October Challenge
So it’s the first of October and I had an awesome idea at school! Each day I would work on my game, livestream it and then upload it too YouTube. So that’s what I did! If you wanna see the first episode then here it is:
Ludum Dare 31 – London has SOLD OUT. We are so happy and feel very privileged that we’ve had such an exciting response from the LD community.
We are currently in talks with our hosts, Google Campus, about securing more space and catering so we can extend the event. However, we cannot guarantee anything.
We would actively encourage anyone wishing to attend a real-life event in the UK to consider hosting their own – especially outside of the London area (Birmingham would be pretty good, or Manchester, if you needed ideas).
Thanks again for the support you’ve given us through your amazing, ticket-reserving response.
-The Ludum Dare 31 – London team.
Hi there, after programming This Little Piggy for LD30, a number of people were interested in how the character controller was achieved. I’ve now put together a little tutorial showing how it’s done.
Source code: http://pastebin.com/YBbFGZzD
World model by @danielsound: http://bit.ly/worldModelPackage
Hope you enjoy and learn something 😉
For my first Android project I made a mistake of only testing on a single device. This time I decided to to extensive research to make sure my game looks great on all Android devices from 800×480 to 2560×1600 pixel screens. After two days of research and testing and made this guide for all the Android developers;
http://bigosaur.com/blog/31-android-resolutions-definite-answer
I’m making all the graphics in 6 different sizes, scaled from 100% for 800×480 screens to 320% for 2560×1600. I’m using letterboxing with 16:9 being the base resolution, but instead of plain black background I’m using a filler-background so the whole screen is full with some graphics. The “action” takes place only in the central 16:9 space though. It should cover 99% of devices out there. Here’s my main menu:
I plan to automate most of it with ImageMagick. The workflow would be like this:
1. draw everything for the largest resolution
2. scale images (svg where possible, jpg otherwise)
3. for any overlay text, use imagemagick to add it on the shrinked image using the appropriate font size
As you can see in my blog post 2134×2733 is needed if you simply want to scale the image down to any resolution. This enables you to use the single “scale” multiplier in entire game. Whenever you need a fixed coordinate, just multiply by the scale factor and you’re done. At least, for Sprites. If you’re using libGDX Stage, then you also need to offset each coordinate against the screen center, because libGDX Stage coordinates start in bottom-left corner which might be different on aspect ratios other than 16:9.
Well, I hope this helps anyone who makes 2D games for Android. I still see some very popular games not doing this right. For example I got CubeMen from the Humble Bundle and menus are so small on Nexus 10 that you can barely read text or touch the correct button.
Hey guys!
Yamanu 1.3 is now officially here! I apologize for the recent or now starting confusion on which version is what. The version for Ludum Dare 30 was 1.2. Now it is 1.3, because things were added and changed. I have a sort of changelog/demonstration video here. You can download Yamanu and/or the source code here. Thank you guys for all of your support! I really appreciate it! My Yamanu 1.2 video has over 80 views, and is the most viewed video on my channel. There’s also been a fair amount of downloads, so at least some of you are taking a look! 1.3 doesn’t add amazing features, but it fixed some annoying things, and did add a few cool features. Check out the video for more details. Hopefully I can get 1.4 out before Ludum Dare 31! Again, your support helps motivation, so if you want to see more, tell me you want more! Shoot me an email (gandalf1209@techpandainc.com) and let me know what you think.
Thanks!
– Gandalf1209
We, Random Abductions are doing a sprint weekend where we implement as many features in our game as humanly possible. Mostly working on randomly generated level design. We are publishing our progress live on twitter. If you like to follow us you can do so by checking out @randomabduction and @RA_siewart. We are working on the following stuff:
We will also try to answer any questions you might have via twitter, so don’t hesitate to throw some.
Hope to see you soon. Greets, the Random Abductions Team!
So I decided to tackle the October Challange.
First of all I liked my LD30 game. I didn’t write a post-mortem yet but overall I was very happy with it(even though the scores were pretty low).
I want to fix the problems the game has. The UI is not the best. Players got confused by it more then once.Also I want it to beusable on mobile which it currently wouldn’t be. I want to up the visuals. Add some eye candy and maybe try to use something else besides color to differentiate stuff. The audio needs work too as some sounds are pretty annoying after a little time. Music is fine but I have some ideas to improve that aswell. Finally I’ll build in some little gameplay tweaks and will try to implement a proper Tutorial because most players where overwhelmed by the complexity.
That I think I’m quite able to do. But I am concerned about what comes after this. I am like many others someone who hasn’t properly released a game yet. My only public games are on the Ludum Dare page and one hidden in some forum waaay in the past 😀
So my plan is to release the “final” game on itch.io and the Google Play Store. I’m not sure about pricing to be honest. I was thinking about placing it at 1$ or below on the Play Store and make it free(pay what you want) on itch.io. I’m not sure if this is a good idea. Once that is done I want to make the game visible to as many people as possible. But honestly I don’t know how to do it. I guess I could send my game to some Indie reviewers but it feels strange to be honest. I’ll have to look that up and get some feedback on that topic. Because I really want people to enjoy my game.
Lastly I’m not sure about taxes here in Germany. I haven’t found any infos what you need to do if you start selling games and what costs/paper work are associated with that. If anyone can give me some directions I would be really grateful.
Tags: im in, october challange
Just submitted my October Challenge entry. I hope you all enjoy it. Unfortunately I’ve been spending too much time working on games recently and not enough time working on grad school stuff, so I have more I want to do on this project.
I hope you all enjoy it.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/october-challenge-2014/?action=preview&uid=30603
http://www.tallshrimpcreations.com/arithme.html
October Challenge
Finally got round to uploading the second video – here it is:
Hey guys, I am Nemo one of the game developer within HundredHundred. Recently, well a year a go I decided to start writing up a blog about becoming a better game developer. After submitting my first game for Ludum Dare 30, I was able to learn a lot of positive experience, and I want to share my story and my experiences with you guys, fellow game developers like myself. So if you have time have a read, you never know you might just find it interesting : ]
http://claumpark.wordpress.com/
Tags: game development, game jam, itsNemo, story
Some weeks ago I lost all enthusiasm to continue the game I started in September. Having a day job and being a parent takes most of the time so the progress was very slow.
Lucky me that I found a post about the LD October Challenge, that got me on my feet 😀
So here I come with my wannabe Top Down Arena shooter titled “Karmatron”
I got inspiration from Robotron 2084 and the late Ultratron, but I’m adding a small twist, there is a ‘core’ to protect from enemies.
There isn’t much done yet, but is starting to look like a game. Will be very abstract, since I’m not good with art, and later I will play with some palettes.
Here is a video of the status of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsUus1cbhlI&feature=youtu.be
Here is a video of me fixing some bugs yesterday (FF edition, no sound): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgmeA5ttB-4
Next task: Gathering energy for the core.
I’m doing it in Haxe/HaxeFlixel and targeting Flash so I can easily distribute it on any web page.
Hope on finishing it by the end of October.
Cheers!
Eka
PS: Second time posting this, first time got an error 😛
Hi
Have just entered the October competition with my game Tower Block Builder and now I will have to finish this project I thought would take about five weeks. That was about 6 months ago and I am still not finished so I though I would blog about some of my problems and pains ( at one point I abandon the whole idea).
But I want to inspire and help people create games and so I will also detail some solutions and help I found and explain the shear joy of people playing the game you have created.
So to recap. I have created a game in HTML5 using pure Javascript with a little help from JQuery and Box2D. I have always liked the ‘real world physics’ of Angry Birds and wanted to develop a game with similar ‘physics’. While testing and playing with Box2D I came upon the idea of a simple game I called Tower Block Builder. This was to be a simple stacking game and (I thought) would be a quick test game to get to know the code of Box2D.
At this point I am happy with the game engine and graphics and have created 5 of the 20 levels. Easy huh? No. When I started creating levels I realised how the game could be played in different ways. For instance – when staking blocks you could lean on the walls and build more and so score higher. This meant the scores needed for 2 and 3 spanner awards neede to be adjusted. My advice is always get someone to test the game and play it from scratch without any advice from yourself.
This means, although I only have to create 15 more levels, I have to take into account the pass scores and different ways of playing. Hence, I may not make the end of October.
Will give more advice next blog.
Coderfap
I’m making an online multiplayer programming game where you try to hack your opponent’s computer to execute the DAT command, which makes you win the game.
EDIT 1:
Ooo! I’ve got an intro animation:
While testing the math from my previous post, I noticed that wrong set of images gets picked up on some of the Android devices. Those devices have on-screen buttons (home, back, menu) which are shown inside the screen. Luckly, the solution is simple, just enable the immersive mode and buttons would go away and you have the whole screen to your game.
As a side-effect, players would be much less likely to hit the home button at the bottom of the screen and exit your game mid-play, as they would have to drag the finger to make the button appear at all.
The immersive mode is available since KitKat. If you don’t want to bother with the docs, here’s the code you can simply copy/paste into your project:
http://bigosaur.com/blog/32-handle-immersive-kitkat
The code uses a 5 second delay before immersive mode is activated. This is useful in case user lanuches the app by mistake.
If you’re making an Android game, please implement this.
I don’t really have time, as a self-employed developer i need to make ends meet, but…. Finally making an android game and bring it to market is sth. i have been planning to do for quite some time now, but there was always sth. that prevented me from finally doing it, same as right now.
So what?… October is laughing at me? Teasing me for never seeing it through to the end? It is CHALLENGING me, DARING me to DARE a game to the world?!!
I will make some HTML5 game or another (prbly some simple puzzler), the challenge for me will be to set up all the workflow i need from a HTML5 game to a mobile app (CocoonJS or PhoneGap) for future reference and use.
So, the goals are simply:
(in reversed order obviously)
So, lets find some time then 
Goeth forth and codeth…
October Challenge is now and I finally decide to finish one of my project that been collecting dust for 2 years now. It’s a racing game with few different game types, customizable cars and few other things. Here is some old video playlist for you too look at to see what I decide to finish this October.
I’ll be broadcasting most ‘interesting’ parts of the project via Twitch – come along or bring some one, join the chat and watch me doing/failing something. If you have questions about this project, please ask, I’ll be happy to answer. No spoilers, thought.
If you are not afraid, you can play demo here: http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-big-wheels
Tags: game development, october challange, video
I’m having trouble with making music. Before when I used to make music, it was easy, as I didn’t know much about good music and as long as it sounded fine I was okay with it. Now, I’m getting myself braindead trying to make up music with my OCD kicking in. Whenever I even make a small beat, I can never make up anything good to go with it, as LMMS doesn’t have much to offer. So, I move to Anvil Studio. It made some of my FAVORITE music (Including in An Untitled Story and Generic Man) so I decided to give it a try. It has lots of very good high-quality instruments, and is very versatile. A couple problems though:
1) I have no idea how to import my own instruments
2) The process of making music in it is very long and neck-aching.
I have tried FL Studio, but the free version had little to no to offer, and I’m trying to stay on a budget of, well, 0.00$.
I look at Famitracker, and it can make some very nice making music! (One of my favorites being Rushjet) But it is really confusing to make different sounds that I want, and in the period of a month I can’t cram in learning the 8-bit sound system whilst making a game and trying to get done school!
I would just make the game first and use that as inspiration for the music, but I’ve tried that 2-3 times already, and I just couldn’t make the right tune for the game! I don’t want a mining game with puzzle music!
I feel like all my ideas are drained, and it’s hard for me to make even videos now!
Does anyone have any tips on what I should do?
So, I present lazer(with a Z!), a game made about a year ago in the middle of algebra class. This is made for the TI-84, and the as a fellow graphing calculator programmer pointed out will not run on the TI-83 (usually TI-84 programs can run on a TI-83) .
In the game you must spin mirrors to bounce a laser(s) into a detecter(s), while passing through portals and avoiding boxes. An epic puzzle game for graphing calculator! Futures 45 levels. (I might get a calculator so.. More levels soon?(I made it on a borrowed TI-84)). It received a 8/10 rating on ticalc.org .
anyway! If you wish to download go there–> http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/459/45934.html
pics at link!!
Apparently, I released Not a Clone at the same day as the October challenge was announced, so here it is!
Not a Clone
Upon receiving his new smartphone, poor Jimmy downloaded all of the top-selling games that now demands every second of his attention. Help Jimmy play through as many mobile games as possible before the battery runs out!
Not a Clone is a satire on the rampant clones that appears in the mobile game market.
Tags: clone, Flappy Bird, mobile, Satire
I would like to participate October challenge very badly! But one month is not enough. That’s why I started personal October-November-December Challenge! It’s like October challenge, but it last the rest of this year. I have been improving my programming skills since the latest Ludum Dare, so I think it’s finally time to make something actual. Maybe not a full game, but an alpha version (alpha funding is the way to go!).
Here’s the list of my goals:
Well, two goals are more than one, right? I’m not sure whether I’m going to make a story-driven rpg or a multiplayer game.
I’ll make another post when I get something finished.