So I thought I would celebrate finishing my 4th compo with another trailer, hope you guys like it!  The game is called Steven Seagal: Hard to Swat!

As always, check it out Here!

Wow. That was close. But we made it!

You can play “Antarctic Glitch” by clicking this awesome poster made by Ruppel!

Now we are going to bed. But tomorrow we will be playing and rating lots of games!

Cheers!

Tags: antarctic glitch, beavl, games, submission

After a well-deserved rest, it’s time for the post-mortem of my fourth LD entry, 10s Paparazzi.

I was travelling back home on Friday night when I learned about the chosen theme. I’d been brainstorming a bit with the final list, and for “ten seconds” my main ideas revolved around choice-fate (resulting in more or less convoluted/pretentious concepts such as “your life could change in 10s”, “10s to meet/lose your soulmate”, etc) in addition to more straight approaches (i.e, “you have to do X in 10 seconds”).

After translating some of these concepts into gameplay, I ended up with four main candidates:

• A shooter with waves of enemies appearing every 10s.
• A tower defense with waves appearing every 10s.
• A dungeon crawler, mixing elements of FTL and The Binding of Isaac, where you had 10s to fulfill whatever was required of a dungeon room, and then would have to pick an exit with no possibility to backtrack. I even had a title for it: “No time to explore!” (an obvious reference to the game “No Time to Explain”). I really liked this idea, but sounded as if it could go out of hand quickly.
• Last, a glimpse of the landscape through the window gave me the idea.  A game where you had to scroll through the scene and take a picture of something (rather than hit him as in a Whack-a-Mole game)  seemed approachable, and there were several compelling mechanics that could work fine with it. As you may imagine by now, we had a winner here.

What went right

• Reusing the codebase from previous entries. The less time you devote on setting the application, defining game states and the basic engine functionality, the more you can use to polish, balance and create assets.
• Simple concept. You can just pick the game from scratch and start playing immediately. Unlike my previous entry, where I made the mistake of not providing enough feedback or instructions to get the hang of the game quickly, the controls were intuitive enough for all players to know what they’re doing.
• Backlog. I decided to create an exhaustive list of tasks to help me track my work, plan and prioritize. These are skills I’m working hard to improve (I think that I’ve become better with each Ludum Dare :D), and keeping the backlog updated turned out invaluable. Also, there’s the dopamine shot when you begin to see large areas of green ^_^
• Potential to further develop it.

What went wrong

• Missing features: The opposite to the “dopamine shot” previously mentioned was to see in the backlog how many tasks you still needed to do. While I managed to finish the highest priority ones, there were still lots more, which could have helped immensely with the game experience. Some examples are:

• Better character behaviours
• Camera “skills”: The idea was that some objectives required a bit more than  just “have this little fellow photographed”. For example, we could have a more complex “take a picture of a smiling red ventolin with a blue one next to him”, and to achieve that we might have some “freeze” or “move” skills to manipulate the scene.
• Livelier environments
• Multi-layered scenes, with parallax.
• Photo gallery
• Secondary objectives
• Sound and music
• Etc, etc

• A series of unfortunate events: As I’ve said, I ran out of time for features, testing and polishing. I could blame my poor planning skills, but this time I ran into a couple of handicaps in real life that made me waste some hours, too. First, as I said, I was travelling by train. It was supposed to arrive in Barcelona at 9:00, but due to some forest fire in the northwest, it arrived with a delay of almost three hours. Secondly…I had lots (I’ve counted around 50 between legs and arms) of mosquito bites which seemed almost cured by Friday, but then started to itch again like crazy and swelled insanely the next day, reaching the point that I was starting to feel pain and/or numbness in some areas (this freaked me out). They still look pretty terrible today, but it’s nothing compared to Sunday, when I had to leave my desk 4 hours before the deadline to find an emergency centre, covered with large patches of burning red skin. >_<
• Dat scroll bug. I wasted several hours trying to smooth the camera movement. I improved it a bit, but introduced new bugs, some of them resulting in nasty camera shakes. As I’d got stuck and still had some high-priority tasks, I decided to start working on those first, think about something else and then go back later to polish the scroll. This, sadly, never happened.
• Character art: Most backgrounds look quite nice in my opinion, but I can’t say the same of the characters. I’d hoped that I could add more animations, and give different appearances to each creature, rather than just changing colours, but once again time had its way.
• Way too easy: The first screen is meant as a tutorial, so the creature appears close to the camera to teach the player. As for the other ones, the implemented behaviours were insufficient to pose any challenge, so the game can be completed in less than a minute.

In the end, I’m left with a bittersweet feeling. The game looks nice and shows promise but the compo version is way too simple. Still, I’ve learned a lot, as it’s been the case with my previous entries. As always, I love the experience! 😀

Tags: LD27, postmortem

This was my first Ludum Dare, or any game jam/compo for that matter. I had a great time making my game and got a lot done in 48 hours.

After seeing the winning theme I thought up a couple of ideas and then slept on them. Woke up with an idea that I was pretty happy with, so started the coding.  The idea is that you control a box which freezes in place after 10 seconds. You then control a new box which also freezes in place after 10 seconds. The aim is to get these boxes into good positions so your future boxes are able to progress through the level.

I decided to use LibGDX because I had messed around with it before hand, but I had never made a full game with it. So this would also be a great learning opportunity. I also used Tiled tile map editor to create the levels. It was simple to create levels this way but I ran into a few issues early on regarding getting my Tiled shapes into the Box2D world correctly. I got a bit confused with the Box2D coordinate system and how to create bodies from shapes. However it all worked out in the end and managed to get a good level making system sorted out.

Tiled map editor

After that it was time to get the gameplay figured out. Most of it was pretty simple but I ran into a few problems with detecting collisions, especially wall jumping. Eventually I just figured it wasn’t worth it and designed the levels with wall jumping in mind, which is not a bad thing.

Overall I had a fun time, learnt a lot and I am happy with the product at the end. Thank you Ludum Dare organisers!

Here is my game: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=26905

After 3 days finally something playable is done.

And it somehow makes fun.

Here it is: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=5888

I did a lot of backend work so there is not much to see. Just simple programmer art. Powered by gimp.

The rules are simple:

→ You control the balls on top. Move them left and right. Trigger them to shoot balls down.

→ On the lower lane there are other balls spawning. Hit them!

→ You win when there is no ball left. You lose if the lane if full with balls.

To crush the lower ones you need to hit them with the right color. Just the yellow ones can be destroyed by any of them.

The tricky part is more on the technical side. The game runs on a PC. Currently only on Linux. But you use your Android device to control the movements and shooting of your balls. Moving is done by rotating. Shooting by accelerating/wobbling.

What did I use:

→ gimp for creating awesome balls

→ C++, QML for coding

→ Qt + QML for Android controller

→ SDL2 + SDL_image + SDL_net +SDL_ttf for PC game

→ vim + qtcreator as IDEs

→ Debian Linux, Cyanogen Android as dev systems

What else?

Lines: cpp: 1228 ||  h:320  ||  qml: 508 || total: 2056

Problems:

→ Vim plugin syntastic made some problems by automatic including wrong headers. Setting the right option helps a lot. Session plugin also wasn’t always doing what I want. Now it’s better.

→ SDL_net provides much less comfort then QtSockets. It’s very basic but it works. Documentation is OK for most things. But missing others (or I didn’t find them), like e.g. how to detect a disconnect, setting up a broadcast.

→ SDL_ttf can’t do multiline text

What did rock?

→ Vims autocomplete with clang_complete and error finding with syntastic

→ Learning working with sensors and network

→ Doing something with SDL2 and C++ again

→ Getting the high score ^__^

So,

have fun playing this and all other entries!

PS: Could someone please provide a Windows & Mac port of this one? (Maybe even an iOS version of the controller?)

PPS: Got 72 seconds and 234 points. Anyone can beat it? Did anyone win? 😉

its not done yet XD http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=27280

Hey everyone! This is our 2nd time joining a Ludum Dare Jam and here’s our entry:

“Withdrawal Syndrome” is about a drug addict patient who suffers from withdrawal syndrome as he tries to escape from the hospital.

Check it out here! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25961.

Controls: Arrow keys and spacebar

Have fun, rate, and tell us what you think about the game in the comments!

Three hard days left behind. Work hard, no sleep, stop talking and write code. And now it’s over. We are now at a friend who allowed us to stay here for 3 days and work 18 hours a day. We want sleep, eat and rest. But we glad to introduce you our little game. It’s called “Holiday in Russia”

Our Entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=26281

You need to survive!. But new insane monsters will try to kill you every 10 seconds starting right from the beginning.

Move your hero by pressing WASD. Attack monsters with your mouse.

You can upgrade your stats in the shop by pressing Space button. You can upgrade Damage, AttackSpeed, MaxHP and use Aid for restoring your health.

It was a cool idea to create that game just for fun but we are faced with some difficulties like collision detection and for example it was difficult to get the mobs move around obstacles.

Spruce pulled down my head off! fix your algorithm, you idiot!

We laughed a lot. For example, it was fun when 4-leg-spider-mob couldn’t reach his destination and stuck in one place, constantly trembling. We tried to fix that bug about 30 minutes and spider always just came to player and start trembling.

I guess we could make more simpler game with simpler idea. We had a lot of other ideas how to improve our game but we had only 72 hours minus time for sleep and eat. We did what we did, we tried so hard, please comment and rate.

Thanks for your attention.

Nerlin~ and Silent.

my first ludum dare game for the jam

The design and art is mine, jellcakes the programmer did everything else.

CAN YOU GIVE LOVING CARE TO THIS BALLOON UNTILL IT IS OLD ENOUGH,

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=27220

have fun .

It’s been a crazy weekend, but we made it!  Our Ludum Dare 27 Game Jam project “Unseen” is finished!  We have OSX, Windows and Web versions available for play:

Unseen

It’s a super-simple idea that we tried to build a lot of atmosphere around.  We tried to use 3D sound positioning and audio cues to create a constant, ominous feeling.  This really shines if the game is played while wearing headphones.

It was a long road and I’m sure a bug or two probably slipped by, but overall I’m really proud of what we were able to put together in just three days.

Thanks a ton to anyone who took the time to follow our progress or try out our game.

Congratulations to everyone who participated in Ludum Dare 27!

Tags: #GameComplete

After a minor delay, here’s the entry…

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/53322618/Ludum%20Dare%2027/02%20Sun%20LD/02%20Sun%20LD.html

Sadly, this is slightly more of a tech entry than a full game. That said, there ARE three messages you can find in-game, so go look for ’em…!

So this is Ludum Jam, eh? Fun. Next time, I’m gonna enter, get a smashing idea at the start and hit all my milestones. Get knocked down 8 times, get up 9!

Looking forward to the judging!

–Rev

PS: 10 second – relevance… Control switches between characters every 3.33333 seconds. There was going to be much more plot references to 10 seconds, but no time, no time.

We did submit yesterday very late at night, before falling dead asleep.
The game doesn’t look too bad and is fun enough to play, but we must admit it’s very far from what we’d hoped it to be It’s the hardest thing for perfectionists…
The two most disappointing things happened on the last day: one of the developers dropped out treacherously putting the other one under an impossible strain, and the cover art never got finished due to a lack of time.

Nonetheless, we hope you still enjoy it:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=20790
Be sure to check back as we should be releasing a post-jam version soon!

Whatever the result, thank you, LD!

[View Entry]

My entry, for the record:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/&uid=25313

I just had to rewrite the engine. I mean, it was much slower than it should have been., making the game unplayable at spots.

Now? It’s fast. Very fast. Possibly blazingly fast. Makes the technical and gameplay issues all the more glaring.  😀

I’ll probably putter around until I’m satisfied. The engine itself is now suitable for future projects, too.

Looking at the comments, all those “wouldn’t work” ones worry me. Is it the Monogame? or compiling with VS 2012? or something else?

Anyway, I’m glad I got a game done, instead of a tech demo – you can win and lose this one, after all. Still, I hoped I wouldn’t miss my goals by this much.

The coder art sort of grew on me, like a mold. Especially with the animations.

Apparently I messed up the last time and didn’t link the game at all! My bad folks!

The Stuffuv

Code, Sounds, UI Art : roaet

Thanks for playing! Be mindful that it is quite short! My apologies for that.

I really had blast. Somehow managed to make this despite breaking my ankle right in the middle of it… feels very good.

But it’s actually a very unpleasant little game : ) Imagine you have to look for someone in a seemingly abandoned place and it takes 10 seconds to transmit a kinda creepy  image back to you. Curious?

Three cheers for me for my first successful Ludum Dare! And my first successful NES game! A lot of first successes this time around – my body will forgive me for the missed meals.

So a bit of post-game analysis – I had a lot of reasons for wanting to make this game the way I did. As I said in my initial post, I’m developing an online course in NES ASM programming (#8bitmooc), and part of the course is all about making a game all by yourself from scratch! So I wanted to make sure that I could develop the game using the same tools that I expect my students to use, which are the 8bitmooc playground and the documentation that I’ve been writing! I’ve been taking the text from the NESDev wiki, and rewriting it to be more accessible for people who are just interested in programming by describing the NES as if it were an API. Normally I use that wiki when I need help, but for this project, I made it a point to only use my own documentation, which I think went pretty well!

A few folks have indicated some problems with the ROM image, such as it failing in some emulators. It works perfectly in Mednafen, jsNES, and John’s Android NES Emulator, but a friendly fellow from the NESDev forums told me about some not-so-great things I was doing in my code, like writing the sprites way too late. I still have a lot to learn about the NES, but the best way to learn about something is to teach it, and I obviously know quite a bit considering that I was able to make a game in the end!

I really wanted to get a fast-paced game with goofy sounds and graphics when I made this game, and that’s why the controls are so twitchy. I spent most of the time on the physics engine and the “feel” of the game until I was happy getting a little dude bouncing around, pushing blocks, and dying every 10 seconds. Having to do collisions between 16 solid objects is tricky and takes up a lot of clock cycles. But for a simple game written in 48 hours, I am extremely pleased with my output, and that I was able to take the two top themes and run with them so quickly! I think I might have spent 16 hours at the computer in total or so. I definitely did NOT spend much on the level design, which is my least favorite part of game making.

All things considered, I’m amazed that my game has managed to get 67 ratings in just one day after submission – I’ve really appreciated everyone’s feedback! Granted, it’s hard to play others’ games when you’re running Linux, but I’ve enjoyed many of the ones I’ve gotten to run! LD really brings out the creativity in people, so I’m glad I participated this time around.

Tags: 8bit, nes, post-mortem

Want a dump of all the current Ludum Dare 27 entry data (URLs, screenshots, thumbnails, description text, format types) in JSON format?

HERE YOU GO!

(This isn’t the first time I’ve done this.)

Happy parsing!

I’m not good at making music.

But this time, the main theme of the game

is made by me. Maybe it’s not so bad, what do you think?

MAIN THEME at audiotool.com

or right in the game WHEN HE LEFT entry

Hey everyone! After a good night’s rest I’m ready share my thoughts about LD27 and my game, Daisy.

If you haven’t played it yet, click here to check it out!

What went well

• I had pretty solid mechanics. The movement, jumping, and most of the seed planting felt really solid. I have to thank the 2DToolkit and 2dCharacterController plugins for this, because they made working with 2D in Unity so much better.
• I really enjoyed the theme. It pushed me to think of a game using a mechanic beyond my initial impressions of it. I think we probably all thought of the “Wario-ware” type game when we heard 10 seconds, but I think the great games are the ones that found a way to implement a mechanic beyond that. To me, it was a very natural part of my game, and didn’t feel forced (plants need sun, right?)
• The game had a beginning, middle, and an end. Something that every story should have, and that (almost) every game should have, in my opinion.
• Relatively good art for this being my second “real” attempt at pixel art. I really enjoy it, but didn’t find much time to work on it over the summer. I got a Wacom tablet, which helped speed up the process tremendously.
• Sound was incredible! It took the game up several notches higher. I used Abundant-music.com to make the music and SFXR to make the sounds. Very easy to use programs that make a huge difference in the polish category.
• Skype. I talked about it last time, but it was really encouraging to just be idly chatting with someone else who was working on LD as well. It helps with frustration and fatigue, and overall is a great motivator. Thanks Sakuyan! (check out his game SliP, it’s great!)

What didn’t go so well

• First time using 2D Toolkit for a full game, and…whoops. There’s a reason they put tools in there to help your game be more optimized but silly me, I didn’t bother to learn them before hand. First time trying to batch my sprites resulted in my entire first level getting very screwed up. Ditched the sprite batcher. Game still runs well, but the web version has a pretty long loading time.
• The game scales in difficulty way too fast. There’s a limit to how much content you can make for LD, and unfortunately since I decided to spend a good amount of time on the art and seed planting mechanic, there wasn’t much time for level design. Since I only had time for 3 levels, and my sprite inefficiencies didn’t allow for levels any larger than what I had created, things got difficult pretty quick.
• Not enough time to really explore interesting things regarding seed mechanics, particularly their interactions. I’d love to have puzzles where you are forced to use the jump spring and vines to climb a steep area, while at the same time making use of the light plant to stay alive. I didn’t get around to doing that though.
• I was sick. I had to come down with a pretty nasty cold thingy on Thursday morning. Nothing I could really do about it. Ended up doing the all-nighter between Saturday and Sunday anyways, although today I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t!

Things for the future

• More level-design in the back of my head while programming mechanics and drawing art. I think perhaps a few hours less of working with the seed mechanics and more time for level design, it would have been a better game. We didn’t really need the vine seed, and the shooter seed was only really used once. I probably should have just picked one to toss out, and then spend my time elsewhere.
• Learn sprite batching in 2D toolkit. People can’t play and rate your game if it takes too long to load. Again, I apologize to anyone who had to sit through the loading times. I think the game is worth the wait, hopefully you do too!
• I thought I’d use Construct2 this time, since it has proven to be a nicer platform for quick 2D game creation, but the addition of the aforementioned Unity plugins really made this a non-issue.

Thanks to everyone who is playing and rating my game, and thanks to everyone who keeps the competition running smoothly!

—

Andrew Kennedy