I finally had the time to finish the last bit of polish on my little LD#32 game that didn’t make it.

Music Notes are my weapon.

Like I stated in a previous post I missed the deadline due to distractions.
The game is nothing special.. I didn’t get a chance to make it special.

Hopefully it runs well for you guys if you decide to try it, its very barebones.

You can download it right here from my website:
http://www.recursesoftware.pcriot.com/games.html

Just go into the “Program Files” folder and double click NoteInvaders.jar

If you like the concept, and yes it is a concept.. I wouldn’t really call it a game.
Maybe I’ll re-do it using more powerful tools and better art/effects.
And definitely add the “song” mode.

Thanks guys!

***Experimental Folklore Agency (E.F.A.) Headquarters***

“We have developed the ultimate weapon to stop genocide throughout history.”

(Indistinct chattering)

“Behold… The Penanggalan!”

“A floating head and entrails time travelling vampire summoned to eat baby monsters”.

Yeah! Throw those entrails!

Note: buy the original Atari cartridge. Accept no copies!

(Click on the cartridge to play the game)

Tags: beavl, html5, puzzle, puzzlescript, web

Participating in a ludum Dare  has always been a dream of mine .

the positive

I consider the resulting game is nothing more than a gift, and find the value of the experience immeasurable. It’s the shortest jam i have participated in an the assumed pressure  does wonders with the creative mind.

.

that said there was a unexpected fact that hindered the experience for me … power outages caused by heavy rain since Sunday night  until Monday.

I could barely  upload a version of what i had planed to make. but i did submit a game to ludum dare, and by almighty Miyamoto  it exists

.

This post i think is the equivalent of telling the internet the dog ate you homework , the game produced is the equivalent of falling down the stairs, have everybody look at you , you get on your knees, make jazz hands and shout out loud “Ta DaAaa! in a theatrical manner. And i love the experience, just wished i had the chance on blaming unquestionably the lack of polish of my game to my bad planning ( no planning at all)

for a one man team, the resulting game makes me proud. so much indeed i made an android port of it

.

the negative 

-No time for Music or any sound whatsoever .

Sorry for taking the post to the whine side!

See you again on Ludum Dare 33!

link:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=50175

Unconventional  weapon how about a  “Leaf Blower”
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=51198

Added steam spewing off at the top. Cosmetics only changes. Check out my game, Hot Kitty!

Kettle-Cat now spews out steam at the top.

Tags: 2D, bugs, cat, Cockroach, compo, github, Hot, Hot Kitty!, itch.io, Kettle, Ludum Dare, red, screenshot, steam, unity, update, Wheels

I’ve uploaded a timelapse of the making of my Ludum Dare entry, Mountain King to Youtube. 12 hours of recorded work (about 6 not recorded due to technical limitations) in < 10 minutes.

Play the game here (Web/Unity, Windows, Mac and Linux versions)

Tags: gamedev, progress, timelapse, video

Hi, this is my entry: Space Bug.

In this game you must solve the puzzles with your special weapon. It drein the ability of your enemy, so you can use it.
You will drein walk, fly, light and teleport.

Enjoy!

Hello everyone .

Artificial Intelligence Add to the people who have no friends or extra controls can experience the game .

We appreciate your feedback and your vote

Play and Rate ˆˆ

I made a game, it’s called Ants. It’s a game where you ‘convince’ some ants to eat your friend’s sandwich.

Here’s a picture:

Pictured here: some ants

This game was born on Saturday evening when I happened upon a Twitch stream (Extra Credits Design Club Live to be precise) where the streamer was making a Ludum Dare game. I mentioned my idea for a game in chat, the streamer was like “go make it then” and POOF, there went my weekend.

So let’s talk about it.

What Worked:

– The core mechanic came together really fast. My first attempt at simulating ants (a rudimentary simulation at that) ended up working pretty well. So I never really had to change it.

– The sound effects somehow turned out okay. Sunday morning I sat on my porch and recorded two minutes of nature sounds on my Macbook Air’s internal microphone. I also recorded myself spraying a can of cooking oil, and overlaid that with myself going “PSSSHHHH”. Thank god for Audacity.

– Probably the main reason I could finish this in a day is that the concept needed zero real art. I’ll probably continue with that tradition in future LD jams.

What Didn’t Work So Well:

– I had this idea that the game would be self-explanatory, but a lot of feedback suggests that people got confused about what was going on.

– Similarly, some people are turned off by the apparent randomness, because they can’t see what’s going on under the hood. I think I could have done more with the level design to show the player the patterns the ants tend to follow.

This isn’t just my first LD jam, it’s also my first Post-Mortem! Thanks for reading!

Tags: ants, postmortem, puzzle, simulation

If there is enough interest we will release the full jam entry with Oculus and Leap Motion controls + the post compo version with hidden clues and what not. Mostly this was a test for us to see what it looks like in VR, and we had really hoped to have the VR stuff done in time, but we now are just thankful we got something complete out! Thanks for trying out HALLAWAY

GameRoom is my 48 hours compo entry for LudumDare32. GameRoom takes place inside a flashy arcade theme park which is filled with multiple game arenas. Each game arena offer a different kind of game with its own challenges. This game arena focusses on Ring Toss.

Now sit back, relax and allow me to tell you a tale where in 48 hours a game developer went through the process of creating

Dragon’s Den

To GameRoom

Before the theme was even announced I had already decided that I am gonna try a 3D one person game this time. This will be my second time attempting to make a 3D first person game. The last one I did was a while ago during 7dfps(7 day first person shooter) challenge. I was thrilled to hear the theme (An Unconventional Weapon) as fits perfectly with the genre of the game I had in my mind. Now all I have to do is to come up with an unconventional situation that could possibly use an unconventional weapon and I am gold. Out of nowhere I thought of Ring toss. Its pretty unconventional to use ring toss as a weapon and using it in first person makes total sense. Great, I said to myself. How about hunting dragons using ring toss? Similar to what Hiccup did with a hammer in How to Train Your Dragon training arena. I patted myself on the back, “brilliant idea! (or may be not)” :D. This feels doable in under 48hours. So lets jam now!

First Few Hours

Within few hours I had the player movement working in the first person. The ring toss mechanic was also fairly functional. I was making really good progress so far. I started looking for level design inspirations that are not constrained and offers enough freedom of movement to the player in a relatively small world. I setup a very simple level with walls surrounding the entire arena and few walls here and there creating a sense of disconnection and at the same time dividing the arena into small rooms and corridors. I placed few ammo fountains that will spit out ammo at a fixed rate. The player is free to collect the ammo whenever needed. The ammo is used to shoot/throw the ring. I had this notion where the game will offer 3 different types of rings consisting of three different shapes: square, triangle and circle. Each ring is composed of a fixed number of particles or cubes and the player is required to have those many particles or cubes in their inventory to be able to shoot the ring of that shape. The player can easily switch between different types of rings. Each ring will differ from other in some attributes like damage, size etc. This all worked pretty well. Bed time 😀

A Second Thought

As I woke up the next morning, I added my first AI unit. As soon as that happened, I started seeing some troubles with the way the game is played. It wasn’t as fun as it looked in the movie :p. Not that I was aiming for it exactly but something wasn’t right. I spent some time trying to figure it out but I wasn’t sold on it completely. I lost my entire Saturday morning and half of the afternoon trying to make it right but no success. Now I am at a point where I need to make a decision whether I should keep iterating on this or change the gameplay completely but keep the same mechanic. I took the hard decision of converting the game into a simple arcade style ring toss simulator. It was a bit disappointing but I rather have something working as opposed to something that is half done.

A New Beginning

New beginnings offers new excitements. As I work toward turning my game into an arcade theme park simulator, I was flooded with some really good ideas and I had to convince myself that this is a 48 hour deal and not a 48 month deal. My overall vision is to create an arcade game theme park. The park consists of several arenas. Each arena is dedicated to a different style of game with variety of challenges. The more and better you play, the more you get to play. For eg; if you beat the high score at a challenge or win a special timed challenge you will earn in-game quarters that you can then use to access more games. Of course, GameRoom (aka Ring Toss Room) is just one tiny part of the park, its like one bit in a 64 bit integer. The possibilities are endless here. Every challenge will showcase the names and avatar pics of the top players. Beating the high score and having your name showcased in front of every challenge is a dream of every player. The game will not impose any restriction on the player as to what they should play and when they should play. If the player thinks they have got the skills to do it (with or without practice), the game is ready for you. There will also be sufficient arenas for training and practice that will help you hone your skills.

GameRoom is a reflection of this thought process. Its not perfect but it proves the point that such things could be fun and enjoyable either solo or in multiplayer if implemented properly and on a large scale. GameRoom comes with a practice arena located right in front of the main entrance. In addition to that, there are 7 other challenges that the player can partake. The road ahead was very straightforward as I have clear vision as to what I am trying to deliver at the end of 48 hours. I added one challenge after another and without any realization the compo time was up.

Thats all folks!

If you haven’t played and rated GameRoom, please do so. Thanks for playing!!!

Till Next Time!

Anshul

Tags: gamedev, ld32, Ludumdare, postmortem

I made a video of 6 minute gameplay video of our Jam entry Warigami. Enjoy!

Tech Valley Game Space (the Troy, NY’s real-world meetup location) will be live streaming during the weekdays from 7:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST starting tomorrow, Thursday 23rd (except every Wednesdays, and Friday, 24th).

Our Twitch.tv channel is at:
http://www.twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace

Want to submit your game? Fill out the form below!
http://goo.gl/forms/gDU933T27R

All the responses are listed below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RbvfWHMb-vWmYBagjjnfVAMKugG1vgQ41QFQ_Wa4YjE/edit?usp=sharing

If you want, play our games, too! They are:

Jammie Dodger

A basic shmup with a twist: all of your ship’s movement is performed by firing your weapon.

As the pilot of the Jammie Dodger, your mission is to guide your tiny ship along the two different-colored tracks to avoid being hit by flying asteroids.

How long can you survive?

My Voice is My Weapon

Use the power of protest to convert citizens to your cause, while avoiding getting busted! Current locations from the Capital District of New York State. This is my first game ever.

Star Power

In “Star Power,” You play as the leader of a party of three adventurers exploring a goblin filled dungeon

Your party consists of:

EDRIC, THE ORANGE PALADIN who fights with his sword
Edric is also impervious to hammers.

LANA, THE PURPLE ROGUE who fights with her shurikens
Lana is also impevious to arrows

ERIYAL, THE BLUE MAGE who fights with her electric magic.
Eriyal is also impervious to axes.

and YOU, THE SLIGHTLY SLEEP DEPRIVED LD CONTESTANT who fights with ratings.
How does fighting with ratings work? Like this:

At the start of your turn, you may apply ratings to your party and to the enemies they face. When you hit “CONFIRM,” the following things will happen:

-enemies will attack first. They will attack with the weapon that you gave them the highest rating on, because that is the weapon they will feel most confident with. They will deal damage equal to their rating on that weapon. Enemies also target the lowest rated members of your party, because they appear the most vulnerable.

-players will attack second. Players will also target enemies with the lowest total star rating, and deal damage equal to their player rating.

-Finally, enemies will receive bonuses to any weapons that you rated with only one star. Receiving such a low rating makes them self-conscious, and motivates them to train more and increase their skill with that weapon. The bonus gets factored into their damage and their rating with the weapon when choosing how to attack.

Adaptation

You control the heroic main ship. Every hit you take from the enemies brings you closer to destruction… but also makes you stronger. Coming in contact with enemies and their weapons forces your ship to adapt and become more powerful.

Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator

Ever wanted to swing a stick unconventionally? Now you can!

Experience the true art of swinging your really-long stick. Work hard to make it longer!

Star Driller Ultra

Drill through space and destroy your enemies to claim yourself as the king of the galaxy! Star Driller Ultra is a Star Fox-inspired space combat game where your play as a neon-colored drill to obliterate evil space ships.

Can You Reach the Sun?

Pictured: A good memory.

Can You Reach the Sun? is a metroid-kite-vania about a boy and his kite and a warm summer day and a lot of good memories. Explore your little world to learn new kite abilities, fight dangerous wild animals with your kite (what an unconventional weapon, AMIRITE?), run around with your kite, listen to soothing music with your kite, fly with your kite, and kite with your kite.

Kite. (kite, kite.)

The more abilities you discover, the more places you can explore. Enemies can be tough, but every new ability you find will save your progress. Have fun exploring, but don’t forget to let your exploring guide you to answer the question: Can You Reach the Sun?

Hey guys, just wanted to promote my game a little bit. This is what it looks like:

You can play it HERE

It’s been a few days and I’ve had some time to recover most of my lost sleep from the weekend so I thought I’d finally sit down and write a little about my entry and what I did and did not manage to accomplish in those 48 hours.

Upon seeing the theme I instantly thought of the expression “the pen is mightier than the sword” and wanted to incorporate that into my game somehow. I thought about a writer who summons creations from his stories to fight for him. I considered a writer who literally uses a pen to fight, sneaking up on enemies and stabbing them in the throat. I settled on something a little less gory (though not entirely devoid of violence).

I wanted to make a game about a writer recounting an old war story from memory. As he writes the story, the battle plays out behind him, as he recalled it. I loved the idea but did not think I could write a reliable interpreter in such a short time frame. I played around with some other ideas but couldn’t get that one out of my head, so I decided to go for it. The sooner you have an idea, the sooner you can start working and the better the end product will be.

And thus, The Mighty Writer was born.

I’m happy with how it turned out, but there are some very obvious flaws and the game is in dire need of some balancing. The concept of writing the actions of the soldiers works well, but with so few possibilities, the game stagnates and becomes boring/tedious fairly quickly. I admittedly did not spend a lot of time playing the game through to the end while developing it, so battles tend to drag on longer than they should, especially with higher soldier counts. This unfortunately adds to the tedium and would definitely be something I fixed were I to work on the project further.

The end result is only a fraction of what I originally planned to accomplish. Look at this list:

• Game starts in writer’s small apartment. It is obvious from the size of the room and tattered furniture that he is poor. Rain patters softly on the window.
• Player chooses location of battle from 4/5 possibilities – War torn street, shop interior, train station, library. Writer’s room fades out and battle location fades in.
• Player chooses time of day – lighting changes to reflect.
• Player describes the soldiers, picking from several classes, each with their pros + cons – Rifleman, Grenadier, Medic, Sniper. As they describe them, they materialize on the battle field.
• Player then describes the actions of the soldiers – shooting, taking cover, throwing grenades, healing comrades.
• Game ends when one of the teams is eliminated.

What I managed to complete:

• Game starts with writer.
• Player chooses location from 2 possibilities – indoors/outdoors.
• Player chooses number of soldiers.
• Player describes actions of soldiers – shooting, taking cover.
• Game ends when one of the teams is eliminated.

This is why it’s important to limit your scope. Take whatever you plan to do and half it, and you’ll probably still have more than you can manage to do within the time frame.

I got around writing a complicated interpreter by sticking to very simple rules. This limits the player in how they can structure their commands, but it allowed me to keep my sanity. The subject of the command is always the first word, which is why soldiers only have last names. The second and sometimes third or fourth word is the action of the command. The last few words in the sentence is the target of that action, which is always one of the enemy soldiers.

So in “Carter fires at Soldier 2.”, Carter is the subject, fires is the command and Soldier 2 is the target. You can write anything in between those and it will still work. “Carter fires his high-powered water pistol at the squid-like abomination that is Soldier 2.” for example.

A huge thanks to everyone that has left ratings and comments. Your feedback will be invaluable should I take this project further.

If you’re interested, you can try the game here.

Hi. Now I tell about development of my LD compo game

Play It here =)

The main concept is “Mind Weapon”. An ability to control creatures by your own mind. I supposed, this type of weapon is corresponded with “unconventional weapon”. But while I’ve been made this game I’ve understood deeper game concept. My purpose was to show “Everyone controlled by something”. Same thing at my game. Player can control other creatures. But actually he controlled by MEDIUM. Actually, player is medium. One of mining of “MEDIUM” is “environment” or “interface between…”. So player is MEDIUM… But what the creature at the end? Who knows…

Anyway game “The Manipulator” isnpired me make something simillar but with my own vision.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/erkkavir/themanipulator.php

One of my favourite games ever. No jokes.

Now about implementation. First thing which I’ve always done is game mechanics. I made character, walls, few enemies. Then the most important part for me is level design. I always trying to create something different. I think about unique game situations. And I should find balance between “what I do” and “how many time it will cost”. But at this point I should make something with interaction between player and enemies. So I decided make stealth game. With my favourite “light system” it should be great! Also with time limits I decided make monochrome graphic. It simplier for me because I’ve been working with monochrome for years. And I added some color with blend mode. Just overlay colored rectangle over the screen with blend mode “add”. Awesome. Colour is changing by random way by rgb components at interval (150,150,150) and (255,255,255). No magic, just experience.

Next step is stealth game mechanics. Lights should be trigger area for enemies. Enemy should follow by the player by timeout and do some actions. Further, player can do same actions while controlling enemy. But how player controls the characters? This may be direct control or transitive control. I decided to make both of them. Direct control I called “Enslave”. Transitive control I called “Illusion”. It’s “Fear” actually. The easy way to manipulate people is fear, right? So I can make gameplay situation called “Fear them to the mines”. Yeah, I like mines. You can meet mines at any of my games!

But I still needed game situations. The next idea is to control someone to break the wall. So “quest with key” was born. Player should control General who shoud drive the car to the “OIL STORAGE”.

Now I can draw the level. I took me about hour.

Ok, it’s ready… After few hours of work I’ve completed whole map at room editor:

Then I made unique gameplay situations step by step. Most difficult part for me was final. I still needed one more enemy type but can’t imagine something… But! The most dangerous enemy for mind-controller should be someone who uncontrollable. More dangerous if he can DEFINE controllable characters. I made mentors. They’re silently stands and patrool some area with their lights. Player should enslave ppe solder and open the backdoor with button. Yeah, final. Time is up. I tired and wants to sleep. So I haven’t time to make intro and outro… Maybe at postcompo release.

As result I can say: “I love what I made”. This is solid game. I’ll done small changes to make this better and will release as final product.

P.S. There are many typos I know. But my native language is Russian. So I hope, anyone can forgive me for this.

Tags: development

So this is where we share with you a little of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ crazy that happened during our Jam as we developed Spelunk!

Getting Ready

Ex Nihilo Studios does not have a full-time artist, so we generally subcontract artists on a project basis. Ludum Dare was just such a project and so I placed an ad on PixelJoint.com looking to hire a pixel artist for a 72 hour project. Six artists responded and after evaluating their work, I contacted ShroomArts to let him know we wanted to work with him. We quickly worked out a communication plan as he and I are separated by an 8 hour time difference, Shroom in Istanbul, Turkey and Exnihilo in Colorado, USA. This would be a critical piece of the development cycle given the quick turnaround we would both need to work well together under a stress-full 72 hour time limit.

As the voting week began, I began tracking the voting of the themes after the first round closed and it was clear by the end of the third round that the three top voted themes had some cool potential – “Companion”, “An Unconventional Weapon”, and “Deeper and Deeper”. Within a few hours I had a pretty solid game concept that incorporated all of the top three themes. Now the wait for Friday evening to see if our hedged bet would bear fruit.

Background

Coincidentally, a week prior to the voting, my oldest son and I had been talking about some fun game concepts that we wanted to try and flesh out, and one of those was a caving, spelunking, exploration idea that used algorithmically generated maps of immense size that would go down thousands of tiles deep, giving the player a huge underground world to explore – different every time you played.

One of the ideas we felt was important was that the hero could cut through the earth, ala Dig-Dug and make their own path. This would lift the requirement off of our map generator to make connected cave systems and paths, whereby the hero could traverse the whole map. With the ability to dig into almost anything underground, the whole map was available to explore, whatever the generator might spit out. With that design and some initial algorithm tests under my belt, I entered the voting week with a hopeful anticipation that a theme would emerge that might allow the use of our idea. Much to my delight, “Deeper and Deeper” was a top contender for the LD32 theme!

Theme Announced and Game Design

“An Unconventional Weapon” was the official theme for the 32nd Ludum Dare game Jam and Exnihilo Studios was ready to go! Shroom and I had already begun talking about the likely outcome of the theme votes and we had a solid idea of how we could incorporate all three of the top themes into our game. We already knew the setting would be in the future with the need for light-weight rock-cutting technology that could double as our “Unconventional Weapon”, and to fulfill the “Companion” theme, we would incorporate a hover-bot that would accompany the hero wherever he went, assisting him in completing his adventures. Of course, with the central game mechanic revolving around digging deep into the earth, we had “Deeper and Deeper” already covered. We were off!

Right away I decided I wanted a heroine as the hero in the game and I was leaning towards an Alita:Battle Angel kind of look. Our initial inspiration for the hover -bot was V.I.N.CENT from Walt Disney’s ‘The Black Hole”. With our two central characters fleshed out we turned to some of the finer points in the game like – what’s the objective of the game? Being an adventuress, our heroine would naturally be looking for ancient artifacts and priceless gems to help finance her spelunking addiction and the costly tech it requires, so it was decided that gems would be sprinkled liberally throughout the underground map. She had to collect the gems for credits – simple enough.

Since I wanted her hover-bot, now called a ‘Spelo-bot’, to have a more central role in helping the player, we decided that the hero would give the gems she collected to him and he would store them inside himself until he was full. At that point he would begin the journey back to the surface to sell the players gems for credits and then visit the local spelo shop to allow the player to buy any needed supplies or upgrades. All communication with Spelo-bot would happen through a detailed HUD that Shroom was designing. The HUD would also be used to identify important objects and explain their importance or use to the player through a series of mini-tutorials. The game was starting to take shape.

What Went Right

The whole LD32 experience was not new to either of us. Shroom has been in several other time-limited game jams, and I used to work for an independent game developer in CA, so working around the clock to hit a deadline within a few days was nothing new. We both knew what to expect in terms of mental and physical stresses of working round-the-clock and were prepared to meet that challenge. Below are a few highlights of what went right for us.

1. We had a solid initial game design to begin with and both programmer and artist were committed to that design.
2. Shroom was able to capture much of the visual vision that I had for the look of the characters and visual elements in the game and responded well to my direction, freeing me to concentrate on the code.
3. I had a core base of code to develop from that I had written from scratch, so understanding the game engine and how it worked (and didn’t) and where to go to effect the change I wanted was critical throughout the development cycle.

What Went Wrong

What was new for me was dealing with the logistical complications of the eight hour time difference between programmer and artist. But I think overall that was not a big negative factor in our development cycle. Below are a few highlights of what went wrong.

1. We over-estimated what could be accomplished given the time-frame we had and feature creep added a bit more to the initial design that added more to our plates. As design lead, I should have clamped down on the scope and kept us a bit more focused – but I like to dream big too!
2. Although I had foundational working code for a basic tiled-based map engine, my initial design was focused more on compactness and saving memory (for huge world maps) and thus added a layer of complexity in the packing and unpacking of data in the map. This complexity was finally scrapped for quick and simple access to the map data. Having all this worked out ahead of time would have freed me up to implement more features.
3. We changed our method of lighting the hero in a dark, underground environment mid-game and this added some time and work in implementing a new method. While the final result is closer to our preferred look, the initial implementation was acceptable and the cost-benefit was likely a loss.

Final Thoughts

Shroom did an excellent job of keeping me supplied with fresh artwork to implement into the game and sadly, some of it did not make it into our final version due to time constraints. High on the list was the cool tutorials he designed that would have added a nice in-game ‘instruction manual’ to aid players in quickly figuring out what the game was about.

Additionally, he created some cool monsters that we both wanted to see provide some action moments in the game for our heroine, but I simply ran out of time to code the AI for their behaviors. To his credit, Shroom was cool about the missing features but I know he was as disappointed as I was that his baddies and tutorials did not make it into the game. Here are a few stills of what went missing…

Overall, I think we were both impressed with what we were able to accomplish. There is a certain amount of polish that the game shows, despite being whipped together so quickly. Being a perfectionist, I can point to many places in the game where I would like to improve the experience or look of a feature (code implementation, not artwork), but for what we had to work with, the time constraints, the distance and 8 hour difference in our working day, and the fact that Shroom and I have never collaborated on anything prior to LD32, I think we did a smashing job!

My hats off to all the other contestants on a great and fun LD32!

Cheers!

Gil

I had tons of fun this Ludum Dare, more so than previous ones.

The reason for this is because I had the ability to make everything in 3D this time, as opposed to being stuck with Pixel Art because I didn’t have the 3D software I know and love.

Guess I’ll do a quick good/bad thing now.

The good

• I did everything in 3D, this resulted in nice graphics and was, for me personally as I was taught 3D art in school, a much faster and easier process than if I’d done stuff in 2D/Pixel Arted.
• I had the initial idea fairly quickly, just build a third person game and then throw unconventional weapons into it, this changed quickly into something more marshmallow focused when I decided to change the setting to an “in the woods” type deal and my dad suggested marshmallows. Thanks dad! (In previous Ludum Dares I had always wasted the first day trying to come with something good, not this time!)
• Using Vertex coloring instead of textures saved me a lot of hassle. Totally gonna stick with this again next time!
• Everything went so well I even had time to put in a small boss fight!

The bad

• Performance wasn’t the best for some people and the game started stuttering after a while on lower-end machines or on the web player, this was mainly due to the large amount of objects I was spawning as you throw things and zombies spawn. (The zombie spawning vending machines initially didn’t have a spawn limit!) Aside from performance being low after a while, it started off as pretty terrible on Android, my reasonably high-end Nexus 5 couldn’t even run the game at 60fps! So next time I’ll try and minimize the amount of skinned meshes too I think.
• The camera was called “Horrible” multiple times. This is mainly because I was trying to go for a sort of Super Mario 64-type camera, but I realize a lot of people didn’t like that camera either, and in that game you still had SOME degree of control over it, I should’ve added something that gave you some level of control instead of just automating it all the way through. It does have controls on it but I for some reason chose to only let those work on an Xbox 360 controller.
• The sounds weren’t that great. They were cobbled together in the last hour or so I worked on it, I should make more time for proper audio next time.

The (art) process

This was the first Ludum Dare I did in 3D, I’ve made countless 3D prototypes and games in the past, just never for LD or public release of some kind (yet).

It started off pretty simple, I needed a character so I made a basic character

I sort of liked the animal crossing-ness of him so I decided he was good enough for my game and made him move for a bit

I liked the feel I had going, but wasn’t too sure about what to do with the camera, it had to follow him, right?

He’s still jumping here but I decided to scrap that as it’d make the animation system more complex and require an extra animation. :)

However, later, I noticed some weird flippy-ness if you went too close to it so I made it follow the character loosely position-wise, also preventing from the character moving too far away and becoming too small on screen.

When I had him moving I started on a static zombie, then got some bones in him and made a quick animation like so

It’s blending between running and idle based on the magnitude of the input vector. Was super easy to set up!

After I had that I started messing with the zombie, giving it bones and animating it.

That sorta worked well, all he had was a walking animation but it was nice. (Later I added getting-hit and dying animations.)

I figured it’d be cooler if he had some mouth movement or something so I started messing with blendshapes

And then I figured, why not have the wolf blink? He is alive after all.

The basic workflow for me was this:

1. Model thing
2. Put thing in Unity
3. If all is well, scale is right and everything, go back to Maya and start vertex coloring it
4. Back and forth with Unity to check if the colors look right with the lighting
5. Colors right? If it’s not an animated object you can skip the rest and go straight to implementation, if not: Make his bones, but don’t skin him yet!
6. Think of the blend shapes you want the thing to have, they need to be applied before the skinning so they don’t override each other.
7. Skin the character to the bones and check if the weighting is correct, the auto skinning works pretty well usually but it always requires some small adjustments.
8. Animate! Don’t worry about the speed of the animations too much as they’re usually not fast enough looking for in a game, I almost always end up speeding the animation up to some degree in Unity/Mecanim, then again that might just be my own incompetence in animation…
9. Animate the blend shapes in unity! I usually find it easier to animate the values of the blend shapes in unity because it’s easier to get the timing right, here I do worry about the speed of the animation, but that might be because I can just set the fps of the animations individually.
10. Automate as much as you can, animation wise! Saves on coding. For the zombies’s mouth movements I just had a basic loop in mecanim between 2 animation states, running in a separate layer on top of the base layer, on override, because blend shapes don’t override animations if you’ve implemented them before skinning the character or thing. Automation-wise I had to code in a specific random blinking part for the blinking, I might’ve looked into adding a new mecanim animation node thing for randomness but I didn’t want to waste time on such a small detail.

I won’t be going into any specifics of modelling and how to use programs because there’s plenty of tutorials for that on the web, this is just my workflow!

If you want to play Zombies ‘N’ Marshmallows, here’s the link:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=15287

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem

We’ve almost done the 3rd level with a lot of awesome things such as thorns, beams, flying angel-pixels, switches, “spring”-platforms, mirrors and etc. What does it mean? It means that because of your positive comments about the game, we’ll continue the development with more serious attitude and maybe deploy it on Steam’s Greenlight or even port it to mobile platforms! Yeah!

If you don’t know what we’re talking about, just visit the Ludum Dare page of our game and try it (and rate it, please) http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=52405

Moreover, if someone wants to be a part of the development (mostly in a field of level design), you’re welcome! Just contact us via email (lebrokholic@gmail.com) or Skype (zhumanovtemirlan)