I’m in the process of slowly moving out of my comfort zone, and try to learn to make games without Flash. Flash has had its moments, but the port to mobile is getting really clunky and impractical.

So, the obvious choice would be Unity, as it seems to grow in popularity and has the advantage of being cross platform. But I was also considering another option: Cocos2D JS

I’ve read some tutorials, and it seems like a nice concept: I make a game in JavaScript, make it work within the browser, then port it nicely to iOS and Android. But there some issues with it I could think of:
#1. Well… it’s not clear but… is this developed by Zynga? ;-P
#2. The IDE of choice seems to be cocosbuilder.com, and at the top of the page it says Cocos Builder is no longer maintained. (then it redirects me to SpriteBuider.com). Does it look like a red flag?
#3. Isn’t JavaScript slow?

The reason I’m not completely sold on Unity, is because I’m mostly a 2D game developer, and I would prefer something a little more lightweight. Unity seems to be for the kind of devs who like to incorporate APIs, engines. I’m the kind of dev who’d rather implement basic collision detection than use a physics engine in my game.

Anyway, just looking for other dev’s thoughts about it. Thanks

Tags: cocos2D, cocos2d-javascript

So myself I don’t really make 8-bit games, but I know a lot of you guys do. There’s one thing I would love to see more in your 8-bit retro games: CUTSCENES!

And I found the perfect tool to help you achieve that ;-). It’s an online tool (no download) found here: http://c64.superdefault.com/

I encountered this site when I was looking for a PNG to 8-bit retro converter. The naive approach was to scale a picture down, save it, then scale it up to make it look pixelated. That actually failed big time, simply because the result was too rich in color. It clearly looked like a scaled up photo rather than a retro graphic. There are a few tutorials that showed how to do it right using photoshop, but for the lazy type like me, I found that the online tool works best! Just look at this awesome 8-bit photo of Nicolas Cage below!

Tags: 8-bit, gamedev, nicolas cage, retro, tools

Have you seen AutoTileGen? It’s a useful-looking tool that will let its users generate tilesets from just a few images. It’s not coming out until April. Note that that is in time for LD29. It’s got an IndieGoGo campaign going, you can contribute to that here and, as perks, get a license when it comes out for $25-50 or early access for $120.

If you can’t wait or you can’t afford it for $25, though, I’ve written an alternative tool in Java, called GoTile. It’s free and it’s got a GPL version 3 license – its source code is here. I made the great majority of it in just 2 days. I think it works pretty well, but expect AutoTileGen to have less bugs, more features, and a better interface. You should be able to figure most of it out by messing with it, but custom levels should be CSVs and masks should be solid white in the shape of a tile. Here’s a screenshot, the GUI shows most of the features.

GoTile at its most show-offy.

EDIT: There have been a few updates to the program since I made this post, so I updated the screenshot. Make sure to get the new version, too – I added some good stuff.

Tags: autotilegen, gotile, tile set, tiles, tileset, tool, tools

Download – Incomplete Soul v4

This was cross-posted from my development blog at wally2069.blogspot.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 13th, 2014 at 1:06 pm and is filed under LD #22. 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.

Today, lonebot.net is officially turning one year old!

I wanted to post this here because without Ludum Dare, there wouldn’t be Lonebot. So thanks a lot everybody! I think we’ve come a very long way since we launched our website

Here’s a cool video Mati made about our games:

So what does the future hold? Hopefully, not potatoes.

Thanks so much for everything, Ludum Dare!

I continually working on my LD28 submission, which was “You can only get peace” an experimental  game about meditation, and plan to distribute when the time come. It had a name change to “Get your peace”. If you intersted in future update about, you can find on the project newly created indiedb page here.

Just to say I’m Innnnnnnnnnn, and post my usual sexy photo

you can see/follow my other games:
http://www.mamoniem.com/
https://www.facebook.com/mamoniemworks
https://twitter.com/MuhammadAMoniem
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBBcKlWecOLdywouiZPGkgg

m;

You are stuck in a universe full of war, terror and hazard. You have been sent on a mission of Recon, to see if you can find any survivors. You jump into hyperspace but something goes wrong. The dials and buttons are flashing red…

Read more & play the game here.

21st to Monday 24th 23:59 of February (in your timezone) (FINISHED!)

Theme

• Non-human player

Rules

• You can work alone or in a team.
• You can use previously created assets.
• You can do it in your timezone. (21st-24th of feb)
• Have fun.

Non-human player, is the player a crow, a fish, a trap, an arrow, an apple, a monster, an obelisk, a droid or maybe a creature disguised as a player? Use the theme as you want, try to make something cool. You can make an artsy game (a flower?), a mechanic driven game (a bird?) or maybe a sound driven game (a bat?).

[ View ]

I made a mock up poster for ludum dare 29 for a pirate theme

You know you all want pirates as the theme

Hey LD community,

some of you may know, that I’m currently working on a project called “Game Jam Management System”. As the name implies it’s supposed to make hosting game jams simple and accessible to everyone!

And now I need some help from all the game jammers out there.´
For the website I’ll create for it, I’ll need screenshots of game jam games to use in the head slider. So if you want to have your game jam game shown (including credits, i.e. mention of name and link to website) go here and submit a screenshot!

Ideally your screenshot should have a width of 900px or more. The height doesn’t matter much.

Thanks for your help!
– Folis

While Ludum Dare is typically an online event (make a game from the comfort of your home), many real world events happen around Ludum Dare. Here’s the list:

• Portland, Oregon – Portland Indie Game Squad (pigsquad.com)
• Longmont, Colorado – Tinkermill (Tinkermill.org)
• Brazil – “Online” Ludum Dare Gogogo
• Paris, France – Ludum Dare Paris (Meetup.com)
• Lund, Sweden – at Sony sonymobile.com/hackathon (was Malmö, post)
• Calgary, Alberta – Meetup.com (hi!)
• San Francisco, California – The MADE
• Falmouth, UK – 8-bit Bar
• Minsk, Belarus – MZOR/Techspace
• Lausanne, Switzerland – FIXME Hackerspace
• Enschede, Netherlands – University of Twente **
• Richmond, Virgina – RVA Game Jams
• Aarhus, Denmark – Aarhus
• Mannheim, Germany – RaumZeitLabor
• Los Angeles, California – CrashSpace
• Omsk, Russia – Omsk Ludum Dare
• Knoxville, Tennessee – Technology Cooperative
• Adelaide, Australia – Jamalaide
• Hamburg, Germany – InnoGames HQ
• Johannesburg, South Africa – MakeGamesSA at Microsoft Campus
• Charlotte, North Carolina – IGDA Charlotte at Microsoft Campus
• Lexington, Kentucky – Super Soul
• Rochester, New York – Rochester Indies Anonymous at RedBottle Design
• Coventry, United Kingdom – Warwick Game Design at University of Warwick
• Bandung, Indonesia – Institut Teknologi Bandung
• Brisbane, Australia – Eastes
• Miðfjörður, Iceland – Isolation Game Jam
• Chicago, Illinois – Looseleaf Lounge
• Skopje, Macedonia – Hacklab KIKA
• Eugene, Oregon – FertiLab
• Oslo, Norway – Bitraf
• Tokyo, Japan – Pico Pico Cafe

If you want your event on the list, post a comment letting me know where your event is. Be sure to include a link to further details (either here on the blog, or elsewhere).

I have made a free background music.

You can use it in your game if you want.

License = CC 3.0 Attribution only

What better way to celebrate your birthday than by crunching some goodie-goodie-game for a MiniLD?!

I would also love to promote a new game engine! It’s called the Furnace Engine and it’s similar to increpare’s PuzzleScript, but is more focused on creating Minecraft-like games where you mine and build and use inventory items on the environment.

If you feel brave and this sounds interesting give it a try:  http://madflame991.github.io/furnace-engine/src/
See those little flowers? They are ANIMATED!

Furnace Engine

Hi everyone !

I got some interesting ideas for this mini compo ! I work on the HTML5 part and my teammate works on the music.

The only problem is the graphic part :c
I must admit that the pixel art I did isn’t really convincing ! So if you’re interested in creating some tiles, contact me 😀

temporary tiles

EDIT 2: Thanks for all the help, guys 😀

EDIT: No longer accepting entries but feel free to read anyways.

I am in need of music for my game and I cannot compose to save my life.

I am making a space themed game for the Mini LD and I need some music.

Here is the concept:

The music needs to feel like you are floating through lifeless space, it needs to loop.

Contact me at theupgradezone@live.com or @theupgradezone for twitter

You shall be credited!

Thanks a lot

The Running Dead is a small game with a high difficulty gameplay on you run to survive from zombies.

To survive you can shoot and jump(or double jump) to avoid the various type of zombies including birds and wolfs(And maybe i add some piranhas)

The GFX are simply dots of 8×8 using a pallete of non-saturated colors all to get the most possible “real” looking for this resolution/style.

Title screen:

Gameplay .Gif:

Actually the game runs at:
Windows, Mac, Linux, Flash, Android, iOS(iPod, iPhone, iPad) and OUYA.

The overall progress is around 60-70% ans is planned to be released on next month, first on mobiles i guess and later on ouya/deskptop.

Links you maybe interested:

Tumblr with the last updates:  http://dev.kronbits.com/

Tigsource Thread:  http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=38878.0

GameJolt Page:  http://gamejolt.com/games/arcade/the-running-dead/22793/

Kronbits Official Twitter:  https://twitter.com/Kronbits

Personal Twitter:  https://twitter.com/DavitMasia

Half an hour till compo with absolutely no ideas what so ever!

Tools:
Language >> AS3
Engine >> Flashpunk
Art >> ASEprite / Paint.Net
Music >> PXtone
Levels >> Ogmo Editor

Good luck and I hope to have fun!

So I’ve spent the first 2 hours coding the first screen to my game. In that time, I decided what my game was gonna be like. I will not reveal what the gameplay is like yet, but to hint, it’s rather similar to Wasteland Kings, which is now known as Nuclear Throne!

I’m trying my first Ludum Dare as the MiniLD that’s starting today! I’m only a high school student, so I don’t expect to do too well, but I’m only doing this to improve my knowledge! Good luck to everyone, and I hope you all have a great time!