Here’s a first screen after 2 hours of work. Starting to take shape

background for light & dark worlds

So I’ve never spent so much time thinking about what to do

I had a hard time starting hope to catch up.

Slept 4 hours, and rest of the time thought about what to do. Only now finished one screen. [art]

Gonna work on some music maybe it’ll inspire me…

Which one the first hum ?

Ok so good news, I know what I’m aiming for. I have no idea how to do it, but at least I have some direction. As usual, I’ll try to make up a little story to it even if that make me lose the “game” part.

Bad news, it’s been three days since I had my last cup of coffee, and I can’t buy any. So, no coffee, I can’t live without it, but that add a challenge to the initial challenge though.

Ok, go back on making games !

I recall making some basic 2D platformers a few years ago (warning: code rot! broken in my FF) with CraftyJS. A quick peek at its page shows that it was last updated in January, which isn’t exactly inspiring me to go back and use it again. So I googled, and wound up at Jaws.

Jaws really captured my attention for a bit: it seems to do all the things I want, and I like the philosophy it’s taking off the bat. But… some of the 10 examples are buggy (like blocking right-clicks pagewide when the mouse isn’t used), and there is no “structure of a Jaws app” page. There are just pages telling me to make gamestates and how some of the constructors work. The lack of documentation makes me think I’d be in for a bad time, so on to greener pastures.

This list hilariously says “no, look here instead for an updated version!”, then says “but also, that version is broken” — a bunch of the table doesn’t fit onto the screen. The ‘notes’ don’t aren’t super useful anyway; I’m looking for subjective evaluations, here. I can find out an engine’s features by just clicking on it, but I can’t find out if it’s widely regarded as sucky or great, has a good community, has useful docs, etc. That which would help me a lot.

This list finally came to the rescue. The rating system is exactly the kind of meaningless number I need to have to deal with the insane amount of choice in engines. Then there are tags like “WebGL” and “free”, rather than paragraph-style notes. I can quickly use them to tell if something is worth a deeper look.

Not entirely surprisingly, the top-rated and most popular entries are not-entirely-free or outright paid and are more or less “no programming required” deals, with a lot of drag-and-drop and learn-the-UI stuff. Those are cool, and you can make good games with them. GameMaker is a great example of that. I personally get frustrated when making a game in something like that, because I feel like too much is being hidden from me, and like the skill I’m learning is “how to use this app”, rather than “how to make a game”. If I ever decide to move to another platform or don’t have this app available, I won’t be able to make a game, because I won’t know how.

Which is stupid of me, because seriously, when will that ever happen or be a need I have? But alas, hamartia.

Anyway, the next engine, Phaser, looked great — until I saw the book that wants me to pay $129. “Sounds like a scam!” I thought. Then I wondered, “what’s below the hundred billion news post links on the main page?” and guess what, it’s USEFUL THINGS. There’s a “Getting Started” section and it links to a blog post that takes you through a whole minimal first game. They have some number in the hundreds of examples. They have a section explaining that you need a web server and how to get it and why, and what editor to choose! My kind of people, they are. It looks to be fully functional and have the community usage to prove it, along with the documentation to help me get off the ground in a reasonable period of time.

So, Phaser it is. That only took two more hours. 1 day, 15 hours, 40sih minutes left. 😀

PS: okay so ALSO, just gushing now: the Phaser README on github is crazy-comprehensive and has a ton more links and GUESS WHAT, they seem to name all of their releases after locations from the wheel of time universe. I was like “I wonder if Amadicia is a real word that Robert Jordan just used for the name of a place?” and bam, they’ve got Tarabon and Illian and all kinds of great names. Cool cool cool.

So Connected Worlds

I was voting for this and had couples of ideas but finally i had chosen one and starting working 😀

Player is in Development so basic component almost done in his first form !

I hope everybody like to run :D!

i got almost everything for the player, next thing to do is to create some dumb AI bots and then i’ll start the level design process and finally the environment graphics

And euh… yeah, they are pretty connected 😉

How awesome is it just making games… I dig the compo but bringing pixels to life is sweet

Tags: #ianSync, gamemaker, kidando

Getting ready for my first LD, and I am going to use some libraries that I’ve written.

Feel free to used the libraries, but they do not have any documentation with them.

Link: https://github.com/Potato047

Hey Folks,

while we were Brainstorming for a concept matching the theme, we somehow came up with the work title… No Shit!

Yet, there is nothing to show, but the game will be a side-scroler, based on a satirical story about intercultural communication… Whatever.

Good luck everybody!

Anna, Kristof, Philipp & Nico

I’ve got a basic job system set up. At first it was a pain implementing it, but when I took a breath and wrote down the steps I needed to take on some paper, I was able to implement it quickly. Next up, displaying the amount of money you will earn and the destination of the cargo!

I’ve finished a lot since the last update, just didn’t have much to show until now. But here it is, the first screenshot:

You play as an orange person in a blue world. That’s all I’m going to reveal for now!

Hello

I finally got my game concept, you might know we’re “celebrating” the 70th anniversary of the Operation Overlord, so I came up with the idea of connecting different towns to supply the reinforcements to the front.

Two blue towns connected through railways battle to conquer the red town. The battle takes place on the dirt road between the red and the north blue town.

The more towns you own, the more money is earnt each turn, which increases the number of reinforcements that can be created each turn.

As it’s my first game I don’t think I’ll have time to balance it : there will only be one type of unit, which means that you can almost only win by outnumbering the opponent.

This will also be my first time with AI, should be instructive

Hello everybody !

Woke up this morning with an headache and no idea for “Connected World”. But after a few hours, my head seems to be back and I have found an idea which doesn’t look too bad !

During last LD, I was jaming with my friends of Ecotone and I was pretty proud of the result. This time I am solo and I know my entry won’t be as good as it was but I’ll do my best !

So what is my game about ? It’s about a guy watching television and falling asleep… except the TV is still on and the characters from the movie are tired and want to go to bed ! So they must find a way to switch off the tv. And guess how this can be possible ? That’s because fiction world and reality world are … CONNECTED ! yeah !

The tools:

– stencyl
– asesprite
– sunvox
– ipod
– fruits

May the force be with you !

Can’t forget breakfast! Especially when I need to be focused

Fairly simple marmalade on toast as I get ready for the crazy amount of pulled pork I made last night to last me through the weekend.

The game is underway and I’m getting some of the basic bits of script sorted and then I’ll get onto adding more to it. As per usual I’ll intend on doing the art and sound tomorrow and have the scripting wrapped up by the end of today. Doesn’t always go that well to plan but I’ll see what happens!

Gotta figure out my art style too, would be nice to do something a little different for a change too, shall see what happens!

Tags: food photo, LD30

I am in this time for real!

Using:

Unity

Gimp

Inkscape

Notebooks

Hi. As the title says this is my third attempt at a Ludum Dare. This post will be a bit of a mess as it’s part general information and part mental dump (that I’ll hope will provide interesting insights into my general thought process).

I was pretty happy with my first Ludum Dare. The theme was “You Only Get One”. I made a little game where you played as the number 1 (the only character you could play to begin with) and had to solve maths problems by placing clones of the 1 character everywhere. I was happy with the idea of the game but never got round to finishing it, only the first level was ever finished and that only happened in the last 45 minutes of the competition. I had a lot of cool ideas for how to take it forward but stumbled on the implementation details of how to make it cleverly variable between levels (something I’d still like to do).

The second Ludum Dare I took part in had the theme “Beneath The Surface”. I had several ideas for this one and couldn’t quite decide on one. After a couple of failed started attempts I had to give up and it kind of bummed me out.

This time the theme is “Connected Worlds” as you’ll probably all know. Again I find myself with quite a few ideas and none of them are quite as fleshed out as I’d like and I’m a bit worried I’ll end up in the same position I was in last time. My favourite is quite a simple game but I’m a bit worried the connection to the theme will be missed by many (the major complaint of my first LD) and that the game will come off as dull unless I’m VERY careful. I’m working on a quick design document to try and flesh it out a bit.

I’m thinking it’ll be something akin to a non-horror 5 Nights at Freddie’s (non-intentional similarity given how recently it came out but I think it’s the closest fit for the style of game I’m thinking of) mixed with Civ style diplomacy. As I’m writing, I’ve just thought of a really cool feature but I don’t know that it’d be easy to implement without losing some of the essence of the gameplay and I don’t want to say in case I can do it so I don’t spoil anything.

I’m also stuck on whether I should go for full custom engine (probably easier in the long run) or go Unity for added graphical fidelity. I don’t know Unity all that well and as much as I like the idea we’ve never really seen eye to eye. DELETE THAT ASSET AGAIN I DARE YA! /rage Ultimately I’m thinking full custom for now and if it proves popular I can reimplement the game in a 3D engine like Unity post competition.

At this point in my game programming “career” (quoted because I’m not a career game dev) I can see how far I’ve come even since just December but I also acknowledge I’m in that weird transitiony period between “don’t know a thing” and “I know too much for my own good, how can I constrain my desires!?”

The other main reason for writing this article is to say that I’ll soon be setting up a Twitch stream for the development of the game and to post my git link for people to see my general development/thoughts as I go through it.

My twitch is twitch.tv/drentsoft

The git link is: … I can’t get the git link working atm. I’ll update as soon as I work it out.

Ok so the link is: git://pi.drentsoft.com/ld/ld30.git – Please be gentle this is running on a Raspberry Pi on my home network. Too much traffic’ll probably kill everything…

Anyways thanks for reading. I hope it provided a little insight into what I’m doing. If you’d like a list of some of my ideas (and which one I’ll be probably going with – and/or would like to help me decide) let me know in the comments and I’ll post them up)

We are over with the Stage Theme of the game. It was quite expansive, we had to rent a part of our local opera orchestra for the day, which included 3 violins, 2 cellos, 1 bass, 3 drummers, 1 sound engineer, 1 dancer, 1 licensed truck driver for the travel, and a turkey.

Time spending on composing the piece, teaching to the orchestra, and rehearsals was 7 hours long. We are actually working on the other pieces to be able to make an opera about the game in conjunction with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Anyways, this is the song:

Theme

Maybe I’m late, but I will give it a try anyways.

I’ve finally got my concept. Starting with the game models and in about 8 hours will move on to the game code. Still not 100% sure how it should end but at least the ball is rolling. Here I am in my little corner busy working on world 2.

After a solid 4 hours:

The Physics works! (apart from the gravity)

Oh well.

A: No.

The train is coming together it now has modular cargo and engine sections, I now need to start modelling some weapon sections.

I’ve decided to go in more of a Oregon trail kind of direction now for the gameplay, although I’ll still keep an emphasis on combat.

Next steps are to make the train lines between planets and get the train to follow them, and then sort out the combat and enemies, I’m hoping to get these both done tonight, then I can spend tomorrow, writing the text systems for characters and trading and also working on sound.

https://soundcloud.com/huruey/sinister-1

Finally the team is up and awake, no more lonely coding. Expect to see some serious shit going on. Again the stream link is http://www.twitch.tv/alex1000209/

Storyline is finished, Erik is working on the character design, Henrik is soon about to start music development and the second programmer should be here any hour soon.

Cant enter, problem after problem. Tablet drives fail, then they work again, unity stops working. then when that starts again and i start getting the hand of it woop… monodevelop now  refuses to launch so editing scripts has now become a no no. im running outa things to break before my laptop dies completely.

So, that’s the first update on the LD project I’m working on. Each planet does have their own resources and you have to make sure that every planet gets that what he needs. (May adding more planets!) That’s the base idea, let’s see how it turns out. The planets down below are the two main planets of the game!

Living in Europe I always start the LD a few hours after the rest. Given that due to timezones, the challenge starts at 3 AM here, I usually start it up and figure the topic the following morning.

This actually forces me to keep it as simple as I can.

For this LD in particular, to follow the given topic “Connected Worlds”, I have decided to make a 2D Puzzle platformer game where the player controls both characters at the same time while dodging obstacles and enemies.

Tools used:

• GameMaker: Studio
• GraphicsGale
• Audacity
• Office (for design purposes)

Progression so far (2 hours in):

I made some placeholder graphics (stickmen) for the characters and the obstacles, and so, I started into the coding of the objects and the behavior of them upon player interaction. Very basic functionality, and all buggy, but satisfied with the current progress so far.

I made a test stage to try out the platforming mechanics, which you can see right here. I know it’s not very impressive right now, but I’ll try to make it prettier along the day.

On the To-do list for the following hours:

• Polish movement mechanics.
• Define win/lose conditions.
• Attempt multiple level flow.
• Creating additional obstacles.

You can follow the whole process live (where I try to figure out things on-the-go) on my Twitch Channel.

Having the time of my life!

First picture of our running prototype:

The programs we us for now:

– Tiled
– PyxelEdit

So after a few hours i managed to get the graphic style i wanted and finished some of the features, including:

• Playermovement (walk, sprint, crouch, jump)
• Climbing ladders
• Cameras
• Simple enemy movement

Controls:

• WASD – Walking
• Shift – Sprinting (uses up sprint meter)
• C – Crouch
• Space – Jump

Playable version can be found here:

Unity Web Demo

Keep in mind that this one will get more and more features as i’m updating it. Chances are that the build might have a new bug that wasn’t there before. Just try again later in that case

Hi LD-ers! Our protagonist this time is Morgan. Nothing flashy or crazy…yet. 😉 The idea is that Morgan is dying and is struggling to stay positive and fight their disease. This hospital scene is the stage for the majority of *one* part of the game. The other part still needs to be designed and arted out, so that should be the more elaborate and interesting part of the game. Really trying to make the hospital scene look sterile and cold.

Kind of self conscious about this since it’s currently A LOT less impressive than previous games, and I’m counting on a lot of people not being impressed. But I’ve been waiting forever to find an opportunity to do this line-heavy illustration style, so I’ll have to say “screw it” and do what I like.

Tags: 1st screenshot, LD30

So I managed to make the player feel somewhat controllable on a planet’s surface. I also accidentally made him able to go into an actual orbit.

Anyway the idea is now, to make some enemies swam the player, so he’ll have to connect a portal to other planets to escape.

I hope you guys are making some progress as well. Good luck.

As usual I’m starting later then anyone else not located in Europe :p What a bummer.
No need to worry though, this time (in contrary to last times) I got quite a fun idea I want to explore, even without time constrain.

After a inspirational shower and a sore thumb from scratching clean my whiteboard (it’s not used much so scratching is required to get stuff off), I’m ready to get stuff done quickly and (hopefully not too) dirty.

I wish everyone the best of luck and a good rest for those that have already done great amounts of work on their entry.
Good luck and have fun!!

PS.
If you need help planning stuff out, I am using PlanBox which is a neat tool to put in tasks and list the stuff you need to do.

This weekend I am participating in the Ludum Dare for the second time. I learned a lot in the last Ludum Dare, and I have made some improvements already: I prepared…. somewhat. Due to my busy schedule, I have not been able to go all out in preparing for this Ludum Dare. As I will be using Unity3D for the first time on a “real game”, I can already predict that this will not be too serious of an entry for me.

The theme was one of the few themes from the final round I just didn’t have any ideas for. So today started with picking up my list of random game ideas that has been growing for a few years now. There were some ideas there that could fit within the theme, most notably a platformer where you can switch between world at will. This would however include level design, a huge obstacle during my last Ludum Dare. I also noticed quite a lot of similar games on the website already, so I decided to do something different.

In the end, I decided to take a very simple version of something I have already wanted to do for a long time: a trading company game. As tradesperson, you want to get rich by chartering goods around. This does of course mean you are “connecting worlds”, but that’s a bit boring, huh? So, I decided to add in a special factor that changes the whole game: a portal to another world. These worlds have different supplies and demands. That means that trading between the worlds could turn out to be very profitable, if it weren’t that the single portal is of course under control of Portal Inc., which also wants to get some money out of it. It is up to you to make the best out of it, and if you make enough money, maybe you can get some scientists (or magicians, same thing really) to make you your very own portal.

The biggest problem I am having right now is the lack of a clear losing condition. This game is turning to be some sort of economic simulator, so going bankrupt is an obvious choice, but with limited time, balancing this to be challenging, but not too difficult, might turn out to be a tough job. Maybe I will get some interesting ideas along the way.

So, to finish off: yes, I will be participating using Unity3D; and probably a little bit of Photoshop, and my fellow friend Evernote.

Been toying with the idea to make a city building game for a while. So why not use this as a chance to cobble something together? I’m trying to keep things simple since I know how complicated these things can get.

Game is going to be called Salvation and you play as a station manager guy (name is in progress) who runs a refugee camp trying to save people. This occurs after the Frontier worlds are assaulted by the enemy (I dont know who that is yet). All the different worlds inhabitants are now jammed together in one camp. He is trying to keep them all alive and well, and maybe even gives them the oppertunaty to fightback?

Still working on the lore but got the overall design finished in my note book. Mapping it out in more detail now:

Still trying to decide on simple 3D or 2D via quads. Would be awesome to use <SIMPLE> animation in the form of deltatime * transform.

Anyhow back to it!

Hobo

I now have two different kinds of enemies. One is “real” and the other is a “dream” enemy. They have slightly different behaviors. The dreams are smoother, slightly slower, and turn slower. Your goal is to shoot the dreams with dream bullets, and the real ones with real bullets, if you misjudge and mismatch it, you lose points.

Here is the video:

Previous Update

Tags: 2D, game, Love, lua, progress, screenshot, video

Got a cylinder and a sphere, they do stuff, I promise 😛

Luckily Connected Worlds was one of the themes I had an idea ready for, so I hit the ground running last night and got a couple hours in before sleep. Just woke up (Good Morning to those in EST), and starting the day with a quick status update. Working on the basic game mechanics in Unity currently. Should have alot more to show in a few hours. I’m a coder by nature, so I’m not looking forward to audio/art. Gotta make sure I don’t put them off too long. Next update will have nicer pictures and more details

Good luck all!

Hey all, this time i started with a big idea, I will try to finish it before the 48h if not, i’ll try to get it to the Jam.

This is what i have so far:

Some kind of God simulator where you need to conquer worlds using your resources

Right now all planets and resources are randomly generated but the system is not done.

If you ask for the genre it is strategy

My team is in for the Jam.

Progress:

Eclipse is installed and exporting to desktop/android and GWT. Lets do it!

Tools:

Libgdx and image editors.

So I’ve been working on the foundations and a bit of level design over the past few hours. I sure hope I haven’t picked too big of a scope, I’ll have to figure out how to make the most of what I have.

I’ve also decided to go for the jam. Didn’t want to re-do all kinds of important stuff at the last moment.

Having settled on an idea and a framework and completed the chief tutorial for the framework, and it being 6:25 AM my local time, I think it’s time to visit the land where I’m a viking. I’ve been fading in and out of consciousness while reading the last bit of that tutorial, and while typing this, so yay! sleep. See you tomorrow, #LD48.

Here´s a first Screenshot. As Ludum Dare starts at 2am in Germany I only worked 2 hours on it yet. But I like the result:

It´s gonna be a game about sozial networks

Late, but I’m awake now!

So the theme is (as expected) “Connected Worlds”…

Hum, I didn’t manage to think of any decent idea with this, although there are several bouncing around my head:

– Society is connected: You have to do actions on your Facetube profile to get more friends. This one would probably involve a lot of UI work, and I hate UI work… :\ Also, a lot of writing and procedural generators…

– Realspace/Cyberspace: Player is at the same time a hacker flying in cyberspace, defeating ICE and opening a path to a spy, which in turn has to place access nodes for the hacker while penetrating some secure facility. This one might be simple enough to pull off.

– Trade management: Player must manage interplanetary trade routes, taking into account pirate attacks and the needs of certain places. The idea is to keep the peace between planets by giving them what they need, while keeping your business flowing. This one might also be doable, just don’t know if it’s any fun!

– Split-screen: Player controls two characters at the same time in two screens, and has to either solve puzzles with both of them (in this case, we could give the player the capability of controlling only one at a time), or action-oriented where you have to flee/destroy hazards on both worlds at the same time. This seems like a nightmare to level design properly, and the strength of it hinges on that.

– Ghost game: Player controls two characters (each at a time): a medium (which can go into the spirit world, and where he can see the ghosts) and a ghost hunter (which can hunt ghosts, but can’t see them). Player has to find and trap several ghosts/spirits. Everytime the medium is in the spirit world, it will attract the attention of the ghosts. The problem with this idea is that it seems the hunter just needs to stand next to the medium and wait for the ghosts to come to him. This might be mitigated with some way that the hunter can’t be with the medium. This one has some interesting concepts (possession, traps, perturbations, etc)

– Gravity influenced portal shooter: Scorched Earth inspired game. Players are in different worlds, but they can shoot using gravity. Shots can also include portals for really trick shots. This seems fun, but it rely on either smart AI (which isn’t my think, really), or network code (for multiplayer). I’m not scared of multiplayer code (I do plenty of it for a living), but for the voting stage, I doubt we’d have people playing it enough so that people could actually try it…

So those are my ideas at the moment… I need to really think long and hard about these…

–

I really am not, but if I do finish this game early, I might even start on another one for learning purposes. Come watch me make my game here.

I have determined to make a game that acts a bit like a mash-up of a Tamagochi and Dating Sim, only the characters are all planets, moons, or asteroids.

This is what I have so far…. http://www.gfycat.com/WebbedIllegalHerculesbeetle

Time to start building the “engine”, going to be pretty darn GUI oriented.

I have an Idea: A twin stick shooter set in a universe controlled by competing empires. Weaken an enemy and strengthen others. Gain the trust of your allies by fighting their enemies!

Connecting worlds

Whiteboard?

Woke up 45 minutes ago. Panicked. Painted this:

What the heck do I do next?

Tags: ASEPRITE

Ok so this is what I have so far… maybe going to make a survival thing with paranormal stuff and portals to parallel worlds… oh and also a camera! #spoilers

Just woken up and seen the theme, entering the compo writing in Java, using Eclipse. Simple but its what I feel most comfortable in.

Good luck everyone!

First time Ludem Dare, never done a game jam alone before so I’m excited! I’m gonna be throwing something together in Unity.

For those that couldn’t tell, that’s a missile, not a spaceship. Clearly.

I’m excited to start developing a game for the LD30 game jam.

I’ll be using the Phaser HTML5 2d game development framework. I’m going to make all the work on a Chromebook Pixel using apps from the Chrome Store. I have Xubuntu installed in a Crouton environment in the Chromebook, but I’m only using that to run Tiled, because there’s no Chrome tilemap editor. I’m using Cloud9 as my text editor, and my code will be posted on Github at https://github.com/dreadpiratepj/escape-game.

The theme for LD30 is “Connected Worlds”. I googled the theme and two images were the most striking and inspiring to me:

The first image is by karu-panda on Deviantart ( http://karu-panda.deviantart.com/art/Connected-Worlds-Sunny-Side-Up-153189742 )

The second image is by the architecture & design team of effekt.dk ( http://www.effekt.dk/eka/ )

I chose to make an HTML5 2D game, so I can’t just create a Fez clone, which is what the second image suggests to me.

So I think I’ll make a game where the user has to switch between “warm, sunny, right side up” world and “winter, night time, upside down” world to solve a puzzle. That is way cool, as one of my favorite games is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which features an alternate, connected worlds motif.

I think I’ll stick to making a puzzle game rather than a Zelda clone, as I don’t have the time or the art skills to make a Zelda clone, even if I use OGA spritesheets and tilemaps.

Good luck to everyone else in the game jam!

Dread Pirate PJ

Tags: html5, javascript, LD30

Ludum Dare is this weekend and I am thinking about giving it a shot? The theme is connected worlds.

My current thought is a match game with cards representing different types of opression. The nod to the theme would be intersectionality/kyriarchy being how these different world view filters or “worlds” are “connected”

It’s simple but I also don’t have a whole lot of time to do the thing AND i have social obligations to work around this weekend too. Any thoughts? Is this an awful idea? Any examples you think should be included?

list i am thinking of (in no particular order)

• sexism
• racism
• ableism
• cissexism
• classism
• heterosexism
• monosexism
• ageism
• sizeism

What’s missing? what should be left out? what public domain images would be good representations of these concepts?

This is my first Ludum Dare, I’m missing the local beer festival for this as well!

Equipment & Software I’ll be using:-

Unity

Photoshop

Maya LT

iPad with Garageband

1x Fender Stratocaster

This is my initial design for my first ‘Connected World’

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/123350185/ConceptArt01.jpg

Hello, this is the first post of MechanicMoon with the new account of LD. This time we will have some extra help in this edition. I’m going to introduce MechanicMoon’s Team:

– Javifugitivo (Javier Martinez): The main developer of the studio.

– EduPerez: The main artist.

– Sinda: The animator girl

– Shulger(Angel Sustaeta): Community manager and game designer

In this edition, we will use Game Maker Studio again and the target is improving the results of the last edition, where we entered in top 100. We are very happy for be here again, this afternoon (GMT +1) we will do streaming and more updates about our game. Connected Worlds is a difficult topic … but it has a great potential. Will we be able to surprise you? 😉

Here are some of our past work in other LD:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=25708
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=25708

It was hot outside today. I took Dipsy for her morning-walk. She jumped and peed and played with the other dogs  when the phone rang. Stav and Mirit were on the line. It was time to talk about Ludum Dare.

We made a deal, a few days ago. After we had tons of fun in the last dare, we definitely wanted to team-up again for the current competition. The thing is, even without the LD, we are all really busy these days, and we weren’t sure we could commit this time. Mirit has a full time job she has to get to Sunday morning, I have my last exam for the year in Monday (not to mention my own full time job), where the hell could we find the time needed to make a new game? So the deal was, we’ll talk saturday morning, after the announcement of the theme, and only if we’ll find a *really* cool idea we could all get really excited about we’ll participate.

So, there i was, out with Dipsy, and we talked about connected worlds and couldn’t really find that *really* cool idea.We had some fun ideas, but none of them got all of us really excited, so  i was like, ‘oh yeah, i’ll have all the time i need to study and i’ll ace this test!’. Too bad about the LD, but we’ll always have #31. We were ready to call it quits just as i got home. It was hot outside. So naturally i turned the AC on. And told Stav and Mirit that air conditioning is the coolest invention ever, and how turning it on makes me feel like i’m in another world. another world… another world…

And just like that – our idea was born. And it’s a really silly and bizarre idea. Really.

So, Mirit is already working on all the graphics, Stav started to write the basic code, and I’m thinking about the story and starting to design the puzzles. It’s gonna be a really weird ride this time, and very different from the previous game we made. Oh, and i’ll probably fail the exam, but so be it. AC is much more important.

Hey folks! I’ve started taking notes and collecting thoughts on a Ludum Dare website rewrite. What would help is knowing what people are thinking as they use this current website. While you’re participating this weekend, I ask that you come here and leave a comment sharing what you’re thinking. Things you don’t like about the website/event, things that seem wrong, and things you do like about it. No matter how small, the irks and pains, unnecessary things, and even those little moments that make you smile. I have my assumptions, but you telling will be best. Thanks!

EDIT: Don’t be overwhelmed by the number of comments! Don’t even worry about reading them. Repeating what’s been said just reinforces the importance of something.

So I started on my entry today and I am going to call the game Alma for now. It took me a while to get my idea to fit the theme and probably it fits well.

The only problem I am facing is creating art and how time consuming that process is. Even when it is that much of a hassle, it still looks way worse than crap.

Here is my little protagonist

Here is one of the NPCs too.

As you can see, they aren’t the best looking. But here is hoping that this won’t be the main focus when the game is played by people.

Let’s just hope that Alma could live through the 2 days and see day light than die a horrible dark death in the Recycle Bin. 😀

Tags: 2D, compo, LD #30

I waited up till two for the theme announcement, then decided to sleep on my idea. I wish I hadn’t now as there have been a couple of posts containing similar ideas since, but I think I’m still going to press on with mine as I think it has enough unique components. I’d like to hear people’s thoughts if they think otherwise, but I imagine lots of the submissions this year will have similar gameplay.

You’re presented with two small isometric maps, side-by-side on the screen. There’s a player in each map and your goal is to guide them to an exit. Moving the player in one direction will cause the players on both maps to move in that direction, which could lead the other character into obstacles etc.

I’m weighing up whether to have a heaven and hell theme – where pushing a rock into lava may produce a cloud in heaven to cross an obstacle for example – or a first world/third world theme – where using an electrical appliance may cause a water obstacle to disappear in the third world. I think the first idea is more achievable within the mini isometric map format. The latter feels like it would need to be on a SimCity-like scale.

Anyway, that’s it for now. The last isometric game I built was ten years ago – http://rob-bell.net/2009/03/rob-o-tronic/ and https://github.com/robbell/rob-o-tronic – so time to dust that off for inspiration.

Very early prototype!

Seeing as I’m in the UK I’ve only just started going on this LD, so far my plan is to make an 80s themed space train combat sim. I dont have much to show yet, but here’s a screen grab of the galaxy being made:

radical I know

I have no idea what I am doing.
My game seems a little off-theme.

Right now it’s basically a 2D space-invaders-ripoff, but then with splitscreen. With ugly space-planes. Yeah.

Here’s a picture anyway:

Can’t refuse to enter LD #30, now that I’ve been here since the first one.

Mankind made it into space, inhabited new planets, but failed to get proper internet on it’s colonies. Finally fed up from their local ISPs you set out to connect planets with cable.
First thought is a mix between action and puzzle, so let’s get the gameplay done to test it.
Currently only got the space ship which drops a cable in it’s path.

First ropes…

LD30 here starts at 0300 AM, unfortunately, so I decided to get lots of sleep and make a conference with my team at 0900am. Meeting started at 10 but we had decided quite quickly about the game and now I am finally coding!
The game will be a gravitation puzzle, where two planets are connected only by a small shuttle. The way from one planet to another is affected by gravitation of other planets, anomalies and stuff, so the player have to find out best possible lauch angle and power to get to another planet. I am really excited about that. Some powerups and auxiliary features will be added to differenciate the game from similar titles (like Orbitalis), so wait for further updates!

Woo ho! It looks like I have idea for Ludum Dare.

Take role of multidimensional police officer and close connection between worlds, that causes chaos! Find ‘warping keys’ and close doors!

Each connected world changes level setting, by adding elements characteristic to that world to another! (Eg. if we connect fire world to water one, we’ll have burning fire in some water area!)

Tags: C++, progress

Yay good morning everyone!! 😀

Here’s my breakfast:

The bagel was actually kind of dissapointing… never buying a ready made breakfast in a super market again.

Also the STREAM is up!

Now to come up with an actual game idea…. connected worlds huh?

Maybe a multiplayer game where the players play in individual worlds but they interact somehow… kinda like Journey but every players’ world is different?

This is literally the first idea that came to me just now so let’s see 😀

LET’S JAM!!!

For this Ludum Dare I’m making very simple but fun platformer. I’m using Unity3d for the first time.

In my game there are 2 worlds: red world and green world. When you are in green world, you still move right and when you’re in red one, you still move left. You can switch between worlds using Left Control. You can also jump (in both worlds) using Space. Some coins and platforms are only in one of the worlds.

Progress so far:

• I’ve finished almost all game mechanics (world changing, jumping, moving)
• I’ve made a lot of graphics
• I’ve made 1 level

To do:

• More levels
• Sounds (I’ll use USFXR)
• Possibly music
• Menu

My first level (it works faster, of course )

As I want to at least finish this Ludum Dare with something playable, I’ll try to create an “Untangle Clone” but with little planets.

I think this concept is simple enough for me to implement, since I’m still learning Unity.

Okay I’ll stop posting these now.

Just finished the walk animation of the player character. ^_^

So… I have no idea what to do with this theme… “Connect Worlds”.

So this is what I do know.

* I want to make a game and I have less than 38 hours left to do it in.

* I want to write it in C++ using SDL 2

* I want it to be pixel-based. Not retro 8-bit pixelized, just pixels, not triangles, lines, sprites or texturemapped 3d stuff…

Here we go….

Alright! Connected Worlds it is! This is my second time participating in the Ludum Dare and I have been counting down the days! I have slept very well and I am well rested with 38 hours to go. Not too excited about the theme (I had some really good ideas for the other themes, so I will have to improvise!) but it will be fun nonetheless!

My tools are going to be

• Engine: Unity
• Graphiocs: Adobe Photoshop + Tablet
• Audio: Adobe Audition + Zoom H4n
• Streaming: XSplit

I am going to be live on http://twitch.tv/WeaselZone and I usually interact with the chat, answer questions and/or explain what I am currently doing. So feel free to join the fun Because that is what #LD48 is (at least for me) about: Having tons of fun and participate in an awesome event!

Good luck to everyone

LET’S DO THIS!

Tags: intro, introduction, LD30, motivation, unity

Forgot to post an “I’m in.” post yesterday so here it is. We’re ten hours into the competition and I’ve been awake for the past four.

My basic idea will be an abstract reflex game based on multiple spheres around the scene and maintaining connections between these spheres properly. I’m thinking of dressing the game into a “human relationships” theme which will enable me to introduce interesting rules on connections. So, my connected worlds are going to be people.

Nothing done yet, just the idea, but I’m fairly confident that I can come up with something original and fun. I’ll be using Unity3D and C# as always.

See you later on my next update,

Arhan.

Hello

as i said earlier this is my first ludum dare and i have only been coding for three or four months. I am not great at art so excus my bad graphics but this is what i have done so far. Alos after an hour of useless coding trying to get my view to work i have finally done it.

(p.s i woke up late) (p.p.s dont expect anything special)

Never had so much fun with arppegios P:

I’m as surprised as you possible are!

This is how my tiles look in tiled, still no code to draw it in the game Go, go, go!

So I read the theme “yesterday” and had the idea floating in my mind while I slept (Europe). I’ve just started, and I’ll be streaming at http://www.twitch.tv/bormeir , AND recording a timelapse. Come say hai.
I’m doing a skyline runner! And a crappy one, at that.

 😀

This is what I actually do in the morning, instead of working on my game, dammit!

Okay, okay. So I decided to try Twine this time (yep, I know next to nothing about it, so it must be a success, right?). I’m not native English speaker, so this might be a little hard story-wise, but interactive fiction fits my general idea and I wanted to try this for quite a long time. And LD seems like a great opportunity to test weird ideas, as always!

So the plan for today is to get a little more knowledge about Twine macros, custom scripts, etc., and have the story fleshed out. I was aiming for some more interactivity using custom JS, but we’ll see how it goes. Story is a minimum for today.

Tomorrow I should work on the graphics (want to have some), and music (I did play with MilkyTracker for a couple of hours).

The final aim is to have a IF game working on desktop as well as mobile.

Tags: coffee, foodphoto

I’ve finished sleeping now. I went to bed at 6am. I’m still super tired and probably will have a nap later. Going to get as much done before Doctor Who and then I’m heading out for the night.

Basically I need to get as much done between now and 3pm as possible. I don’t have very much at the moment sadly, but its a start and I think I know how the puzzle element will work.

Will post updates as I go.

I coded a BSP subdivider to create a galaxy full of stars, in three dimensions rather than two to make things a little different from the average indie space game.

Then I got caught up in aesthetics for the rest of the night just like I said I wouldn’t, and it was a waste of time for the most part; my stars still look more like gas giants than stars. I really need to quit doing that during LDs. There isn’t enough time for it.

I made myself a serviceable skybox in Spacescape without it consuming too much time, at least.

He likes exploring connected worlds… or does he?

Finally made my mind about what my game should be, working on the concept it made me even more sure about the idea..

It might be a bit complicated math-wise, i just have to remember things I once knew 😛

I’m quite confident for now that it can be done, we’ll see ^^

Here’s a sneak peak of what I’ve so far!

Time to code up now 😀

Hi guys, so this is my first LD and I’m enjoying it quite a bit

I’ve decided to make a simple platformer in Unity with pixely 2D graphics(I know, this is used pretty much everytime :D)

It’s about a guy liberating space cities from a dictatorship. And these cities are connected with train tubes(connected worlds).
Now time for lunch and some Futurama 😀

Tags: 2D, unity3d

It’s the first half of the first day and here it is. A jump and run with a level importer camera control, animations and some other stuff.

Whew!

A quick process for me, I did a bunch of pixel art and assembled the core functions to my game, with the placeholder name “Of Light and Dark”. It sort of follows the theme in that the shadow and the light worlds are cone=nected, but some things can only be done in certain ‘worlds’. Basically, It’s a bit of a puzzle game.

Anyway, this leaves the next major thing to do as the player graphics, for normal player and shadow player.

Here’s a screenie of the bundle of mess I’ve created so far:

Unfortunately, as I’m using GameMaker, HTML5 doesn’t support the blend modes I’m using, so I may not have an online version :(.

After sitting with the code since 3 am (it’s 1 pm now) I’m taking a long break, I will be back on the code soon enough, but for now we’ve got the splash screen going and a solid base for everything, now all we need to make is the game itself. Back in a couple of hours!

Oh, I almost forgot to say
That I’m in, I’m doing this
Because LD48 is the way
To take part, is such a bliss

I’ll do my best to finish my game
Even if it will be hasty at the end
Because it won’t be the same
If the deadline I have to bend

I wish you all a weekend of fun
And if you finish the game of yours
You can proudly say that you won
Whether or not it get good scores

Because having fun, learning, and hopefully finishing your game matters more, than getting a good score.

Well I was originally going to do this without any libraries, but at the last second I changed my mind and decided to use LWJGL instead! :p

Here is the lighting engine I have created for the game:

I guess it’s time to start making an actual game!

(Click4gifs)

He’s gonna be exploring planets in his spaceship and punching things! 😀

Spend so much time on searching for idea, and seems lke I’m finally get some general view of what am I going to do. I’ll be trying hard to come up with some game!

Programming: C++, Lua, SDL and my little framework

Drawing: PaintNet

Sound: don’t know, maybe Propellerhead Reason

Hi everybody!

I just woke up, got out of the shower and checked the Ludum Dare site for the theme. I haven’t been too excited about the previous themes, but this time, I’ve got ton of ideas!

I already set up a Github repository with a preconfigured projecet prior to the compo, so it’s time to dive right into things. My tools this time around looks something like this:

• Tech: ThreeJS and TypeScript
• Graphics: Photoshop, Expression Blend Design and possibly Wings3D
• Sound: Sfxr as usual.

My progress so far

I suppose it’s going to be a space game. The circles are the “connected worlds” (although they aren’t connected yet).

Tools I’m using:

• Javascript + canvas
• JustMath vector library
• node-webkit (For the sake of compatibility, although there’ll probably be a browser version too)
• Sublime Text 2

So this is my desk for the compo. Hope it will do.

Firsttime doing 3D for a GameJam. Did way to much detail. But alas rest of the team makes better progress.

I’ve lost focus for some time and made a tons of bugs. But it seems like, I’ve came back