I wrote up a post mortem for my game Solar Collider which you can play here

Post Mortem Link:

http://integershiftdevelopment.com/2014/08/26/ludumdare-post-mortem/

Hello, In addition to creating Games, I also record YouTube Videos. I started a new series this week for Ludum Dare 30 Games, it will run until September 15th. Each week I will have videos for at least five games.  The release Schedule is Mondays at 3pm PST.

Youtube Playlist

Tags: Videos

This is the intro sequence for “The Bookcase”, a game we worked on for the Jam.

We didn’t have time to finish enough gameplay to submit it, but we are very likely to turn it into a full game at some point in the near future.

Hi LDers!

So I have a question regarding being able to change stuff post 48 hours. I know I can’t change stuff in the game and that’s not what I want.
But what about the Web link? Can I change from the free hosting link full of ads to Kongregate now? Please respond and please respond with yes 😉

//Kiwiboi

I made a quick video this morning giving an overview of our game.  Please swing by and give it a play/review.

We didn’t really finish (does anyone?) but I think our idea is generally there.  We have a tradition of having a group brainstorming session at a restaurant here in Vegas.  This time there were only two of us and it took us over two hours to agree on this game.  We thought Connected Worlds would be an easy theme, but it was harder than expected to come up with a unique interpretation of the theme.  Initially we prototyped a completely different idea, but threw it away early on Friday.

We didn’t have any artist support this time around, except for my cousin (title screen) and brother (music).  So it’s kind of a programmers’ creation and I think we may have focused too much on technical coolness (the server backend) and not enough on gameplay mechanics and theme.  I feel like it’s missing the artistic composition of our LD29 entry, but overall I’m still pleased with it and think it has some potential.

Looking forward to reviewing all of your games!  This is the fun part.

Then we need you!

We have made a game that requires the use of both Android and Windows. However only 1 person downloaded the android .apk (we did have 6 ratings, which is kinda strange :< )

If  you have both Android and Windows, we won’t let you down!

Check it out:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=29549

Hey guys !

I updated  my game for mac! Now there should come no exeption !

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=38779

Just made a port of my C++/SDL based compo entry to Web!

Bunch of tweaks were needed and then Emscripten was able to compile my game as JavaScript – madness! But such madness I like!

It is so weird to see this monstrosity to run in browser…

This is our little version of Pac-Man, hope you like it.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=23927

Ive been trying to get a high score for a while now, so far i’ve managed to get around 160000 points (that’s 16 copies of myself jumping around and getting in my way!!)

It would be great if you guys post your high scores, as it would help stress test the game if it gets above say 30 copies!

Post your scores here, or on the Game Page . Have fun!

Thanks to all!

My entry can be found here or you could just check out the game at my youtube link here

(Post mortem taken from my blog at http://zwodahs.github.io/blog/2014/08/25/ludumdare-postmortem/)

Another ludum dare is here and this time I decided not to post about participating until I actually completed it. Since I completed it, I shall write the post mortem for it.

First of all, the game can be found at the ludum dare page or at github.

Upon knowing the theme, I kind of immediately had the concept of objects passing from one world to another. Initially I wanted to do a match 3 style game. It was the first thing that came to mind. I didn’t immediately start coding; instead I take my time to have my lunch and think about the idea.

I settled on a tile game where you connect the line to move the objects to the next area. This appears in the last world in the final game. By the end of the first day, I finished setting up the basic architecture of the game, with basic collision and pushing of blocks. The matching is also completed. It seems like I was really closed to finishing so I decided to take the time to set up my XCode to export the game.

On the second day however, I had a sudden change of idea. I thought, what if each world have something different from the others.

I took the entire day (and night) to finish the ambition goal to change requirement at the last minute. I did managed to finish the game at around 3am (submission at 9am).

So what went right :

• Using a framework I am really familiar with.
• Using a graphic style that really do not need me to draw.
• Trying to set up XCode early.
• Setting up the architecture of the game properly.

I was toying around the idea of creating a SFML library that (almost) mimics what ncurses has about 2 weeks before Ludumdare. I am really glad that I managed to finish that code just before Ludum Dare and using it really saved me a lot of time. You can find it in my github inside zframework. Because of that code, I also ended up using a character-style graphics instead of nice sprites. That really saved me a lot of time, which is then used to create the gameplay.

On the first day, I actually spend a lot of time setting up the game architecture, which I thought was a bad idea initially. The effort did pay off when the requirements of the game changes and the architecture was ready to adapt to the new idea.

So what went wrong :

• Not testing compilation of code on Windows prior to LD.

That is pretty much what went wrong. I spend a few hours trying to compile it on Windows, with errors that I had never see before. I did manage to get it working eventually today, 1 day after the submission. Other than that, this ludum dare couldn’t have gone better.

This time round I really enjoy the process and manage to make the game that I had in mind on the second day. I hope that the next will be the same =).

Personally I really like this game more than my previous creations. Among all the games that I have made, I think this will easily rank in the top 3, so I really hope that you guys can help me out by taking a look at the game =). I am already trying my best to rate as many games as possible with my limited time during the weekdays. The rating don’t matter to me, I just want feedback ;D

Click To Play

Cosmic Conga is a fast paced strategy game that may… or may not be, balanced 😛

Most of the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive (thanks everyone!) with the one exception of a psychotically insane AI difficulty.

Fancy a challenge? Try and beat the original LD submission Play [Web]

Sick of that stupid AI? Try our brand spanking new ‘balanced’ version Play Balanced [Web]

I stress ‘balanced’ as I’ve spent so much time testing this build I’m not entirely sure what constitutes ‘difficult’ anymore 😛

Thanks to everyone who helps make Ludum Dare possible,

And congrats to everyone who submitted, the entries keep getting better every time.

Aaron

Click To Play

Tags: 3D, Conga, Connection, Cosmic, hard, LD30, space, strategy, unity

The Salt Pleeease is a puzzle game about exchanging condiments.

-> http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=11872

Technically it’s connected sliders on a grid, that meet each other at some intersections.
You move all the sliders simultaneously with the mouse. Basically, the mouse’s position is the slider’s ratio.
Moving from left to right updates horizontal sliders, up and down movements are for vertical sliders.
Sliders have different ranges, and various interdependances between them.
You grab the condiment by holding the mouse’s clic, to make it travel through the area.

For the interpretation of the theme, there is obviously connections, but “worlds” may seemed light.
Unless we see people as individual worlds. May be I should make characters more unique and different, for emphasizing the theme.

I haven’t spent the 72 hours at working. (I’m currently on vacation and there is sun outside)
I’ve worked a lot at making procedural levels that would be both solvable and interesting. (Not really satisfied with actual generation but it’s okay for now)

The main rush was the last day, working hard at packing the game with graphics, hand-made and procedural levels, menus and debugging.
A little victory screen was important to reward the player. (Will pimp it up, for more satisfaction)

I have to finish the polishing, with more drawings, animations and levels. And balance speed and challenge.
Some ideas have come in mind, like blocking a slider when antoher slider grabs him, but that’s for a later version.

But for now, I’m going to play and rate some of yours great and awesome games !

<3 Ludum Dare

Click here to check out System Harvest!

Adrift from your long gone solar system, you and a measly 1000 others are in search of salvation within another solar system.

You must command humanity to reap the benefits of the system before this sun implodes too! 

Gather resources and return them to the mothership to gain the highest score before the sun dies and sucks all life from its orbit! 

Be sure to keep people alive by placing them on resource rich planets but be sure to leave before it’s too late and your population uses all of the resources! 

Check out Gravity Flipper here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2014/08/26/gravity-flipper/

In this game you control two characters which are both trapped in different worlds. 

The only thing connecting the two worlds is you. 
You must keep both characters alive by reversing their gravity. 

Unfortunately, both of the worlds are connected. 
Reversing one world’s gravity will also reverse the others. 

Try it out now!

 

First game jam in my career done, resulting in Hot and Cold. Time for a summary! I’ll list what went right and what went wrong, just because everyone does it this way.

Hot stuff

• Graphics.
  Other than some stuff that I’ll mention later, I did a pro job here. Honestly, I don’t know a thing about drawing and art in general, so it was quite a challenge. I decided to go for a minimalistic look with 8×8 pixel tiles and sprites – relatively easy and quick to make, not much detail is needed and can still look good. Credits for inspiration go to this tileset by Soundlust and the game I once enjoyed – Legends of Yore.
  
• Animations.
  There’s just a few of them, they’re all 3 or 4 frames long and the logic behind them is quite strange, but in my humble opinion they look really good. Especially destroying barrels is very eye-pleasing.
  
• Aseprite.
  Connected with the two above points, the software I used. As stated on gosu forums before, Aseprite is the only pixel art tool I don’t hate. I used old free 0.9.5 version for the compo, but I was happy to pay $10 earlier today for the newest version. It’s really good.
• Concept.
  I was quite pleased the theme, but to be honest I would be happy with almost every one there was. In the final voting I upvoted more than a half of them, and downvoted only two. The idea of stwitching between worlds might not be very original, but it’s a good setup for a game and it was the first thing that came to my mind, so I just went with it. Of course, lots of planned features were dumped/changed as time was passing, but the main point is there.
• Game mechanics.
  There might be not much to it, they’re quite poorly coded and rather undertested, but I was very pleased to realize that they all seem to work OK. Maybe I just didn’t try hard enough, but at current state I wasn’t able to cause the game to crash or even find any major bugs (and I’m the person that is supposed to know all the code flaws).
• Blogging.
  Okay, some of you might think it’s just a waste of precious time, but I found writing these short posts very helpful. I’d really recommend doing this, as it basically lets you think for a moment about what you’re doing, rate your progress and simply blow off some steam. Just take a look at my journal, it’s not too long, but there’s abundace of hilarity and drama.
• Exacly, drama.
  Ludum Dare is just too much fun, drama and excitement. I was so glad when it was over, but I would (and I will) do it again. And again. And maybe once more.
• It’s a game.
  Not much of a game, but it is. It has some kind of a a goal, and a win condition, and shit. So it’s a game by definiton. That makes it not truely complete, but the most complete game I ever created. Let me elaborate. I made jCaster, but it’s basically just an experiment (and it’s in development – very very slow development – for over a year now). I made – and finished – this pretty neat Game of Life implementation, but as we all know (or should know) – GoL sadly does not fulfill any game definition known to humanity. I made some other projects that are not even worth mentioning. But yeah, my point is – last weekend I finally made a game. Deal with it.

Cold stuff

• Time management.
  I hesitated what should be number 1. on this list, but now I’m pretty sure it’s the right choice, because it’s the source of all further evil. I had 48 hours to make a game and I wasted more than a half of it. Looking back I don’t think I spent even 20 hours actually working. That means, I wasted at least 28 hours on sleeping, eating, drinking too much beer and making all the general stuff when all I had to do was follow the damn train, CJ to create a damn game. And I even failed to prepare a mind map, or a TODO list, or anything alike. I made myself disappointed.
• Levels.
  There’s the tutorial that you can go through in less than one minute (I finished it like 20 minutes before compo ended). And that’s the only thing that a regular player can see in game besides main menu. So yeah, not much in terms of gameplay. And that’s the main direct reason why my entry is rather disappointing (or a complete faliure, if you prefer).
• Code redundancy.
  That’s something very specific that makes me not sleep very well at night ever since. I can’t understand how I could think it’s a good idea to load every level from 4 different files and store the data in (wait for it) 7 (seven!) arrays. Okay, to be honest I know how – I had 2 different ideas to approach this matter and ended up mixing them. I did not fix this for, how I happened to think of it at the moment, simplicity (sic!) sake. But still, that’s just one example.
• Code in general.
  Yeah, even though I’m known of hacking the hell outta every single line of code I come into contact with, I believe this might be the ugliest source I’ve ever produced. Mixed conventions (or no conventions whatsoever), chaos, devious logic that even I won’t be able to understand after a while and everything is hardcoded. Still, it’s some kind of fail/win situation, because as mentioned above, it turned out to work quite decently. But don’t read it, especially if you want to become (or already are) a good programmer.
• No debugger.
  One of the reasons for the two above. You know, I love writing in Ruby. And I love using Komodo Edit. The problem is, there is no good free Ruby IDE with a debugger (I think there’s Aptana Studio available, but it was crashing on my PC when I tried it some time ago). Komodo is a really lovely editor, but it’s only an editor, a fancier Notepad. I’d love to own Komodo IDE, but $90 for a personal licence, seriously guys… Anyway, of course there’s always an option of debugging in command line, but I never really used it, so it would probably be slower than searching for mistakes by reading the sources backwards and underwater. So there was no debugging involved at all.
• Lowering standards.
  The game was supposed to have

  “pretty complicated levels, not only with fires and barrels but also water, lava, rocks, guards and stuff”
  – myself

  I think we all know what happened

• Message window.
  Or the big ugly sign. You know what I’m talking about. This thing:
  
  It’s hideous and I know it, because it was supposed to be just a temporary placeholder. And it happened to stay there. (To some extent the same could be said about main menu background, except it’s not that ugly.)
• Effects.
  Or no effects at all. You know, lights, shadows, particles etc. I wanted to have at least some kind of cool transition effect between dimensions, but again it was something killed by priorities.
• Music.
  I had an opportunity of at least trying to create something, but my decision, decision was I’d rather sleep. So then there was no other option than generating soundtrack in cgMusic. The actual levels themes – you know, the ones you will never hear – are pretty nice in their generic way. And then there’s this absurd march I decided to play in tutorial
  And you know what, I was lying about the “you will never hear” part. Level 1-4 music is included with game files (in levels directory).
• Travels.
  Would not recommend.

So here you go. That’s all I can think of at the moment. Again, I’d like you to check out Hot and Cold. It’s not all bad, and at the very least you won’t waste too much of your time on it I’m thinking of eventually making a post-compo version to actually finish what I started.

Tomorrow I wish I will finally start looking at other people’s entries. Sadly, I’m just one guy and I can’t rate all the games out there. So if you specifically want to hear my opinion, feel free to ask, I’ll be happy to give one! (especially to a person who was not bored to read this far :))

Damn that’s one long post.

Tags: postmortem

I noticed that not too long ago, the awards / medals section on the right hand side of the website disappeared.

Where did it go?

I have been looking and learning Irrlicht recently and I was wondering if any of you use Irrlicht for games?

If you do and have any links to your projects, I would love to play them and check them out.

Thanks! 😀

Hey all, hope every one had a gd LD.

Unfortunately due to work and a power failure I didnt submit in time, I thought I might be able to submit today after work under the ‘jam catergory’ as the rules are more relaxed but apparently not. So im submitting my link here, I wont get votes but heres my efforts

Grez

Have fun, feel free to comment, any problems let me know.

Cheers,

Rob