LD28 December 13–16, 2013

Hot Air Balloons and True Love

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Play it here 😉

Thank you everyone for the feedback and kind remarks, this has been a great first Ludum Dare and I’ll definitely be back! Also thanks to those who suggested I post a GIF of The One.

I’ll be developing this further. :) Short checklist includes bug fixes, ragdoll pilots, and a mobile version! Any suggestions are welcome, just contact me on twitter @ploogle.

How to play Boomerang Blade

During the development period the only person play testing my game was me. Now that I have gotten some feedback I realize that most new players treat the boomerang as a linear projectile weapon that comes back to you. That was not my intention with the game. The boomerang is supposed to orbit around the player killing targets as you dodge out of its path. The goal is to not catch the boomerang. The point system incentives you to kill as many Zombibers in one throw as possible. This is only possible if you keep the boomerang air born between Mobs.
Here is an animated gif of how I meant it to be played:

VorpalBladeSm

The boomerang will accelerate towards you and it will also partially turn towards the mouse. By combining mouse and player movement you can direct the boomerang to specific targets. The challenge of this game is not killing Zombibers but getting the most points by killing them with style.

Comments

18. Dec 2013 · 06:36 UTC
I quite liked the feel of the boomerang. I played this game earlier cause I had made a boomerang game myself and was looking for others who had too, and I really liked the physics of it, how moving out of the way would keep it going. I had no idea it was part of the combo system though, nice! Some Devil May Cry style combo displays would be killer. Hope you expand on this game, even after the compo!

Penguins gone mad – Post mortem

Hello everyone!

I know I’m a little bit late for a post-mortem but those last two days I was very busy and I wanted to write a good one!

I know ludum dare for at least 2 years now but I was never able to join in, mostly because family/friends messing my schedule up. I don’t know why but saying: “I’M DEVELOPING A GAME AND I HAVE 30 HOURS LEFT TO FINISH IT. PLEASE GO AWAY! >:(“ doesn’t work around here. 😛   This time, however , I decided to really cancel everything that come out on my way. After about 5 missed Ludum Dares, I really had to finish one Ludum Dare! And looks like #28 was my lucky number.

On friday I didn’t know for sure what themes were on voting (and I didn’t look out to find new theme battles like Potato x NoPotato ) so I was pretty lost! But when the theme come out I had this weird idea of using exploding penguins somehow. And that’s how my game was born!

 

— Friday night.

On my previous tries on Ludum Dare my workspace was on my bedroom. And what really happened was:

I had an idea -> started programming it -> found difficult to solve bug -> got frustrated -> pretended to be tired -> slept -> lost time -> solved bug -> had another idea -> repeat forever.

And obviously that didn’t work because with this cycle a huge amount of time was lost. However some factors are impossible to get out of the equation. We will always find really hard to solve bugs get frustrated. The problem here is that frustration lead me to “I need to sleep, after sleep this bug will be so much easier to fix” and this statement is not true, at all. But what lead me to think that way?

-> My bed.

I don’t know if that only happens with me, but I’ve found out that the warming environment of bedrooms makes me be amazingly unproductive. It makes me want to play, sleep, eat , enter on twitter/facebook, hang out with friends…anyway… procrastinate in the most different ways. And it’s a unconscious action….

When I realized that (and it took me a while to get it)… I decided to move all my workspace to my living room.  And it worked! I’ve broken the evil cycle! 😀  After that, those two days became extremely productive!!!

734112_763453327002442_1469777796_n

Change workspace = new ideas and increased productivity. The best lesson I’ve had at this compo.

Other thing that I’ve decided to do was to use Actionscript which isn’t a tool that I’m used to work on a daily base. And that was a challenge at first but I really liked how fluid it was programming and using flashpunk was awesome (flashpunk = <3).  

— Saturday and Sunday = Progress

screen 1 -> screen2 -> screenshot3

(Friday night )->(Saturday afternoon) ->(Sunday night)

What went right:

Workspace change  : This change was the turning point for me. It made me get more focused and organized. 

Choosing a simple concept: I normally choose ridiculously difficult concepts for my games and that normally leads to difficult design decisions that take time. I decided to keep a simple mechanic and develop more the humorous and fun side of the game. That freed my time to focus on other things like graphics, fixing bugs and most important having fun with my own game.

Choosing funny subjects: I’ve decided to work with something that would make me laugh  (exploding penguins ). This made me have so much more fun developing this game and with this choice I had almost no tension while making this game. I found myself at sunday 7 am laughing hard when I’ve created the parachute exploding penguins, even after two almost sleepless nights. This made my compo way better.

Time management (almost): Comparing to my other tries, I managed time in a better way. It almost worked completely I did almost everything that I’ve wanted to do. I think that went better because I planned my how I was going to use time and really respected all the work sections. If I’ve decided to make sounds in that time span I really made all possible sounds for that allocated time, no more no less. However I was not able to finish all my tasks.

NO FACEBOOK/TWITTER OR PROCRASTINATING: That really went right. I’ve shut my cellphone of and kept away from social networks and procrastination tools as hard as I could and that really helped me.

What went wrong:

Music: I should have searched for music development tools before compo. I found myself sunday 10pm searching for tools and how to make an interesting soundtrack for my game and…. That didn’t work. Planning on this area that I personally know nothing about is essential for next compos.

Sleep: I got so excited with my progress that I almost forgot to sleep on saturday. I slept from 10 am to 12 am after developing for 10 hours straight . On sunday I forgot again to sleep and went o bed only at 6am and slept only until 9am. In sunday afternoon I was so tired that I literally passed out at 6pm and only I only woke up at 9. This messed up my schedule and progress. I need to give sleep some hours, it’s important! This whole sleep issue destroyed my sleep cycle in such a way that I’m still having trouble to sleep.

Level design : This was the really last thing that I’ve done and I should have spent more time on that. And for my type of game testing rounds/levels really take time. For me I should have mixed engine testing with level testing, I mean I shouldve started earlier developing the round system to test both levels and engine add-ons at the same time.This would have freed my time for other stuff. However, I’m satisfied with the level design result.

 

That’s it 😀
Please consider playing/rating my game! It’s my first LD and I’m really looking foward your comments!

They are extremely important for me and for my next games! :)

Click on the image to play!

screenshot2

 

Well, this is it! I hope you liked this post and ,if you want, please leave a comment about what do you think of my experience!

Thank you all for making this compo awesome! You guys rock :)

flyingpenguinplane

Jam Entry: Junktion

junktionBanner

JunktionWin-2013-12-17-16-50-22-09

Teaming Up

After having a good first time jamming alone for the LD27, I was delighted to hear that quite a few friends were ready to join me for this one.

So my close friend David Satzinger ended up having a local LD Jam at my place for the whole 72 hours with the rest of the team dropping by for many hours.

We sure had a blast!

 

What We Came Up With

It’s you typical reactor-breakdown-and-now-you-have-to-escape-situation with a twist:

You can only have your vision or your ears at a time while avoiding invisible but audible radioactive hazards.

For the full story, just have a look at our entry here.

Headphones are highly reccomended!

All assets were created within the time exclusively for the game (as a selfimposed rule).

 

The Aftermath

We’re quite fond of the result. Especially with the atmosphere.

Sadly we ended up not using some assets and ended up with a smaller world to explore than intended, but we accept that as a fitting punishment for the text book mistake of aiming too high ; ) It’s still the essence of what we intended it to be and we hope you’ll enjoy the experience!

The team dynamics were surprisingly good! Everyone is very enthusiastic about working on a game again, so definitely achieved something for us here.

 

Curious? Check it out!

 
 

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 18th, 2013 at 7:14 am and is filed under LD #28. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Triceratops (short story)

At first it was a a team work, made during the Jam Shaker at Cité des Sciences (Paris). The final result on sunday was a 2D fighting game with dinosaurs but the part where the players should have mixed DNA to create their own dinosaur wasn’t achieved. So the game wasn’t really interesting…

So sunday evening I took the dinosaurs sprites, created a new unity scene,  and made a completely different game, very simple, but with a more polished universe : Triceratops.

Play Triceratops !

triceratops ld28 jacqueslelezard

Some Day – Post Mortem

Some Day

Despite its title as a competition, Ludum Dare is an event mostly there for people to learn from making quick games. My entry for the last Ludum Dare ranked very well at the cost of being a bit too familiar in structure, so this time I resolved to make something more unique and learn more from the experience; in this sense I succeeded, and I suitably created a more flawed game because of it.

 

About

Of my 3 shots at Ludum Dare my entry Some Day is definitely the biggest, and the one I find most interesting. It’s also the most unkempt; buggy and complex to the point where I felt uncomfortable hitting the submit button. You’re given an open area to roam about in and discover for yourself that the objective is to collect the 7 orbs spread throughout. Opposition comes in the form of survival elements, where the player must maintain several values such as health and hunger, while avoiding getting killed by apparent hazards. Nothing is explained about the world, lending everything an unfamiliar quality and further increasing the likelihood of failure. The theme takes presence in the fact that the player can receive one gift a day picked from a random selection of items, and the soft perma-death element. The uses of these items also go unexplained and are sometimes only learned about through wasting them on reception.

 

 

The Beautiful

The cryptic nature of the game is both its greatest asset and setback. Even when the game is confusing or broken there’s a bit of richness in being free to wander and learn in all the chaos. Even if there wasn’t time to keep the game functionally sound and to polish everything, I’d say having so many opportunities for players to create situations unique to themselves counts for something. The most prevalent compliment I’ll get will be on the visuals, which I always appreciate, but at this point often rings hollow as I can’t gauge improvement, nor am I putting much time/thought into it comparatively.

 

The Ugly

There are certain unsafe practices that require a great deal of care to pull off well in a game. A couple of these found their way into the final product, and like omens the unfavorable effects spawned from them; relatively large scale (effort spread thin) and inexplicit objective/properties (some can’t figure out what’s going on) are what plague the game. If I had spent more time constructing/reconsidering the idea and scope these issues could have been avoided. For all the good that may be in the game, the clunk makes it unpleasant to find, and it’s always a bit sour receiving criticism on things you’ve been kicking yourself over already.

 

What’s been reinforced from all of this? Simply that vision is key, that I like making non-constrained experiences,  and that accommodations are necessary for less streamlined aspects of a game, assuming you’re not compromising intentions. Obvious messages perhaps, but they hit hardest coming from an actual product rather than supposition.

 

Thanks for reading. As said, I find what’s here of Some Day to be interesting, so I’m off to see if I can build it into a better and smoother experience.

 

Tags: 2D, compo, postmortem, some day

Comments

18. Dec 2013 · 11:02 UTC
The cryptic nature is a good thing, but for the Ludum Dare when everybody is playing loads of games, I think many don’t have the patience for it.

So are you planning to release it after the Ludum? then maybe I could spend some more time on it.

YOGO Submarines gameplay gif

 

 

I made a gameplay GIF of my game. I had to keep it under 2mb so the colors look a bit ugly (ingame colors are better).

It’s a 2 players game where you need to share earpones ! Try it there.

yogosubmarinesgameplay

 

 

Food Survival!!

Hey! Watch our creation! Food survival is a adventure game! There is not level, but just an increasing difficulty!

Collect pieces and avoid obstacles!

A hungry horde  chasing you!

For jump, press Up, for move to the right or left press directional array left or right! To pause, press escape!

To vote : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=21196

To play : http://turfsms.fr/draft/foodSurvival/index.html

Enjoy it!game game2 game3 game4

“You Only Get One Ship” – A Post-Mortem

You can play it clicking in the image!

What went right
My ability to react:
Actually this was not the theme I expected (the ideal would have been “Death is useful”), but once I learned to adapt quickly to circumstances and had an acceptable idea after thinking for a few hours. From what I read on IRC, many people had no idea what to do until we were already in the final hours of the jam, so I think in that area I can consider myself lucky.

Simplicity:
Thanks to the simplicity of my idea I did not have to use several of the tools that I announced in my entry post.
This allowed me to save a lot of time and I could focus on the KISS principle.

Fun:
I think the game is pretty fun, or at least entertaining. It is challenging without being frustrating and can give you some minutes of fun. Not bad considering that the idea is pretty simple.

The community:
This time I was able to spend more time on IRC.
And you are fantastic. All of you.

What went bad:

Graphics:
THE SHIPS ARE FLYING SUBMARINES!

Graphics:
And are supposed to be spaceships!

Also graphics:
SPACESHIPS!

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem

A Precious Arrow : Post Mortem

Fight monsters and boss with just ONE arrow in A Precious Arrow

sc_1

 

What went right :

Platformer Trauma healing :
Making a platformer is a classic choice for most of us but I was really scared about it because I had a huge failure at LD20.
Back then, I just spent most of my time on high res animation ( by high res I mean 32×32 😀 )  and collisions detections.
I decided use this experience as a lesson and retry. By using only 16×16 tiles and very simple collisions system I was able to do better than my first attempt.

Editor :
I had to choose between notepad levelediting or try to invest time in a basic level editor. I spent a couple of hours on the second solution and I dont regret it.
It mades my game edition a lot easier : I was able to switch to edit mode in any place and each change was saved on a cookie.
At the end I was able to travel, modify game flags and edit world very quickly, it helped me a lot for leveldesign but also had bad consequences ( see later : high difficulty )

Sprite Editing :
With my previous LD entry Four Scepter I learned to use limited color palette. I’m still a bit newbie at this, but it’s already saving me a lot of time and give the game some fine art style ( which is usually not my best ).

Specific monster’s mechanic  :
For this game I wanted most of my monsters to have a specific mechanic and not to be cloned over and over on all screens.
I think it’s what makes shadow of the beast games so special. It makes each screen unique and give the player the will to explore the world.
Of course because I was in 48h jam I lacked time to design all the monsters I wanted and I had to fill up gap with those bugs, bats and frogs. But I still have 4-5 unique monsters and i’m pretty happy about it 😀

What went wrong :

High difficulty :
That’s the main problem. Every comments agree  and I was really unaware of that before I submit the game.
I think I tested the game just bit by bit, without having a vision of the whole. Each time I designed a part I was gaining skills by testing it over and over without realizing how much time people will need to gain those skill without the dev cheat mode.

Unclear goals :
Some of my puzzles can be solved with skills instead of the real solution. That is a very BAD idea. It refrains people from looking the clever solution and reinforce the feeling of a high difficulty game.

Ending sequence :
I spent way too much time on them. I was happy about it,  even had 2x differents ending for the game. The problem started when I realize how difficult the game was and that very few people will actually see them. This is the second time I make this mistake ( first was with LD22 entry : Final Trip Soccer ).

Comments

18. Dec 2013 · 10:56 UTC
I’m not sure the puzzles/rooms were difficult per se.

However the fact check points where rare and discrete is .

As a consequence it makes you redo entire portions of the game increasing the chances to die thus the perceive difficulty.

It’s also what gives the game its old school touch, but may be discouraging for a player who have a “small” game expectation.
18. Dec 2013 · 11:50 UTC
😀 I definitively need to put a washing machine in this game. And a cabbage too.

Monster in My Head, my LD experience

I’m not a fun of long post, so I will make it small (even if I have a lot to say).

That was my first LD experience, I was invited by a friend. What can I say?… it was AWESOME so many great idea, so many great games, and I have learned a lot. My only complain is on me because I wasn’t able to work on the game all the 48h, of the jam, I worked around 12h for work issues.

I’m happy with the result, my idea as always is to try to go outside of the box, think something different and see if it can be “fun”. I’m happy with the general and mood of the game, the graphic and the code needs both to bee much more refined (they are both full of bugs).

I would like to find someone to collaborate and make the game more MVP.

The three main lessons that I have learned are:

  1. Give the right amount of time on the design at the start.
  2. Don’t work on advance mechanics until the basic ones are done.
  3. Enjoy.

If any want have one two minutes spare, please test my game, every feedback is more than welcome.

Comments

18. Dec 2013 · 09:54 UTC
Hey My, first: your game link doesn’t work (probably a copy & paste accident).

Gravity Assist: Post Mortem

Gravity Assist is my first Ludum Dare game – my first participation in any game jam, in fact. Players launch a particle angry birds-style through a map of gravity fields, repulsor fields and others, trying to tailor their trajectory to maximise their score. The game keeps the trails of previous attempts, guiding your next attempt and getting prettier as you explore the space.

Screen shot 2013-12-15 at 17.00.21

What Went Right

Unity and CFXR: Using Unity was absolutely the right choice. While everything in a 48 hour game is necessarily hacky, and my physics code is no exception, Unity allowed me to worry about the game more than the physics, and to quickly put together graphics which, I think, look pretty good. CFXR allowed me to quickly iterate through sound design too.

Concept and Scope: The concept ended up working out really well, which I feel was probably as much luck as anything else. It’s simple, lends itself to player choice while being satisfying and is intuitive enough to allow depth without swamping the player with controls and options.

Replayability and Reward: Once I realised that the strength of the concept was the player’s ability to try many solutions and compare their success (on their own terms, not necessarily just score), I focused on making it easy and rewarding to do so. The trails help this hugely, allowing players to even treat it as a drawing game if they like, while pressing space to restart quickly encourages iteration and “just one more try”. The comments back this up, fortunately! I also wanted to ensure players got satisfying feedback for their actions, so the objects in the game light up and make sounds when activated.

What Went Wrong

Unity: While Unity is great, I spent far, far more time than I wanted trying to get GUI to work in a nice way. Even putting the tutorial text in was painful, and if I had a better GUI solution I would have probably been able to double the amount of levels.

Difficulty and Physics: It’s not an easy game, in some senses. It’s forgiving in that you decide when to advance, but some levels are frustrating and could have done with more testing. Partly this is down to the hacky physics, which don’t react intuitively in some cases. For example it’s impossible to get a particle to orbit an attractor.

Feedback: Similarly, many comments have mentioned things like better indication of launch angle, and previous power. These are things I would have liked to add but ran out of time. When the screen fills with tracks, it’s all but impossible to judge your next shot!

What Would I Add?

The concept has shown itself to be a fertile one, and I have a list of ideas for how I would expand the game. Decelerators, switches, moving elements, ricochet plates and loads more would all suit the game perfectly, hopefully without adding too much complexity to overwhelm the player.

Summary

Overall, I’m very pleased with my first entry. As I say, I suspect hitting on this concept was more luck than anything else, but I do feel I capitalised on it pretty well given the time. It’s been really rewarding to see comments confirming the addictiveness and aesthetic choices. I’ve played some great games by others as well, so basically the experience has been fantastic and I’ll see you in April!

Check out my blog at gameoflyje.wordpress.com or tweet me @six_ways!

Comments

tinyangrycrab
18. Dec 2013 · 10:37 UTC
Check out NGui! The default Unity UI is absolutely horrible at the moment – they are replacing it soon, but for now the legacy UI makes me cry a tiny tear of blood every time

The first 3 levels done in one jump!

A fellow asked me if I could show the first 3 levels of my game (ONE JUMP) being done in, well,  one jump, so here they are:

Levels 5 and 6 are too secret to show (also I have only done level 5 cleanly once and trying to do it on camera gave me a hernia Q_Q). If you can do it send it to me and I’ll put it on my channel with a shout out!

Red Christmas – A Developer’s Journal

Play our heavily story-based game here (with a high reflex sniper scene):  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=29131

Red Christmas title_2

 

Red Christmas, notably the game changer of my life. It is the first time I have finally completed a game for Ludum Dare right on time. Never in my life have I got that much positive review for any games that I have made throughout my life.

I really have to admit; I suck at programming, I suck hard at music composing, and I suck even harder with graphic (I made none graphic for this game; my friend did). I almost think that I am going to quit game making after all these years of trying and failing to complete a single game (none of my game ever took over prototype phrase). As this is my last year before my college life starts (I am going to have financial issues paying for my college fee), I have decided to make a single last game for this Ludum Dare.

However, with my game getting more and more popular, this really gives me the motivation again… I have decided to pick up game development again.

How do you end up with this idea?

I really do not have any ideas 4 hours into the competition. I had a crappy idea later and tried working on it. It was originally called ‘Deception’ where you can only use 1 deception to distract the enemy and then use only 1 bullet to finish them off and then pick up another 1 bullet from that enemy. But the AI is too difficult to code and I gave up halfway. I really have given up all hope up to the point. I am not going to make another game this time for Ludum Dare. I suck at game development.

But, luckily, my artist friend, Isaac joined in and he has decided to help me with the art. He suggested something about zombies, but I don’t remember well, but basically it’s going to be humorous with tons of killings. We initially was going to make a game purely about the gameplay and level designing only as we think this is what everyone only wants to play.

However, I suddenly had an idea of making a game where you are the sniper and you only have 1 bullet to save 1 life. After that, it develops from just that into more and more stories. This is where I have finally decided to just make a game which is heavily story based by that point.

Also, it didn’t started off with a second “Christmas” theme in my mind. I actually took some time off with my family to go shopping… That is where I got the inspiration from, a Christmas song came on. It is called “The First Noel”, which I have used for this game afterward. I named the game only on the 2nd day as “Red Christmas” because, well yeah, bloody Christmas.

What is your initial feeling about the final product?

Well, I only have half confidence about this game actually, when it was released. Because from my experience, many people likes game that is full of action and addicting to play. I am ready to get shit-stormed with many bad comments such as: “The cutscene looks really bad, the texts are boring, the gameplay is frustrating and not fun, the game is too short… 2/5”. I felt very down afterward, thinking about whether the decision that I have made to make a story-based game is good or not.

What is your reaction after some comments?

Holy shit. I shit my pants. WHAT?? OMG. People actually like my game?? Let’s see…

“Great story-driven experience! You used the theme very similarly to me but with a much more serious approach. Shooting that guy with a quick reflex is tricky but extremely satisfying when you pull it off. ” ~ SonnyBone

I cried.

Finally. Finally I have made a good game! Never in my life someone had praised for my game! Although I admit that I have cheated by using some other people’s music (they are Creative Commons though), but… GAHHHHHH I feel so happy!

I don’t know what to say any more. I am at lost for words. Thank you isn’t enough to satisfy how thankful I am to those who have commented on my game:

“Great story..!” ~ KumoKairo

“Good story, good job ! ;)” ~ Ekilibr

And many more who have commented on my video; THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENT!!

Your comments have made me realised how much game development has grew inside my heart. I loved game development too much to put it down. I promise, I will pick up game development again and make another awesome game for the upcoming April Ludum Dare #29!!!

What I have learnt from this Ludum Dare?

A lot, so many that I really wanted to cry.

1) Not all people likes only game that only focuses around gameplay and level design.

2) Game development teaches you to self motivate and self expressing through visual and interactivity.

3) I can only make good story games, and I suck at making action or any other gameplay-focused games.

4) Not to give up halfway, you still have the chance even if you have lost few valuable hours. It’s a huge comeback for this game to finish on time even though I have lost a lot of progress. Oh, and also even 3 more hours for debugging, that’s more than enough.

5) Do not over-stressed yourself for making the game. Last Ludum Dare, I spent only 12 hours of sleeping throughout the 72 hours jam. The game ended up buggy, unfinished, and not many people likes it (only 1 people like it so far…).

6) Take some time off to relax and get some inspiration. Going off with family for a shopping is where I got the Christmas inspiration from. It really adds extra emotion to the game. Without the Christmas theme, I don’t think the game’s story is anywhere far this good. Losing some time for relaxing isn’t bad at all, and I actually still had few more extra hours for debugging!

7) I do not suck in game development. This game finally tells me that only if you do not put more love and creativity into the game, that is what makes it suck. I have seen a game with shitty graphic and buggy as hell, but was really fun to play with!

8) There is no defined rules of what type of game is good or not. Not like if a game that only focuses on the gameplay rather than graphic itself is the best… it all depends on many different factors.

9) I have finally decided to pick back up game development again!

In reality, before this game, I was about to give up game development and go for something else like building up my Youtube channel, become an Accountant or just go with Computer Science. Right after this Ludum Dare, I feel like I have finally understood what I wanted to do with my life: Game.

I realised I can’t live without game development. My life was getting more and more depressed. I feel more and more lonely day by day. I never smiled ever since and I got more and more serious face. I had no one to talk to. No one could ever understand how I really felt. Even after my uncle’s passing, I hold on to my tears until when nobody’s around. Death… was the third theme of this game.

However, ever since the game was out yesterday and when I see so many good comments, today I went to work and I felt much more energetic and happier than before. I smiled on the way walking to the bus station. I was too busy thinking about the future promoting plan for Red Christmas. That was when I realised how much game development and Ludum Dare have changed my life for the better. I realised so many things… so many that I just have to write a journal for my game today on Ludum Dare.

Thank you Ludum Dare, for making me realizing so many thing… I have learnt a lot throughout this journey.

It has been a great journey.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Lets find the One traitor !

Everyone has ever seen a movie scene in which serveral gangstas are targeting each other, in circle, seeking the one betrayer. It’s pretty interesting in terms of dynamics, so I decided to make a game about that…

…and here is the result : There Is Only One Traitor !

Screenshot : There Is Only One Traitor

My First Ludum Dare Entry

I have my own blog at: http://pyjamacoder.com/ so this is kind of a mirror of my post there.

I’ve been contemplating trying it out to see if I could make a game in 48 hours. Well…this past weekend was the first one I’ve had free since I started paying attention to this competition.

I didn’t really prepare to create a game at all…but rather did it on a spur of the moment decision. I figured, what better time to try to create a game for Ludum Dare than now? After all, actions speak louder than words.

Here is my very first Ludum Dare 28 entry: Existence

It can be played at: http://pyjamacoder.com/ld28/

And the source code can be retrieved from github: https://github.com/donaldducky/ld28-existence

Here’s what it looks like:

existence

Deciding where to start

The choice of tools was pretty simple for me:

  • I have no experience using any “game development” tools
  • People who play Ludum Dare games have access to a web browser
  • I have a web development background

I ruled out trying to learn how to use a game development tool. Creating a game is hard enough as it is, add in a 48 hour time limit and some kind of theme and you don’t have too much time to think. Why bother trying to learn the quirks of something you’ve never used and may not use in the future?

The second point is pretty important for exposure. People who visit Ludum Dare obviously have access to a web browser. Being a game developer of some sort, it’s very likely they use modern browsers such as Chrome and Firefox. After playing and rating some games on the site, I feel like I made the right decision with this. A lot of games are Windows only (thanks to the tools they use), or they use something like PyGame, which I seem to have trouble installing on my machine (OS X Mountain Lion). I decided to stick to web technologies available in a modern browser without any sort of plugin (ie. no Flash).

Making stuff for the web is what I do for a living. If I’m going to make a game in a web browser, I should use the tools I’m already comfortable with. That was a no brainer.

I managed to cut out some of the learning curve and debugging time from the start and that played to my advantage.

The Toolset

I stuck with some of the standard web development tools that generally make my life easier. I will list the tool and the reason for the choices.

For my editor, I used Vim.

Browser of choice: Chrome (stable not Canary)

It’s getting late, so I’m going to have to continue this in a part 2…coming soon.

Beaver’s Last Log

Hello,

For the fifth time, we completed the Ludum Dare Jam Version after a long week-end of very hard work (especially the last hours).

Here’s our result, feel free to try it out : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=10263
We were a team of four : Vincent Schneider, Francois Mauge, Fabien Kalinowski and Quentin Chevalier. Two artists and two programmers.

Influenced by the weather at our main location during the jam, we chose to focus our story on our hero’s quest to not freeze to death in a point and click adventure game.

You can ask for hints and follow the evolution of the project (We hope to add more scenes and types of death) on  https://twitter.com/Hadesfury

We are currently working on a post-Jam version to fix most of the bugs.

Thanks for your time.

Comments

18. Dec 2013 · 11:40 UTC
Really cool graphics! Good choice of colors for the textures :) Congratulations!
18. Dec 2013 · 11:52 UTC
You’re link is broken. The text of the link refers to the 28ld entry but the actual link goes to your 26ld entry.
18. Dec 2013 · 11:53 UTC
*Your

DAMNIT I hate it when other people do this and now I do it myself …