2 button game of some sort

I’m in!

Prior to Friday, I was all set to participate in MiniLD #56. Unfortunately, I began to come down with a nasty cold on Friday, which has barely gone away since then. If past experience is any indication, it’s better for me to take it easier & ease off of rigorous activities that I do for long periods of time. I had all of the concepts for the game planned out, so I hope to work on it later in the future, but I don’t feel up to working on it this weekend.

Good luck to everyone else that is participating.

For this MinLD 56 we’re doing Flappy Goat v2!

Watch the development here: http://www.twitch.tv/technocf/

It started from an idea I got on the bus and I thought this was the best opportunity to try something unusual and that may be very bad.

Here is some kind of diagram I had to make, you can probably understand why I needed this.

Graphics will be bad, so I don’t want to show them now ^^ I went for the “4 colors” thing, just to have an excuse to make bad graphics ! I think that’s the only thing from the MiniLD post that I followed (except the “do what you want” part, obviously !)

I’m working on this LD with the theme of Film Noir, and the limitation of Reduced Colour Palette. I have a nice menu screen set up, with parallax scrolling, and I’m currently working on NPCs. I don’t have a definite story at the moment, but I have a mechanic that I like. The basic idea is that you’re a cop or detective in a small section of a city, looking to dish out some justice. There are NPCs milling about on the sidewalks constantly, and any time a gun is fired, or a victim screams, all the NPCs in the area get thought bubbles above their heads, with pictograms showing the type and direction of the crime. I have the pictograms mainly working now, but I’m having issues with my coordinate system because I’m using a parallax camera.

Included are some GIFs

The Menu (GIF compression messed up the light beams)

And the Pictogram system. I will center those arrows, if it’s the last thing I do XD

Hey folks!

It has been a month since I’ve said anything, and I owe you guys an update.

Me, I’m still finishing up my Steam port of Smiles HD. Like we always do, I under-estimated the amount of work necessary to finish the port. This was a C++ game I wrote back in 2008, over 6 years ago. I haven’t seriously touched the code for about 3 years, and the bit-rot is real.

Since then, SDL2 was released, and pretty much all fixed-function GPUs have gone extinct. I’ve been using shaders and SDL2 so long now, I don’t want to go back. This meant making the game work with my current code-base, and unfortunately finishing parts of the code-base as it hasn’t shipped a game yet.

The game is working again, but it still needs a lot of TLC. That and I’m going to have to rework/redo the high scores and achievements to be Steam friendly. I’m hoping this only take 2 more weeks… but yeah. This game, the Patreon, and the donations are my only income right now, so it kind-of has to be done ASAP.

I had planned to start on the new Ludum Dare website on Monday February 2nd, but I’m just not ready yet.

On March 1st I’ll be travelling and spending the week in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference. When I get back, we start the countdown to Ludum Dare 32.

It’s also tax time soon, so I’m going to lose a few days to that.

Long story short, development on the new site is going to be spotty these next couple months. I should find some time before Ludum Dare 32 in April, and hopefully even before GDC. But for sure, the new site will not be ready for April. The goal is still August’s Ludum Dare, but we’ll see once I get in the thick of it (this year for sure).

Thanks for your patience.

I’ve been hanging around the IRC for about a week, and did a song or two, but I really wanna work for someone during this MiniLD and I don’t have much time. If you need music for your game, please ask! I will take almost all requests!

I can do about 1-3 songs for your game. I don’t have a real instrument available at the moment so It will all be FL Studio. The song can be a standalone tune, or a repetitive loop/song for your levels.

Bit of info about me: I’ve played Baritone (Euphonium) for about 4 years and have been an EDM producer for about 1. Although that isn’t alot of time, I have learned a lot of things, and have made things for people in the past, with happy results!

For demos, you can find my recent (and good stuff) here.

(And if you wish, you can listen to my older stuff (Most good, some tests and REAL old “meh” stuff) here.)

Tags: EDM, game, music, OST, Producer, song

Tags: MiniLD56

Well, this went better than last Ludum Dare, but still not as done as I would have liked. My game tihngy is here:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild-56/?action=preview&uid=34574

It’s just a mechanic at the moment, but I may run with it in the future. Good luck to everyone else Daring!

This is a precursor for a game I have wanted to make for a while. This runner tests the mechanics quite well. Glad I could throw this prototype in the mix.

Thank you & Enjoy!

Play and Rate

This was my first jam, and it was awesome!  I had a lot of fun.

What went right:

As far as complexity, I decided to aim really low on this one since it was my first time.  I had a playable game up and running within a few hours, which let me relax and spend my time adding things and tweaking gameplay.  I didn’t want to run myself into the ground and be burnt out this morning, so I took lots of breaks and got a fairly decent amount of sleep.  Next time I will probably go for something a little more ambitious, but I hit my main goal, which was to just finish something.

The gameplay ended up being pretty close to what I wanted.  So did the music and sound effects (if I may abuse those words).  The idea was to make a game that was way too easy, and then make it really hard not by increasing the difficulty of the game itself, but by annoying and distracting the player.  If you can block out all the visual/audio noise and adapt to the controls repeatedly reversing, you could play forever.  (Just for fun I made the time counter go up to 100 hours, but I can’t stand it for more than about a minute and a half.)

What went wrong:

The biggest issue I had was balancing the development with family needs.  My wife and I have two elementary school kids, so it was a lot to juggle.  I also lost some time due to some web hosting issues that I should have sorted out in advance (a DNS issue, and forgot to add the MIME type for Unity 3D files).  I figured that something like that would happen at some point, so I left myself a lot of buffer time.  I also had planned on swapping out the cubes with some kind of graphics, but I ended up needing more time for gameplay coding than I had though.  In fact, this game has absolutely no imported art assets of any kind.  It’s all built on Unity’s stock cubes and UI elements.

Conclusion:

Overall I’d call it a success.  The main goal was to finish something and have fun, and I did both of those.  Can’t wait for LD 32!

Actually kind of half LD? I actually started making my entry early Sunday, hope some of you read this and play it!.

I did the GGJ gig last week and found out that these events make me very productive!.

I foresee you.

Cheers!

This is the first time i entered the ludum dare….

I dont know what i should say, but im not proud about it…

I used the theme Back to the Future – 2015. I dont know many refrences from that movie, that’s why i didnt add much to the game

Here it is http://www.filedropper.com/backtothefuture-2015

And I never have time to mak teh gamz. But I’d really like to Holler at me cuz I have a TON of Unity Assets that I don’t have time to use and I want to make some cool shit!

Hey guys! I recorded all of the Mini LD #56 game entries, as well as wrote an article on my favorites!

Tags: Jupiter_Hadley, MiniLD, MiniLD #56

Hi, does any one know the exact deadline for mini LD 56, my game is almost done, just want to be sure.

I made not only a game, I made my very first game ever! And the MiniLD was the perfect opportunity for this. I don’t think anybody would’ve submitted their first game creation but yeah… here it is. Not perfect but I can work with it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xcubtb239bned0g/Quatri.swf?dl=0

Tags: MiniLD56, stencyl

I started out this MiniLD #56 with the goal of making a retro pixelated renderer (shader) which I have wanted to do for  a long time. The most difficult part though turned out to be coming up with a game that would suit the art style. After some time experimenting with a 3D platformer I decided to go for a 3D Tetris: because 3D and Tetris are two of the coolest things!

It took some time, but I really wanted to get something nice and polished in this retro style (although it’s maybe not used to its full potential in this game). I must say that the work payed off, let’s hope some of you’ll enjoy the game as well!

Play Tretris here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild-56/?action=preview&uid=47137

Tags: MiniLD, MiniLD56, tetris

I know lots of games out there are the following ( c++ c# java python? maybe javascript ) but i wanna take it up a notch and wonder if use 6502 assembly making a game with that instead of the old used stuff. Well I just wanna know if that’s fine. Note if i do. the testers will need an emulator of some sorts to run it Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Peace!

Tags: 6502, 8-bit nes assembly homebrew, assembly, coding

I definitely did not have as much time as I would have liked to but I am happy with how much I got done in the time I had. I’m actually pretty happy with how my art came out since this is the first time I actually worked on the art for my game. The goal for the game was to make a relatively calm and laid back experience.. More could be done to accomplish that but I think its pretty relaxing if you work on keeping your health up and fighting a couple of wolves rather than running away from all of them the whole time. No sound yet but hopefully I’ll get to it in the next couple days! This was my first ludum dare and it was very exciting, I was pleased to make my first game that could at least be played from a start to a finish

Check it out its page at: http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild-56/?action=preview&uid=48906

My MiniLD#56 entry, Ludum Dairy, was a quick game that I made in Java in a couple of hours. Ye, I left it to the last minute xD. I’m not going to leave a link because I’m already typing and I forgot to copy the link xD. Anyway… Bullet points 😀

What went well:

• I finished the game for a change (sorta XD)
• I learned how painful it is to work under pressure while I’ll 😀

What could be improved:

• The game was awful ;3
• Innefficient collisions
• Awful graphics
• Awful sound
• Awful jumping

Yeah, maybe I could improve…

Hi guys, not only is this my very first post but it’s about my very first game (prototype) which I entered as my very first Ludum Dare (well mini LD) game entry!
My aim was to create a never-ending game that used only four colours and would somewhat make the player rage quit.
I sought inspiration from past LD entries however all of the ides I came up with were far to similar to their inspirations so I just kept on brainstorming and came up of the idea of the player creating platforms for the main character to jump on. At first the user would be able to create a maximum of 3 platforms and every new one created would remove the previous one, but I thought that it would be too easy and settled with the idea that there would only be one platform.

What Went Well:

Planning the game mechanics whenever I got the chance in school definitely sped up the prototyping process by quite a bit.
It meant that when I sat down in front of sublime text, I didn’t have to think of everything on the spot.
I could just look at my pseudocode-y notes and drawings and translate them into working code for the game.

What Went Bad:

Keeping motivated.
It was just bad luck that this was a week riddled with homework, a physics mock, and team trials for a mini marathon (Which I have tomorrow. ;-;.).
It was hard staying focused and I spent about 2-3 nights not programming or making any developments on the game.
I will be sure to plan my time better on my next game.

What I’ve Learned:

This MiniLD gave me the chance to do something I’ve never done before, create a sprite sheet. Albeit, a very simple sprite sheet with 3 frames of animation for the main character and text, but however, a sprite sheet nonetheless.
Thanks to this I feel more at home with gimp and its’ capabilities to create art assets for games and I’ll be sure to practice and get better with it in games to come.

Conclusion:

This is the first time I’ve ever thought out an idea for a game, planned it, programmed it and finished with a working game prototype. In fact even better, for all intents and purposes it’s a finished game it’s just that I’m getting more ideas of things to implement. So for that I am proud.
Overall, it was a reasonably stressful experience but the feeling of joy I felt once I was finished was great and I definitely want to do it a game.
MiniLD 56 inspired me to make games for past Ludum Dares and One Game A Month and I want to thank Sophie Houlden for that.

In conclusion thanks if you read any of that and please do try out my game prototype!
Comment too, I’d like to hear what you think. ;3.

Tags: html5, MiniLD, MiniLD56, progress

Hi ! As submissions are now over for MiniLD maybe should i post here a short debrief about what i did : I wanted to make progression / improvement on my current project DMS (random initials mode…), and add game mechanics. I was thinking about a storyline that fitted with the back to the future stuff (super inspired nazis coming back from the dark side of the moon…sorry for such bad taste)…

Gameplay now seems barely OK and stable to me so maybe should i yearn some feedback ? Here it is :

http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild-56/?action=preview&uid=46874

Start the shit

What was used :

Game Maker Studio
Gimp
Bfxr
Autotilegen

What was planned to be used :

Reaper : i didn’t manage to take time for music
Spriter : i prefered make it low-res (320×224) for now because Spriter needs really more work/time than i think everytime i want to use it… Or maybe am i too slow.

What features were planned :

Better use of test mode and level building (i spent too much time doing shit with this)

Level design : i don’t like game maker’s level editor and i hope to have my own working soon, so pooped levels to try mechanics and stuff but time spent on it is reduced to minimum. It just shows gameplay and features, but has no polish/real meaning. Still i enjoy destroying everything on my way and make to to game over screen so i think it may be OK. No end level but you can try to score.

Art : a lot of stuff i did draw, that could explain a bit the story or get visuals more attractive, was not integrated. I like hand drawing (sorry trees) and had no time to make it low res (as i was first planning to make stuff on spriter). In the same vein, i wanted to make a short intro that was not made…

Music : i had ideas but recorded nothing … anyway i tried some famitracker loops but did not included in the last working version.

That was a good concept, too bad i did not make a new game from scratch, because now that it’s over i think about ideas i could have made with it, and something fresh would have been great. The reason i did not make something this way is probably because i’m a bit stressed with making something out of my project, on wich i spend too much time. Now, after + or – 6 month fulltime learning GML  (i said goodbye to slavery for a time…) by myself, i’ll try to slow down a bit, maybe i’ll better find some shitty work for food ; i don’t want with too much hope to alienate myself, but i need feedback on what i’m making because i still do hope to release a good stuff someday,stuff that people will know and enjoy to play. But i may go right through the wall with a smile if nobody tells me that i’m building a useless shit that will lead me nowhere.

Sorry for being boring, that came from the heart Cheers !

 
kNarf

So i made a post a while back stating that i would like to make an nes game for this years ludumdare compo. and i got posative replies. And now i would like to ask, if you got ideas for this. ya know. just brain storming. 😀 Thanks again for the positity 😀

Play my top 3 out of my 17 game jam entries.  11 of the entries were made for Ludum Dare

VIEW BLOGPOST

Just a random game that I’ve been making in Java. Probably about halfway through development, so nothing special. Isn’t ready to be downloaded yet :/

YouTube channel if you want to follow the development. Probably won’t post too often. I probably won’t even finish the game, but whatever xD: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEq__UwOi1m2SHuksQzCTlA

Many moons ago, I was on here plugging our game Camera Obscura, which was on Steam Greenlight at the time.  Well, we made it through, and we’re releasing the game on Steam on February 19th!  This is the first game I’ve worked on to be published on a major platform, so I’m pretty excited.  You should visit our Steam page, check out our new trailer, and see how far we’ve come.

If you missed my first post, Camera Obscura is a sidescrolling puzzle-platformer with a unique mechanic that allows you to take a picture of the geometry around you, then move it with you for a few seconds.  You can use it to bridge wide gaps, create staircases up cliffs, and solve other, more intricate, puzzles.  It takes place in a mysterious tower in a forgotten land, and features amn

This site has been a huge part of my personal journey to this point.  I also wanted to thank you so much for your support on Greenlight!  I don’t doubt that the members of this site helped the game get approved.

Camera Obscura on Steam

Thank you again!
– Brian

Tags: 2d platformer, camera obscura, greenlight, puzzle platformer, release, steam

My game Mighty Retro Zero appears inside the last Groupees Bundle Retro4 !! 😀 .

Get your Bundle Here: https://groupees.com/retro4

Also after 4 days in the bundle, Mighty Retro Zero has benn Greenlit!!

So, thanks to everybody that voted YES to the game! 😉

My idea for this MiniLD is a text-based Platformer with perma-death called desrever, or reversed backward. So far I have every thing down on paper. If there is anything that you would like to see just post it in the comments and will try to do my best and incorporate them in :). Also there is currently winter weather where I live so let’s hope the power does not go out.

Software that I will be using is GameMaker-Studio, Sfxr, LMMS, and Gimp.

Tags: MiniLD #57

I’m just ironing out the final details.

Tentatively, it’ll be GDC Monday at 7 PM at a REALLY COOL NEW VENUE! Backup plan is Tuesday at ‘the usual’, but things are looking good for Monday.

I’m In

Made this game For miniLD #56 hosted by Sophie Houlden (@S0phieH). basically, this game was built the game because i thought it would be cool and fun (selfish dev is selfish). i can upload the source if enough people request it, but other than that please enjoy :p

Game link: http://www,apexstudio.co.nr/Games/Contrast/index.php

i used unity3D to create it, Photoshop for the art, and the internet for the sound (all of which i do not own).

link to soundtrack : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSFy8N-2CDo

this game is kind of absorbing all of my free time…

Tags: 2d platformer, MiniLD #56

Hello!

I’ve got an idea how to easily make good music for Compo and I want to know is it against the rules or not.

Can I manually copy sheet music (like this) into music sequencer (LMMS, for example), add some effects and custom oscillator and use the result as music for my entry?

The title says it all…

Hi.

Thanks for participating, playing and rating in this Mini LD! If you haven’t played my game yet, you can do so here.

The Idea

I had the idea shortly after reading the announcement. A platformer is like the average game so it seems obvious to just make an average game aka some Generic Platformer and then play it reversed from finish to start. The rest just came naturally from thinking about how you would play a platformer backwards. However i think that fun gameplay is more important than the game making sense, so it unlogically gets harder from finish to start and the controls are not reversed.

What went right

• I made an amazing game.
• The idea is great. It’s both easy to do and easy to expand and flesh out more.
• It was loads of fun.

What went wrong

• All art is bad because i’m bad at art.
• I didn’t think of a better name.
• I could have added more content if only i wasn’t so lazy.

It was my first MiniLD and my second game jam, and it was a lot better than last time. I got an idea really fast and started to work, because I was not home on the first 3 days.
What went good:

• art was better than last time
• didn’t spent a lot of time like last time
• music!

What went bad:

• I don’t know is the gameplay enough fun 😀

I’m in. Or I was in. Whatever. This is confusing!

My idea is a blatant ripoff of RPG tropes, although many of them are somewhat reversed. As such, it may be hard to take seriously. However, the music went really well. It’s tense, and keeps the game off-putting instead of full-on humorous. I also like the art style, but I did have to rush some of the art at the end – beginning? – whatever. I should have put more effort into all of it. The gameplay isn’t very innovative, but that wasn’t my goal, though maybe it should have been. My goal was for the player to both chuckle, and ask “What the heck is going on here?”. I believe it accomplishes that goal well.

Did I do that right? This is my first post-mortem ever, and I haven’t made any finished games yet. This is confusing! Well, I’m out. In. Whatever.

What went right:

First of all, I had a lot of fun.  Second, I think the concept of this game was pretty cool, and the gameplay really worked.  I’m also pretty happy with the music and sound effects.

What went wrong:

The art took longer than I expected [which is kind of weird writing in advance…because I’m expecting it to take longer than expected?!?].  I’ve never really done pixel art before, so I ended up getting in over my head.  But from my experience, getting in over my head tends to be very educational.  This game still needs a ton of polish.  Now that the jam is over, I may take some time to smooth over some of the rough parts…maybe even release a commercial version.

The biggest issue we faced as part of MiniLD #57 was the lack of communication.

Nobody really knew what the game was about, we just had assets being thrown together while I worked on a game. THEN I had to shove them into the game haphazardly hoping that somehow it would all come together.

It did not.

On the up side, Olligobber’s art was incredible, and Neilogd’s sound effects fit the theme perfectly.

The creating of the assets and then trying to fit them into a randomly created game fit the theme nicely, as opposed to planning the game and adding assets was interesting to say the least.

This MiniLD was a lot of fun. I managed to finish a small fun game that is not the worst thing I’ve ever made.

I challenged myself to reverse my game development process, meaning

1. I started by creating music,
2. made a design document,
3. pumped some sound effects out of bfxr,
4. created all the art for the game,
5. wrote a TO-DO list
6. and finally started programming the game.

Good things that happened:

– No silence: By making the music first, my game finally wasn’t silent because I usually drag this out to the end and then I totally forget/scrap it.

– Small but finished: The game is actually finished, because I decided to not take the first thing that came to my mind and think about all the cool things I could do, but instead kept the scope small and concentrated on one single core mechanic.

– emehT: This is probably the first time I made something that fit the theme, instead of ignoring it or just tangentially relating to it.

Bad things that happened:

– Bad Art: The art is really bad, as always when I do the art myself.

– Bad Music: The same goes for the music, but at least it’s better than silence… right?

– Rather shallow: The game is only fun for a short time, the novelty wears off quickly and then it’s rather bland.

Tags: MiniLD57, pre-mortem, pre-postmortem, reverse

I’m proud to announce that this years Ludum Dare GDC Gathering will be at a brand new venue: GitHub!

Do you Game Jam? Then join us for an evening of war stories, chatting, chillin’, and whatever. There’ll be food and drink (Pizza and :D). And yes, for the first time, there will be Vegetarian and Vegan options. 😀

Have a game you want to show-off? Bring it along too!

Monday March 2nd, 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM
88 Colin P Kelly Jr St
San Francisco, CA 94107
(about a 15 minute walk from Moscone)

EDIT: The Ludum Dare Wallpaper/Poster from the party can be found here:

http://ludumdare.com/…/LudumDare32.png

I am really looking forward to starting this MINI LD two days ago (wut?? :0)

everything went AMAZING I obviously came first (lol) and all the ideas were just sooo good.

WHAT WENT WELL:

I came first (even though there are not places)

my friends said my game was amazing (this is actually relatively likely)

WHAT WENT BADLY:

uuuummmm….

probably a lot of stuff.

Hope you had fun everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!emag ym tuoba stnemmoc evitispo hcus teg ot gniog saw i wonk ton did I

:llew tnew tahw#

gnihtyreve ton-

:gnorw tnew tahw#

gnihtyreve tsomla-

This was my first Mini LD, and despite all obstacles, I’m very satisfied with the final result. The idea of creating a MMORTS using AR and the capability of traveling backwards in time seemed far fetched, but in the end it all went very well.

The Good:

• It went pretty well. It actually went so well that Google is now interested in buying it, go figure!

The bad:

• Accidentally killed my past self, and now I’m painfully fading away. But no worries, I’ll just go back in time to stop myself from killing myself by killing myself and thus saving myself from being killed by me.
• It is alleged that some players lost the notion of what’s real and what’s virtual, some even had to be hospitalized with advanced stages of dementia.
• I might have broken the sole fabric of existence
• Accidentally brought Hitler to the present.

Love all your entries.

Peace

Tags: MiniLD57

Creating my game ‘Replay’ was an awesome experience. I hope it’s a sidescroller you’ll also like.

I’ve learned quite a bit. For the first time I used WebGL in a game jam after I ported one of my games to WebGL only half a month ago to learn how to use it (the port isn’t finished yet, because I just had to do this jam, but if you want to take a look: unfinished WebGL version, finished WebGL-free version). This is the first game which isn’t as static as my older games. I’ve got fancy animations and cool parallax scrolling.

Things that went great:
* getting all those images into WebGL as textures worked without a hitch
* finally some animations and parallax scrolling!
* the game has a really cool ending
* came up with a name really early

Things that went bad:
* I wanted to use free sprites for my character and environment, but couldn’t find images for everything and had to do some art on my own (every good looking image is not made by me ;))
* Couldn’t use the whole week because there was some really annoying disturbance that prevented me from working on my game
* didn’t have time to add a start to the game, so you have to start at the ending

Please play and comment on my game

While, that just about wraps it up.  This is the first jam I’ve competed in and it went… all right.

The idea is that you are going back in time to reverse the effects of time travelling hooligans.  Or something like that.  Maybe you are the hooligans, it’s not really that clear yet.  Either way the program is in it’s infancy and your job is mostly to sneak into different places in the past and steal information and technology while attracting as little attention as possible.  And for god’s sake don’t kill anybody!  The time scientists are having enough trouble trying to untangle the timelines without cleaning up after you.

Oh, and you don’t get a choice.  You are a clone, one amongst millions, surviving in a pocket protected from the ravages of the timelines.  If you do not comply, their are plenty others who will…

That was the plan any way.

Tags: MiniLD #57

Introduction: This is my 3rd game jam and my very first ludum dare or mini ludum dare. I have participated in 2 global game jams before and have enjoyed them thoroughly. This will be my first game in unity but I have worked with XNA in the past. I will be working with a group with one other coder which is more experienced with unity than me and an artist.

The idea:
The game is similar to Touhou and is a bullet hell styled game with a twist. In the game you will have a shield that rotates around you that reflects bullets. These reflected bullets are the way you kill enemies. It contains multiple bosses each with their own unique challenges.

What went well

• I actually got some sleep 😀
• Pretending we did well before we even started

What went wrong:

• We didn’t end up having music if anyone wants to join us in making music particularly looking for some boss music you can contact me on (Dont be shy)
  Skype: logan.k2
  Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/logon_13
• Pretending we did well before we even started

Hi everyone !

This is DESERVER post-mortem, also my first one.

Very interesting themes, it was very inspiring from the start ! even the game’s tittle was set before it even begins. Lynch-like stuff + Chinese Astrology really gave good/weird ideas from the start !

Maybe a little too much because at very first i didn’t know if i was going to try to make a braid-platformer-like thing, an adventure game with weird storyline (i would love to make one someday), and it ended as often, as an old school shmup !!!

This was decided because :

I’m currently working on this game style since month now with no regards for others, and i have my “game-engine” (made with GMS) project barely working ;

So while i’m updating this engine made at first for the last 2 LDJAM events, why not trying it with a different approach and gameplay ?

I first tried some lines of code, very basic, before the jam started. Some very simple “sinus” function to make some AI movement like classics, i mean Parodius/Xenon 2 etc… This worked from the start, the simpliest stays the simpliest, so i told myself hey ho let’s go.

What went right :

I tried stick to the plan this time and not to implement improvised stuff.

Starting from the end forced me have a workflow/limits.

I made a post Mortem.

Good occasion to take a fresh breath.

I’m ok with the tittle

What went bad :

Barely nothing, perfect week i was super-lucky and made super awesome things.

Music was a mess but that’s how i have fun.

I’m bad at level-designing and wasted some-time because of the use of a non stable engine at the start (mine!) instead

Undpredictable things.

Still needs polish.Always needs polish.Forever needs polish.

Wish i had more time to fully exploit theme But hey ! i have time !!!

And it all began like this :

and you can try here as everytime i’m yearning for feedback suggestions and opinions… Give a shout !

Cheers :]

Franck.

Well this was my first entry here at LD. I would love to say I learned some things, but I probably didn’t.

Overall, I had a great time. I seemed to have struggled the most with the theme. For the life of me I couldn’t come up with any concepts or any ideas.

However I still managed to crank something out. It definitely needs more work, a direction would have helped exponentially during this whole process. But I’m happy with it, I think…

Tags: 5, 57, 7, ld, mini, MiniLD

I was originally not going to enter this MiniLD, but then I decided it would be good to hopefully finish a game.

What Went Right:

I came up with a new Idea and deleted my old post-mortem from the day before before it was posted
I made a game
I meant to make this game before, but never got around to it
I had fun making beautiful pixels

What Went Wrong:

The music was less than perfect
The sound was BFXR again
My microphone still does not work
I kept switching ideas, so I may not even make this specific game

I hope to play some good games in this next week!

mini LD 57 was fun. the theme was “reversed”. i made a game about a maverick scientist who has invented a reverse evolution ray and uses it to devolve birds back into dinosaurs.

• it’s not really much fun
• not enough time to draw and animate a variety of birds and dinos
• sounds, as usual, is lacking

• i got to draw some dinosaurs

You can find it here : http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild-57/?action=preview&uid=16100

It is kinda fun small and simple, to read more about it check the entry.

this isn’t really a postmortem but i finished my game early so I’m writing it now.

i made level zero, a rpg where you level down instead of up and get weaker as you progress.

Good:

i finished the game!

core mechanics are fun and work well

Bad:

level design is not great

programmer art

not many sounds

this was good preparation for LD 31!

(DISCLAIMER: I took the post seriously and I am writing this before making my game, so it’s a joke post, I will post actual news on my game later)

When I saw the theme I wanted to create something clever and original for this mini-dare, and my original plan was spawned from thinking about “What would it look like to watch a game of Super Mario Bros played back in reverse??”. The resulting game is… Well, it’s interesting, you can check it out for yourself. I only with I had been given more time to complete it, what with school and all that. Maybe I’ll continue working on it beyond this! (Probably not though).

– Connorses

This is my post-mortem… I thought about The Unsolver when I was watching the very cheesy trailer for Mini LD #57. The goal was simple, make a game where the player has to unsolve a level for the next challenger!

The Easy:

Thinking about it

The Difficult:

How do you unsolve a puzzle?!

Well now’s the hard part… undeveloping this game…

After all this coding and debugging of my latest MiniLD entry – Revertris – I’ve decided to write up this post-mortem.

A quick recap of the game first, just to clear my sleep addled brain and get some creative juices flowing;
Revertris is a game of reverse Tetris, you start off at the end game screen of the tetris game. Once the game starts you get a ghost-image of the latest block that was placed and you have to quickly find it a place before it’s pulled up and off the board. When the block disappears off-screen then score is calculated by the number of pieces in the same color you managed to fit onto it, using powers of two. So for a 2×2 square with three red and one green block in it you’d get 8 points, 1 for the green, 1 for the first red, 2 for the second red, and 4 for the third red.

What did I do right?
– Had a full game idea and mechanics sketched out in advance.
– Managed to talk myself out of clinging to some vague and unexplainable hope that I’d be able to do sounds or music.
– Decided to forego UI completely, since I seem to be balls at it.

What did I do lef- I mean less right?
– For some godforsaken reason I decided to dive into the deep end of a new toolset I’ve never even compiled before, called OpenSceneGraph. I’ve never even used a scene graph before.
– I ended up throwing away all the debug databases by mistake, so lost a lot of time rebuilding the entire toolset.
– As usual I put up way too lofty goals for the final product, so I had to cut away lots of features I really wanted to cram into it.
– Built the game around the hot-seat concept of having one person playing Tetris before letting the second player take over with Revertris.
– For some reason I spent far too much time on an AI that played a fake game of Tetris to fill up the board, ended up losing lots of time for that.
– Started coding far too late to have enough time to learn my new toolset properly, much less get a well made game from it.

So for my ending words I guess I’ll just have to hope that the rest of you have had as much fun (and coffee) as me during this little MiniLD, and I hope we’ll all have just as much – if not more – fun when the next full Ludum Dare Compo/Jam comes around.

// Ace

Tags: C++, MiniLD #57, why am I still awake

Hey there!
Some time ago I started producing electronic music and it is royalty free, so you can download and use it in your projects, trailers, gameplays, games/everything for free, just credit me.
If you want – check my new music blog for latest tracks, maybe you’ll find something for you.
Thanks! ;]
https://muciojad.wordpress.com/

Tags: creative commons, music

I thought I’d have plenty of time this weekend, but it didn’t work out as planned, so I only really started making anything today. Here’s a gif of the main character, Jake:

ANIMATION

The way he is drawn is pretty much how everything will be drawn in the game. Naive and childish, with mish-mash colors, and probably only two frames of animation for everything. I’m partly doing this because it fits the theme and partly because I can’t really draw

Hope people’s games are coming along nicely or disassembling nicely, or whatever you do in this reversed jam.

Tags: screengif

And so I decided to partake in my first Mini Ludum Dare, because apparently I don’t have nothing that I should be currently studying just so I can get to the Uni I want. Anyway, my game. Main idea of ‘Hey! Where’s my Guy’ is that while your Guy starts at the left side of the level, the camera starts at the right side. And while Guy moves right, camera moves left. That’s an idea I’ve never heard before, so I went for it.

So, the things I did properly:
– I actually managed to finish the game! Yay!
– My graphics, with exception of the Guy doesn’t look that bad.

And things I didn’t do properly or didn’t do them at all:
– Wanted to make this game in Unity. As always ended up doing it in Game Maker Studio.
– I’ve started way too late, like two days in.
– The Guy doesn’t look that good.
– I could have added more content.

So, for now it’s all. I’m actually going to study now.
Bye.
Yonish

Tags: MiniLD #57, Yonish

Wow, I can’t believe I manged to finish a Ludum Dare contest entry, even if it is a mini. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do anything at all, considering I didn’t find out about the MLD until the 23rd, the very end of my weekend. After that, I had work for the remaining days until the deadline, which is why I decided to use Game Maker for the game. Anyway, enough of that, on to the post-mortem proper.

What went right:

• I finished a game for once. Whooo!
• All the basic bits of the game are in place and working properly.

What went wrong:

• Almost no polish! That’ll happen when you hardly have time to work on something that has a deadline.
• No music or sound effects.
• Didn’t do much for me in the way of learning new things.

Tags: MiniLD57, post-mortem

Sorry that I didn’t write the post-mortem earlier, but I usually don’t know what my game will turn out to be like)). In Human Apocalypse – Zombie, you play as an armed zombie that has to murder all the humans invading(by simply walking about) – it’s reversed that way. There are no enemies and probably won’t be any by Friday, but I am planning to work on this game further and I will add an entire city with vehicles and world events later on. I am a programmer first and foremost, therefore none of the models are mine. As far as I know, they’re all allowed for commercial use, but correct me if I am wrong…

So, this was my first time making a third person shooter, I wanted to make Mario 64-style controls first, but changed my mind because I preferred the way I did it in the end, therefore the orientation of the character only depends on the camera when aiming. I did not have many animations, therefore most of the coded functionality is commented out, but I will add crouching and aiming animations later. Since I’m 14 at the moment, school is taking a lot of my time too, so I will probably not be able to add much by Friday.

I know, it’s a bit early. But I’m already preparing for the upcoming Ludum Dare competition. Like previous years I’ll be competing in the April Ludum Dare. This will be my ninth time in the 4 years I compete.

To get myself prepared I’ll be doing a series of research on “What makes a game good?”. From experience I know there’s a list of do’s and don’ts. I’ll be keeping a blog on this here on the Ludum Dare website and my own blog. Up to the event I’ll be posting eight blogs, followed by reviews on how my blogs fit with games made by you. Feel free to request or comment. And if you’re in for a review on your entry about “What made your game good?” Leave a message!

Previous blog

Current blog

For the upcoming series and Ludum Dare I prepared my normal toolset including:

• Islandworks’ GameCreator
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Audacity
• Mobile microphone

And lastly

• Tape, lots of paper and a pen

Tags: emotions, features, gamecreator, islandworks, ld32, ludum dare 32, mood, rex van dorp, strong99, what is a game?, what makes a game good?

Yesterday I released an improved version of my LD31 game, 3Scale, to the Android Play Store:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jpmitdev.threeScale

Additions since the LD version include:

* more levels

* new survival mode

If you didn’t get the chance to play it when ranking LD31, 3Scale is an arcade game which involves jumping over small blocks.  It is simple but challenging, and can also be highly addictive!

Ok, this is going to be weird. Writing a post mortem before the game
is something I never attempted.

And yet, I’m pretty sure what is going to go well and go wrong with
my game.

First, I know I will pick up a game I will like, and this is going to
be very helpful. This way I’m going to be very excited about my game
and will be very excited to seee the finished result.

Second, I will overshoot my idea by a countrymile, making it
impossible to create in the time frame of the miniLD. For sure, it is
going to be something so huge and impossible to make and the final
result is going to look like an incomplete mess.

Third, I know that I will interrupt my first idea right in the middle
and I will starting to work on a new idea ex novo, because “it’s so
much better!”, just to finish with a game that is probably worse than
my first idea could have done because of the lack of time.

This is a complete postmortem, and is going to be very accurate when
I’m done with my game. How do I know? Because it looks exactly like
all of my 5 postmortems so far.

Best thing though is that it is going to be a very fun mini ludum dare.

I know because they always are.

Tags: backwards, MiniLD57, postmortem

So, um. Where should I start? This is the first third person shooter I made. I DO NOT CONSIDER IT COMPLETE, and I will continue working on it for as long as it takes for it to become a complete product which I will not feel ashamed to charge money for. The idea is that you play as an immortal zombie slaughtering mindless humans roaming the streets. The humans have ragdolls and the player can choose from an incredibly wide option of weapons – a pistol and a machine gun. Technically, I have scripted the behaviours for sniper rifles, shotguns, knives, blunt weapons, grenades, and hand to hand combat, but I do not have the animations yet so I have decided not to include that yet. I also had enemies, but I was not fully happy, so I decided to perfect them and add them into the game at a later stage.

The screenshots only feature the pistol, but that is because the screenshot shortcut on mac is Command Shift 3, therefore switching my weapon to the handgun whenever I want to screenshot.

KNOWN BUGS:

-camera clips through walls – will be fixed REAL soon. (After the MLD of course).

-aiming at various heights not animated – I will address this next week.

-borders around the level also have colliders so when you shoot at them, sparks and smoke appear. – in the final version there will be no apparent borders, so yeah.

If you download the game and find a bug, please tell me at [email protected] /* */

CONTROLS:

WASD – movement;

left mouse button – shooting;

right mouse button – aiming;

3 – handgun;

4 – machine gun;

I consider this a success of sorts, and I did not really believe that I could do something like this. I am really eager to find out what you all think about it. Models were not mine, but I will replace them with my own models later down the line.

i have just been having some trouble with the new unity GUI and the canvas and stuff and the part im having trouble with is doing the coding to implement what i need into the new gui somebody help???

I had a lot of fun working on “Butterbats” (working title was “Flippity Flip”, but that’s just stupid), but I bit off WAY more than I could chew.  I was planning on doing this game in about two days, but I ended up spending the entire week on it.  Since the theme was “Reversed”, I…like a moron…thought, “why not reverse my workflow?”  First I’ll just do music, pixel art (which I have never really done before), and work on polish…then do the gameplay last.

It was kind of fun doing it that way.  It caused me to end up with a more polished game, but I spent most of yesterday wondering if I would even be able to finish the stupid thing.  This is not an approach I will ever use again.

It’s not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, but for a very first attempt at doing any form of pixel art in a game, I’m pretty pleased with it.  I used Pickle for creating the sprites, and it worked great.  It’s pretty simple, but it did everything I needed it to do.

If anyone comes across any bugs (I’m sure there are some lurking), please let me know.  I’m considering doing an Ouya version, and I’d like to embarrass myself as little as possible in the process.

Can’t wait to play your games also…after a big ol’ bunch of sleep.

-Chad

Hey guys, I am barely having the time for this, so I made a game based on my buddy’s idea a while ago, now it’s on itch.io:

http://tosic.itch.io/casino-simulation

And my models pack:

http://tosic.itch.io/super-space-pack

P.S. I dont want negative comments, alright? My friend wanted this to be 2$, but I put it for less… and there is a demo!

OMG TRUST ME I HAVEN’T STARTED YET!

But people say you don’t need much time if you use a brain, don’t they?

I’ll be trying the MiniLD for the first time, I think the theme is very interesting! ;D

I’ll be using Unity, Pyxel and bfxr.

Great theme for this Mini LD! I think I’ll just reverse my development process and start by doing graphics and sound and do the programming and add some gameplay at the end. I hope time is on my side.

I’ll use my usual tools (Dart, etc.) but I’ll use WebGL for the first time in a Jam. I started learning WebGL about a month ago, so I hope it’ll work out. But I’ll still do something 2D.

You’ll probably be able to play my super awesome game here.

First time doing a Ludum Dare and first time actually getting close to finishing a a game, its been an interesting experience.

We all know games, everyone plays games, but do we really know what defines a game? Before we can create a good game we need some sort of definition of it. So what is it? Sure, everything with rules can be defined as a sort of game. But let’s define it a bit better than that. So let’s try!

What would be the most simplistic game you can think of? The first game that comes to my mind is the child’s game “Tagging”. It has two very basic rules: One player is “it” and if you’re being tagged by “it”, you become it. Remembering my years on the primary school’s playground the game had different additional rules all the time. An often used additional rule was “You can’t tag the old “it” back”. Although these were set by us, additional constants where there too. For example the teachers didn’t allow you to leave the playground or trip others. Not a rule set by us, the players, but by our superiors.

The summary of the game? There’s conflict, no-one wants to be “it”. It would be boring if someone wanted to be “it” because of the lack of conflict. The rules define boundaries in the game. The outcome of the game was clear too, the child being “it” at the moment of the school bell lost the game. Katie Salen, a veteran game developer, her description of a game comes to my mind:

“A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that result in a quantifiable outcome” (Katie Salen, Game Design Fundamentals, page 80)

If I apply this logic to one of my previous Ludum Dare games, for example, “You only get one” we could describe it like this:

Conflict: the player wants to get home without being eaten while the dragon keeps advancing.

Rules: the player is constraint in a 2D world, there’s gravity, the game is lost when touching the dragon, his fire or falling out of the screen.

Outcome: the player wins when he enters his house (time constraint).

That is quite clear, but how does this apply to popular games like Minecraft? Is it a real game? Let’s try:

Conflict: the player needs to stay alive (retain its hearts)

Rules: the player loses hearts when hungry, the player receives damage from mobs, the game is lost when its hearts are depleted, the player can eat food, can create weapons and armor etc.

Outcome: is there any? What about defeating the ender dragon?

Is the ender dragon really a quantifiable outcome? After defeating the dragon the conflict itself remains, nothing is resolved. The main conflict centers around staying alive, not on the dragon roaming a different realm. Thus, I wouldn’t describe it as an outcome or a game, but more of a sandbox or toy. Though open world games like Oblivion feature some kind of the same freedom as Minecraft, in the end you resolve the main conflict, defeat the bad guy and establishes peace. That’s a clear quantifiable outcome with rules and conflicts.

This is my first of a series of blogs on “What makes a good game”.

What’s your take on the definition? Does it fit mine?

Tags: Ludum Dare, rex van dorp, strong99, what makes a good game

So, um this is a short gameplay video I made of my game. I am still working on it, and will be posting more videos later on. For now you can download it at asado.itch.io/haz

The game looks quite jumpy in the video, but it is quite smooth in real life.

Just a thought, what if we were asked to make a timelapse before making the game itself? since, the theme is reversed? O.o haha

Anyways, I just want to share the first part of my timelapse series in making the Adventures of Esrever Wild, my entry to the miniLD 57 😀

It’s been fun and challenging, this miniLD, and I want to know what you guys think 😀

feel free to comment, like, and subscribe for more 😀

Tags: MiniLD57, reversed, timelapse

This was my first time making a game with such short notice, only getting to the jam late due to a packed work week. Here it is if you want to see it http://ludumdare.com/compo/minild-57/?action=preview&uid=49360

The crunch for time effected the game in a few ways, mostly the tutorials – which I think harmed the impact of the game overall.

Were I to go back and do it all again, there are three things I think I would do differently.

Firstly, I would choose a genre of game where I had boilerplate code prepared. I had to sink more time than I would like into basic game states. On top of that, tiny errors in code where hard to pick up in my IDE, which lengthened this process out and burned me on development.

Second, I would figure out how to tutorialise as I go. Part of this was in my prioritising it last, but also due to cutting back the scale of the game. Originally it would have been a little bigger and easier to see the systems.

Third, I wouldnt code while mostly asleep asleep. Making small mistakes like having something check against the x axis twice hung me out to dry – this was partially the fault of the first issue I adressed. The moral is, always try and be focussed.

Overall, I’m not the happiest with this project, but it taught me a few valuable lessons about jamming and helped me write some new boilerplate code.

I played all of the Mini LD #57 games as well as wrote an article on my favorites. Feel free to check it out!

Tags: Jupiter_Hadley, MiniLD #57

Yo Wat’up Guys! 😀

Here’s the second part of my timelapse series 😀 this video covers me, setting up Unity and my assets for the programming to come

Feel free to leave your comment, like if you like, dislike if you don’t, and subscribe for more! 😀

Tags: makulitStudios, MiniLD57, reverse, timelapse

Yo Wat’up Guys!

Here’s the third part of my timelapse series this video covers me, creating the terrainSpawner, a game object with a script that randomly spawns a set of terrain from a list of terrains for my game, Esrever Wild 😀

Feel free to leave your comment, like if you like, dislike if you don’t, and subscribe for more!

Tags: makulitStudios, MiniLD57, timelapse

Indie Dev Mix Tape 001

OK back in the dim distant past there was the ZX81 and this little black box was a computer with amazing computing power that could take you into the very first versions of Virtual Reality via your TV!

And for this amazing device to work you had to plug a tape deck in, to load games and fun stuff!

But some of the tapes you could get did not just have 1 game on them they had lots of games!

Anyway had the idea for an indie dev mix tape

-> http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieDev/comments/2xyjan/should_we_be_making_indie_game_mix_tapes/

It could be taking off, people are looking into ways to tip the developers and have even tipped me for the idea!

PS> The idea is to also have a ‘slow’* Indie Dev Mix Tape Jam to give people time to make the games!

*At least a week ideally two.

Yo! Wat’up guys! 😀

Here’s part 4 of my “making-of” series 😀 (it says part 3 because part 2 has two parts 😛 )

Here you can see me designing and animating the main menu for my game, Esrever Wild 😀

Enjoy and don’t forget to like if you like it, dislike if you don’t, and subscribe for more 😀

Thanks!

Tags: makulitStudios, MiniLD57, timelapse

I’ve been participating in Ludum Dare compos for awhile now, but I’m going to be on the road for the first time ever for April’s LD, meaning I can’t use Game Maker, because I’ll be on a mac laptop. I spent a week learning Python before realizing that it puts up a real fight when it comes to compiling and distributing code, so I’ve since decided to explore the Love2D framework for Lua instead. I know I’ve seen a lot of entries made using Love2D, and I was wondering if anybody who has experience with the language could offer help to a total newcomer like me.
I’m especially curious to know if there’s a specific IDE that people like to use, but I’m hungry for any and all tips, tricks, or advice that veterans of the language can offer.

-Thanks,
Nick

First a huge shout-out to everyone that joined us at our Ludum Dare GDC gathering party in San Francisco last week. It was an amazing time. We’re hoping to do it again next year, and will try to get even more you there.

TIP: Sign up for the Mailing List!

I owe a huge thank you to GitHub for generously hosting us, and Lee Reilly for planning, organizing, and throwing us a really amazing party. It was the best!

Here’s a few photos to remember the night.

EDIT: More Photos (Higher Quality. My camera phone is terrible)

Enter Here

People thought they were early

Octocat

Octocat skeleton

Octocat Thinker

Gaming themed Bar menu

Side-Scrolling Platformer

Real Time Strategy

Third Person Shooter

The Chow

Pool with Sos

Footy

Developers

Developers

Developers

Developers

Demoing

Developers

Just Cheese and Vegan left

@foolmoron sleeps

We got those!

Wide

Bar

Until next time…

Hello all!

To those who were faithful to my Java Game Development Tutorial Series, you may have noticed my dropping off of the radar for a while. Basically, I got sick, then busy, then more stuff, then sick again, and now I’m back! Every other day there will be newly added episodes to the series! Please take a look if you haven’t already, and subscribe if you’d like to follow along!

– Gandalf1209

So, i sorely miss taking part in the last LDs. My last one dating back to being LD27.

But, i told myself, not again. I’m not going to shy away anymore. But to make sure, I announce that I am in way before, like.. right now. Already took the 20th Off from work, and it’s time to get back into the game. It’s roughly a month left, enough time to prepare.

Maybe this time i will actually produce something i’m proud of. We shall see. See you all in 37 days, stay coding!

Hi guys! 😀

Here’s the last part of my time timelapse series about the creation of my MiniLD57 entry, Esrever Wild! 😀

Here you can see me applying my final touches and fixing the UI for the game 😀

Enjoy!

Don’t forget to Comment, Like if you like, Dislike if you don’t, and subscribe for more! 😀

Tags: makulitStudios, MiniLD57, timelapse

Originally made for Ludum Dare 26 (Minimalism), Dodge is an arcade-y game in which you must avoid endless armies of projectiles whilst fixed to a grid.

Here’s the Steam page.

Alright! It’s time we got this ball rolling.

As many of you know, my goal this year is to finally refresh, redo and build us a brand new Ludum Dare website. It’s a big deal. We’ve been going strong for 13 years now, but we’ve grown *A LOT* the past few. I’m in constant awe that many thousands of you tolerate the sub-par duct-tape and cardboard website we have today. I never expected LD to get this big, and to become so important to so many people. I feel I have a responsibility to take this little hobby of mine very seriously.

So part of bringing Ludum Dare up to date is cleaning up the branding. Last year I took the first step, switching our hashtag from #LD48 to #LDJAM. We are big on social media. It’s how I keep in touch with many of you. But we’re constantly bringing in new people, and in just 5 years we’ll finally reach our 48th main event. If we weren’t already 13 years old, that might seem far away. It’s one less question I need to answer.

I can’t even remember when I made the current Ludum Dare logo, but it’s been a very long time. What a shame it would be to have a brand new Ludum Dare, with the same old logo. Like getting a haircut before something new, it’s just something you do.

But rather than starting with a debate on typography and color, I want us to explore something that’s been in the back of my mind: A Ludum Dare Mascot.

We sort of have a logo. At some point, it was clear that many early LD’ers were Commodore 64 fans (myself included). The Commodore 64 never really had a standard joystick, but you could plug in *A LOT* of different things (including Atari 2600 joysticks or Sega Master System gamepads). Somewhere along the line, a bunch of us just mutually agreed that the Suncom TAC-2 was the iconic joystick we were going to use to represent Ludum Dare. It also kinda helps that nobody really knows who Suncom is anymore, and if they’re still around, they certainly don’t care about the TAC-2.

The Suncom TAC-2 (Totally Accurate Controller MK2)

Funny thing, it’s actually a really terrible joystick for play (solder and balls instead of microswitches). But man, it captures that 80’s iconic retro gaming vibe just right. It was all about the style.

So hello, it’s 2015 now.

It’s probably 30 years since the TAC-2 was manufactured. I’m not saying we get rid of the TAC-2, but we should consider our options. Gaming has changed, and is always changing. You might even say we had an effect on that change (something small, but hey). Really, the only constant in gaming is change.

So if it’s fair game to change the Logo, what could we do?

Of course, there’s the mascot route.

Taccy the Tacky TAC-2… this is why I need your help

.. Well, Taccy is probably not a good choice, but we need to start somewhere.

I want to think there is an ideal little character we can create to both represent and share with the community. Maybe there’s multiple mascots. Maybe there’s a root character that gets reinterpreted. Maybe there’s the general mascot, and maybe there’s a Ludu-tan/Dah-ray-chan or other personification.

I’ll admit. I love what GitHub does with their branding

Ludum Dare means a lot of things to a lot of people. You all constantly blow me away with your creativity, so I feel this is something I need to defer to all of you to help find.

Help us design a Mascot and/or Logo for Ludum Dare!

This isn’t a contest per se. I’d rather think of this as a conversation. If someone has an idea, and if you have suggestions or alternative takes on the idea, I want to see the back and forth. I want us to work together on this.

Post your thoughts, sketches, and ideas in the comments. I will follow along as best I can.

EDIT: Oh! Image posting doesn’t work in WordPress. I’ve been manually editing posts and embedding the images. Leave me a link to an image file, and I’ll do that for you.

#MarshieForMascot!

Because during Ludum Dare, you’re doing it right if your hair is on fire.

Bonus!

Toasts to any color!

MARSHIE IS A GLOBAL CITIZEN

Seattle Games Cooperative Meetup group is hosting a Ludum Dare 32 event at Atom Jack studios.

If you’re in the area and would like to participate, RSVP ASAP here:

Ludum Dare 32 – Seattle

Friday, Apr 17, 2015, 6:00 PM

Atom Jack
3131 Western Avenue, Suite 303 Seattle, WA

14 Game Makers Attending

Do you want to participate to Ludum Dare, but cannot handle being alone all weekend? We’re going to have a real world gathering in Seattle for Ludum Dare 32, on April 17th! Ludum Dare is a game jam where you have 48hrs (compo) or 72hrs (jam) to create a game.This gathering is for anyone who wants to participate to the Ludum Dare event. You will be…

Check out this Meetup →

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Tags: wallpaper

Just a quick post in case you happened to be bored this weekend! I’ve put up a #PiDayJam on itch.io for us to celebrate the irrationality of the famous number.

Theme is Pi (or pie!), of course. Make a game of any sort and do something with circles or something! 7DRL got you busy? Put some circles in it (I won’t tell that it wasn’t for this jam if you don’t)!

Starts 3/14 and “Ends” 3/15 (submissions open through 3/18).

Come chat with me (us?) in #piday on irc.esper.net!

Also, I’ll be streaming my game development on Twitch. I hope to see everyone else doing it too!

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Just something I threw together in gimp. I thought a pixel could be a good mascot because Ludum Dare wouldn’t happen if not for this guy.

A pixel

Just thought I’d post this face archive. Da’ Face, and Da’ Face II: Faces can be found HERE and HERE respectively.

Stay tuna’d for Da’ Face III: Face Off, an adventure in ASCII ART, next week on MINI LD!

I’ve been working all day on the letters. Hope you like! c:

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There’s quite a story behind this one. I used wordle.net to generate a word cloud from the text of the “About Ludum Dare” and the “Rules and Guide” pages. [Unfortunately, I used a very small size for the image, so it became blurry when I scaled it up.] I did a few manual changes:

• Removed the word “game” as it was bigger than both “Ludum” and “Dare”, and that just didn’t look right.
• Recolored it until “Ludum” and “Dare” were in about the same colors as the current logo.
• Rearranged it so it clearly said “Ludum Dare” and not “Dare Ludum”.

At this point, I started to realize it was looking a bit like an ocarina, and… yeah.

Sadly, I forgot to increase the width before making the ocarina outline… so that’s why there are seams. I kind of like that effect, though… hopefully it’s not too ugly.

A small tool for sketching flowcharts!

I just wrapped up my entry for the Austin Educational Game Jam. I thought you guys might dig it. This was a week long game jam and I worked with one other person who did most of the art.

In my game you play a cashier in a grocery store for monsters. You will need to scan items, bag them efficiently, count the customer money, and give them their change. It starts easy but difficulty ramps up quickly. I will be showing it at the expo tomorrow at the Palmer Events Center in Austin Texas.

Download Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42191645/MonsterMart.zip

Tags: educational, game jam