Here it comes our first Ludum Dare Game! Hope you enjoy it as much as we didn’t sleep. The Jonbar Point

Jombar Point it’s a small prologue (though it’s a complete game for the jam) of a bigger project. It’s the first time No Wand Studios has participated in a jam.

It’s an exploration game where a space traveler must use the W.E.A.P.O.N. hologram system to help The Society in its mission. Would you like to help as well? Then try our game, dive in and discover the lore of this curious stage.

And remember; enter more data if you find any. The Society thanks you.

Do you like mornings? If so you should play my Ludum Dare game: The morning type. It is SO YOU~. 😀

If you don’t like mornings, then you should play my Ludum Dare game: The morning type, so you can have the experience with none of the pain! 😀

Play “The morning type” here

I encourage you to leave a written review. I really appreciate those!

Like a lot of other people, I’ll just do some “advertisement” for our game here…

So, we wanted to make a game where you the meaning was to eat people.

 To make it even more awesome we wanted some weapons in the game too. We decided to put some guns in the game and realized after a few seconds, that guns are pretty conventional…

We finished the game, and now you throw guns at gingerbread men and eat them when they die..!

I don’t know how to add images, so go check out the images and the game here:

“http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=39343”

*Normal links didn’t work either*

This was my first LD and I had loads of fun. Unfortunately I made few rookie mistakes, but the good thing is, I was able to learn loads in the process.

What went right

1. Game design. I was very happy with what I came out using the theme.

2. Learned a lot about working in specific time period. Next time I won’t overcomplicate things. I am surprised seeing what you guys made. Simple, yet so elegant.

What went wrong

1. The theme was so good that I got ambitious. I totally designed something that was not doable in the given time period.

2. I stressed more than I should have. I was panicking more and more as the clock was ticking.

Anyways, whatever the outcome, I am glad I particpated and will participate in future LDs. Good luck to everyone for this game and the future games you’ll make.

Hello everyone!

We are proud to announce our first Ludum Dare game called Unconventional Cowfare.

So if u like drones, cows, blood or general destruction, feel free to check it out below.

VOTE PAGE

CLICK ME TO PLAY

CLICK ME TO DOWNLOAD

Tags: an unconventional weapon, blood, cowfare, drones

Fish Slap! My first Ludum Dare game!

Click here to check it out!

Here are some detail shots of the art I made for the game!

Going in order by what was made when:

Earliest fish, I first tried making them in Blender, then I tried Sculptris for the first time, and liked it a lot better!

Early draft of Grumpfish.

Final version of Grumpfish.

Happyfish.

Kissyfish.

Cutlassfish, relative of the swordfish.

Early shot of diver riding Nessie.

More progress on the diver riding Nessie.

Final version of diver riding Nessie.

Diver riding seahorse.

Hi, if you don’t played my game yet, try it here 😀

After that i want to show you something!

This:

is first version of my game Ultimate booter 😀

UB Looks like that now:

So… What went good?

Pretty much everything! All my games until now were just interactive stories. It was my dream to create a game which is actually a game 😀 And because i always tried to experimenting and my experimenting always gone wrong, i decided to stick with something more classic.

So…

I turned on my famiclone and started playing nes games. After a while i found out pirate copy of rockman/megaman 1. I really like megaman games 😀 So i grabbed that style, combined it with some old gamedev documents and voila! Booter was born!

Because i have practically all game mechanics in my sketchbook, programming was pretty fast and smooth. Thanks to Shaun Spalding i am pretty good in programming platformer games and inventories. And thanks to xygthop3’s shader, game look pretty badass!

And, what went bad?

You guys 😀 Everybody here keep spamming with awesome games 😀 Sometime i talked to myself : “Hmm, my game looks pretty good!” and after that i checked ludum dare page and i saw hundreds of awesome looking games… That was pretty painful 😀

Everybody here made an interesting game! Every hour i found out some cool new mechanics. Some hilarious weapons! Sometimes i was being sucked into great atmosphere of your games!

So..

Good job everyone and see you in next #LDJAM!

Well then, it’s been a few days since the Ludum Dare, and I am relieved. The feedback on our game so far has been very good, other games have been fun to play to, and I haven’t failed any exams after completely ‘wasting’ my weekend. Well, on to..

WHAT WENT RIGHT

• First off, communication went pretty great. Of course, there was some disagreement here and there, but all in all, we came to decisions pretty quickly.
• We actually finished! Of course, more polishing could always be done, but I’m very satisfied with the end product.

WHAT WENT WRONG

• I got distracted a lot, by looking at the Ludum Dare site, for instance.
• Bugs. Bugs everywhere. In the end I decided to call them features, and people still seem to think the game is supposed to crash when starting and wipe your hard drive. I’m so smooth
• Implementing all features. A lot of them where cancelled in the end, because I simply didn’t have the time. Poor Brzoz made tons of unused sprites, too.

In the end, this whole jam has been big fun, and I’ll certainly try to join again next time. Until then!

(subtle second link to our game that nobody will notice)

Tags: 32, LD #32, ludum dare 32, post-mortem

You can play it HERE

Hey!

This is Le Chef Farteaut Postmortem!

First of all, I know, it’s a lame idea, but I couldn’t think anything else that fast and at first seemed like a very simple game. And finishing my game for LD was really important since I’ve failed the last 2 LD’s main events that I’ve participated.

So, you control Péter, Le Chef Farteaut. You really need to go to the bathroom, but first you have to struggle through your messy restaurant’s kitchen. You have to fight and avoid giant mutant radioactive cockroaches and spray them with your farts (yeah, that’s the weapon). You also use your farts as an aid to run faster, jump higher and float through the air.

I’ve started saturday late. LD begins here in Brazil at 10 p.m. so I was already kinda sleepy, besides been pumped thinking about a game concept.

First, I wanted to get the movement mechanics right and tight. Walking, running, jumping, changing directions and FARTS. At first I didn’t know how I would use them as a Weapon and who would you fight with it, but I’ve learned that is far more important to develop anything than nothing in game jams. I knew that ideas would come in the process and I tried to kept the Done Manifesto in my mind.

Character Movement + Tiled Integration + Physics were done very quickly into a prototype, thanks to HaxeFlixel. Tweaking them to perfect values took a little longer, but I was very satisfied with them in the afternoon.

Then, was time for some (f)ARTS. At this moment, I was forced to define the complete game concept idea…I just had some white square that could fart bouncing around the window. I was SO frustraded, no ideas popped for a long time, but I had to draw something. And I’m a programmer by formation who is trying to be a self-taught artist. But learning during a jam is just insane, but I had no other option. PyxelEdit saved my time as I started drawing some generic white tiles, that made me think about kitchens, then chefs, then restaurant dirty kitchens, and then the whole concept of the game.

After that, I started drawing/animating the chef and I did pretty well I guess for a brogrammer and learning (f)artist. Basic level +chef arts were done and saturday was over. Time to sleep.

Sunday was all about art and polish. Refined tiles, kitchen props, chef animation, fart particles, some hazards like spikes and tuning player movement some more. I wished I had finished it for Compo, but I had soo much more to do.

Monday I did the rotating saw blade, polished death, level transitions, sounds, menu, build the advanced levels and the radioactive cockroaches. That was my Trello self-management Done column (you should read it bottom-up):

To resume, some bullet points:

• Bad
  • Fart jokes (sorry);
  • Wasn’t able to manage time again, couldn’t make it to Compo;
  • Art Frustration! Lost a lot of time learning/experimenting new techniques, worflows and tools;
  • Difficulty ramp too steep. Not enough time to tweak it;
  • Fart could’ve been explored more as a weapon;
• Good
  • Haxeflixel and PyxelEdit, pure love here;
  • Art made me happy in the end;
  • Menu Screen teaches all the buttons you need, without a tutorial;
  • Level Design and progression as a tutorial;
  • Game Design was actually pretty fun;

See ya in August, or some miniLD along the way.

We were showing off Ludem Dare games made in Eugene over at Mindworks (the co working space where I made Pillow Fight!) and decided to have a little tournament. It was great seeing a group of people getting excited over my game, one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced! This is why I make game 😀

Also, I am very sorry for potato quality…

Hey all,

So we decided early on we wanted to do a platformer.  When the theme was revealed we probably went through 100 unconventional weapon ideas and could not agree on a single one.  An hour in to the jam we were losing hope….and then someone suddenly blurted out “Techo-Druid Holo Squirrels!”.  Yes, we had the same response…silence…deep confusion…and then we all magically agreed.  It made so little sense to us that no one could argue against it.  So alas, “Aora: The Spirit of Nature” was born.

What we did wrong:

Spent too much time crafting the level, this didn’t leave us enough time to really fine tune the controls and mechanics.  If we did choose to continue this game, we would definitely add ALOT of different and unique mechanics for the player to use to navigate the world and combat enemies. (We had thoughts of using Vines as Grappling Hooks)

We started out with the hope of making a really interactive tutorial system, as time ran out and we started cutting features the tutorials just didn’t make it

What we did right:

We really put alot of effort into building the level.  We wanted it to have an element of exploration so we added multiple paths to the end.  If you play the game multiple times you can take a different path the second time and have a totally different experience.

Our artist really nailed the character concept.  As soon as we saw it we knew people would like it.  The animations were rough, but they still turned out nicely (especially the hair).

All in all it was a good jam.  We stressed a lot and probably cried a little, but it was definitely a good, educational experience.

Check out the game here if you wanna play and leave us some helpful feedback

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=50502

What is it?
Brute Force Commander was my very first try to make a game in a short period of time like this. So of course, this was my first Ludum Dare
When the theme was publicly announced, I did not know what to do! Even after 2 hours of brainstorming… Then all of a sudden, I came up with an idea of making a game where you should protect something using text. So here is my not unconventional weapon.

This game of course can’t be classified as “text based”, but to control the whole game you must type in commands (even for the menu), and this is what I want to talk about now…

What went wrong

– Me : My experience in making games is very low, I’m a kind of artist (not at all), but I love all the other stuff needed to make a game. It makes me voluble sometimes (voluble : person who can’t maintain focus, person who changes all the time) and of course it slows me down on getting anything done.

– Didn’t warm up: I didn’t expect to participate in this Ludum Dare so I kind of decided in the last minute… which was bad!
– The commands are too long: Well, hitting 3 keys to simply make a ship move is a little bit too much, Isn’t it? In order to activate the propellants to move, for example, to the right, the actual command is: .d and to make even faster is .d=5 (5 times the natural speed). It works very well, but not as expected… If you have tried the game, you might have seen that this is way too hard!
– Didn’t implement the ‘move asteroid’ function: I really wanted to give the player the ability of controlling asteroids to use them in their advantage to save missiles. But I couldn’t finish it.

– Limited missiles. Really, you only have 100 missiles in the whole game: It can be considered as evil sorcery of mine… >:)

– I developed a evil personality in making games hard.

– The game was not going to be a space shooter  (or whatever): The initial idea was to make something protect some other thing using text. Before coming up with the idea of a ship and a meatball planet in the background, I was planning to make a zombie shooter, but it’s cliche…
I started making stuff for a zombie game but I ended up with some thing completely different. Such “fade in” (or out) drove me into waste of time.

[Insert more cons here]

What went right
– MobsterSquirrel.volubility–; : I think Ludum Dare is what I needed to focus in one thing. To make a commitment in making games and stick with an idea I like till the end. I know some people would say that in real world you have to develop a good product, and my is statement is not completely true. But when it comes to an idea you think it’s innovative and you love, you can’t give up.
– [Technical] I learned float.TryParse(), Trim(), Replace() : This is a noob “What went right”, but manipulating strings is a very important task in any kind of system which uses text (Mr. Obvious award). To make the ship go to the right, you type .d and hit enter. To move faster .d=<number here>, it’s OK to make an if to check if the InputField text is “.d”, but what about .d=10? or .d=140f ?
– The feeling of being using a command line, or being a Hacker… : After deciding what I wanted to do, I had to decide what kind of feeling I wanted to give to the player. Once I like text and command stuff, I thought, why not giving these GUI users a taste of using a command line?
When using CMD (in windows, this is just an example) you have to type in stuff and hit ENTER, and the computer will respond to your commands. This is basically the felling you have in the game, you type in a command and something happens.

I’m not a half empty glass kind of guy, but it’s hard to point good stuff …

Thus…
Of course this game still have tons and tons of improvements to be made, but this is what game development is all about…

I pretend to participate in the next Ludum Dare, but the next time I want to go a little bit further, by using something like C++ & SFML/SDL/OpenGL or Java & LWJGL and making my own sound fx and music

Sorry for my bad English guys, I definitely starve for vocabulary and grammatical education. I hope my mistakes didn’t make the post impossible to read

I don’t want to promote my game or anything, but I encourage you to give my game a shot. It’s pretty difficult…

Thank God for the opportunity of being here and everyone in charge of running this epic event.

Skype: victor.gomes2153 please send an invitation!!! I need friends

Hey everyone!

We made a 220x sped up time-lapse of our 48 hour long live stream where we made the game “Mutiny on Samovar V” for LD32!

Pretty nifty seeing it come to life, no? This jam was way too much fun.

Play, rate and share it here:
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=50665

It turned out that our ordinary guy is in fact really skillful free runner! Just have a look:

Part 2:

Yeah, and he is really great stunt man too:

Play I Saw Her and She Ran Away

Wounded by Words is the tale of six people who are trapped in the ruins of a shopping center after a terrorist attack. All they can do is wait for the rescue team to come. As the individuals are growing more and more desperate over time, you’ll be able to grow closer to them and discover their stories.

Due to the time limitation, the current build is still missing some scenes (and there are a lot of typos that we’ll be fixing soon) so you can follow our itchio account to be notified when a new build is up. Or take a look at our social network profiles (Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, we have it all) where we’ll be relaying the news ;). I hope you’ll enjoy it and do let a comment on our LD page!

I have noticed a lot of peole complaining about lack of suport for varius kind of keyboard configurations, so I thought I should make a post about this.

Alot of Unity games use Unitys built in Input system like this: “yAxis = Input.GetAxisRaw(“Player1AltYaxis”)”  (from my LD game)

This means that when you start the game after it’s built there is a tab called “Input” (it’s allways there).

You click on it and then you find the movment keys/Shoot keys or whatever you want to change.

Dubble click on it and it will ask you to chose what key you want for that command.

And then you are done, chose whatever key you like.

I hope this post will help you. Go and enjoy the great LD32 games now

Tags: advice, controls, help, PSA, tutorial, unity

Dark tales?
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=50448

So this is my Post-Mortem for my LD32 compo game REVENGE OF THE CLONES

 The Concept

I actually came up with the idea before the compo started (THOUGHT CRIME), I’d looked at the top 4 entries and tried to think what I’d do for each of them. My first idea was for Companion, it was going to be a meadow running simulator where you ran through a field with a partner but with obstacles like buzzsaws that would separate you, somewhat violently. I thought unconventional weapon was a bit rubbish to be honest but then I hit on the idea for Revenge of the Clones. What if you made a platformer where you can’t jump? What if instead of jumping you created an exact copy of yourself and propelled that forward instead? What would happen to your last copy? The more I thought about it the more I liked this idea and, luckily for me, that’s the theme we got!

So Revenge of the Clones is a platform game where instead of jumping you fire a gun that creates an exact copy of yourself and propels that forward, like a jump! Your old clones will then attack you (and each other) so you better distance yourself from them quickly! Later levels include switches you must get your clones to step on.

 What went right

I think the concept is a good un! I’d never done a platformer before either so that was interesting. The concept allowed a pretty open ended scope to how many levels I would actually have, once I’d actually got the basics down i could make levels easily. The last level for example was made about 2 hours before submission on a whim because I thought I needed an end point! It’s a lot harder than the previous levels but I enjoyed doing the ending and think it’s one of the best things about the game!

Animations were also a big plus, I’m not great at art but I used Spriter to bone up my guy which let me create animations quickly and easily and import them to Unity:

I used a program called ‘Gif Screen Recorder’ that allowed me to have regular updates to Twitter too which was good since I’d organised a group of Ludum Darers and it was fun sharing what we were doing. So when I did something good I chucked it on twitter like particles:

And when I messed up that also went on twitter like this unfortunate animation mishap:

What Went Wrong

The platforming is suuuuper floaty and a bit wrong, I couldn’t change it after I’d done my initial couple of levels since I’d need to replan all the jumps! Truthfully I should’ve nailed the platforming first but I was overly enthusiastic! The collision detection on the edges is also rubbish, you often get stuck on the corners. Reading peoples feedback I’m kicking myself for not tightening it up!

THE NAME. I’d been calling it Attack of the Clones all day so just chucked ‘Revenge’ in their so George didn’t sue me but the day after I thought of all the names it could’ve had! Clone Gunman is probably my favourite.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

You can play the game Here

Wow, this was already my fifth LudumDare (The first one was on a different account). And again, I had a blast! Its just such a cool feeling to know, that there are thousands of people out there making games at the same time. And you can try them all afterwards! Might not be a good idea for your health though

I tried out some new tools this time. The past LudumDares, I always went for C++ and OpenGL, because that’s what I know the best. During the last few months however, I played around with JavaScript and WebGL a bit more and thought it might be a good idea to try it out during a LudumDare. Turns out, it was!

Coming from C++, I still don’t really like JavaScript. I ran into some stupid bugs, that would never have passed the compiler in C++ because of its stronger types and generally stricter rules. But I got the job done. And I honestly am impressed, every time I work with JavaScript, of how fast it can be!

The feedback I got so far is awesome! Lots of nice words and very helpful feedback. Honestly, I think that’s the part I like the most about LudumDare: The feedback after the competition.

So, I will keep on rating games (I am currently at the 30 games mark). Lets see if I get to 100

And last but not least: If you would like to play my game and leave me a comment here, I would be very happy!