Tech Valley Game Space (TVGS) will be live streaming in about an hour!

We’ll also be streaming during the weekdays and Saturdays from 7:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST (except every Wednesdays). We’ll also do our best to post the games we’ve played onto Youtube as well.

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

For those interested, the following games were made at TVGS:

• Jammie Dodger
• My Voice is My Weapon
• Star Power
• Adaptation
• Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator
• Star Driller Ultra

Tech Valley Game Space (TVGS) is live-streaming now!

We’ll also be streaming during the weekdays and Saturdays from 7:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST (except every Wednesdays). We’ll also do our best to post the games we’ve played onto Youtube as well.

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

For those interested, the following games were made at TVGS:

• Jammie Dodger
• My Voice is My Weapon
• Star Power
• Adaptation
• Unconventional Stick Swinging Simulator
• Star Driller Ultra

It’s time for a little post mortom of Freeze Tank. I would like to keep a short one, since I don’t really think most people want to read a wall of text. So, let’s dive in the good & bad points!

Play & Rate our game

Follow our Twitter for playing/streaming schedules!

What went right

• The game is playable! We were in such a rush during the last hours, so we were really surprised that we could deliver an enjoyable game.
  We have never finished a multiplayer game before until now. It was definitely a challenge, since you face problems you wouldn’t encounter while developing a singleplayer game.
• (Thijs) This is my first attempt to create handpainted textures for a game. I still have a lot to learn, but I am definitely satisfied with the results! I cannot wait to improve my skills for the next Ludum Dare.

What went wrong

• Some small features were not implemented that turned out to be very important from a game-experience perspective. For example a scoreboard, a notification of the winning team and instructions for the player.
• GITHUB. Gotta hate it. The Unreal Engine has no option to merge in a proper way (yet!)
• No tutorial, players don’t know what to do if they have not read the description on the Ludum Dare page.

Multiplayer entry pros

• It’s very satisfying to see other people playing and enjoying your game.
• You are automatically the no-life-pro-master with 72 hours of gaming experience on record, before the game even came out.

Multiplayer entry cons

• The biggest issue with a multiplayer entry is that you won’t receive as much feedback compared to a singleplayer game. Our servers aren’t 24/7 and we can’t expect all players to make their own server. We are trying to compensate this by livestreaming play events. This approach resulted in some interesting games, although we didn’t reach the full potential of the game yet. (5v5)

Last but not least.. a timelapse! (perspective Thijs)

Tags: exeranger, freeze, freeze tag, freeze tank, freeze tank post mortem, multiplayer, TAG, tank, thijsku, tumbleweedgames

There’s a slightly updated version of TANKED up now. Just some slight clarity and convenience fixes, old build still available for windows.

Fixed a few things that were confusing for players:

• Added HP to damage text because a lot player thought they were losing points instead of doing damage
• Added a slight checkerboard pattern to the ground for a reference that you are moving
• Added a simple flag where the goal of the level is so you can know when it’s done.

Also just added some convenience things:

• Added how to play instructions to the options menu
• Added a button to increase your speed so you can choose to go faster if you’d like, the goal is still points though, not speed
• Added a few more enemies in a very slow part of level three
• Increased explosive barrel damage range so all of the intended chain reactions occur.

We want to get all the content we missed into the game, quite soon!

Here we are trying to get more uses for our unconventional arrows, by making a puzzle that can only completed by you standing on one pressure pad and using a Rhino arrow on the other.

For now , you can play the jam version here!

Play the game here

Wow!

It has been both humbling and amazing to play other peoples games, and get feedback on my own! For my first ever Ludum Dare entry my fiance and I made a game about collecting resources and hacking other planets as the endgame/unconventional weapon. While we didn’t get to implement the endgame we had a lot going on this weekend and are proud of what we got done in the time we had.  I’m thankful for all of the awesome open art (thanks Kenny!) and the cool audio generation tools out there! It really adds a nice bit of polish to a game. Thanks for reading/playing/making games! You all are amazing

What went well:

• Idea/concept
• Art/music
• Mining Resources

What didn’t go well:

• Compiling the game(weird bugs revolving around Unity’s new UI)
• Not enough time (sometimes real life takes precedence)

You can check out the entry here.

Thanks! Can’t wait for the next LD!

Play and Review Zeldish

Problems with easy but annoying solutions.

I wrote my game in Python/Pygame, which generally, I can’t say enough good things about. I did a cx_freeze of my game, which should collect any dependences and wrap the python code into an executable. For some reason Pygame’s extended image support is sometimes not working. I think there may be some SDL libraries or some other thing that are required, but I’m not sure why there not getting bundled in the freeze. Pygame people, any ideas?

Until I can fix the actual problem, I converted all the PNG files into BMPs, which is the default format that works even with the extended image module. The zip file is a little bigger, but it should work for everyone.

Actually, this is such an easy and reliable “fix” that there is a 42% chance that I will never get around to figuring out the actual problem.

TL;DR — The Linux build wasn’t working for some people, but now it should work for all x such that x uses Linux.

Tags: pygame

streaming games http://www.twitch.tv/nidolabzfhp

Let me know what to play!

LD32 was my 4th ludum dare, and the first I finished a playable game. It was also the first time I had to upload changed code (twice) after compo ended. The problems rendered game unplayable: at first, textures did not load in compiled version (everything looked fine in unity), and then I found out that if you get killed and restart the level, you can’t move (while game requires you to try and fail for a first minute, to figure out what happens).
During LD30 and LD31 I already learned, that I need to plan levels, and having a vague idea what they’ll be is not enough: in LD30 I did not even know what I want to do, in LD31 I had everything planned, but prologue, and I wasted most of the time working on that one part. Yet once again I did not do anything about it. In effect, I had to rush some block-built arena on the last minute, that killed the performance, and I never had time to even try if my game works.
That’s how you fail – by not learning on your own mistakes.

Obligatory entry link.

We created a little making-of video of our creation of Funky Knight last weekend!

• Look over our designer’s shoulder!
• Observe the consumption of our coffee!
• Watch our programmers coding stuff (I added no link to a specific point of time in the video because you can see them coding all the time)!
• Watch our game designers eat snacks!
• Spot the pink Ubooly plushie!!!

What you won’t see in the video:

• how we record the dubbing
• where the coffee came from (from the recording studio aka our kitchen)
• the pyjama party

Tags: Coffee Consumption, Fluffy Tigers in Pyjamas, Funky Knight, making of, makingof, time lapse

Going to hop up on the stream for an hour or two.  http://www.twitch.tv/zerocreativity1

will try to give preference to anyone in the stream.  But i will be going through the list submitted here.  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Oq7hndrwnnbfJWro3nNmWZQykQOqNyMS2LxCueuYOSA/viewform?usp=send_form

You might have played Ludum Dare #-6192 before. If not, play it here. Anyway, if you have played it, you probably noticed the glitches. So I decided to make a full remake of it in a completely new engine. The rendering part is pretty much finished now. On the gif you can see 16384 64×64 squares in random positions and random rotation in 720p at 50-55 fps. Each square has a 16×16 texture. Now I can get to the new collision detection and hopefully I’ll finish the remake ’til next weekend. If you’re interested in the engine, I might make it OpenSource and put it on GitHub once it has some more features.

We put our 3 day time-lapse together for CharnHell, and you can view it on YouTube below!

We’ll be improving the game in coming months – currently, it seems that the control system is too difficult for people to work out. More UI / HUD / prompts are needed I think! In the meantime, try out the game here.

Tags: brawler, king of the hill, local multiplayer, timelapse

Just getting started on another round of streaming.

If you’d like your game played…join me in the stream chat.

http://www.twitch.tv/nidolabzfhp

So it turns out that unCAVEntional wouldn’t let you start o_O.

So… I fixed the standalone builds and added a web-player while I was at it.

Enjoy!

Play and Rate our game here 

This time, we tried to make something less ambitious than the two last times, but more fun.

What went right

• Game concept

We are finally learning from our previous mistakes, be less ambious in game mechanism, finding a concept and an easier gameplay once you know the few controls.

• Graphics

Game concept art and assets are more mature than in our last jams, and by restraining ourselves on the concept, we were able to create enough visuals during the 72 hours to have a game with some interesting basic assets.

What went wrong

• Unity export

Definitely, what went wrong was the Unity export, lots of glitches and bugs we weren’t expecting occured, mainly because unity player was no longer supported by Chrome and webGL export was still in early beta stage.

• Bugs

It’s important for use to improve our way to anticipate bugs when exporting and when playing. But we are really happy with the outcome, while comparing our first jam and this one, we are learning from our mistakes and that what’s important.

Feedbacks are really appreciated

Tags: #ld32 #ldjam #art #2d

Farm Fury Post Mortem

Farm Fury was my first Ludum Dare entry, and over all, I had a very successful experience. I was able to create a compelling, engaging experience with a tight UI and fun and unique mechanics. My run was not without problems, however; a lack of playtesting led to an unforgiving difficulty curve and some issues with the music.

What went right:
From planning to design to code, the Construct 2 engine made developing Farm Fury a rapid and fairly straight forward experience. The decision to use open license art for the majority of the project meant I didn’t have to burn a lot of time producing a product that by necessity would have been inferior. Instead, I was able to focus on mechanics and gameplay.

By developing with Construct 2, I was able to simultaneously build and deploy for every major platform with essentially zero work for localization. The only problem with that approach was that the web platform launch was a little buggy, and occasionally unresponsive on some platforms.

What went wrong:

While using open license graphics helped with rapid development, the game’s graphics felt a little disjointed and incongruous. If I was a little more confident in my abilities from the beginning, I might have attempted to make my own grahics. Also, I ran into problems with the sound levels of my music, due to lack of playtesting.

Speaking of lack of playtesting, the largest problem my game faced was a plateau in game difficulty. My game’s mechanics had a lot of moving variables, and while it felt right with a couple of playtesting passes, the game quickly ramped up in difficulty, beyond what I was expecting or planning for. With more time, or perhaps with better planning, I would have playtested more and made a smoother experience.

Future plans:

I want to make a more fully featured game out of Farm Fury, including a progression of missions, which will make it much easier to control the difficulty curve. I also want to include tailored graphics by bringing on an artist to the project. I plan on taking the jam version of the game, rebalancing the difficulty, and including it in the post jam version as “Fury Mode”.

Hopefully, I will be releasing the game on Kongregate.

Lessons for Next Time:

As I’m more comfortable with the timeline of the jam rather than the compo, I want to invest in all the benefits of making a jam game. I want to get a team together for sound, graphics and gameplay, with at least one person on each. I also want to keep a tighter game design document, as the scraps of paper I kept for this project became largely useless outside the context of immediate development.

Conclusion:

Over all, I had an absolutely amazing experience with Ludum Dare, and I’ll definitely be participating again. I think I can take my project in to a fully featured game, and my desire to design and create games has only been strengthened with this experience. Thank you so much for your time.

If you’re interested in trying Farm Fury, you can find it here:

Farm Fury Entry on Ludum Dare

“This time let’s take it easy and make a simpler game” – famous last words of a Ludum Dare 32 participant.

What Have We Created?! is not only the title of our game, but also sums up some of the emotions we felt towards it a few hours prior to submission. Our game idea was deceptively simple – let the player create a monster and unleash it on a city – but actually proved a lot more fiddly to implement that we had anticipated, and we were caught at the 11th hour panicking about what could be cut out so we could submit on time.

What went right – Becky’s music came out really well this time, mashing up the “Bwooooom” movie trailer sound to create a really atmospheric track for the monster launch. Alex achieved an impressive amount code wise, made all the more impressive by the fact that she only started using Unity a few weeks ago. Even if the game could have used a few more hours tweaking, there is a lot going on behind the scenes with the monster building section. In terms of graphics, I am pretty pleased with the how the cityscape turned out.

What went not so right  –  There was a lot the never got put in the game that we would have liked to add or finish. We wanted to put tanks and choppers into the city portion of the game (indeed the graphics were done) but we ran out of time to implement the enemies properly. Also its pretty clear from the feedback we’ve had that its unclear to some players quite how the monster fits together and that there are too many of certain kinds of tiles spawning – easy things for us to fix but we simply didn’t have time to get that level of polish. Plus a million-billion bugs.

Had I done the project again, I would have held off making the lab background so busy – it would have worked as well or better with a much simpler design, leaving me with more time to help Alex with exporting and tweaking.

This is our third LD, and in many ways this project was our most ambitious. Our aim was to beat our previous rankings (#42 overall for both entries) but judging from the feedback so far, it seems our game has been less well received than before. If nothing else, this project has been a success in helping us learn the work flow for Unity, so fingers crossed our next jam will go a little smoother.

And next time we will be making a pong clone.

Please play and rate our game.
Thanks to those who have already done so.

Or try here for a slightly tweaked post jam version.

“Pied Paper” – stupid little game about dancing zombies. It’s my first attempt to participate and finish game for Ludum Dare.

What went right – Idea to use Fuse tool for characters and mixamo.com for animations, really saved time. It’s easy to make realistic character in Fuse and I prepared pipeline for exporting characters from mixamo.com to my engine before Jam. Also, making game gave me a lot of fun (really, loudly laughing first 10 minutes, when I saw first dance) and it was important motivation to finish it.

What went not so right  –  planning (as usual) – I spent one evening on selecting proper music from freesound.org and had only one evening and night to actually write code. As usual, found several weird glitches (downside of usage of own engine). One glitch was leaked to first release for LD ( and fixed in latest version)

This is my first LD, so the goal was just to finish something. Engine is mature now and can be used for next LD. Probably will continue to work on Piped Piper if will receive positive feedback from community.

Please play and rate my game.

Youtube

Or try improved post jam version – stable and with disco effects!.