I’m just going to add to a OneGameAMonth Project I started later last month. In fact, I plan on taking my Hexagon game and adding a candy making mechanic to it for this month’s project.
It’s not anything fancy, but whenever you left click, all of the hexes turn green; right click – turn hexes red. I’m going to implement a way to detect the bounds of individual hexes next. 😉
I downloaded Android bundle and set up my Linux machine with Eclipse. I was able to run Hello World on my Galaxy S2. Hello Java. I really have to remember all the Java stuff as I haven’t used it since 2002 or something like that.
Looking at all the 2D/3D OpenGL stuff, it looks like it would be a good idea to use some toolkit/library to build the game. I got some free licenses for Unity3D at NordicGame 2013, but those do not include rights to release on Google Play, so I guess I’ll skip Unity for now. I’m now looking into CoronaSDK and some other libraries.
When I first saw that there’s some October Challenge on LD page, I thought I don’t have a time for this… But then I read the rules and realized that I am already working on a game that fits this challenge! It’s a flash game I started to make in July and I already have planned to publish it on Kongregate this month, and eventually earn a few bucks. I must say that participating in last two LD’s (#26 and #27) was a big motivation for me to keep working on my game (not to mention the experience I gained). The thing is that this game is already about 95% done – I just need to design last two worlds and do some final polish – but I hope it is still ok for the October Challenge.
Well, something about the game now. The title is
and it is some kind of shooter/defense game. Basically you are the giant, ancient, magic eyeball and have to fight against hordes of different enemies that come in waves (there would be 10 worlds, 6 waves in each). After each wave you visit the shop and buy weapons – and that is the most important element of this game. Diffirent weapons have diffirent powers and strike areas, so you have to choose the most suitable weapons to deal with different enemies types and their configurations – and this is the key to victory. Sounds easy, but you usually you don’t have much time to think about strategy when you are surrounded by enemies. Enough of speaking, here are some screenshots:
Level selection screen
Some in-game screenshots
Statistics displayed after each world
Bestiary
and weapons book.
I think I will publish this game in about two weeks – so stay tuned!
Tags: flash, flashpunk, october challenge, the ancient eye
So, some backstory from last year first:
I entered the October Challenge last year with my first commercial game Super Grid Run and finished submitting the game to Google Play and Apple late January (late or what, huh?) It went down really well with the android marketplace and is still selling a copy or two every day. An updated version is coming out at the end of this month for the Gamestick console as a featured release title which is fantastic, I never thought this would have happened!
If you’re one of those people who are on the fence about entering the October Challenge, I reccommend you give it a go, even if you finish late like I most definitely did. Going through the publishing and marketing post-game making is quite an experience, submitting your game to review sites is always a bonus, just don’t, DON’T go for any of those dodgy “pay-for-review” ones.
There are loads of resources out there that can help you out with getting your game out there, a quick search for something along the lines of:
“Top [insert platform here] Review Sites” or “Youtubers who cover indie games” May well gain you some unexpected exposure!
Also. I’m in for this again this year, it’s a blast and I ‘m working on a retro shooter, targeting mobiles this time around, more details will be posted most nights on my twitter, http://twitter.com/refreshcreation/
Have fun making games everybody, you’re awesome!
Hey everyone. So I did some more thinking, and I’m not sure about my last idea (as stated before) due to the timeframe. But then I ended up getting hit with something else that I’m now considering. I’ll copy some of what I posted on my blog today:
“I already shared one of my ideas on the LD blog (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/09/30/second-wind/), but I’m a little concerned about the size of the project in terms of getting it done in a month. But today, this new idea hit me. I would be sticking closer to some stuff I know I can get done, particularly graphically and musically (I still need to work on these skills). My idea is Pixel Ninja: Reset.
Why “Reset”, you ask? That is the main concept behind the game. PN:R would be a platformer much like Pixel Ninja, but with a more linear level structure as opposed to the survival schematic. As for the “Reset” part, that is one of your Ninja’s key abilities. At nearly any point in time when navigating a level, your player can use the Reset Code. It does pretty much what it sounds like: it resets the entire level EXCEPT for your player’s status and position. That means obstacles, enemies, hazards… nearly everything. I think this has some crazy potential to it; this could range from simple resets to restore a fallen platform to a more impactful reset that puts all doors and bridges back to their original locked/unlocked state (for better or worse). Those are just examples. Imagine the creative situations that could ensue!”
I like this idea, and I think I can handle the graphical and musical side of things too. Any comments? Hopefully I’ll make a decision soon and get the motor going!
Also, for those who don’t know my original Pixel Ninja game: http://photongamedev.wordpress.com/games/
I’m in for this years October challenge I’m looking to start, finish, and sell a simple game. I’m still in early brainstorming but I will use Unity and want to release on Mac / PC at the minimum.
Last year for the October challenge I polished up my Ludum Dare 24 game Panspermia which took longer than I thought it would and released it for iOS and Android in mid December earning my $1. I contacted several blogs and despite follow up from a couple smaller blogs never was featured. I think the majority of my sales were word of mouth or random stumbling. Sales peaked around release with friends and family picking it up and sharing it with others, but petered out over the course of this year to maybe 2 – 4 sales per month.
Panspermia on Google Play
Panspermia on the iOS App Store
I’m still thrilled that I was able to get a product polished enough that I felt good putting a price tag on it, and even had some people I’ve never met pay me for it.
I’m hoping to release another game this time around. With any luck and what I’ve learned since last year it will have a bit more success but even if it just gets one sale I’ll be very happy.
This MLD45 coincided with my girlfriend and I acquiring a freshly baked Puppy!
We’ve been in a perpetual state of pee dodging, sock changing, fragmented sleep, and overdosing on cute.
Still eager to participate but with diminished mental capacity, I tricked a friend into ‘just making a game’ together. Bwoehahaha!
He occasionally sprites you see, but lacked a coder to get things out there. Each Ludum has been a great boost to everything I needed boosted, so figured he might enjoy it as well.
Out of this collaboration Sword, Stealth and Sausage was born, is a top down dungeon crawler/puzzler with a focus on a class switching mechanic to solve puzzles and a disturbing overdose of sausages.
Looking at all the other entries MLD45 entries it didn’t feel right submitting the game. It’s not exactly a text based Pac-Man. Instead we’ve decided to give it a proper polish and release it separately. It’s progressing great so far!
Tell us what you think!
Dev banter and some (low resolution Twitch.tv) gameplay:
Coding timelapse:
What do you think, should we use it for the October Challenge?
So I just woke up in the middle of the night, and the first thing that pops into my head is a awesome name for the game I’m working on for the October Challenge, Candymonium! I am also doing the One Game a Month challenge as well so…… themes rock.
Any way, a little bit about Candymonium. It will be an action RPG where you take on the role of one of four protagonists that just happen to be trick or treaters, among them a vampiress, lycanthrope, mummy, and a witch. These young champions will have the fright night of their lives as Candymonium rises from the depths, converting the much beloved town into a candy filled hell on earth.
Looking around the net for ideas, and browsing Android forums, I found an ad for Revenge of the Titans. Cool game with retro graphics and nice animation. I can do retro graphics. So, instead of monsters, aliens would descent from space into your backyard… well…
No! Backyard does not seem like a good idea. I guess I’ll need a new game name as well. I have two ideas here:
Not very exciting titles? Oh, well. I hope something better will come to me as I’m making the game.
DOING IT
Most of the game I currently have is done, I just need to juice the hell out of it so it looks like a real thing. First things first, I need to figure out a good way to switch between screens.
Now I just need to stop watching so much breaking bad and just dev.
So, I can now play sound in C++, neato. Sadly I am using the Windows header, still looking for a way to make it cross platform. Maybe I can find a clever way to do it. Anyway, I am not doing the October Challenge because of school and things, and I missed out on the MiniLD, keep you guys updated. I am still learning more and more about C++ and OpenGL, so maybe next LD I will have sound and graphics. Who knows.
Keep you guys updated.
~Blade
Well, we’ve not done so well in trying to do Ludum Dare this year! Let’s change that and take part in the October Challenge.
Raiding my archive of past entries, we’ve decided upon taking Yargh! from prototype to completion, and hammer it on to as many devices as we can.
Those that may remember Yargh! will probably remember the art being somewhat wacky, and that’s something we’re going to be keeping!
So, without further ado, I present Pegleg Pete.
Dance, monkey boy dance!
Pegleg Pete is the backbone of your pirate armada, serving as your ground troops in capturing as many forts, docks and gold mines as quickly as you can.
Capture more than the other players before the time runs out to win, also acquire more gold than everyone else, and perhaps blow everyone’s ships out the water for good measure.
Octopi has been cleaning up my original art, and Pegleg above is an indication of where we are heading. We thought the two frame “dance” animation was mad enough that we just can’t not put it in!
Anyway, we shall keep you updated with our progress, and hopefully we’ll be on our way to shaking our booty at the end of the month!
Tags: arcade badgers, octopi, stuckie, yargh!
A bit late but yep, I’m in.
(Copied from my blog: http://photongamedev.wordpress.com)
So today, I did more brainstorming. I decided to start jotting down the different things that could have an impact on the game if they were reset. Among some of the interesting ideas:
I think, creatively speaking, tactically mixing different elements together in a level will be what causes the player “grief”. “I need to reset, but if I do, that door is going to close on me.” Stuff like that. So the gears are certainly turning!
The end of day 4/21 has come and gone what do I got? A lot.
The other day I went and dusted off one of my old projects and started working on it again. The game is an RPG with RTS and rogue like inspiration. When I came up with the Idea I was just going over cool games I liked and smashing their game mechanics together, this game is the combination of Binding of Isaac and monster hunter and Zelda and Pikmin.
Yesterday and today I spent my time implementing file Loading/Saving and and fixing old features that I stopped working on the game because of. I will leave that part with a screen shot of hoodos.
Have you seen the new episode of Adventure Time?! Train Dungeon!!!?
I can’t tell if you answered that or not… but anyways, Tonight I am going to make a small side project based on the train dungeon!
Wanna watch? GO HERE!
My body is double ready!
Wrote up the code for a title screen and a quit-confrim screen.
It took way longer than it should have, but it works. Now to just put up the mode selection on the title screen. So yeah. First thing off of my todo list. And its only day 3.
Tags: october challenge
I’ll finish my LD#27 compo entry – Candle Man and publish it on Kongregate.
It’s a great challenge for me to actually FINISH one game in my spare time during October. So I’ll strictly follow the K.I.S.S rules:
Keep it simple, stupid.
I’ll spend more time purify the core of the game and polish the game’s FEEL. I won’t add too many levels into this game, but I wish each of them is interesting and challenging.
Honestly I’ve felt off my game the last two LDs. My entries were technically pretty good, but lacked inspiration. I was on the fence about the October challenge, until I got my OUYA. It’s a lot of fun, especially playing mutliplayer games with my girlfriend. It brings me back to the days of having friends over to play console games with each other, and I decided I have the perfect game to make for it:
escausage was my entry for LD21. Each hand controlled one end of a sausage, and you had to get it to the exit before the time ran out. Some levels gave you multiple sausages to control, and as long as a certain percentage of them made it to the exit you would win the level. Although the physics were a little glitchy and the levels were kind of quickly designed, it was to this day the best game I’ve ever made.
In the OUYA remake, Sausage Party, each player will control a sausage as you compete in various game types. Racing to a finish, king of the hill, longest sausage wins(via growth increasing powerups), climb to escape the rising lava survival, etc.
My biggest challenge will be picking up Java development. I’ve only toyed around with it, and in general I have a hard time with languages that have any sort of compile time (because I’m the kind of coder that makes tons of dumb edits until things work) I’ll probably use libGDX for the game engine and a box2D port for physics. Hopefully I can target the desktop for my builds until the basics are in place. It would be great if I could get sublimeText building the project, but will settle for eclipse if it seems to be taking to long to set up.
I want to thank all you guys who’ve brought a game to market for inspiration. It makes me so happy when I see something I recognize from LD on one of the game markets, and I see them quite a lot 
I have been trying to draw some docking bay graphics and it looks like s***. So, I’m diching the “docking bay” idea. The combat will happen in space. Yep, that’s it. Aliens would come from one side of the screen, and you would shoot them before they leave it on the other end. At the bottom there will be some destrucable stuff. Aliens could hide behind that, and maybe you can shoot it down or make holes in it by shooting. Here’s an example with a tower, satellite dish and some other things:
The idea is that you have limited time (say, one minute) to shoot down as many aliens as you can.
Since the game will have a space theme, I’m browsing my font collection, to find some cool gallactic font. So far, ArdourGM looks like the one I’ll use for in-game text like points, option screens, etc.
The graphics above are created using Gimp, and insipred by this nebula tutorial. After reading that and doing some my own tweaks I was able to draw the above picture in a couple of hours. I hate when I lose that much time on a single thing, but this background would be used for most of the game.
(Entire project history is on my blog: http://bigosaur.com/blog/)
I’m seriously considering to participate at the October Contest.
I’m evaluating some idea. The more concrete Idea is to make a shmups.
A vertical shumps, without pixelarts, but with simple 3d models for the ships and backgrounds. I’m not decide yet if the models will have a little animations. I’ll inspire at Shikigami No Shiro II and Ikaruga two of my favorite for this genre.