Made a trailer for my entry, since I don’t have a Web version. Maybe this will encourage people to download it?

Hope you enjoy : D

This is the first time I joined Ludum Dare.

Thank you for all who did post there comments about this.

Play Soulbound

The Good

-I only had to sacrifice a left arm for the graphics. Sure, my keyboard was really bloody and It was hard to tell the keys apart, but luckily I had a copy of Typing Tutor 12 in my closet. Typing Tutor has become a key tool I use to develope games.

-I feel the mechainics were very ‘organic’. They were loosly based on things I saw nearby during development. This one guy out side my window was pushing this wooden crate, someone was pushing a button to open a garage door, and this one guy was trying to hang himself from his balcony but got teleported back into his house 10 seconds later. You know what they say, art mimics life.

The Bad

-Gossip Girl was on TV and you know that’s my jam so I had to watch that so I didn’t get much time to make levels so I had to code a complex level generator to create 5 levels for me to use in the game

-Originally there was going to be chain physics I spent a good 10 hours making it so the chain felt realistic and not plastic but then I was like ‘Fuck Gravity’ and the chain fell through the floor and I haven’t seen it since

This page were very usefull during last LD :

http://hub.tutsplus.com/tutorials/animate-a-cartoon-explosion-with-flash-professional-basix–active-9495

Thanks to the author.

play exposure

exposure is a game about discovery and exploration.

climb ruins, explore the desert, discover ancient artifacts, find multiple endings, and try not to get scorched by the heat!

i went for a minimalist art style and control scheme (think proteus).

this was my first 3d game, using a custom pseudo-3d engine i made using flixel.

enjoy!

208 ghosts, 40% of a fairly weak CPU, 19 MB of RAM, and a steady 45 – 50 FPS.
I love modern computers.

I iterate over every ghost car and draw it, whether it’s visible or not. Box2D does all the physics. Works great.

Streaming here: www.twitch.tv/jellycakes1

Come hang and play some games!

Tags: jellycakes, ld48, stream

So a lot of people who played my game were commenting on it being very slow, after watching someone else play it and having someone test it on a different computer, turns out there was a massive bug that for some reason I and some players weren’t experiencing.

It was one line of code to fix it, that basically changed the game from drawing shadows over every single tile in the entire level (!!!) to only drawing shadows on the tiles that are being drawn to the screen! Obviously that makes a huge difference in speed, but it is just one line of code? I think it is allowed to fix this, yes?

At any rate, I’ve uploaded the fixed version, but I’ve kept the buggy version up as well and explained the situation on my game’s page so people can make their own judgement call on which version to rate

And if you played the game before and experienced horrible slowdown, please try it again now, this should fix the problem 😀

So .. I cannot begin to explain how great an experience this Ludum Dare was for me. I’ll be rating games all week. Also fixing ‘typos’ in one fell swoop probably by the end of the week. I learned about the importance of planning and scope. Plus just how tiring a couple days of focusing on a single project is. I cut corners where I could but spent the most time working on the engine of my game. It was more than worth it.

I didn’t have time to update during the competition but you can check out the devlog here :

http://sotgdc.blogspot.com/2013/08/ludumdare-27-48-hour-entry-development.html

Enclosed is a true story of how Ludum Dare 27 changed my life.  I hope everyone had such a positive experience as I did.

If you haven’t tried WaterCloset then follow the link to the entry here. I should have a linux build up before too long.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=5288

Thanks for the good times LD Community! I’ll be back again. ( they always come back )

– Ben ‘Angrycrow’ Nix-Bradley

Tags: 48, compo, dare, hour, ld48 27, ludum

Our game can be a little hard at Level 1 and 2, but I thought some people might enjoy a short video of me beating level 9. I dare not attempt level 10!!!

Feel free to play/rate the game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25369

Enjoy.

-mikegbrown

Finally, my first go at an LD: Noah’s Tasty Confusion.

We brainstormed ideas at the LD kickoff party we hosted and each idea got sillier than the last. Landed on a story about Noah mishearing the “go get two of every animal” into “go eat two of every animal”. I didn’t get a chance to build the funny intro movie/how to even after my prolific voiceover/gfx buddy did sounds and a script for it.

It’s a memory game of sorts, as the unstated game over ending kicks off when you eat more than two of a particular animal. (Try it at least once.)

Controls: Click an animal to start chasing after it. (Fork and knife in hand, of course.)

CLICK ME TO PLAY!

 (link to the game : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=26486 )

About time I made a post mortem about my first Ludum Dare ever ! (And not my last)

First Day :

Seeing the theme before going to sleep didn’t help me in the research for a game idea, I was sure it would somehow but nope, of course the Ludum Dare was timed with me going back home, so I had to basically search an idea and start making the game inside a driving car, but it was worth it because if I hadn’t done it I wouldn’t have had the bases ready AT ALL.
Finding an idea, I think it took 30 minutes, a pen and a paper, I wanted to make something original and not a WarioWare/McPixel clone, and then I had this grid image in my head, and then “What if there was a delay of 10 seconds between the moment you press the key and the movement” and it was done, I had found my idea.
For the visual style, I wanted to replicate a computer kind of style, really electronic feel to it, and I adapted the story as such.
Also, trying to figure out several ways to implement the movements was fun, at first I went with physics but it was glitchy, then I went with raycasting but it was even worse, I finally settled on the game checking which tile ID was next and moving the player if it was not the one pre-defined.
Also, the joy I felt when it was working was amazing.
Thank god I never stay’d in front of a problem for too long or else it would’ve sucked so much time, I prefered to ask Elisee (creator of CraftStudio the game maker I used to make the game) for help (I never planned in participating to the 48 hours comp, just the jam)
And this was day 1, I managed to get a movement system working. (And I even have the first “level” I did which was really a prototype)

Second Day :

Waking up and on the computer I go !
The game was too easy, it needed a little spice, so I said to myself, “Why not make some doors and locks” and okay let’s roll with it, plus I’ll be able to borrow the code from my other game Subversion, this is when it struck me, it was not in the library (I had wiped my disk a few weeks ago) and I said to myself : “Oh I just backed it up elsewhere, but….. where actually ?” and this is when I started to stress, I searched everywhere, every inch of my laptop, every inch of my hard drive, my two external hard drives, NOTHING, I couldn’t believe it (And I still can’t) HOW COULD I’VE NOT BACKED UP THE PROJECT !? I tried GetDataBack but I couldn’t find anything, the whole game I worked weeks on is just gone like that and that really pissed me off, but I needed to move on and continue, to make an homage to him (Which had practically the same visual style) and I started coding the trigger system which is a basic trigger pos minus player pos and if 0 then remove the block at X-Z and I then started making more levels and I asked my friend Thoune if he’d like to help me on that and he agreed and that really boosted the number of levels, and I told myself “Since he’s going to make levels I should make a score system”, it was a challenge so I said to myself, let’s go then ! I streamed a bit of it here : http://www.twitch.tv/jordo76/b/451330923 and I was really pleased with the result.
After that I went to sleep.

Third Day :

Waking up and, let’s go on the computer !
There was a lot of levels that Thoune did that I needed to implement and since it took a long time to playtest and everything I went right away into it and this is where some troubles appeared that cost me hours, for some reason the player was not synching to the map, the first issue was on the Tutorial level and that was awkward because it worked fine yesterday, I eventually figured out how to fix it by moving the stage to a set coordinate, I think it happened thrice, after porting a few levels I went ahead and created some sounds, it was the first time I created sounds (I used SFXR) so I was never sure, but the response was great so I guess I managed that !
I then went ahead and asked a friend of mine if he did chiptunes, we talked for a bit and I gave him full control on the music, and it turns out the response was again, great so this was a good thing, at one point there was only 2 hours left,I started streaming : http://www.twitch.tv/jordo76/b/451962808 we had no ending and no last level, so I went ahead and created the last level “DATA SCRAMBLED” which was designed to be the hardest since you’ve to go around the whole map several time, I think it take more than 220 moves to complete it, after that I coded the endgame (not going to spoil you :P) which is REALLY simple and quick but it sync with the game “story” (or description of the game on the Ludum dare page) at that point there was 1 hour left on the clock and this is where I tweaked the difficulty on levels a little, when there was 30 minutes left I went ahead and added little humorous text on almost every levels and thus it was done !
My first Ludum Dare game !

This was a great experience overall, and as I already said I’m participating in the next (Except if I really have NO ideas or can’t due to some personal reasons)

Tags: postmortem

So this is our very first jam entry into LD and it was an absolute blast! The net code was absolute hell to do from scratch and several people almost died but we did it! So come join and beat the hell out of eachother, throw some bombs and dragon punch some rocks to show your ULTIMATE DOMINANCE OVER THE EARTH.

Megapunch is a 16 player online brawler where the level structure changes and items randomize every 10 seconds! PREPARE YOURSELF!

PLAY IT NOW!

Programming- Nick Weihs (@NickWeihs)

Art – Ayden Polat (@16bitboss)

Audio – Chris Nash (@FMBigBoss)

Working on our StepOut was incredibly fun and we learned a lot and fell in love with Ludum Dare.

What follows is an excerpt of the complete post-mortem on Bitserum

The Good

1. We were already familiar enough with unity from previous dabbling that we could work pretty fast. We managed to finish what we think is a decent game and polish it in only 72 hours.
2. I managed to create an atmosphere/environment I really like and am proud of, and had immense fun with doing that. Level design must be my favorite part of the process.
3. I love how music basically made itself, for the largest part I just randomly put sounds together.
4. Ivan (the programmer) loved creating and testing new mechanics, everything past walking and jumping which was pretty basic.

The Bad

1. I feel the music is lacking and wish I had much more time to play around, learn and polish ambience track creation.
2. We hated adjusting to Unity’s physics and accepting all the limitations of its native physics engine (relative to 2D development)
3. I really wanted just one more level, also more variety in the second level.

I was finally able to make the timelapse. It was kind of a slow process, as there are 22862 frames. At least, that resulted in a nice video with pretty much my desired speed (if I could, I’d probably like to take one screenshot each second… but that would way over the top xD).

Thanks to all who played my game.   A special thanks to all who commented, I really value each comment. 😀

Haven’t played it yet? Why not give it a try? It takes just a few minutes (less than five, really).

Tags: LD27, timelapse

Well, I just got done with my second Ludum, it was a lot of fun, and I had a lot struggles. For one, I didn’t like the theme much at all. I was really pushing for something more, broad, or a place or something. I was really pushing for Space. Oh well, I did it anyway. (I am really glad that it was not You Must Leave It Behind or anything like that. I would have not done if it was anything too dark, I can’t deal with that kind of thing.)  I am glad I entered and I learned A LOT. I only had about three weeks experience with C++ going into this, I knew that was a little bit too little for making games, but I made it work. (I would not recommend making a game without a month of experience prior. Hahah.) My game is pretty buggy, and Level 3 was a nightmare. Here is what I learned in the hopes of making your next LD better:

The things that went well:
-Aside from getting off the ground, C++ and my compiler worked almost perfectly for a solid 48 hours.
-I was able to come up with a good amount of ideas right of the bat. (Not so many that I didn’t know which to pick, but enough that I had options.)
-In addition to C++, just a side-note: bools worked with extreme ease.
-Ratings, I have rated 50 games in the last two days. In return I have gotten 35 ratings. Mostly positive. (Thanks, guys!)

-Text based, my game (if you didn’t know) is text based.) This gave me the opportunity to avoid things, like: Art, collision, etc. I am glad I did this. Although it may have pushed down ratings, it made nice and easy to code. (Well, comparatively.)

Things that did not go:
-Getting the menu up was dumb as all hell. I do now get what I was doing wrong, but still. (Wasted a good five hours debugging.)

-Leave your computer on…I wasted a good 15 minutes overall waiting for Windows to boot. Dumb Windows.

-Plan, plan, and then PLAN AGAIN. All of the levels were done, in the heat of the moment, and not planned at all. I had basic ideas, doors, buttons, keys, etc planned, but not a lot more.This was a HUGE mistake and if I was redoing this LD, I would have planned all of the levels in advance and then coded them, and debugged in order. what I ended up doing was coding the base, then doing each level when it came time. I did this in a poor fashion, and I will plan next time.

-Bugs, As I did code the levels at 3:00AM most of the time, having just made the level ideas, the levels are pretty buggy. My process for this was literally: think >> code >> debug >> code, repeat. This pretty much just lead to a lot of bugs because I would only test the bits I had just added. (I have actually only play the whole game maybe….Three times? Sorry.)
-Windows/Mac, I don’t have a mac, so, I just made a .exe and I am (working on) getting a .app out. There are some problems with that, probably won’t happen. Sorry.

In Conclusion:

LD is a lot of fun, but it is important to prepare accordingly beforehand, and make sure that most of your tools, and things are in order. It is a good idea to try out some test projects beforehand. Think the theme might involve sound? Learn how to make sound!

If you want to play my game, you can do it HERE it is a text based adventure dungeon crawler. Enjoy guys, and best of luck to you.

(I will be releasing a post-mortem version of the game in a few weeks, more levels, less buggy, better tested. I would release it sooner, but I am pretty burned out right now, sorry. Hahah.)

Are You?: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25461

When I was actually able to hit submit on my game it felt good to have finished something I started.  Here is a look at some of my thoughts after the fact.

The Good:

1.  The Story.  For the most part, I was happy with how the story came together.  I thought it was engaging enough have people see it through to the end.

2.  The Art?  I honestly didn’t have much of a skill set to work with when it came to the art.  For the competition, I tried to do something simple that wouldn’t detract from the story I was trying to tell.  I think the black and white pixel art was able to do that.  The character art was a challenge, especially trying to show the passage of time, but again I think it ended up working okay.

3.  Pacing.  I thought the story moved at a good speed, and I am happy with the things I cut out to stop it from dragging to much.

The Bad:

1.  Interactivity.  The biggest issue with the game so far is the lack of player input.  It’s a short game, but giving the player 1 choice does seem a bit lacking.  This was never going to be a “choose your own adventure” style narrative, but I do wish I had worked in little ways the player could have interacted with, and colored the world along the way.

2.  The End.  From my perspective, the final choice seems like an easy one to make.  When I started out on this project, I didn’t want that to be the case.  Which leads into…

3.  Character Development.  In order to make the final decision more difficult, I think I need to flesh out characters more, and allow the player to interact with them.  I also wasn’t super pleased with the way my main female character’s story developed once she moved into the apartment.  It felt rushed, and didn’t fit 100% with how I wanted her to be portrayed to the player.

What’s Next/Next Time:

1.  Moving forward I want to work more on this game.  I want to tell this story in a better way.  Adding in more ways to interact with the world, and giving the player ways to change how their view of the story (and ending) is #1 on my list.

2.  I am definitely going to participate in the next Ludum Dare.  The time crunch forced me to start and finish a story, instead of obsessing over every little detail and never finishing.  Next time I would love to try making a game with a group for the Jam.  That, or maybe try the 48 hour again, and make a better game in this style with all the things I learned this time around.

Thanks,

Dru

I’ve updated the post-compo version of my game to address some of the issues brought up by players:

• You now start with $300, so you can buy a few upgrades right away.
• Combat messages display what’s happening to the robot in the arena.
• Improved character movement in the workshop.
• Hold Shift while clicking to buy (up to) 10 health/armor upgrades at once.
• The escape key will now close dialog windows and return to previous menu screens.

So THAT’S what all those things are!

I’m still working on improvements and I’ll continue to update the post-compo link. Please feel free to check it out and suggest features or report problems.

Just uploaded the final timelapse of my Ludum Dare weekend. Check it out here:

Ludum Dare 27 Timelapse – Barricade

Play and rate Barricade here!