Does anybody know what a good Default Score would be for a game. I am new to Ludum Dare and I am just Wondering.

Does Anybody know a good score?

If you do thanks in advance 😛

Since we only get to explore one idea during Ludum Dare, there are a ton of ideas that get conceived and then immediately tossed. To preserve those, I’m listing some of the one’s that I though of during the compo, and after.

Ten seconds of oxygen

I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t seen this yet. Maybe it was avoided since it seemed obvious to a lot of people. Some kind of aquatic themed platformer, where the character can only hold their breath for ten seconds.

Ten second flop

Credit to Justin who was at the MADE for this idea. You’re a top racecar driver, and you’re contacted by the mob. They let you know that it’d be in your best interests to lose the upcoming race, but to make it look legitimate, you can’t lose by more than ten seconds.

Ten second votes

Stretching the definition of second a bit, you are some sort of legislator in a body of 21, and you really want to get a bill passed. In order to do so, you need to collect 10 second votes from the others by bribery, favors, etc.

Ten second distress call

You overhear and record a ten second distress call. You have to track down the source of the call by listening for clues in the recorded version, and comparing that with the city that you’re in (e.g. train horn in background).

What were some ideas you all ended up passing on?

!WARNING! May contain boobs (LOL, I mean stage 9 contains)! !WARNING!

“Ab Solanum” – Ludum Dare 27 Compo game entry page

So we are few days after Ludum Dare 27. This was my first LD 48 hour Compo and I can say I am really satisfied with my game (above You can see pretty screenshot of stage 3). So far comments are mixed and people commenting are torn between “Great graphics!” and “It hurt my eyes”, I literally have no idea what to think about it 😉

I was working on my game for about 26 hours, I produced exactly 3278 lines of code, 41 graphic sprites, 2 font files, 10 map data files (png files), 9 sound files and 1 music theme 3 minutes 24 seconds long. Ab Solanum was created using Microsoft’s XNA 4.0 (C# language).

Things I used creating my game:

• IDE : Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express
• Graphics : GIMP 2.8
• Sounds : BFXR
• Music : PixiTracker

I think 26 hours is my maximum. Starting Saturday after 11 hours of coding I could not concentrate enough to produce anything worth a dime so I started creating music. I did not know PixiTracker before, but after some time I loved it sooooo much! Finally I came out with nice music theme fitting my game exactly how I could imagine it! I got some really kind comments about my music as well, thanks for that! You people are really awesome!!

When I started to think what kind of awesome game I should create I came up with wonderful idea… I wanted to incorporate all of the final round themes keeping “10 seconds” as the main one. One game stage would be all about one selected theme which would give whole nice shiny 20 stages. So it is Sunday, I am finishing 6th theme and suddenly realizing it is already 3 pm and… “well I am f*&#ed”.. Ultimately I came up with only 10 of them, pitty, it would be real blast if I had enough time to finish them all!

Thanks for reading, I will go back to rating games now, there are over 1800 more to go for me (oh my). I will be flattered if some more of You will play and rate my LD48 Compo game! Here is the link: CLICK

First of all : here’s my entry, since this is what I’m going to talk about.

Now : How the fuck did this happen ?

Warning, it turned up to be a long story (but there are pictures and all, so it might be fine)

Chapter 1 : The « Awesome » idea

Usually, on Ludum Dare (it’s my 7th), I go to bed early on Friday, then wake up early on Saturday to discover the theme and think about it in a cafe (I’m in France, so the theme is announced at 3 a.m). This time was a bit different though : instead of going to bed, I went to the bar and had some pints. Then some wine. Then some more pints. Maybe a wee too many pints.

I was feeling the theme would be « 10 seconds », so I started thinking about it…and then I had this awesome idea :

What about…10 seconds…in the life of a ROCK ?!

Uh oh…

AWESOME, isn’t it ?You know…because rocks live a long long time…so what they would consider to be 10 seconds would be a much much much longer time for us….like a whole lifetime…so I would make a very very long game, while most of LD entries would be very short…funny…

…at least when you’re drunk.

I eventually went to sleep at 2h45 (to avoid spoilers), woke up, and saw I was right : 10 seconds was the theme indeed. Haha ! It was 9 am and I already had my game idea (and what a great idea!) This Ludum Dare was going to be piece of cake ! (sarcastic laugh from future me)

Chapter 2 : Hit by a rock, in the face

some mocks-up mixed together

Seriously, my « 10 seconds in the life of a rock » idea wasn’t THAT bad. It wasn’t that much about a rock, but about what was happening around it, and what was happening was the whole lives of two human being, meeting on the beach as kids, playing around the rocks, growing up, falling in love, having quickies behind the rock, having kids, whom would play around the rock, getting old, remembering when they were playing around the rock, dying, mourning, dying. And that would be only 10 seconds in the life of the rock. A way to show that our human lives aren’t that important after all, or on the opposite that they are important after all…I don’t know.

No, this idea wasn’t that bad…

IT WAS JUST FUCKING STUPID !

But I still think this scene was kind of cool

First of all, I wanted to write 50 scenes for the games : 10 time period (each seconds) with 5 points of view. 50 FUCKING SCENES IN 48H ? Was I still drunk ?!

But yeah, in the end, I could have lowered my ambitions and wrote less scenes, but there was an another big problem :
– A game is supposed to be interactive.

– The player is supposed to be a rock.

Do you see it now ? Is there anything less interactive than a rock ?

Believe it or not, it took me a whole day to realize this.

Oh noes! What I’m making is all fucked up!

At the end of the first day, I stared at my computer screen, full of graphics, full of dialogues, and realized this wouldn’t go anywhere. I gave up, for the first time in my Ludum Dare history, thinking nothing was still better than a shitty unfinished « game »(which is totally wrong by the way).

I went to the bar, drank more pints.

Chapter 3 : The providential tweet

I spend the next morning trying to convince me that it was ok, that failing at a Ludum Dare didn’t mean I was the worse loser, that I didn’t even care after all…and it worked. I had given up on my LD game and it was Ok. That is precisely what I wrote in a tweet at noon. Then I had several kind answers telling me « come on ! Make something anyway », « try something else », « I want to play your game », but I didn’t really care because, as I said, it was OK now.

Until @leafthief replied to me

@Oujevipo Move on to a shorter, smaller game. I myself am starting just now – so let’s do this! http://t.co/s5xKlYLf7z

— Stefan (@leafthief) August 25, 2013

I don’t really know leafthief, I only played one of his games and really enjoyed it, but the day before I told him off (not seriously) for not making a game for this LD, telling him a wedding during the week end wasn’t a good enough excuse (when, in fact, it is). And now, he was telling me he eventually started working on a game ? Ooooh I felt very bad. If he could make a game in half a day at a wedding, I could make one in half a day in an awesome LD real life gathering filled with awesome people. (But now, in the end, I’m sad to see Leafthief didn’t submit anything)

Chapter 4 : Still too ambitious

I wonder if they’re really reading…

So I started working on something totally different, from scratch (or almost from scratch : I kept the characters’ faces). The scene would take place in a cafe where two strangers meet and, maybe, eventually, fancy each other. The player would play the boy, of the girl, and all he’ll have to do is to control his looks with WASD (looking up, at his journal, at her, away from her). I wanted the player to create his own story, by catching the other one’s eye, staring at her, or avoiding her eyes. I wanted the story to be totally mute, and the player totally free to imagine it. The ten seconds would be the ten moves of the player (no timer), then the game would be over. If you have played the submitted game already, you would recognise some similarities with the first scene, except I wanted the whole game to be the first scene, and I wanted it to have many path, many endings, and thus…many sprites.

“this will do for now”

For example : the boy could stare at he tits, then she would give him a dark look, then he would be embarrassed…or he could read his journal, be astonished by the news, and miss an opportunity, once again, I had many ideas, and felt it would be great. But once again, I was too ambitious. I only had like 12 hours left, and even if all the sprites were already drawn, I didn’t know how to create a good system to manage every stories. 10 moves x 4 possible moves…that’s a lot of possible path, more than 1.000.000 in fact. Once again, I was discouraged, and once again, I gave up.

Chapter 5 : Don’t. Think. Make.

…but this time it only lasts a couple of minute. I had to make a game. I transformed the original idea in a cooperative multiplayer game, each player playing a character’s eyes, I didn’t script any « story » except the characters blushing then smiling when they look at each other, I decided this was the way to win…and I still had some hours left.

*spoiler*

So I transform the whole game idea in a warioware-like game, I created two more mini-games, still happening at the cafe (lighting a cigarette, taking each other hands), and added a twist in the end to make it funny and fit the theme a bit more….aaaaaaaaaand it was done. Just in time (except there was an awful bug, but hopefully Laelien helped me to kinda fix it at the last minute. Play his game and cry  )

Epilogue : What’s left

In the end, I’m very proud of At the cafe. Partly because I managed to finish it in time when everything seemed lost, and partly because I think I nailed something, and this is the first scene. The scenes 2 and 3 are shitty, I was just filling the game with content. The 4th part is funny, but it’s just a lousy sex joke. Overall, the game isn’t very good, and for many reason, but that first scene…I think there’s something strong in it, it might not be very well made, but it’s there. And the comments I have so far tend to confirm it. I think the second idea I had, the one with the looks, was the best one, by far, way better than the mini timed games I submitted. I wish I’ve had it at the beginning or the 48h, maybe I would have made something great with it. For the first time, I want to re-work on my LD game, I want to explore this path I might have open, and who knows, maybe I will do (but I’m already very busy with projects)

I know At the cafe won’t be as well ranked as some of my previous LD compo games , and I know why, but I like it much more than most of my previous ones, because it taught me a lot of things, and the most important one is :

Don’t get drunk before Ludum Dare, you stupid !

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem

Hey guys, time for a postmortem on my game 10 Second Spike.  You can check it out here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=8229

So when I first heard the theme, my first thought was: Warioware!  Then I immediately dropped the idea, and thought of something else.  Usually my LD entries are the results of several failed ideas until one finally works, or can be made fast enough to reach the deadline.  This time I worked on my first real idea, and that was 10 Second Spike.  Every ten seconds a trap would be sprung and would need to be avoided.  I thought the idea had potential so I started pixelling.  I made the main character, without hands of course, because I stink at animating hands.  After that I started making tiles, using the tetris-esque style that I had started to really like lately, and made several different palettes for different areas.  Finished most of those and started mapping.

I decided to use spikes as my first trap because, frankly, they were really easy to code.  I had originally intended to do all manner of traps, but as it turned out, I didn’t have enough time for that.

This weekend was my first weekend in college, and as a band geek, it was also the last two days of band camp before practice.  So there went most of the day, and there is the reason I didn’t finish Spike for compo.

So yeah, that’s enough “backstory.”

Overall I’m pleased with how it came out.  The game itself is kind of a jerk, reminiscent of I Wanna Be the Guy, which was more or less how I intended it.  There is no indicator as to where the spikes pop up, and touching a spike leads to instant death, so I understand how it could be frustrating.  However, I did want to create a semi-creepy aura of paranoia, which I think I was moderately successful with achieving.  One has to tread carefully and remember where all the spikes are in order to get to the end.

As far as the art goes, I’d say it is one of my better looking games.  So yeah, it’s an art style of games I like to play, so I was inspired by that and used it in my game.

The music was okay.  I originally was going to go with making a countdown clock, but I thought that music might better fit the tone more, and once the player figured out when the music was going to end they would have to sit through the couple of tense seconds before the spikes would appear.

So, in conclusion, 10 Second Spike is a hard game, but that’s okay in my book.  I personally like hard games, and that sensation of being victorious is much more pronounced in beating a hard level of game.  I feel much more accomplished beating a level in Super Meat Boy, than I do after beating a level of Kirby’s Epic Yarn, for example.

Also, I’m planning to make a full version of this game.  How long that will take, or if it will happen is questionable, but I’m going to give it a shot.  I’m going to increase the graphical and animation quality to make it a much more lush and vibrant world of death.  There will also be different types of traps, and it will not be instadeath.  Most of the time there will be some sort of indicator of the presence of spikes.

I’ve started redesigning the main character, so here’s what he looks like at the moment, although that will probably change.

From left to right, there is the current character, the new character, then the new character wearing a backpack.

I’ll try to post more regularly on twitter as long as progress is being made, so if you are interested in the game, feel free to follow me.

Until next time,

toaster

This was my first Ludum Dare, but my fourth 48 hour game jam. in the past couple of months. I think now I’ve more games made in game jams than not! I always work flat out, and push myself, but I think I’m pretty good at knowing my limitations (which there are many). I’ve never not finished.

My game was called Ten Second Clone. Every ten seconds you are cloned, and that clone moves how you moved and shoots when you shot for the 10 seconds before it came into existence. You can play it here.  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25172      

It was always going to be a challenge having the enemy just act out your movements without making it easy for you to make it easy on yourself. And for the Ludum Dare version, I failed. You can get about 30 kills just by standing on the spot. It takes too long to get going.  However, I have been working hard on the sequel 5 Second Clone! There are more changes than just the timing. Now you can’t shoot through clones so you can’t just line them up and get them one after the other. After 3 shots the clone disappears for good. Now if the clones reach the bottom of the screen, you turn into a clone of your clone!

If you played Ten Second Clone, and quite liked it but thought, it was a bit slow, you really need to try 5 Second Clone http://www.dreamofsleeping.co.uk/games/fivesecondclone/ Obviously you can’t rate that game as part of the competion, but there it is anyway.  I’m going to be adding more to it. Hopefully better graphics, some sound effects when you die, but I think it’s a fun game now.

Hello again!

Thank you to all those who gave me advice on the optimisation on Pressurized, but especially to Lightmare Studio for actually taking a look at my Source to find the problem! 😀

Thanks to them, my game’s one potential “Deal Breaker” has been fixed!

File size has been reduced from 110 MB to 16MB

So if you have been put off by my file size or simply haven’t played my game, I would greatly appreciate any feedback given 😀

Here is my Entry!

Many many thanks,

PS: Check out Lightmare studio’s entry here.

Taha

Here’s a video I put up of my LD27 / LD48 entry, Ten Seconds of Thrust.

You can play it here: bit.ly/14wot3t

Anyone know how to capture the sound from a screen recording in Quicktime on OSX?  I can’t for the life of me figure it out–all I can do is get it to record the microphone, which is not what I want.

Anyway–can you avoid being a SPACE FATALITY??!?!!?!?!

Post some comments on features you’d like, I’m going to make this into a full blown game over the next few months.

Hey guys !

I just published a web version on our game, “Fragment”. Works well with WebGl, thanks to LibGdx libraries !

However, this version is still experimental. Music can become unsync with graphics And you really have to listen the music to win this game !

Click here to play NOW ! (Web)

Don’t hesitate to vote and post feedbacks here  You rocks !

Created a page for the game which will be developed further

http://www.indiedb.com/games/theres-a-hook

Since I’m lazy to make a gameplay video, caranha made a (video) review of my game… So I thank him a lot for this

And for those who want to play this game:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=2043

And also play caranha’s game
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=7847

That’s all, okay let’s play more games.

Hello All,

My friend SineRider and I got together and made a remix of the music from my entry for LD27. It’s quite over the top compared to the subtleness of the game, because music. The best way I can think of describing it is “galaxy rock” or “slow trance.” Free download, so enjoy!

Tags: music, remix

The Run is done for a few days now so I’ll better write my post mortem before I forget the small hurdles. First, let me introduce The Run shortly.

You are playing a small slime and your goal is simple. Get to the rooms exit by walking on floor, walls and even the ceiling. The facility your trapped in is in a bad state so be aware of toxic liquids. Be also aware of traps, since defense systems will detect you after 10 seconds in a room and will be trying to stop you from reaching the end. Though, it is possible to finish the levels even when the 10 seconds are over. How fast can you beat all five rooms?

Play and rate now

What went right

• Head first
  I started this Ludum Dare game by doing most of the game-design before writing any code to save me from thinking about basic decisions during coding. This worked out great and I could focus on the code while coding.
• Doing pixel art
  Doing 8×8 pixel art again was the best thing I could do. I finished the assets pretty fast and I’m pretty happy about how it turned out. With more time for preparation I’ll may try WebGL next time.
• Fixing the screen size
  Not having to care about dynamic screen resizing like in my LD25 game was a huge simplification since I could expect a fixed resolution when coding. Next time I’ll may be flexible again but for this game it was perfect since the screen size equals the size of one room.
• Gameplay decisions
  One hing that was clear to me when I started working on this games code was that I didn’t wanted to make a hard 10 seconds limit. That’s why I implemented the traps. The original goal was that every room has a prisoner that you CAN free for the price of losing time and having to get around the traps. The prisoner was later replaced by bottles since I ran out of time for doing their sprites. The controls were doing well except of relying on physic.
• Flexible input system
  I’m happy with the way I implemented the input handling. When a key is pressed or a button on a known gamepad (and gamepad mode is enabled) these are mapped to actions like “left”, “right”, “jump” or “use”. So the entities don’t care where the input come from or how it is proceeded, they only need to check if they need that action. This would allow touchscreen controls as well.

What went wrong

• Leveldesign in the text editor
  My biggest mistake was to make no ingame level-editor. To edit a level I had to Alt+Tab to the editor, change a letter and Alt+Tab back to the browser and reload the whole game. A simple toggleable editor mechanic would’ve result in much more levels. Another problem was that I started doing levels 3 hours before deadline.
• Rely on physics
  When I decided to do the whole stick to the wall mechanic I did not thought it would be this hard. I had to rewrite the players physic three times before it got kinda bug-free. I also made the mistake not to give it away to players early. Thus some players had problems with the controls I didn’t see.
• Redoing the basics
  Another mistake I did was to implement the state manager and thus the menus and screens during the last six hours. I also missed the chance to do a real statistics screen (with death counts and such) simply by losing time due to the initial plan to not use libraries covering the basic stuff like bitmap fonts, state managers and controls. I’ll either use an existing library or do my own next time.
• Not finishing features
  The game has basic support for XBox 360 controllers, though this requires manual activation. It would’ve been much better if I had integrated game controls selection into a start screen (“Press space or start…”). Same applies to some in-game features like death counting by reason and the collectible bottles that have basically no use at the current state.
• Keeping it silent
  One major mood breaker is, that I didn’t create any soundtrack to the game is completely silent. A little loop would’ve helped the game to build a more intense atmosphere.
• Naming
  The Run is too unspecific for this game, since the character is a slime without legs. May I should start naming my game next time not in the very last hour.

Tags: post-mortem

Play the post-compo version here!

Just a quick post to say “Escape the Underground” has a post-compo version released, based on Jools64 and N0_Named_Guy’s feedback.

Added:

• Subtitles to introduction (removed voice over, it was rather annoying)
• Death counter
• Feedback when the stompy thing hits you
• Level starts when you press a key, instead of straight away

Fixed:

• Checkpoint spawning in ground sometimes
• Factory levels slightly more difficult

In future versions, I’ll be adding loads of cool stuff, including gamepad support, key configuration, difficulty levels (make it easier for noobs :P), easier to control, variable jumping, and fancy menu backgrounds.

Thanks for playing, and if you haven’t already, please rate my game? I will get round to rating a lot more games soon!

-The Good:

The Music:  “I think it went well this time round – used VCR6 for a bit more freedom, gained a little understanding of FamiTracker “music theory” and will definitely be using in future. Music could’ve looped a bit better. Will NEVER compose in beats of five again.” ~MK, composer

The Gameplay:  For once we managed to create a game with a nice difficulty curve, as the bosses got progressively harder, but not too hard.  We had also added challenge modes, for a more difficult experience if the game was too easy(And lets not forget easy mode, which comes complete with a pretty pink ribbon and a keyboard cat cover).

The Tools:  We knew our tools from the start, even if Jello didn’t have a proper level editor.  This allowed us to be more proficient whilst creating the game.

The Death:  After creating the third boss, we had noticed an unintended effect:  If the boss dies from a bullet, he dies red.  We decided to make this a thing and when the boss dies(except for the second boss, who falls).  This is also partially true with the blue representing laser charge, but this was an intended effect.

-The Bad:

The Crash:  Early on we had discovered a crash, which was seemingly random.  At first we thought little of it, since it was kinda rare, but it progressively got more annoying.  In an attempt to fix it, we changed the world system to something more state based.  The crash was still there.  Since the crash only occurred when changing worlds, we had assumed it had something to do with it.  We were not far from it either, after a little debugging we had found that it occurs when streaming music from the disk, so instead we changed all of the music to static.

The Name:  As with most other games, we had a little trouble naming it, so we called upon our friend Suyo to aid us.  After a few minutes Suyo came up with “Supersonic Attack Squad,” and went from there.

-The Ugly:

The Idea:  We spent a good amount of time on the first day coming up with ideas.  We said no platformers, since we didn’t have a proper level editor.  After a few hours we decided on a boss rush sort of game, except all of the bosses were beaten in ten seconds.  We probably spent way too much time coming up with the idea when we could have been making it

The Cookies:  On the second day, we became addicted to cookie clicker.  All three of us.  Don’t ask why, it just is.  It hampered our efforts by quite a bit, and we had to change from the original planned 6 bosses to only 4.

Graphics:  The system used for AFD was much different than our previous games and didn’t have the usual restrictions. This led to a lot of free-hand which is something Ace should never ever ever never do. Ever.

Composer’s comments: hi would you like the FTMs to poke around with in FamiTracker yes you would here are the FTMs

Well our first LD is over, we’ve made our first ever game together as a team, and we’ve got the obligatory platformer out of our systems

Technical stuff:  Made with Haxe 3.0, Flixel, Flashdevelop, GraphicsGale, sfxr, Autotracker, Excel.

The level that no one can complete!

What Went Right

• We finished a game in 72 hours without killing each other!
• The toolchain worked really well, Haxe, Flixel & FlashDevelop felt very familiar despite not using any of them before the warmup.
• Use of Microsoft Excel (hardcore mode!) as a level editor.  There are obviously some very good tile map editors out there, but learning them would have taken way more time than setting up a spreadsheet with some conditional cell colouring.
• Bringing in a third person for brainstorming and powerup graphics on the first day.  Thanks Graham!
• We anticipated that the main source of bugs would be unexpected interactions between multiple powerups, and set time aside to get this working properly.
• Almost all of the powerups we came up with initially made it into the final game.
• Staging the powerups and level progression to ease the player into mechanics without explicitly telling them. Combining different powerups gave us a clear sight of what obstacles a level needed to have, and a convenient “to-do” list for the 20 levels we built.
• Targeting web – easier for people to play off the bat, rather than having to install or download or compile, it just works on most platforms.  Having never built a Flash game before, this was surprisingly painless.
• The platformer controls and the level design we thought went well, it felt polished and enjoyable to play, even when getting squished every 5 seconds 😀

Cryptic instructions hidden in the levels

What Went Wrong

• Difficulty with scaling the character & collisions, as well as the timestep changes interacting poorly with the collision logic in Flixel.  Getting it running at 60 resolved most of this, but there are still spots where a random bit of wall will just make you explode.
• Lack of experience with the IDE & HaxeFlixel meant the initial setup wasted about an hour.
• Music was a bit of an afterthought, we tried a few different packages to create the music eventually settling with Autotracker.py.
• Collisions. The collision logic wasn’t quite doing what we expected it to, and we wasted time re-implementing certain collision features that were already present in Flixel.
• We had smooth interpolation for the scaling of the character, but had to take it out as the player kept getting stuck in walls during the scale change. In the end we had to bodge in level-specific fixes.
• Not understanding transparency in GraphicsGale – a lot of time was spent sucking the backgrounds out of sprites using Photoshop.
• While we’re pleased with making a platformer that feels nice to play, the genre is obviously well-worn as a Ludum Dare standard.  We defaulted to this because we knew we could get the game finished in the 72 hours, but it’s kind of old hat to people who’ve been doing LD for a while.

Wheeeeeee!

What We’ll Do Better Next Time

• Familiarise ourselves more with the tools, as well as deciding in advance what software packages we are going to use rather than flailing around!
• Artwork – practice creating artwork for next time, it had been a while since Bob had done any serious artwork and the simple 5 minute sprites that we knocked out were OK, but could have been better. Paul plans to learn some pixel art techniques too!
• We need to have alternatives for different game types, HaxeFlixel was good for rapidly building a 2D game, but it would have been nice to have the option of 3D.
• Work out how to use Flixel properly, rather than having to hack bits of code together to bend it to our will.
• Get together some flexible game ideas that we can adapt to the theme, instead of just defaulting to a platformer.

LINKS:

Please play our game, and let us know what you think!

Watch our timelapse video!

Play these awesome games that we’ve tried over the last few days!

•  Tracewire
•  Explosion Time
•  Vampire the Buffet Slayer

Tags: flash, Flixel, haXe, jam, postmortem, timelapse

Well, our first Ludum Dare Jam is behind us now, and even though it didn’t quite work out we still managed to gobble together something (almost) playable, or hopefully atleast enjoyable.

I was really disappointed that I couldn’t make the physics work and so I upgraded the game to use Box2D (my second venture into Box2D programming, first was yesterday!) and guess what; it makes things almost too easy! Here is the link to a (windows) build that is much closer to the vision we had in mind when we set out to make this game. Hopefully we can take the things we learned and apply them in Ludum Dares to come!

What went right:

• The story. We came up with something that fit with the theme and was at the same time quite enjoyable.
• We knew our tools. No extra time was spent learning our tools. It might’ve been useful to grap Box2D earlier though when things started looking pretty grim regarding the gameplay…
• We managed to make something, even though it wasn’t anything special!
• The art got a lot of praise in the comments so I guess that went alright.

What went left… I mean wrong:

• Scheduling. I left the collision code for the last day along with polishing and minor additions, bad choice since I hadn’t really done any complex / physically (somewhat) accurate collisions before. Maybe I also overestimated my capabilities.
• Planning. Especially the gameplay should’ve been planned more thoroughly, and we should’ve tested the basic gameplay ideas more to see if it would be any fun.
• Testing. While writing this post a friend of mine spotted a bug in the intro / outro. Just because I have seen the intro working many times already doesn’t mean it won’t break when the code is altered.

Tags: Mortem, Post, postmortem

I really don’t like the word Post Mortem. As to me,  it implies the project is dead.  I think,  it is something you do once the project is complete and either a success or a failure.  That way you can reflect on what you did, and improve or add another trick to your bag to be used in other projects.   It seems that in terms of projects created in this competition, it is only the beginning where your creation can go.  Personally speaking, I have found Ludum Dare to be a great way to spring board accelerated game development.  I believe Cherry Bomber has great potential to be a cool, fun, and hopefully successful mobile game(Ive already started testing)… If at the least web game somewhere that people will enjoy playing.

Why would we spend the greater part of 48 to 72 hours glued to a computer toiling away?  We like to make games?  Yes, of course…. but by no stretch of the imagination is it easy… at least not for me.  I think the real reason is because we want to share those crazy thoughts and ideas we have in our minds with other humans… and make a connection… And this is a great platform.  It also cant be under stated that we want to be successful.  We like making games, and I am sure we all aspire to be able to do that as a means to our financial well being.

This was my first Ludum Dare.  I am astounded at the number of entries submitted.  Actually I find it somewhat intimidating that the competition is so high.  To me this signifies a real change in the games industry.  I think the production bar is low enough that large teams for development are really not an option anymore.  This is actually a great thing…. It means that we all have the power to create the thing that we have been imagining for so long…  So let’s do it.

We are Indie, we are strong.

Wallpaper of our team by michax

Here it is! Thank you for keeping up our passion for this game!

voting page:  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=17178

The Intro

My first Ludum Dare – then suddenly my first Ludum Jam. Let’s be honest – this didn’t work out, but the end result was worthwhile, nonetheless. I’ve done a few jams before, but I’m basically still a baby programmer – still a lot to learn.

The Good

* Art – This came together fairly well and the submitted experience looks rather nice (folks other than me like it too!). Palette and colour temperature worked, lighting was fairly successful. I’m very happy with the combo of pixel art and PS1-level polygon modelling – I think this’ll be worth pursuing in the future.

* Particles – Shuriken, I could marry you. The others will say you should be filed under Art, but what do they know? You’re special. You have only to smile and suddenly there is Animation and atmosphere. *sigh*

* Programming – Again, nae bodder. No real programming challenges, but some good practice. Lots of animation-by-way-of-code, which is a fast way to give a scene a nice sense of life.

* Ludum Dares! Ludum Jams in disguise! – I’d given up after the first 48 hours, then read somebody’s post where they mentioned that they were switching to Ludum Jam rules. And suddenly I could see – THERE WAS TIME! Glorious, bounteous, forgiving gulfs of time!

All of which makes…

The Bad

…all the more bitter.

* Inspiration – Read the theme and thought oh, that’s fun, that reminds me of the Lars Von Triers movie ‘The Five Obstructions’, I wonder if I can make a game based around the first obstruction? No, that’s a mad idea. I’ll sleep on it and have millions of better ideas tomorrow.

Except I didn’t.

Normally I have hundreds of ideas for jams and this theme – Ten Seconds – was an especially good one! But – NOTHING. All I could think of was trying to build a multi-camera, multi-character adventure game where the player would have to layer and stack character interactions as control cycled between characters on a 3.3333333 second interval.

But, Rev, that’s a CRAZY idea for a gamejam!, you exclaim. What about the scope?

* Scope – And you’re right. It makes me angry that I’ve fallen for this again. Approaching Ten was clearly a two-artist/programmer man job. And I knew this going in. But damned if I could think of any other worthwhile ideas (at the start. Natch half-way-in, I could think of hundreds). Rrrrg.

* Design – So I didn’t even really like this idea and I was always trying to think of a way out of the problem… Which distracted me on design, which meant I lost time each day to just sitting down with a notepad and scribbling. That said, eventually I came up with a very slight story (GAH a story-led game for a gamejam, bad idea, bad idea) which I was reasonably happy with. By this time, things were pretty much doomed – I’d spent far too much time dawdling around with the art and fiddly little details and I was unlikely to get the gameplay in – hence the published version of Approaching Ten.

The Conclusion

The lessons learned here are: 1) BRAINSTORM HARDER at the start and only start on a game idea you’re really excited about.  2) If you have to go with an adventure game, don’t go to the computer until you have your story and puzzle design. 3) This art style is promising. 4) SCOPE HARDER.

…Still. Can’t wait for the next one. =)

Yours,

–Rev