I got out of the hospital today! Yay!
I just came back home and am pretty exhausted (took 5 hours via train) and in a bit of pain.
I didn’t have much time to work on my game so far so I don’t know if I’ll make it for the compo, but I’ve got a cool concept in mind and will at least finish it for the jam. 
Hopefully I can make up a bit of time tomorrow.
The game is going to be about communication.
I’ll give you a sneak peak when I’m a bit more rested tomorrow.
Mostly did GUI stuff, and about 0% gameplay…not good. Tomorrow it’s all about getting the gameplay implemented. This is what I got so far:
http://www.gfycat.com/GrouchyMildAsp#?format=gif
Working on some weapon design for the game, I have decided to make the game mostly multiplayer, but it still doesn’t have a name. Anyone have any friendly ideas? lol
It looks fine! Nothing really happens here yet, but at least it started to look like a game.
The character doesn’t walk through walls any more, added some random background outside… That’s all good. Other than that, so far I know there will be fire. And barrels. And some magic involved. And not much of a story. Basically, I’m going for some kind of logic/puzzle game. We’ll see.
I don’t think I’m able to do any more programming today. I definitely need some R&R. What I might actually do before going to sleep is try and make some music. But I never did music before. I happen to own Stagelight license and it looks interesting, on the other hand there’s rezoner’s chirp that looks simple enough even for me… but still this shit scares me.
Of course, I could also call it a day and skip directly to bed. And regret it tomorrow. Decisions, decisions…
In my last post I told you that all my work was gone. It were only 5 hours because I coldn’t start earlier, but I knew the theme all along. In the first 12 hours I couldn’t come up with anything, because this theme means everyting and nothing at the same time. That’s because “Connected Worlds” is more of a broad concept than a theme. More than that, even if you count it as a theme, it is a very bad one. There are one trillion ways in which you could interpret this theme, and even more ways to make a game that somehow, in some way has something to do with connected worlds. The problem is that you could just about make any game and then somehow kind of fit it into the theme.
For me, a lot of the fun was allways in the tight constrains of the Compo, but this time, more so even than with the last themes, those constrains that allways spark creativity were meaningless. Thus, I have zero motivation to start anyting again, even less then in my earlyer posts.
And I know I’m not alone in this. I can tell from the frontpage posts, from all the “So I have this and don’t know what to do with it”, “maybe I will use it, maybe not, I don’t know” and the “I kind of have something that could fit the theme” ‘s
Thus, I want to ask you, the ten people that will find this post inside the compotime frontpage mess, to watch out at the next compo what themes you vote for. Please don’t let us reapeat this.
#LD48 #LD30 Ok, think I'm ready to start coding now… designs for the game screens are ready: http://t.co/A0yUIyE7Lt
— mkv25.net games (@Markavian) August 23, 2014
I’m participating in a local game jam here in Albuquerque, and we’re nearing the 24-hour point. It’s been really cool so far, I’m on the art team this time, and we have 2 programmers putting stuff together in Unity… And then today we got kind of scattered, but I’m confident we’ll be able to meet up in time to finish the game. Since it’s running at the same time as Ludum Dare, the game may be submitted to the Jam but we’re not sure yet. The robots can be killed but they still need a nice explosion animation. #RioGrandeIGDAJam2014 Remember, when you say you’re meeting at someone’s house, don’t show up to meet somewhere else. >:U
It’s not looking like much changed, but I was mainly working on code side of the project. Also maybe I have musical theme.
Ignore the un-synced audio, Here is a sneak peek of my game
http://puu.sh/b4Ypz/4d76ed8065.mp4
Feedback greatly accepted
Still going terribly, but its gradually improving… Think I chewed more than I should, because of the balancing… It takes too long to adjust the simulation parameters, especially if you’re not used to that kind of work!
Planets now have food supplies and their population grows with it.
This is mostly data driven, so it will probably be faster to get up and running for the other resources.
Also got load and saves working. Next step, build hyperspace gates and start laying down the trade routes.
Current schedule after the break:
Our game is about connections, feelings and universe. It’s a metaphor about influence of human culture on space and beyond, about our waves of informations. And now… we have SOUNDs!
It’s 11pm in Czech Republic, and I’m pretty tired after 19 hours of development.
I haven’t progressed much, I’ve been most of time playing with GUI tweaking. Tomorrow I’m planning to tweak game mechanics, make it more fun, challenging and harder, add some new features and finish it with sounds, music and intro. I still worry about music, because I have no idea how I’m going to do that. Well… let’s see.
I’ve spent a lot of the day wrangling quirks in three.js. Aside from that I’ve just been creating content in hopes that it will help me settle on some gameplay.
The theme isn’t terrible or anything, I’m just having a hard time managing expectations.
Hospital, meet dungeon.
At this point I’m sure I could cobble together a reasonably pretty and atmospheric map and I have some decent story written, but I’m at a loss for gameplay that can be implemented in a realistic timeframe.
Do I keep polishing this turd, or do I scrap it and start over?
I had many ideas for most of the themes EXCEPT this one, and of course, this one was chosen. I have been away for most of the day, and despite only having 10 months programming experience, I’m going pretty well! Check it out…
Although it looks like I’ll have to call it a day. I may have to enter the jam since I have so many ideas yet not enough time to figure out how to implement them all in such a short space of time. So, early tomorrow and possibly monday, getting into shooting mechanic, further level design, possibly music and sound and some other cool stuff.
BTW, if you wonder why there are so many files on the left, my eclipse screwed up and there’s files everywhere, better remove them before handing in the project 😛
As you can see this game looks better than watch dogs. Nah just joking. If i have enough time on my hands i am going to try make this game look far more visually appealing (it is going to take a lot). I might even try implement a day night cycle and a basic lighting system. I have finally got the core mechanics now all i need to do is everything else.
Hey all!
GIF time:
What we’re seeing here is the player and a simulated network player following the mouse (network player at an offset) over a test backing wall. The little lightballs drift around their root position, and flicker slightly. I currently just have the network player smaller and darker to distinguish it, but I’m thinking of a more obvious recolouring before release.
I have the players hooked up to a mock network service for now while I finalize the netcode, but once that’s done I’m gonna start a live stress test! So look forward to that in the next few hours.
Finally, i have take a rapid screenshot of the work of @Leenuyth. It’s nice, i think 😉
Howdy! I am continuing work on my text adventure game. I’ve got a few nifty areas so far, but I needed a break. So, I decided to see if I could create a title screen for my new game…
A Broken Planet!
Yes, that’s right. A planet. A world. Singular. No “s” at the end. But hey, I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve, like —
Oh, trying to trick me again, huh? Well, it won’t work!
Cheers!
-NRathbone
I have finally thought of a title for my game.
COMPARE:
It looks like a repeat from LD27, LD28 or LD29. Hardly any progress on day one.
I think the best I can hope for is a repeat of LD28.
CURRENT STATE:
Things are moving on screen and there is some stuff going on behind the scenes, but that’s about it.
TODO:
Good luck everyone.
Tags: LD30
Hello Everyone,
I’ve done most of the code, and I think I will settle with the graphics. Now I’ll be doing the music, menus, and levels. And by ‘now’ I mean ‘tomorrow’. Here’s a couple of gifs, showing my progress so far…
Good luck everyone!
More eyecandy and gameplay. The game is already hard.
I can’t figure out a good name, it’s preventing me from making main menu.
Well I got a 
few hours into development and figured out that the fun element wasn’t quite there with my idea. So I’m stopping development now and doing other things with my weekend!
The plan was to use the Connected Worlds theme somewhat literally, by having you control the Earth and being connected to the Moon via gravity. You must use your gravitational pull to pull the Moon through mazes full of obstacles, pinball bumpers, and other things I didn’t end up implementing.
Here’s a quick gif of the game in action:
I implemented some things during the short development that might be of interest to Fusion 2.5 developers (source code download below):
1) Use a Sub-Application as a custom-shaped draggable window
2) Find the physical on-screen angle between an object in one window and the center of a draggable Sub-Application
3) Simple usage of the built-in physics objects
4) An “obstacle fancifier” that finds Backdrop Obstacle objects in a grid and pastes fancy, linking graphics on top of it. You’ll see what I mean when you look at the frame editor vs the actual game
The game as it stands can be downloaded here, along with Fusion 2.5 source code:
https://www.copy.com/s/8uQkHjLS2wUJkVTW
Good luck with your games everyone 😀
Oh and let me know if you end up using my source code for anything! I’d love to see your creations ^_^
Added a new popup window that appears whenever you click on a node. Nothing exciting but I kind of need this for the game to be playable, so that’s a plus.
Here’s a screenshot.
I guess Caesar Salads aren’t popular in this world…
So I have to create 72 if’s else it possibly isnt going to happen.. hmm.
Saveeee meeeeee
The game concept I’m going with right now is a shooter similar to Puzzle Bobble, where the player has different “worlds” of friends, and needs to connect them using friends that have common grounds (shooting friends into other friends).
What I have so far after roughly nine hours of bumbling around so far: a shooter, which shoots balls that bounce off the screen sides, at other balls circling in the screen’s game area.
Click here to see what I’ve got at the moment. Use arrow keys, or A/D, and Space or Enter to fire useless balls. HTML5, only tested in Firefox and Safari.
This first day was really exciting. Many functionnalities added during this day. Almost all. That’s why I’m confident to end this LD with a game !
I hope this game will be a good game. It can be really cool but It depends on the balancing.
End of Day One !
Shader, Light, drawing was for today ! Tomorrow, let’s go to write a story, a tutoriel, the end game and I hope, a bonus if I’ve time ! My plan is ready ! Let’s go to bed !
I’ve been stuck on the same bug for 4 hours. Not an exaggeration. I’ve been programming for 5 years and have never ran into a problem this big. I already tried recoding it from scratch and the main issue is the part of the game it breaks is the MAIN part of the game, do I risk never fixing this really obnoxious bug or should I just try and sway my project in another direction?
Hi, I’m wondering, when my Loom SDK turbo subscription runs out (the one provided by the wonderful ludum folks) will I be charged to continue the subscription?
I never announced that I was in, so here I am!
I’ve abandoned my usual strategy of C++ with a big framework setup ahead of time. Instead, I’ve started from scratch with WebGL… we’ll see if I regret this choice.
I’m aiming for a fast-paced arcadey first-person flying game with portals between alternate versions of an abstract tessellated world.
Here’s a screen of my progress thus far:
If time permits, I’m going to make it work with Google Cardboard, because VR is fun 😀
Today I’ve reached playable state for my game. You can see a full game with a nice intro and outro screens, enemies spawning, and HUD for a scoring and health system.
There’s still a couple of internal system to be fixed to make it fun, specifically making collisions while facing not damage the PCs. I’ve created some of the graphics but I need to replace the placeholders for hand-made characters, and make each of them have a unique skill 😉
Here’s a video gif of the current state: Quest For McGuffin
Follow my livestream at www.twitch.tv/mr_pakoito
Tags: LD30
Like the korean “horse” dance.
Screenshot from a world in the editor Tiled.
Playing now with the propertie possibilities.
It’s pretty much the end of day 1. I’ve gone for a 4 colour theme, somewhat off the back of #gbjam which I never quite got around to entering. What do I have so far? A flying saucer with a tractor beam, lots of pigs, some crates and some parallax scrolling.
Intrigued? Wondering why it’s called “Bacon Installer”? Concerned that old age is finally catching up with me and that I’ve lost the plot? Tune in again tomorrow to find out.
So here’s what we have so far.
The idea so far is to walk from world A to world B through space, RPG style. Walking: check. Random maps: check. Thinking about doing handmade maps though.
Sooo my second ludum dare! Hope this one gets an entry (unlike last time where i gave up).
Anyway here are some quick screens of what i have been working on…
All the code is written in java using the drawing from libgdx. Art, as you can see, is not too great!
Anyway, good luck to the rest of you!
Intergalactic Defence Command
Heres the look of it. You are spinning the “worlds” left or right. Either clockwise or counter clockwise. Each of the worlds will shoot rockets at the incoming “asteroids — ie boxes”. A red asteroid can only can only be destroyed by the red planet, etc.
I do have another layer to add but wont bother talking about that until i finish the first one, and if theres time etc.
We’ve got a working team selection GUI (the new Unity GUI framework does its job pretty well) and the fight system works reliably (as you can see in our previous post).
We’ve let the evening fade away gently by visiting a should-have-been birthday party, socializing a bit and getting some distance between us and our Ludum Dare project.
We are still using the placeholder sprites. We need some more levels and integrate the story. The fight system still has room for improvements.
Hopefully we can implement all of our ideas. Maybe we’ll let some more of them shine through in a following post.
Keep on keeping on. And don’t forget to have fun! 😀
It’s time to get some sleep…
End of Day 1 summary:
– Platformer movement
– Switching between worlds
– Terrain and decoration textures
That is the question…
Need more suspects, I’m on it…
I got a lot more done than I expected myself too, which is a rarity. Making a game that has to do with sound and creatures from other planes going into a city and stuff.
First I made a big ol diagram from UMLet to get my head organized.
Its kinda like programming, only you don’t feel forced to make a bunch of classes for the giggles.
It is in a PDF that I want to put in with the source code, and it has been a huge help.
I made something that reminds me of assembly language to make the game stuff happen. Think of a list of instructions being ran in order. It is gonna help a ton when it comes to making the gameplay.
I am taking an online class for assembly language, and that is where the inspiration came from.
I also made the city be made from a text file in a JSON like, awkward to read format thingy.
This was inspired from Java and JSON. I could smash each building on 1 line, but then it would be harder to read, and it is hard enough to read as is.
So apart from text file parsing galore, I got this much graphics progress:
The lack of color makes it easier to see the color.
Those blotches are suppose to represent sound. The point of the game is going to be balancing the level of sound in the town. If it is too loud, then the Noise clan will break in the world; if it is too quiet, the Silence clan will break it. When this happens, you gotta fight em off with the mouse.
Next up is polish, because right now the game is UHHHHHHHHH-GLEEEEE
Three kinds of enemies are already running around! =D Need graphics now! 
So, right from the beginning I already knew this would not not be an entry for winning, or serious competition at all. Luckily my main goal for this Ludum Dare is gaining more experience. Working in an engine I am not very accustomed to, with a slightly too ambitious concept… that sounds just like my weekend.
I still made some good progress though. Maybe not as much as I wanted, but I have made some basic mechanics in Unity, and feel more comfortable using it now. You can even already set up the trade routes, and the loading/unloading and supply/demand mechanics are already in place. I have been stuck a lot on UI stuff, which is a task I have highly underestimated in requiring a lot of time. The vehicle management is something that still has to be done, and then there is a lot of polishing, making the game more player-friendly and fun. In general I am certain I can get something to deliver in the end, but I do not know yet how polished it will be and how much it will represent the experience I wanted to create.
While there isn’t much to see yet, I decided to upload a build anyway, so you can mess around clicking things
http://tomrijnbeek.nl/public/ludumdare/30/aug23-2253/aug23-2253.html
(use middle mouse or arrows to move camera, left mouse to click stuff and press ‘0’ to reset the camera).
I finished the game and here it is!
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=40582
Wohoo! My first solo game! Now back to Fran Bow and Netflix \o/
The game is actually working!
Mandatory screenshot:
I’m keeping the colour palette tight
Running low on time so I did some improvised piano. I did some bitcrushing and layered some extra synths on it for extra color. I like how it turned out, but it’s pretty simple. Hope you like it! Feel free to download and use (with attribution, of course) in your 72-hour jam! More tracks on the way 
It’s very much a broughlike but it seems to be fun.
On Sunday I will add more abilities, online highscores and fancy cutscene graphics.
Heya all, I hope you’re all having as much fun as I am.
After some 10 hours of work on day one, I’m off to get some sleep. In the meantime, here’s another pic of my friend and my game so far, showing the underground/surface transition and the shopkeeper. We spent way too long recording his dialog – it was so much fun. I wish I could tell you what we recorded but… that’s for another time.
Our game’s tie to the “connected worlds” theme involves ladders. Lots and lots of ladders.
Tags: jam, progress, screenshot
Setup a simple text system for interacting with friendly NPCs.
Also, the first Alien npc!
Enemy AI system is working. Quite flexible too – probably unnecessarily so, I’m sure I won’t have time to create that many type of enemies as the system allows. :-/
I also changed (simplified of course) my original gameplay idea because I the more I think about it, the more doubts I have that it could work at all. So instead of an Ikaruga-style phase (world) switching shooter, I stick with a simple room-by-room (let’s call it world by world, to satisfy the theme), where the player can only traverse to the next world, if she clears all enemies from the current one. So nothing special, but I try to make it fun.
A quick progress video:
So my game is basically a sort of monopoly game that expands into connected board segments (connected worlds, ah?). As you play around the world, if you land at a corner it will generate a new segment from that corner and you can start down that path buying properties. Right now you buy automatically when you land on anything. You pay rent if you land on someone else’s owned properties and you collect rent only when you hop over your own property (it builds up on that tile waiting for you). The reason you have to pass the property to collect rent was a way to prevent players from just sitting around collecting rent.
Also planning on making the rent slowly disappear if it hasn’t been collected for a long time. You have to register an account to play (click the register button instead of login button after filling in desired username and password). There are sign posts over available properties to buy. I am planning to make it so you can pick the direction you move in if there are multiple directions, right now it randomly picks. Also planning to make it so you have the option to buy or not, and maybe buyout other player’s properties. Need to make buying properties increase the value of other properties around it so everything isn’t just $50.
Check it out: http://billknye.com/foo/nexopoly/
Got a bit into the new uGUI System with some challenges I put myself into and it turned out ok so far.
For now there is a start, an objective and an end, but it is not a game yet. So I hope that a fresh brain will bring some more ideas after a short nap
Tomorrow there will be some more graphical work, sound/music and hopefully more challenge.
My game so far: evil robot world domination!
Next will be multiple connected worlds and win/loose conditions.
This was a request from some friends who are doing a Shmup game. It’s a bit of a short loop, but I really like how it turned out! Feel free to download and use (with attribution, of course) in your 72-hour jam! More tracks on the way
So, day one is over.
Coming up with an idea was pretty easy.
Coding the prototype was a piece of cake. Unity <3
Arriving at a graphical style was a friggin’ struggle. Went in a bunch of directions before I arrived here. All in all, I think it looks pretty good right now.
Was supposed to have a white cat as the main character.
Drew and animated it but everything fell apart when I was trying to get the idle/run/jump animations to fade seamlessly between each other.
I couldn’t figure out the BlendTree stuff in Unity in a reasonable amount of time, so I gave up. </3 
So now, the main character is a glowing white box.
The gameplay is nothing revolutionary, a mix between portal, vvvvvv, and ibb and obb I guess.
Hope to be able to make up for it with gamefeel and atmosphere.
Most of the time have been spent on graphics and tuning the movement.
Really need to get going with level design.
But that will have to wait for tomorrow!
Hope you like it. Feedback is appreciated!
Now sleep.
Hannes out. Peace.
This is how the game looks right now.
Gameplay GIF
Tags: compo, game, screenshot, unity, video
My game is kind of shaping into something playable. I don’t think it’s going to be fun, but that really wasn’t my goal with this idea. I’ve got a trend chart and some other bells and whistles. Hoping to round out the look and feel tonight and tomorrow. I think proper artwork will help a lot.
So now my first day is ending. I managed to work maybe 5 hours in total today because of some things i had to do and watch a movie with my little brother.
What i have done is the basic idea and because i lack imagination i haven’t done anything directly fancy or advanced.
Basically what i’m doing is a top down shooter with 2 dimensions. The player is attacked by enemies from both dimensions but can only attack 1 dimensions at the same time so the player has the abillity to change dimensions but so has some of the enemies.
So far my graphics are… squares just squares. (I wish i could draw good)
Here is a small video featuring 3 enemy types and switching between dimensions. The switching between dimensions really need some kind of feedback like a small explosion.
http://a.pomf.se/zcmclg.mp4
It’s all in the title.
Tools:
– Unity3D
– my almighty TrueColorCP437 asset for super ASCII art
– Photoshop
– BFXR
– GameBoy Color + Nanoloop for music if I have the time.
Good luck to everybody
jujule
I came up with an idea for this LD almost immediately after I saw that Connected Worlds had over 800 votes in the first round – and over the next two/three days, I’ve been really excited about implementing it, but I was also a little scared that it might be too much content for such a short time, but I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made today. I got pretty much all the main mechanics done, and they turned out really fluid due to me also doing a platformer practice game two or three weeks ago. This game has some really unique combination of mechanics – until now it’s basically a mix of Within a Deep Forest and Crillion, quite an unusual combination I’d say 😛 I have the music done already too, I’ve made it a habit to compose music a few days before the LD starts because I find it’s just way too time consuming otherwise. Tomorrow will probably be about adding obstacles, and some more different graphics. Also, I coded OVER 15 HOURS today, a new personal record, that’s for sure! 😀
This is how the world (well, technically two worlds and the space between that connects them) currently looks like!
Hey!
After having a small-one-jam break, I’m in for the LD #30 ! Yahoo!
I’m using, as usual, Love2D, GIMP, sfxr, some neat libraries for Love2D (ANaL for animation, Love-debug and also a network library).
Also, potentially I can touch GP5, TuxGuitar, MilkyTracker and Inkscape.
Today I started pretty late and after 2-3 hours of work I have 200 lines of code and a working “Angry bird” clone
The game is about beetles! The idea is that we classically throw animals into buildings but here’s the twist: something went wrong and our game universe got expanded: somehow we met another thrower! And moreover: he’s trying to destroy our home! So we need to hurry and destroy him before he destroys us!
The mechanics is a mix of “Angry birds” and “Scorched”. We’ll see how will it blend
Beetles attacking :)
Done lots today, but haven’t posted a single update here, but you know what’s better than being updated on the progress of a game? Playing the game!
That’s right, I got a playable version ready, I got a lot to do though. Enjoy, and remember, it’s still not finished. It’s currently quite difficult, which is good, cause it was what I was going for.
Good night and good luck!
I have started work on the mud, and thus far have come to the point where I can easily log in, log out, create players, join players’ worlds, and chat… That’s at least something…. Right? Tomorrow I will start to work on skills, rooms, enemies and equipment (maybe even NPC’s) which of course can be changed by players in their own world…. This is one daunting task ahead
I have no idea what im going to make yet but I will make something! This is my first LD, I didn’t start until today and I have been gone the whole day. Just sat down at my computer now to attempt to build something related to the connected worlds theme (which sounds awesome) with the time remaining (currently: 1 day 2 hours). Going to make some kind of 3d game.
Typing fast because I need to go dev! Tools I will be using are:
-unity game engine
-Playmaker
-Blender3d
-Probably gimp
Current progress:
So far I have only quickly poly modeled a character for the game. Don’t know what to call him or why I made him like this but I just had to make someone to star in my random made up LD game!
want to show a screenshot but can’t find insert image button on here!
How do I add screenshots!?!!?!
I gotta go now and come up with something!
Tags: #LD48 #snowconesolid #gamedev#indiedev #rapid #buildsomething!
So, the theme. Yeah. The theme. Always the most fun part in Ludum Dare.
There were so many great ones, and I had so many great ideas. Except for “Connected Worlds”, that was almost the only one I really didn’t know what to do with.
So, after a lot of thinking, I came up with one at least acceptable idea – the screen is split in half, with each half symbolising a different world. There are two characters, a green and a purple slime. The worlds are completely separated from each other – the player[s] can’t pass through them.
Still they have a connection: there is a rubber band between the two slimes, keeping them gently together. But take care of the rubber band, there are many things which can make it break!
Day 1 finished as I gotta go do stuff and also I was adding more bugs that content. Haha here is a goodnight beever running animation
Hope I feel more motivated about the game tomorrow as right now it feels really shit I think the enemies need to be more interesting…
Here you can see the game mechanics start to take shape, as the player blows apart a number of ships. I’ve probably spent too much time playing around relative the the time spent adding mechanics, but I’m fine with where I am now. What really bugs me is that I apparently labeled all my assets and project folder “LD29” instead of “LD30.” Wonderful.
So I’ve made some progress today. Maybe not as much as I would have liked, but something!
So here’s a little gif of whats going on so far!
Time to hit day 2. Day 1 was long. Got the core mechanics in and working, scoring, and a restart loop. Some early art, too.
I think I’m going to make a game about time travelling zookeepers chasing a couple of Triceratops. Dino Dash? Still a long way to go. lots of polish, art, and mechanic tweaks to go. The time will vanish.
Long night ahead.
Dino Dash!
Here’s a Vine peek of the game in action.
All I managed to get done today. As well as a bunch of back end stuff. It’s called Block-Ventures. Good luck everyone.
As we near the 24 hour mark, I have to face the unfortunate fact that my game idea is not going to be finished in time. I’m new to making a lot of the systems that I’ve been trying to implement, and my art has been more demanding then I expected, so I just don’t have enough reusable elements to flesh out a complete game. I’m disappointed that I have to drop out of only my second LD ever, especially after completing and really enjoying my first, but I don’t want to kill myself in the next day only to turn in a crappy game (for some personal reasons its also going to be good for me to take a day off on Sunday).
BUT! As there so often is in this life, there is a silver lining. I was one of the people really rooting for a theme other than Connected Worlds; I just thought it was bland. But when the theme was chosen, I challenged myself to come up with a unique interpretation of the theme. And I really, really like what I’ve come up with. I’m really proud of the progress I’ve made in the last 24 hours. And though I can’t turn my inspiration into a complete game this weekend, I do want to complete it. I want to see this story through. So thank you, Ludum Dare, for giving me an idea to push me forward.
Best of luck to everyone, and I look forward to playing all of your games.
See you in December!
So 2 hours after my unfortunate late start I have the basic gameplay mechanic all programmed! And I think I’ve figured out the aesthetic of the game.
Which is all very rad, because now I can spend the rest of the comp doing level design and whatnot. Usually when I do LD I spend most of the time doing the mechanics and aesthetics and only have a little time at the end for level design…
(P.S. this is the first time I’ve tried making a GIF of one of my games and posting it here, so here’s hoping it works *crosses fingers*)
Tags: lambomang, minimalism, World Shift
After 9 hours of work finally doing a break on my entry “Two Must Become One”.
I have literally come up with the idea for this while I was half asleep. It’s supposed to be a simulation game where you control the balance between two worlds – nature and civilization. Re-connect human civilization with nature and try not to blow everything up! I hope the connection to the theme is going to show in the final game.
Implementing the game so far is/was both interesting and stressful (the type of “positive stress”, you know?). I was intrigued by the fact I found out new ways how to do a game, and how to do it quickly (for my terms).
I found the “grow” function here particularly interesting: plants and animals slowly “reproduce” onto adjacent tiles the more time passes by. If you let that thing running for a while, it’d create a more or less natural looking pattern. What is also interesting is the fact that some “spawns” of these sprites seemed to have been neglected, while others exploded and surpressed the non-growing ones. This mechanism could be useful for a evolution-themed game!
But let’s not go overboard here just yet. As there’s still a lot of things to add, I’m not sure whether I’m going to be able to finish it at all. If I it’s not done by the end of the 48 hour competition, I’ll submit it to the 72 hour one, and even if I should STILL not make it, I’ll just submit it to one game a month. No matter what happens, I plan to continue working on it (and perhaps put my other projects on halt) because it seems like it’s going to be a very interesting and easy to pick up game.
This is one of the main characters in my game. The lower photo is him standing and looking right, and the upper photo is him walking right.
The game hasn’t visually changed much in the last several hours — I’ve been figuring out how Phaser does camera scrolling in a world larger than the screen, how to dynamically add/remove platforms at random, how to tell what platform the protagonist is currently standing on, and a myriad other little things.
So, now comes the hard part, I guess. I’ve managed to get over the technical hurdle of “just getting anything to do anything”, which has traditionally stumped me. I still have game states and a victory condition to add in for sure, and more art assets to create, but first is the true meat of game design: making this into a fun, compelling experience. I have several ideas for mechanics, but I won’t know until I’ve tried them whether they really work, and a lot of them are just preliminary thoughts. Some of them I don’t even know how I’d implement.
The basic premise is neat, with platforms coming and going regularly and having to jump between them. I think some more visual variety among them will help make things even more compelling. Probably the next thing to do is to make their spawn locations a bit smarter, so that there’s less time spent waiting for options to open up, and more time spent doing stuff. The controls are still a little uncertain, but I did manage to get “hold to jump longer” to work, which is quite pleasing.
This evening I’ve got some plans, and I’m near to considering dropping them to keep working. It’s probably best to go be social in which case I’ll get cracking again tomorrow morning.
Until next time!
The theme, it has taken me more than 3 hours to really start the challenge, I wasn’t expect so much time. So I’ll make a puzzle game where you will connect pylons from worlds (levels) to worlds 😉
Here is the current state of the project before going to bed, a lot more to do tomorrow…
http://www.aftermoon.net/LD30/Test2 (Unity3D webplayer)
The tool : Unity3D, C#
This Ludum dare the theme is ‘connected worlds’ so I’m connecting worlds into nunchucks. It’s a physics fighting game where you fight against enemies using physics based nunchucks using two earths and a string of moons to hold them together.
Jupiter is the king of the block and has decided he wants you dead so he’s teamed up with mars to take you down, but they’ll have to go through your nunchucks first…
#LD48 #LD30 I mean, like… I have a title screen with a button that goes "bzzzt", that counts as a game right? pic.twitter.com/FmWPydPbzG
— mkv25.net games (@Markavian) August 23, 2014
“Made a mockup of random frames in the player character. Dance Time! #LD48”
pic.twitter.com/udLp4lE6Nj
— Aske Ching (@CodingGuy)
Finally an idea. This is what we have right now:
We are going to create a game about aliens whose home planet is about to be destroyed and who need to be transferred to a new place in order to be rescued. But there’s no alien race like another. Dying of air-loss because of accidentally (!!!) breathing in another passenger isn’t that unusual.
There’s aliens who like eating other aliens and there’s aliens who like farting all around. There’s sensitive noses and nervous stomachs everywhere. In order to provide a safe passage it’s your responsibility, captain, to take care of every passengers need during the transfer between two connected worlds. However, we are out for today and hope you all have a good time. Nina & Tim (Bremen, Germany)
Can you guess what this game is gonna be about? Well, it’s not much to look at, but even artists have to make programmer art before polish! I decided to go with a less literal interpretation of “Connected Worlds” but I’m really happy with the idea and I think it fits. I’m about 90% done with the game code. I’m really feeling confident this is gonna be a pretty fun game (and girly!) game. I still have lots and lots to do (which should be obvious) so I don’t want to use to much brainpower on social media. I have a time-lapse thing running so they’ll be lots of WIP material. Anyways, back to work!
That means you, fellow devs who are procrastinating!
Almost 24 hours in, and I have most of it running! I managed to get some decent feeling platformer physics, a way to change worlds, and lighting.
Next, I need to decide on character art, and design some levels with puzzles in them. Things are going well so far, but I think the level design is what will make or break the game. Good luck everyone!
So at first i had a hard time wrapping my head around connected worlds… Read more below about my inital thoughts
Although i guess a platformer or an RPG would have been simpler (because i tried that already once), i decided for a taxi sim. Lets see whether i change out the graphics tomorrow.
‘Taxi Space’ – Day one
Day one is almost over.
We’re all working around the clock, but we managed to have some sleep in-between while still keeping up what we gotta do
Working like this is always a blast, and though I had some issues getting some stuff done in Unreal, I managed to get all the major code-stuff out of the way, and right now I’m focusing on getting some basic assets in
Here’s a little screenshot with Mr. Placeholder and some trees. More to come soon!
Hey, here is the result of my first day. Tomorrow, I create the assets.
Good night for everyone (especially those living in Europa).
So I ran into quite a few problems, the main one being left and right collision. However I have a temporary fix which is to make the world flat. Due to this being my first ludum dare and making rookie mistakes I’ve had to cut back on everything but the core functionality when it comes to gameplay. The end product will probably be a very short and basic game but I should at least have something to submit.
My Ferguson scene is done. Planning on going back to add speech bubbles if I have time!
I love Ludum Dare. I have just made a swimlane chart with three columns named time, relationship and politics to get a handle on my storyline. I just finished creating the fictional /r/mars in my game and I am legitimately using the term ‘Snugglebuns’ in the introduction.
This is awesome. Also, I should be tired but am not.
Minor Character update. Ready for texturing and animation. Gonna sleep for 2 hours then continue with the Gameplay. Probably wont finish but there will be a playable level at least.
Hey ! It’s you just there in the middle ! Rollerskating in Venice Beach !
So. The core gameplay is complete. The player takes the random element (75% Hydrogen, 25% Helium) and performs fusion with one of five slots. Then the player moves the element from that world to the other world where it builts up a molecule…
The problem? It’s not very fun to play. =D
But I’m kinda satisfied anyhow, as I got really limited time (maybe 16 hours effective time) and using a new framework (pygame) in a language I’m not very familiar with (python).
I mean. The game is playable. And educational (well, not really, it skips the whole notion of neutrons and decay and stuff).
More importantly I got to write some new fun code (the molecule structure code is horrible but was fun to write)
I have some minor ideas for improvements. But that’s for tomorrow.
We started the game last night and really haven’t made too much progress in the realm of programming but we have some of the artwork done.
The Game: Though it currently lacks a name, our game is based on the work of Timothy Luke, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech (he also blew up the death star). He argues that one of the key reasons why degradation of nature exists is because humans think that we live in our own separate bubble. We think that the actions we take will have no impact on the world around us. If all goes according to plan, the game will have a fully simulated planet (that includes the atmosphere, water currents, heat, pressure, wildlife, etc.) where every action impacts something else. Your goal is to expand humanity to keep the happiness up while also juggling the impacts that you have on nature.
Language: Java (Specifically Java 2D)
Design Programs: Inkscape, Photoshop CS5, Paint.net
Number of Team Members: 2. I’m doing artwork and Spaceman1701 is programming
Here’s a screenshot of my most recently finished asset:
Nathan here. I just spent a pretty long time putting together the clickable map for Crisis Culture:
I’m teaching myself to use a graphics tablet at the same time, so while my cheesy-as-hell photomanipulations have definitely improved, I could have spent way less time on this.
Still, I’m quite happy with how parts turned out, and Visual Novels live and die by the amount of polish they get. Scripting-wise we’re still on target to finish on time, so I’m pretty hopeful.
Day one is over, I’ve been able to do quite a lot, even tough i’m a bit sick. So I’m going to bed a bit early today and hopefully I feel better tomorrow. Even if that is not the case, I think I can finish the game in time.
You can seem my progress at this link: http://games.corne.info/LD/LD30/ (my internet is not too fast, sorry for that)
Stuff used to create this:
Tags: html5, inkscape, javascript, Polymer
It’s about an hour before the halfway point and I’ve just started streaming a mini-sprint (I mean, it’s not like I’ve omitted to code any gameplay or anything yet :-S) at http://www.twitch.tv/facticiusvir
Got the mechanics of my map, the interface and galaxy generation working though: 
Story and basic commands are coming along. One of these days I’m going to learn to not write like a teenager, but today is not that day.
You can exile people from the island…
There are regular capitalists, and then there are evil capitalists. Here, I exiled the sole evil capitalist from the island.
You can also exile individuals, or broader groups. One time I exiled all males from the island, but there were a couple transgender folks – biological males identifying as female – that weren’t exiled. They had children and decades later the population had rebounded.
You can also do some awful things, like “exile all orphans”. I mean, how evil do you have to be to do that.
What group would you want to exile?
The game gets slow around a population of 5000 or so. This is because the couple-matching algorithm is O(n^2). Luckily the game is going to be a far lower population, so this won’t be a problem.
Next, I plan to give the player more choices, namely tax policy (no tax? flat tax? progressive tax? estate tax?). Plus a few random choices or events, like “Community Chest” in Monopoly. What else should I add? There could be different goals, from being selfish by owning the entire island and controlling wealth, to being benevolent by eliminating poverty or inequality.
Right now it only runs on command line Mac OS X. If I have time, I’ll export to WebGL via Emscripten.
Tags: foodphoto
Hello everyone!
Ludum Dare has been on for almost a day on! Development is going a bit slower on this game due to some bugs and my Unity scene getting deleted, but apart from that, it’s going amazingly well! This game is also way more complex that my LD29 so yeah… I’m about to go watch Doctor Who and Il’ll continue developing after that.
Good luck everyone!