This was a really tough compo for me, but I think this game encapsulates the theme pretty well while proving some decent gameplay. Stop on by and be the first to comment!

As a telephone spider, you must connect planets to the network!

Once everything’s connected, make a call!

LINK TO GAME

Thanks for playing!

-John Bell

1am in France

Only one day left for the Jam, tension is rising. The team’s becoming tired but we’re doing our best to implant moving and interactions with the backgrounds. If everything goes well, we might have a 1/7 of a semi-playable game tonight… Yeah, still a looooong way, we’re not gonna sleep very much I fear XD.

Good luck to those who’re submitting their games right now !

Whoops! Only just realised I forgot to post the obligatory I’m in message. So, I’m in and I’m done.

I’m using/I used Construct 2, Paint.NET, Fruityloops and Bfxr.

The result is Sabotage Will Set Us Free.

I hope you enjoy it!

I am done with my game! And I’m finally even proud of it. There was a time when I wasn’t – but that lies in the past xD

Well, my interpretation of “Connected Worlds” was this one: Screen split in half, each half is one world. They’re connected somehow.

And the result is some funny game with two colo[u]rful slimes, that are jumping in opposite directions, held together by a rubber band. So, connected worlds. Connected with a rubber band.
I guess I would normally make an animated .gif and throw it into here, but I’m way too exhausted to do that now. So, have a static screenshot (don’t be sad! at least there IS a screenshot.):

Oh, and also one where the rubber band just broke (one of the more difficult levels is shown in the picture):

Click here!

Click the cake to go to the submission page, and please don’t forget to vote & comment

Tags: compo, final, game, java, LD30, ld48, Ludum Dare, music, progress, screenshot, update

I’m happy. This is my first time in a Ludum Dare and i’ve achieved my target of ending the game. The game is called Twin Bullets and you can view more info on the entry page of the game

Thanks for the experience! Now, let’s go to sleep a little :-S

Tags: LD30

^U^ So I wanted to have a custom font. This is a pretty basic font though so I didn’t waste too much time. To make the font I used fontstruct

Well I’m not going to finish my game fast enough for the compo.
Wasted to much time learning the framework and fixing bugs, that said, I’ve learned what to avoid now, and I can aim for the Jam.

Well it was a really late start, but I managed to finish.

I’m not too fond of the art, but it will suffice. I’m also a bit concerned that it might be difficult to get the mechanics, but hopefully the help page is clear enough. Otherwise I’m quite happy with the results, I was able to fully implement the idea I had. Maybe I’ll work on this more in future, flesh it out and add some new mechanics. For now, it’s way too late and I’m way too tired. Good luck to all those still finishing up!

Well that was a fun busy weekend, but I managed to finish the game almost fully to my liking :).

I even got a android port ready!

Now it’s finally time for some sleep.

Take care all ^^.

We almost have a game mechanic!! 😀

*Yawn*

It’s been long two days. This is my first Ludum Dare entry.

I’ve always been bad with platformer physics and movement, but I’m still trying to improve. With this game I’ve tried using Unity’s Physics2D functionalities instead of making my own engine. That saved me some time, but the results aren’t that great, mainly because of collision detections. 0.0f is hardly ever equal to 0.0f.

Thanks to this compo I’ve learned a lot about time management. Despite the fact that I don’t like the final result, I can clearly see what should I work on in the future. These two days were a real blast for me, I fell in love with LD. See you in a couple of months!

Here’s my jam entry, Planet Hop, it’s a simple one button game where you hop between two planets. I think it turned out kind of fun. The idea probably wasn’t big enough to suck up an entire 3 day game jam, but I had that feeling going into it. I had a few small ideas for this one, but nothing bigger that felt like I could do anything interesting with in 2-3 days… Any more time spent on this will probably just be tuning & polishing.

Play on web

Hey everyone!

Just submitted my game for the compo and I’m glad that I actually got it finished. B) Excited to start playing the other entries. Bye!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=40382

Enough is enough! No more programming! (Well, maybe except some cosmetics…)

I can’t believe it, but I got everything working! Now just quickly make some levels, and it’s all over!

I managed to finish my most ambitious LD game so far. It’s a space strategy game called Connection Chase. Here’s its’ page.

It really feels good now 😀

Those of you still struggling with your games: you can do it!

Usually I don’t write these; I don’t think people care about what I say much — it isn’t like I am going to win. But… here it is in case someone would like to know what a noob, first timer Ludum Dare participant thought and learned during this event.

Just a small plug for the game

It was 4:00 AM my time when the theme was announced. I was pretty tired and I knew that this is the “real” Ludum Dare (not just another mini one) 6 hours prior to it. Seeing, that I didn’t know much about the competition I ran through the website checking the rules. I generally knew that I needed to make a game within 48 hours. What I didn’t know and surprised me (as well as aggravated me) was that I had to make my own arts and sounds – crap!

Seeing that I have no art skills (aside from 6 years ago having a modeling hobby and it was strictly ArchViz related) it was near impossible I could get anything looking “good”. Not only that, but I am no musician either and have no tools to do that, I had to search for a random generator.

Anyway, with 6 hours prior to the competition I did a few things that I think were leading to a good start in general:

1. I started dumping ideas into a notepad file. While the theme wasn’t announced, I could generally come up with ideas that could pretty much fit all themes (adventure game with puzzles a la Memoria, double jumping mechanic platformer, etc…)
2. I determined what engine I am going to use no matter what — I picked Construct 2 as I have been using it for quite sometime. While in general that was a good move in general, it turned it out to be a bad choice (more on that later).
3. I started immediately searching for music generators and I found a really cool and easy tool here.
4. The decision was to enter the competition and not the jam. Though it didn’t come immediately.

Let’s start with number 4. At first, I wanted to actually get into the Jam. After all my art was failing me; I was trying to draw some stuff on paper and it didn’t work out in the 6 hours prior to the announcement. I panicked and I started looking into /r/gamedevclassifieds and /r/INAT for any Ludum Dare posts. I even went to the Ludum Dare Reddit part. Not sure why but the posts there kind of gave me that vibe that I shouldn’t do the jam. So I decided to do the competition.

I decided to stay up rather than go to sleep and wait for the theme. That was good since a lot of people in the IRC chat was saying that it looks like Connected Worlds would be the theme so I started scribbling some notes about Alma; an adventure game that is controlled like The Walking Dead starred by a young (8-10) year old girl that uses her environment to create her own adventures through imagination.

The time came and I found it was Connected Worlds indeed so I went with Alma’s idea  and I hit the bed.

I woke up the next morning and started immediately on papers leaving the engine and all of that. I made the level progression (quire different from what you see in the game. It was supposed to have longer levels with much more content and conversation as well as 3 cut scenes) along with some of the conversations as notes. On top of that I made some squiggly looking graphics on paper.

I started with the graphics since it is the worst thing and I thought if I finished early I could always “polish” it. What I didn’t notice, is that it was already 12 hours into the first day. So I started experimenting with Pexyl Editor and Photoshop. 2 hours later I had Alma and the guard. Once I noticed the time, I dumped everything down just throwing whatever I could think of as “art” done in either Photoshop (throwing shapes and gradients) or the editor in Construct 2.

The thing I learned, art isn’t quite hard to make, it just needs patience, iteration and an eye to look for details (which are a lot of things I didn’t have the time for).

It is when I started combining the art and forming the conversations that I saw the problem of Construct 2. That engine was amazing for arcade games, platformers, shoot em ups, etc… but to create conversations that are simple or 2-3 choices… it is a nightmare and a lot to account for. I ended up scrapping all the choices but one meaningless conversation choice and I don’t know why I add it and didn’t take it out.

Not only that, but it isn’t quite fluid in handling items being looked at and not in inventory or items in inventory and being looked at and not used. You have to set a lot of variables and deal with distance and things got entangled in a mess fast. I thought of changing and perhaps learning Visionaire Studio but decided against it. What I did was limit the interaction with items as much as possible to 3 states:

• Item isn’t in inventory and far and being looked at.
• Items isn’t in inventory and near and being looked at (picking the item up).
• Using the item to solve the puzzle (which means you just need the item in the inventory).

From that point, I was 1 day into the competition and I had work the next day so I had to sleep. I went to sleep, woke up, did nothing and head to work. Fortunately, work ended early so I came back early but I was tired and didn’t have the capability to do anything so I was sleeping/eating till the time I would have returned home had it gone the normal way.

With that, I scrapped pretty much everything that wasn’t necessary and started to transform the game into what you saw now. Instead of cutscenes showing Alma’s imagination using the room items to change them into things that can be interacted with in her imaginary world, I just made transition between levels with really, really simple puzzles.

Once I was done, I threw a background music in and through IRC I received feedback they showed me a little edit that worked nicely. I edit theirs even further (so as not to break the rules) and I used the concept they showed me rather than the exact thing.

I strapped everything together and uploaded while hoping for the best (not being murdered by people whose eyes are bleeding from the bad graphics).

I have to say this was beyond any fun I had with playing games. I have already made little games before (nothing major) but none came close to this fun. I have met a lot of wonderful people and chatted with them (if even for small talk and not much). I have learned a lot of things and I am ready for the next Ludum Dare (at least I am more ready than before). Here are some of the lessons I learned:

• Sleep. If you don’t sleep, you aren’t concentrating and hence making more bugs that you’ll end have to fix.
• Theme or no theme, come up with a list of ideas (preferably 5+) that are generic in the most part and can be used in any theme then tailor it when the theme is announced.
• I should learn to do simple art. Yes, I am no artist and yes, I haven’t done art (3D) in years, but it would be great to get into that again. Not for the competition but if I can learn the minimal amount, I can have textureless models and someone can do that (instead of hunting down for an artist).
• While I don’t really like learning a lot of engines (which I ended up doing through the years, I can use Game Maker, Stencyl, Construct 2, a bit of Unity with Playmaker). I really need to start learning to program. I noticed a lot of people using Lua and it is close to C# (which I know its basics — damn trying to be a Jack of All Trades). That way you have a literally empty canvas to work with rather than limitations of an engine (either that or I need to learn Visionaire Studio too XD).
• Prepare ahead. Since I didn’t know about Ludum Dare until the last 6 hours, I wasn’t able to do much. But if I knew before that, I would have hunted down some tutorials, reference images, etc… following the “think of general ideas” kind of thing to match the ideas I thought of.
• Have fun. The essence of this competition is to have fun, so have fun. Even if I couldn’t submit something I’d be glad of my progress, an international event I participated in creating something and I did my best and learned a lot.

At the end, I really hope you all had fun (or for those that didn’t join, that you’ll join) and hopefully I see you guys and more on Ludum Dare 31 with a NOT connected worlds theme 😛

Tags: adventure-game, LD30, post-mortem

My game is almost finished, I’m spending the rest of the day polishing and retouching. Also, be prepared to see the finished project tonight!

You can switch dimensions with left click

Later!

Here’s a video

and you can try it out for yourself here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=37050

Have you ever wanted to play as a pilot with instant trans-galactic teleportation powers assigned with piloting your ships to avoid intergalactic space heads of death?

Well now you can!

Command tons of spaceships at once!

Click the screenshot to play!