade with a ton of his games on it. It was really quick and easy to switch between the games, which kept me playing and trying out a lot of games without feeling annoyed. It should be that easy for Ludum Dare games. But yeah it’s tricky, because there are different types of games. Some run in the browser, some require a download via dropbox, others are hosted on mediafire or whatever, and in some cases you need to install a plugin.

One possible solution could be an application that automatically scans the entry pages. Which then continues to download the games that you can run (e.g. Windows), unzips them, and locates the executable. If it’s a web based game, it would simply make a note of the link. When it’s ready with the initialization phase you browse through the list of games via the app and click on one to run it (launching either the executable or website). When you return after playing, it reminds you to rate that game and crosses it off.

Yes there are problems connected with this, but it seems like it might be a useful venue to explore.

That’s it. Thanks for reading.

Coolness 50%
#21 Humor 3.88
#537 Innovation 3.14
#646 Theme 3.45
#721 Overall 3.00
#743 Mood 2.70
#881 Audio 2.13
#973 Fun 2.52
#1189 Graphics 2.15

Yes, you read it. MY GAME IS 21/2356 in Humor.
You know what it means ? I AM HUMOR MAN !
I just have to say « I just have to say » to make you laugh out loud.

So…

I JUST HAVE TO SAY !

Em… You didnt laugh ?

How embarrassing.

I think I’ll stop making jokes,  and continue to make games.

Honestly, I like it a lot more. And .. Maybe you too?

I will avoid the discourse on “Making games is cool and awesome.” But try to imagine it in your mind!

Have a good day!

Okay, so, I’d just like to say I had a BLAST for my first Ludum Dare, and I’m totally happy with my scores, as I got better than I thought I did.

So I got #721 out of 1610 games, which is just FANTASTIC. I really didn’t think I’d get anywhere above 1000, but I did! Many thanks, really. Now, it appears the section(s) I ranked the highest in were Fun and Graphics. The “fun” factor was what I was definitely focusing on, and I’m glad it worked out. Pixel Burst’s fast-paced arcade style gameplay is great for short spurts, heck, I find myself going back to play it a few times to see just how many points I can rack up :3

I’m surprised on the graphics side, as I just wanted to convey a retro feel, but nothing fancy.

The fact that Theme and Innovation were towards the end wasn’t too shocking for me, because I admit, I was having a little too much fun, and I forgot to actually focus on the theme ^_^’

Anyhoo, I think I did great for my first Dare, so, many thanks to you all for such a wonderful time! Congratulations to the winners!

The results are in and they were pleasing indeed!

Our first Ludumdare was LD25 and result wasn’t too shabby all considering.

Plane Of Misery

#13 Innovation(Jam) 3.97
#29 Humor(Jam) 3.61
#96 Overall(Jam) 3.35
#105 Fun(Jam) 3.10
#148 Theme(Jam) 3.37
#150 Mood(Jam) 2.86
#179 Graphics(Jam) 3.10

We were incredibly happy with how we did but LD26 was a new competition and we had to do better.

Mobius

#37 Fun(Jam) 3.69
#39 Theme(Jam) 4.10
#45 Overall(Jam) 3.80
#49 Innovation(Jam) 3.78
#126 Mood(Jam) 3.43
#239 Audio(Jam) 3.00
#245 Graphics(Jam) 3.31
#325 Humor(Jam) 1.94

Mission accomplished! In the overall category Plane of Misery was 22.6% which was awesome but Mobius was 6.1%!!!!!

Now the bar is set even higher.

C.J.

And related game

http://offbeatr.com/project/going-classical-greek-mythology-collab-adult-artbook-58998173679

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-tale-of-persephone-and-hades#share

Tags: artbook, game, going classical

This entry was posted on Friday, May 24th, 2013 at 11:52 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.

Have some RL things to do over weekend, and rules more relaxed, so started slowly tonight  – setting up Unity environment, publishing a blank game to website, that sort of thing, checking the pipeline is in place.

NGUI for Unity has changed a bit since I last used it so running through basics again to get the new approach… good so far.  Like the .ttf importing

Hey all!  Just a quick post to say Aduno, our entry for the LD 26 Jam, has an Indiegogo which we’re using to raise some money to bring the game to Android and iOS.  We’re just trying to raise enough money to pay for submission fees, a bit of software we need to release on iOS (Xamarin MonoTouch), and a nice web domain where we can host game info and whatnot.

You can play the LD version here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=3128

And here’s our Indiegogo campaign link: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aduno-a-reductive-puzzle-game/x/3207382

The campaign goal’s just $500, which will get us far enough to fund the rest on our own if we need to.  $3 gets you a copy of the game on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android when the game is released.  We’re a quarter of the way there after just a couple of days, and every dollar helps.  We’d much appreciate the assistance!

It’s time to try this again! Ludum dare 26 was my first time doing a rapid-game-make. One thing I learned was to actually PLAN the game out so I don’t end up with horrible controls.

Also, I’ll be attempting to make it in HTML5 and Javascript instead of Java.

My secret weapon:

Since I am new to this planning thing, the game is going to have an insultingly basic mechanic that I think is still fun.

The plan of action (spoilers):

gl; hf

[Cross-posted from Omiya Games]

First, I wanted to congratulate everyone who have participated in this Ludum Dare contest! Great job!

Although I may have stepped out before the contest ended, I figured I’d talk about how I got the graphics on The Sentient Cube.  It was surprisingly quick and simple, although it required a lot of tweaking to get it right.  In this step-by-step instructions, I explain how I’ve used Unity’s installed scripts to create a stunning toon shading.

Note: this only works with Unity Pro license.

Step 1: Import stuff

In the menu bar, under Assets -> Import Package, you’ll need to import the Image Effects and the Toon Shading.

Step 2: Camera, Lights, Action

Create a cube, camera, and directional light for the scene you’re working on.

Step 3: Toon material

Create a material under the Project pane, with the shader set to “Toon/Lighted,” and the Toon Ramp set to a 1-dimensional image.  In this case, I created a custom ramp.

Step 4: Test material

Drag-and-drop the new material from the Project pane to the cube in the Scene pane.

Step 5: Camera effects

Add the “Edge Detect Effect” and the “Contrast Stretch Effect” components in that order to the camera.  The screenshot above was the parameters I’ve used.

Step 5: Add real-time shadows

Change the “Shadow Type” under the directional light to “Hard Shadows.”  The screenshot above were the parameters I’ve used.

Results

Just add a few more elements with their own materials, and Voilà!

You can download and import the Unity package I’ve created with the same scene above.

Tags: graphics, toon shading, unity

For this Mini LD, I thought I would do something I have never done before, and use Flash. I only have a few weeks experience with Flash, which most would say is not enough to just dive and and roll with. While this may be the case for most, I have made more with less before.

So, my game, right. Since the theme for this Mini LD is the destruction of earth, I immediately thought of space for some reason… Although the story isn’t exactly clear for this game yet, you have been chosen to be the hero responsible for saving planet earth. In order to save the planet, you have to travel around a spaceship and collect cores. Hence, Save The Cores.
I was only able to put in about two hours today, but I should be working most of tomorrow.
I have semi-smooth x-y movement working, haven’t gotten collision up yet, but I have a good prototype for collection of cores.
Next would be collisions, then story, then fleshing out the level a bit, maybe some music in there somewhere, I hope this turns out well!

Game as it is now.
Now to get some sleep. (T_T)

Tags: actionscript, Cores, flash, space

Awesome deskphoto?

Check.

Design Document in Spanish with awful handwriting?

Check.

Motivation?

Check without a graphic proof.

Kay. Time to work! 😀

Tags: deskphoto, mini ld 42

Thought I may as well join in!

I’m using a home-brew SFML/OpenGL framework you can get here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4826080/MLD42Framework.zip

Starting  a bit late but I’ve got an idea nailed down, so I ought to be okay (I hope).

This time I’ll try and get some audio in there somewhere.

I wasn’t sure at first if I was going to have time to participate in the MiniLD, but then I saw the theme and how could I pass it up?

Here’s an obligatory deskphoto:

After mild success in LD26 I wanted to brush up my skills before coming back (and learn to make a proper applet… LWJGL doesn’t like applets I learned), but there’s no time for that so I’m going to make a Java download only game, inspired by the work of Douglas Adams, one of my personal heroes.

My goals are to finish (close to) on time, make an interesting (hopefully funny) game, and produce a time-lapse of me working (I’m thinking about a text based game though, so it might be a bit boring). Here we go!

Tags: deskphoto, im in, java, MiniLD

Making placeholder everything… will probably end up as final version everything..  My art is not good.  Map of earth freehand for projection onto globe.

Have uploaded a placeholder build which doesn’t qualify as a game. Earth and projectiles, spaceships and events next.  Then the basic mechanics of gameplay.

Yes I realise this is backward, I’m doing the things I think will be a problem first, then tomorrow is reserved for all the gameplay with whatever effects are made before 10pm tonight.

So this is my first attempt at a Ludum Dare after just missing being able to participate in the last event. I’ve decided not to base my game off of Douglas Adams as I don’t know enough about his works beyond reading the Hitchers Guide To The Galaxy. Instead to match the theme it’s being set after Earth has sunk under a sea of water. Using bubbles and platforms to reach the surface before drowning. After almost one day of work everything is working fine.

I’ve got a player, jumping, scrolling, platforms, bubbles. The next step will to be add an oxygen meter and decide on a height to finish at. I might add pick-ups and enemies etc. depending on time and how bothered I can be. Any suggestions welcome, and good luck to everyone else.

You are here. If you don’t do something fast, it will be destroyed.

You’ll probably control some sort of a ship with a hyper-improbability drive or whatever it is, against Vogons. Yeah. 😀

Then again, I might change to do something more innovative. We’ll see.

Starting a little late, but I had to search some supplies for this mini-LD, better be prepared before the earth is destroyed! :`p

Work is proceeding as plann.. eh okay i am mocking about.
However mocks are working excellent  for the first canvas game i have ever done this is going brilliant.

Here is a screen of the battlefield!

Sebb, Over and out.

Hi everybody! Starting a little late but better late than never. I actually were questioning myself in the week how different game designs can be created with the theme, I’m looking forward to what you will pull out.

In this video I explain a little more of the idea:

This weekend is Jam weekend: #1GAM #1GAMCRUNCH #FishingJam #egp mini #LD48 I will try something with all this jams, wish me luck 

As I am working with several themes I will prioritize them as follow:
-Fishing
-Building
-Earth will be Destroyed
-Grow
-No Touch (Hardest to implement)

This Ludum Dare was a great one, and I have to thank everyone who participated and rated my entry!

This time around I made a First Person Shooter called Complexity.

TIMELAPSE:

Here’s the post-mortem for a summary of how I spent my time!

From Potatos to the final moments, the competition was astounding in every way! And now… the results:

Alright, so apparently my game was… funny. Well the end boss was pretty funny… and it has…

I mean seriously… I didn’t even bother to draw a parachute on the character… so you kinda just… land.

Anyways next best was audio. I did work hard on the music and sound effects, but I don’t really think they were as unique as some of my other sounds. Now “fun” was the thing I was trying to achieve most on this one, just like most of my LD’s. I really tried to make movement and animations as smooth as possible and rewards for hitting the enemies. I realize the game is a little difficult at points… mainly because of spawning issues… but the quick respawns and the fact that advancing in the level is pretty easy make the game easy to enjoy. Skipping overall and going straight to graphics, I think this was another problem I had in my other games. I always use basic shapes for my enemies and levels (which probably won’t change due to the amount of time given) but this time I wanted the enemies to look a little more… animated… than previously. I really tried, but failed to make the game look as good my LD23 entry, Invasion Of The Trivials. I know why I failed to accomplish this: I didn’t have enough time due to places I had to be during the weekend. Regrets aside, I can safely say the results are pretty accurate, except for maybe humor…

Thanks again for everything, you guys rock!

Happy gaming, Ludum Dare! <3

PLAY THE GAME

POST-MORTEM

POTATOOOOOOOOO

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem, screenshot, summary, timelapse, unity

I added music to my game, it gives it another feel, it might be a bit too heavy/depressing, i will work with that… :I

Also i added some character animations, next up i need to add some player dialog, still working on how to best implement it.

On another note MelonJS has been a pleasure to work with so far, despite that i am still not 100% sure i like the workflow.

Over and out, Sebb.

For the last few months, the FlashPunk website has been down, along with the forums, documentation and tutorials. If you’ve been anxiously waiting for it to come back, you’re in luck! The new domain is useflashpunk.net, and we’re working hard to restore as much lost content as possible.

Come on over to the forums and say hi! <3

Nine hours of work in, the engine and graphics are all finished. I just have to add all the game text.

I’m making a text based game (and it’s been a long time), you can try out the first days work here. It doesn’t have a lot of gameplay yet, but it’s starting to function.

A quickly created entry so that I could release something on towel day. The entry link is http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=15656 

indie(Function); is in round TWO of the top indie platformers, and we need you to vote for your favorites:

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=51993170e4b07663c9e82048#.UaE_3lSpINg.twitter

Vote for as many as you like, the top ten will be featured in the upcoming issue of indie(Function);’s magazine. Thanks!

This is my first LD! 😀

video > http://youtu.be/hiOmiqGDl-I

In about 5 hours i will have used 48 hours (i am offset a bit in time due to timezones).
These last few hours i am going to be focusing on level design, i have been building my project around the Tiled editor up til now, so i have all the features i need for now.

This is how my screen will look for some time

Over and out, Sebb.

I’m working on a story for this game and try to make it into a full game.

Any updates I’ll post here https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gib-Treaty-Projects/338181696279416?ref=hl

QUICK!! You must save the KITTY from HUGE pepper METEORS!!!!

Tags: kitty

moar video > http://youtu.be/NajFPaJQVLI

A game where you fix wire in your spaceship ! hurry up before the earth explode !

The game is pretty much done on the programming side. I haven’t much level design ideas for now, since it’s a miniLD, I will take some extra day to finish this

have fun everyone !

This is hard. I am making a game called Save The Cores, and I am worried I won’t be able to finish. Going into this, I knew things wouldn’t be super easy. I am using Flash and Action Script, I have barely any experience with Flash, so that was hard in it of itself. In retrospect, not the best idea.

Also, recently I have been having some personal problems, and I have been having trouble making games. I am sure this is a problem that a lot of indies face, but being a teenager, mine might be worse.

Anyway, update on Save The Cores, I have collision up. Which is a massive pain with Flash, it reminds me of the time I tried to code a calculator in year five. Just a ton of if statements and hitTests. Sound is a pain in the ass in Flash. It refused to use the music my musician made, so I might not even have sound. I’ll try and finish, but no promises.

Tags: actionscript, flash, sound, Worries

Hi,

Just a small post to show you my last android game : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.studio3wg.truck

The game is powered by the wonderful citrusengine and nape for physics

And it’s an adobe AIR Game (yep flash ^^) Even if i think clearly that air (and flash) will not survive for long time, my skills with flash make that i allways love Flash, Even if i’m playing with UNITY .

This is my first real multiscreen game (the other or not compatible with small screen) but this one is fully multi screen across every android devices.

I tested the game on many devices :
Samsung S2
Samsung S3
Samsung S4
Jxd 7300 B
Wiko king ( a chineese phone)
Meizu MX 4 core
Nexus 7
Sony xperia Arc
Sony Xperia Z (a little bit slow on this one)

You can play donwload it here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.studio3wg.truck

Sunday is ending, and I am at a very early point!

I’m making a bullet hell game, but with a twist: you have 3 keys (up, down, shoot), and you must keep at least 2 pressed, otherwise you lose health. So, if you want to go up, you release the down key, if you want to shoot, you have to repeatedly press the shoot key, while holding two others.

So… I had no inspiration until today. I only made an engine. Tomorrow, and maybe next days, I’ll be making levels, graphics, etc…

If I won’t have time for much features, I will definitely make a post-compo.

I ran out of time to jam this weekend, much as I love Douglas Adams and Hitch-hikers guide.

I did get some time to upload a tweaked version of Robotater  with some newer levels.

More to come!

http://www.johnnysix.net/games/robotater/

Robotater

I hate this. Flash refuses to work with anything. Yes, I am part of the problem. I am probaly most of the problem. But if Flash can’t import fucking MP3s, it is no fun.

I want to quit. It has take me about 50 hours just to make a stage with collision, collectables, and movement. Now, that is reasonable considering I have never made anything serious with Flash, but if it would work smoothly that would be really nice. Part of the problem is that I got lazy from using Unity. That is part of the reason I left for a while. If I can’t write a fucking Collider. Then I am just a fucking bad programmer. I love programming, I love debugging, but I fail at the smartbits like calculating collision stuff. This sucks.

I need to be a better programmer before I make games. Let’s just get this over with. Sorry for swearing and stuff. But this is very frustrating.

yeah so, I don’t know if anyone remembers me saying I was making a game in python, well…. about that! I decided to change my plans, but kept my old script. when the new one didn’t pan out, I tried the old one. Take a guess at what happened… nothing actually: IT DIDN’T FREAKIN’ WORK!!! 😀 So anyway, now I’m writing a very minimalist game in html5 and javascript. Man do I love html5! As of now, mostly everything is in working condition, and I’m still truckin along.

The game is called ‘End of Days’, and is a simple avoid type game. Basically, you control the earth and try to avoid asteroids (how original 😉 ). I like it so far, and am trying to evoke a desperate, or hopeless type feel. What’s more hopeless than trying to save the earth, even though you know people are dying anyway?

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know about the game and the changes thus far. Thanks!

I decided to play with some new features I’m adding, ended up with this:

My game took a bit of a plot twist; now, the goal is to destroy the Earth. I have a second mini-earth in order to test scaling. He even shoots lasers and has a miniature explosion animation! 😀

Just finished my MiniLD 42 game entry.
I’m not super happy with it, but I never did like text adventures… or writing. Come to think of it why did I make a text adventure?

You can check it out here. It was my first time playing around with screen capture software too, I’ll be uploading a video later. Though it’s 80% me typing and 20% me being away from the computer. All in all this was a good experience and looking over the other game I’m excited to see what other people make. While the game is “finished” I had planed more, but lost my motivation and decided to finish it a bit short, hopefully it’s still an okay game.

Tags: final, postmortem

Current Game: Before The World Ends I Will Fish Trash For The Mad God
Wanted Game: Before The World Ends I will Build A Castle With Trash

So, my goal of making a game this weekend for several jams, got busted by the reality of time constraints, I implemented a nice possibility of playing with your microphone although.

I think as it is rigth now it doesn’t reflect much of the theme of this mini LD, and what I wanted to achieve as it fullest, just a half, so I am thinking that may be better to take advantage of the extension of submissions of this mini, and submit something more complete later on the week.

What do you think? If you have time to test it, raw as it is, I will appreciate the feedback or opinions.
Here is the link:
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1661405/BTWE-IWFTFTMG.html

Even though we left a lot of cool ideas on the table, I think we’re pretty pleased how Extinction Event turned out.  We’re definitely going to continue working on this one.  Try it here.

Some ideas I’d like to try:

Making the satellites modular, allowing the player to design his own satellites and weapons with custom abilities.

Adding the ability to launch weapons from the planet’s surface.

Incorporating the moon.

Lots of new types of weapons.  Kinetic weapons especially.  Directed light/heat.  And attaching solar sails to slow asteroids down.

Modifying the Earth texture to show the devastation of each impact.

More variation in the asteroids.  Some big ones, kind of like boss fights.

Anybody have any suggestions?

So, I realize October is gone for a while, which ultimately means I failed at the October Challenge. Oh crap!

Still, I’d like to share some of our progress here, since this game started as a Ludum Dare game and at this point I feel our game owns so much to this community. This is how it’s looking nowadays:

Now here’s a little visual story of that. Back in August, 2012 we participated in Ludum Dare 24 and made a little game called Singularity, which was born from our desire to test some ideas on procedural generation. Not a particularly great game, for sure, but I think it turned out fun considering it was basically a tech test! Here’s how it looked:

Still, I felt the melee combat mechanic was really lousy. We were already developing The Journey of Eko back then, but it was essentially a physics-based platformer with linear progression and no procedural generation whatsoever – and in Eko, the combat also felt lousy despite the time we had put into it! I felt bad that we couldn’t manage to get it right, so during a 2 weeks vacation I took as a small side project to tweak Singularity’s combat mechanics and feedback, so that if I struck on any insights I could apply those to Eko. I imported some of Eko’s art assets and made this little test:

It is Singularity with improved combat and Eko graphics instead of silhouettes. It was almost October, and we decided to take the October Challenge and try to make something that we could sell out of this test. We worked on it and, eventually, what we were calling The Journey of Eko was this game, not the old, sluggish, overcomplex physics based thing we had before. Oh yeah, October was gone and of course we didn’t have anything to sell, but it’s ok! It became our main project, after all, and it surely deserves the extra time.

Since then, we’ve been developing, developing, developing… The first video on this post is from a January build; I hope to soon be able to replace some ripped graphics of our current build, so that we can share our recent progresses!

The reason I’m posting this here is that I feel we own so much to this community. First, because our game in fact *IS* a Ludum Dare game (there’s still rushed comments made during LD24 in the middle of Eko’s code, and some of Singularity’s silhouette graphics can still be seen even in our latest video)! Second, because when we started participating in LD, we developed a certain way of thinking that ultimately made us much more capable as developers. We were all about looooong development cycles planned entirely on paper and we were always afraid of tossing away what was already completed. Now it’s all about getting things done, playing, having fun, getting feedback, redoing what isn’t working, and adding stuff that we feel is necessary or that would be fun based on our experience with actually playing our game (not only planning it in our heads). For that alone, I’ll always think of Eko as some kind of legacy from Ludum Dare.

Love you all! Keep doing what you do! <3

Gabriel – @pixel_cows

Lire cet article en français

So yeah, I disliked the last Ludum Dare theme, “Minimalism”. But why? This theme has been up-voted by hundreds of people (actually 1888)!

Why people up-voted it

An example of my amazing capacity to make sprites

Ludum Dare is primarily a unipersonal competition. The “Jam” competition, in which you can compete with friends on the same game, is less represented, with around one third of the games coming from Jam teams. So my guess is that single developpers liked this theme because it allowed them to make simplistic graphics and sounds to focus on the gameplay and the development (or simplistic gameplay with a focus on the graphics).

If I was to compete alone, I may have upvoted this theme. Being a crappy graphist, it would have removed me a lot of work.

So why didn’t I like it?

Because I was not alone.

For the 26th Ludum Dare event, I built a team to work on a game. We were 5, a cool graphist (Kévin Kerisit, please check his website), a cool sound designer (Vincent Govindin, check his website too!), and 3 developers (Adrian Gaudebert , Alex Frêne and myself, Aurélien Defossez). Usually, I am the game designer and project manager during game jams, and I attach a lot of importance to making everyone happy.

With “Minimalism”, it was hard. I was obviously going to make someone’s work crappy. Either Kévin, the graphist should escape the colorful cartoonesque style that defines him and draw basic plain shapes, or Vincent, the sound designer should drop his musical universe and create simplistic music, or us, the 3 developers, should create a game with basic controls or gameplay. In all these three ways, I sensed a problem, someone was going to work on something not interesting.

Our dealer reaching his goal: The night club

So we searched for ideas during hours (starting at 4 a.m. because our parents had the wonderful idea to breed us in France) without finding something pleasant. After 6 or 7 hours, we just decided to stick to the idea that seemed to be the best at the time and continued with it. This idea was to control a drug dealer trying to deliver his dope to a night club (easily localized thanks to the electro music it plays) while escaping the cops. This dealer can consume some of his drug, and by doing se he sees the world in a minimalistic way, and this new dimension permits him to see hidden passages and interactions. But we dropped this idea of a dual-universe because we didn’t feel like the game experience would be that interesting. So finally, we threw away what was related to the theme and kept the other part of the game.

Is the problem the theme or myself?

I didn’t like this theme, because I saw it as a limitation to creativity. But after some time, I think I could have seen this theme from another point of view. Instead of trying to create a minimalistic game, we could have created a game about minimalism. For example, we could have created a game in which a graphic-rich universe has to defend himself against minimalistic shapes. Or we could have continued with our idea of switching between dimensions, but we were so tired after 8 hours of thinking about this concept (from 4 a.m. to 12  p.m.) that we started the development right away.

So I’m still angry at the theme, but I’m also angry at myself, because I focused on trying to find a minimalistic game idea while it was not mandatory to do a minimalistic game, the restriction was to do a game in the minimalism theme.

The game, “Sniff”

I think he took too much drugs

If you’d like to play the game, you can do so here:

Play the game

The Ludum Dare post

The Ludum Dare Entry

Ratings

n

A quick update on Save the Kitty:

– added hint where peppers gonna appear
– added personal highscore
– balanced difficulty

SAVE THE KITTY from pepper meterors NOW.

Wow, compos are a mind-trip. Fun as hell, though…

When I was first writing “Revelations”, it occurred to me that maybe I was taking “Less is more” a little too far. But it seems to have buffed out and provided the effect I wanted.

Using “In Media Res” is a bit cliche nowadays if used sloppily, but from my point of view, it seemed like the only way to properly conceal the ending and get the emotional effect I wanted in the player (at least in the first play-through).

It wasn’t until this morning that I had second-thoughts about the twist-ending, if you can even call it that. Personally, I hate twist endings, especially since they are often completely out of left field and feel like a cheap sucker punch. Reading over “Revelations” a few times, I think there are more than enough clues to what is going on. Everything obviously should be clear after reaching the end, even the standard ending, not the extended “true” ending.

Any feedback, good or bad, is greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation…

That was an awesome MiniLD! I wanted to do a space game for ages! You can play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=15753

I’ve uploaded my entry. This game is loosely based on the game of bar billiards. The inspiration comes from a quote in the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve attempted to capture the graphical style used in the TV series for the animated sequences from the Book.

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

And you can play it here: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/10458705/

Spermy and Petunia: Life is Short now available for download! (Windows, Java 7)

When a bowl of petunias suddenly yanked into existence miles above a planet, it finds itself plunging towards the surface in the company of a rather happy go lucky sperm whale.

Full disclosure, SaP: Life is Short uses some public domain sounds and music, and reuses some parts of Steve Can’t Zens framework.

Review page here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=22396

I need to create four  main visuals…

• Starfield backdrop (am using tutorial for Gimp at http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/starfield-tutorial)
• Particles/effects for Vogons firing on the earth
• Shield and other on the Earth effects for fighting and defending
• Earth destruction

After that… need to create the poetry generator and then do some balancing for the levels, end of game.

Vogon weapon sound made using BFXR

Starfield based on excellent gimp instructions here http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/starfield-tutorial

(I need to redo it to get better colours & positioning)

Still to do… Earth shields, Poetry generator and end of world!!

I love to read ludumdare postmortems but I feel like they cover a lot of the same ground so I thought I would focus on a single aspect of my most recent ludumdare entry People. I’m a big fan of dynamic audio in games since I feel like it’s one of the better uses of the medium and the ability to tailor what the player is hearing to whats happening in game can really heighten the experience. So without further ado here’s how I created the three major components of my games soundscape.

The music:

The music in my game is divided into three different layers. Rather than worry about looping issues I ended just playing three very long tracks in sync and when it was time to introduce a new instrument all I had to do was increase it’s volume. This came at the cost of a greatly increased file size but for a jam game I think it’s a reasonable compromise. The most complex part of the music was making sure that the melody didn’t start or end mid phrase. To do this my melody was created with roughly two bars of silence between phrases. Since the melody loop is playing in sync with the other files I keep track of when the silence occurs and only adjust the volume of the melody at that time.

Ambient background noises:

One of the things that I really wanted to do with the ambient noise was to let it provide the sense of space rather than the graphics. I wanted to convey the sound of a large transportation building like a grand central station with extremely high ceilings and lots of reverb. I ended up recording several conversations from various positions in my office. Those were then layered together with slightly different reverbs applied to them. I ended up making three sets of ambient noise that I transitioned between as the crowd thinned out, the first having a large number of voices and the last being a single conversation. Since it’s hard to distinguish any sort of actual dialog I ended up just cross fading between the different conversation sound effects and let the music mask any transitions. By the time the player reaches the end of the game the ambient noise has died down to a single conversation that really reinforces the feeling of emptiness. On more than one occasion while watching live streams I’ve seen players pause after matching everyone else up and then, upon listening, go to seek out the last person. It’s a subtle way to deliver the information that there is one final person to seek out.

Sound effects:

For all the sound effects I used modified version of my own voice. When couples in the game meet up there is a “Yay!” sound effect that consists of several layered recordings of me saying the word “yay”. This sound was then pitch shifted, put through a phaser, and a slight reverb was applied. The “hmms” and other noises that the people make when joining your group were just normal recordings of my voice with a touch of reverb. The footstep noises were created by hitting different pairs of shoes against each other until I found a good match. There were also several squeaks and ambient sound effects that we foleyed that did not make it into the final game.

Together all of these elements help to provide a sense of space and set the tone for the game far more than anything I did graphically. Thanks for reading and if you haven’t played it yet you can find my game here http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=128

My entry for the Mini Ludum Dare 42 is ready :)!

“Just another Thursday…” is a quick game that tells a short story inspired in the great “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

You can check the game here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=23369

Hope you like it! Every feedback and reviews will be welcome :).

spoiler filled walkthrough video of my mini LD #42 game > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4vmYEbGQTY

Actual game is here > http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/morty-s-adventure-quest-abducted/14900/

<3

I ended up submitting my game yesterday as I started late, I only spent around 8 hours on it, but it works well with only a few bugs. In the year 3030, you are the last line of defence between Earth and some cardboard boxes. Defeat the swarm of 99 cardboard boxes to save Earth. Fail and Earth will be destroyed.

Play it here http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=13768

I made a Doom 2 map for the MiniLD

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=2958

I have finished writing a postmortem of Towels for Earth. The link is http://blazinggames.blogspot.ca/2013/05/towels-for-earth-postmortem.html . Quick summary for those who don’t want to read the article:

What went right – incorporating towel day themes into the game
What went right and wrong – Developing the game on towel day
What went wrong – HTML5 issues forced game to be done in Flash

You remember that one time when I made Potato Lotion Dilemma for LD26?

Wellllll, this happened!:

Somehow, I completed this game. There isn’t enough levels, but it also need sounds, additional animations, mechanics, etc. which would take me out of the scope of this jam. Maybe next time !

Play Space Wire

Hey guys, this post is a little late in coming, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on and rated my game, I was very happy (not to mention surprised) with my overall result of #102, maybe I’ll break the top 100 next time! I was also extremely pleased with my placing of 24 for mood, since I did try quite hard to build up some sort of atmosphere.

Overall a very enjoyable first experience, I can’t wait to give it another bash in August – see you guys then!

Also, The IGP made a video of my game on youtube, check it out

Tags: LD#26, ld48, post-compo, results

Hi all.

I made this utility about a year ago and all but forgot about it until today, when I was browsing one of my memory sticks to clear some space. After rediscovering this project I decided to update it a little, and release it.

Basically it generates concepts by combining words from different word lists: eg, Colour plus Title might output “Red Queen”.

This can be useful to come up with names for your games, your game characters, or themes to inspire or stimulate your imagination. The combinations are sometimes funny as well. Here is a sample…

Play with it, use it, give feedback, or help to expand the program by creating/sharing your own word lists.

> download here <

Hi, im new to this site and i just recently learned about it through SourceFed. I wanted to play some of the games but I’m not sure how. If anyone could let me know, that would be great!

Thanks!!

There are many utilities and various formats for bitmap fonts. Which do you prefer?

To start things off, my favorite is ImpactJS’s purely-image-based format, for its simplicity: http://impactjs.com/documentation/class-reference/font

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the Fish was my entry for Mini Ludum Dare 42 and my first Ludum Dare experience.  I had a ton of fun and am looking forward to August!

You play as a dolphin fleeing the rapidly expanding blastwave created by the destruction of the Earth.  You have to dodge flying pieces of the once great planet while catching the occasional flying fish in order to escape.  I had fun making it and I also enjoy playing it, so I guess that’s what counts.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=22584

I also ported it to HTML 5 running WebGL.  I tested it in Chrome and it runs.  Firefox… maybe.  IE, definitely not.  I didn’t get the port done in time for the compo end but, lucky you, I have a link now:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/103108185/ThanksForFish/index.html

Hello, Im Jet Spy Dragon and I’m very excited to participate in the next LudumDare. I’m actually working on Game Maker Studio:HTML5. I’m not very good on drawing, but I love to make music and write stories. In the end, I’m very “hobbiest” in everything so I hope to get better and better with every challenge.

Let’s rock!!!!!!

So, my first Ludum Dare is over, and it’s time to reflect on my experience. I made a simple collision-based game and named it, in a demonstration of true novelty, “Planets”, for the 48 hour jam. It is a very basic game, but just completing it made me very proud. This also happens to be my first game ever, if I’m not mistaken.
This means that there were a lot of things to learn, not so much code-wise as more general project- and time-management related. While I did learn a thing or two about Java I didn’t know, 48 hours just aren’t enough time to allow for a good study. Though it serves as motivation for more study after the competition.
The most important aspect I learned about was performance. Up until now, performance had never been an issue for the small, simple programs I wrote, mostly because unlike in games, nothing was in real-time. Having the game running is nice, but if it’s running at 5-10 FPS it becomes not only ugly, but also unplayable. Trying to minimize overheads and finding as many optimizations as possible was not only a whole new challenge, but also a joy to code. Gaining a 20% performance boost out of simple changes taught me how wastefully I had coded in the past (and am sure I still do). In the end, it turned out to be a game between me and the compiler, trying to squeeze as much power as possible from the CPU without sacrificing the gameplay.
As for the gameplay itself, it turned out quite well, albeit in a much simpler form than originally envisioned. Originally, it was supposed to be visibility-based, with the player emitting light in order to see the objects for a brief amount of time, but as time didn’t suffice, I had to settle for something less ambitious. It was a good compromise in the end, since a simple but finished game-mechanic is much more enjoyable than a bigger but broken one. The game was fun albeit too short, something reflected in the comments. I couldn’t have asked for more for my first game jam entry.
Now, onto the “what went well/bad” feature:

What went well:

• The timeplan was helpful. It turned out to be very realistic, more so than myself, and as long as I followed it to a certain degree (which was probably only the first day) I had a good, reassured feeling. During the second day, I tried to convince myself that I could pack more stuff into the programme despite the timeplan, and it didn’t work.
• Sleeping after having the game announced was probably the best idea. Normally, I’d spend at least half an hour to come up with an acceptable game idea, but this was time spent in bed, so I didn’t really fall behind. Plus, it helped me sleep better once I had an idea and not worry about the contest until next morning. The time zone surely helped though.
• Incremental development. Limiting the game’s scope is a necessity for these jams, it seems, and incremental development allowed the game to stay at a simpler stage without any additional effort. It’s probably not the best approach with bigger projects, but for short jams it really helps in staying within a reasonable scope.

What went bad:

• Free schedule. 48 hours is barely enough time to create something playable, so it’d be good to get the most out of it (which by the way does not mean to cut back on sleep). Some things, like going to the supermarket in the first morning (1 hour), arranging a Skype call (1 hour), or working on the assignment due two days afterward (4 hours) could’ve been done before the jam (or at least afterwards). Time management isn’t only about the two or three days, but also about the whole time period that affects them.
• Not sticking to the plan. Everything was working out relatively well as long as I was following the timeplan I’d laid out for myself. It was only when I thought I could squeeze two or three more features in during what was supposed to be debugging time, that time really started to run out. I made it eventually, but with more stress than needed, and with less time to polish. Most bugs were luckily dealt with, so the gameplay was more or less stable, but the presentation was just plain bad. The welcome and ending screen were coded between 2 and 3 a.m., and this shows.
• Preparation. The game was coded from scratch. When I say from scratch, I mean every single class and method. While it was interesting to see the program evolve from scratch to game, I’d prefer having the basic set of classes pre-coded next time, at least the canvas and the timer. Things shouldn’t be practiced just for practice’s sake, as soon as they’re learned. Having a small library, along with some general design patterns about rendering, should save me another couple of hours.
• Contest familiarity. This was not only my first Ludum Dare, but also my first game jam in general. As a spectator, I was familiar with some aspects such as the journals, but not with things like the submitting process.  For example, I didn’t know I had to submit a screenshot. It took me 20 minutes to submit the game, up until 3.01 a.m., and were by far the most stressful minutes during the competition. This couldn’t have been averted, really, but I’m positive that I won’t have this problem in my next jam.

The future

So, what are the future plans? I really liked the game idea, especially the parts that weren’t implemented. I think I’ll keep working on it on my spare time (as a welcome change of pace form the competition). It should keep me occupied at least until the next Ludum Dare. I loved the contest and am looking forward to joining again.

Thanks to everybody who participated!

I put some tracking into my LD26 entry and got some interesting results. For instance, 57% of players finished the game, and the average score was 278.

Read more: http://scottcummings.tumblr.com/post/52318173685/ludum-dare-game-stats

Game: http://scottedwardcummings.com/ld48/ld26/ld26/

It starts today.

After many wasted hours of telling myself that I will make a game, I am finally gearing up to take part in the Ludum Dare 27.

I’ve never made a game before, despite probably having the programming expertise with which to do it, so it will certainly be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Tags: First post, Ludum Dare 27

This passed April, I participated in the 26th LD48 Compo. Like many others, I made a game from scratch in just 48 hours. I’ve always been someone who had to say “oh well I’m working on something big” or “I’ve got some stuff but nothing concrete just yet”. Ludum Dare was really awesome, and I was happy with the game I made. More importantly, it gave me the motivation I needed to see something through.

Now, a little more than a month later, a friend and I have taken a concept game I had before Ludum Dare, fully developed it and put it out for the world to play.

Our first game as 2DMGames, “Grav”, is now out on both Google Play and the AppStore.

Promtional Trailer

So thank you Ludum Dare community. I will be here for many more Jams and Compos to come, and give back in anyway to the community that gave me the push I needed to pursue my passion.

Keep up with us on our Facebook page, and maybe share us out to your friends if you want to support our virality.

Cheers,

Dan Moran

I’ve been having trouble with motivation lately. Like, trouble working at all.

I’ve decided to do some super-small projects in a sprint style to try to get me back into the habit of working on games.

I have a question for my fellow LDers, though.

How do you folks handle the problem of motivation? What do you do to help yourself finish things?

I want to hear some ideas and maybe have some useful methods out there.

More about this after the page break! 😀

Personally, I’ve usually been better at finishing smaller projects. I’ve gotten into the habit of starting things that are doomed by a combination of their scale and my attention span. Since I have trouble staying on a single idea for very long (I actually have ADD, diagnosed by my psychiatrist), having much smaller things will hopefully help me. Heck, since I know that my upcoming project (which I’m starting tonight at 8PM EDT / 12AM GMT) is only going to be about 24h long (really will be working for that, though I’ll take a little more time if I really need it and am almost done), I’m very excited to work on it. I know I won’t have to commit to a single thing for months on end, so I can finish easily and then move on to the next thing very soon after.

So… what do other LDers do to get and stay motivated? What helps you finish projects? I’m curious what others do, since this has been a problem for me lately.

As for the game I’m going to make…

I’m going to put it on Kongregate to see if I can get a little bit of ad money from it. I don’t expect much (really, I don’t), but it’ll be nice to get something out there to prove that I really am a game developer.

I’ll write a post about it when it’s been uploaded and I’ve got it ready for people to play. 😀

Peace, love, and the sweet feeling of progress,

– Henry

Good news everyone, we have a winner…

winner

johnfn

The stage is now yours

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.

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.

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!

• HelkeGames profile
• Earth Defender (LD 26 entry)
• HelkeGames’ official site

Tags: Earth Defender, game, Ludum Dare, updates

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

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. 

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.)

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.

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. 😉

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:

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

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:

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:

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/ !

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

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

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

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 demo page ]

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

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 !

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/

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

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:

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

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.

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.

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:

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

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.

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!

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:

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

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 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.