I’ve always wanted to make a game using the “groundhog’s day” concept, similar to Majora’s Mask, Level Up!, and Pikmin to some extent. I have a love-hate relationship with time-pressure games, but it’s so rewarding to finally understand what’s going on in the game’s world and figure out how to manipulate it.

I had a lot of fun making this one. It doesn’t necessarily have the greatest gameplay, but it’s really the story and level design that counts in this type of game. Since the theme was discovery, I decided to make it purely about information seeking- each time you try, you should learn something new that’ll help you the next time. I tried something different this time and planned out the entire game beforehand, complete with a map and a rough description of the natural progression of the game. I felt that this really helped, since I had time to come up with a ton of ideas, and then once I started coding I just followed what I had already laid out.

This was my 3rd 48hr design competition, and I still fell into the trap of planning more than I could ever finish in that time. I had hoped to get this done after the first 24 hrs so I could have more time to study for my finals, but after the first day it was apparent that it wasn’t going to happen. I actually didn’t even have a working build until an hour before submission.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have someone else play your game after the first day, or whenever it’s playable. For me, it was a sort of sanity check- it really helped to have a fresh set of ideas tell me what was broken, and what just didn’t make sense.

Play it here!

Also, check out my Timelapse!

With each Ludum Dare, I am progressively more blown away by what people can do in a couple days.  There are so many cool game concepts.  I’m really fried for the first couple days after the compo, so I don’t get on and rate games right away, but just from the little perusing I’ve done, there are a lot of amazing entries.  I’ll be back to rate and comment once I can see straight.

For people who like this kind of thing, I tried to keep it light-hearted.  It’s got a stellar cast, a decent script, and a happy ending.

Enjoy!

Tags: Dark Acre, Jack Nilssen, LD19, ld48, timelapse

I decided to put a timelapse together this time! And even better, you can play your favourite music alongside it, by which I mean I didn’t edit it. I’ll figure out how next time, I suppose. So here’s the Spacebrick Timelapse

It turns out I played a lot of Blight of the Immortals, especially early on.

On to the game – Spacebrick (which you can play and vote for HERE)

I really enjoyed making this game and got feedback at quite a few points – meaning I heard “It’s hard to control” or “I don’t know what to do” quite a bit. Eventually I ditched any sort of realistic physics. It’s curious to note that I actually went for realistic physics at any point when making a game about a rocket powered brick in space.

I’m actually not too happy with the music. I managed to take a few hours out to write and record some piano music, but in the rush I didn’t really make something that fitted the game. The first part seemed to fit the “space” part well enough, but later I was just playing whatever I came up with and it didn’t work so well.

The graphics did turn out pretty nicely, especially the recoloured planets. You may be less impressed with any skill you thought may have been in the enemy graphics if you saw in the timelapse that I quickly made a fighter, smoothed it, clicked “auto-unwrap” and scribbled something on the texture, whereas my last game was a purple mess, this looks quite nice

Oh and it turns out the upgrade curve is 100% broken.

I may not have coded a win condition, but I can safely say this is winning the game.

Anyway, I had a great time this Ludum Dare, especially chatting with other devs in the IRC channel. See you all next time!

Tags: ante-mortem (my game isn't dead D:), timelapse

I really enjoyed making Autoflotilla for Ludum Dare 19. It’s quite different from anything I’ve ever made before, but the project appeals to me very strongly. I’ve decided to release a post-competition version. What I would like to do is give it a bit more polish and develop the game’s atmosphere. I want to avoid making it more complicated or making it feel cluttered, however, so I’ll try to use a light touch when making additions.

A friend of mine will be contributing some ambient sound to the game.

Other additions will include:

• a curved, rather than flat seascape
• some light regional variations- for instance islands in one area might be shaped differently
• a few visual extras, such as flying creatures
• a few unique landmarks
• looping edges (Asteroids-style toroidal)

Can’t wait for Ludum Dare 20 now! I’ve played around 10 games so far but I want to play them all thoroughly enough to rate them, some awesome ones around. I’ve reduced the size of my entry by compressing a wav file to an ogg (From 150Mb to 20Mb). Just make it easier to download and play. Here’s a link to my entry and my blog too.

I’ve decided to make  a timelapse video too to see what it was like during development! Pretty cool.

Also i made a little qwerky video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl-66LyOjlc

Thanks very much!

Kyle.

Tags: bear, timelapse

Well, Ludum dare 19 is over and the game is over. The final name is Discover the name (never changed it to discover the way).

I started the game with not too much time for the compo and I released a unpolished and unbalanced version but I already read some good comments for the game. For the jam, with a friend, we improved it a bit, because we felt the game worth the time, so people could play a better game.

In the end, there are three versions of the game, the competition version, the jam version and the latest stable development version. If we think the game has to be continued, the last one is the version that will be modified.

I have also added a timelapse video for the game (had to remove the gameplay video from the game page because I lack of links in the form).

Remember, you could also go to our blog to see more games and stuff.

Now, a mini postmortem:

What went wrong:

• Game idea came on sunday, miss one day of development, cant force imagination
• Competition version is not balanced it right
• Level editor is hidden and not explained
• Few levels

What went right:

• Made a level editor provided an easy way to make a lot of levels, but… (last point on previous list)
• Movement feels right, a bit to sensitive, but based on a right idea
• Webstart platform, really really like to have an online available to all version from the beginning, to test, get feedback, etc.

Well, I cant think more pros and cons.

Enjoy the game.

Tags: compo, final, postmortem, progress, timelapse, update

I’ve spent a lot of time doing game development, but I almost never release stuff. Always base code, game logic, and abandon. So going in I had a bit of a fear of not finishing LD.

Looking at it now, I can safely say LD has been the single most educational thing I’ve done in my entire life as far as game development goes.

Its so easy to fall into the trap of scope creep, or to say “Oh, I can’t work on this yet! I don’t have graphics from the artist!”. But when time is tight and you ARE the artist, it’s easier to start looking at solutions instead of problems; and it’s that line of thinking that keeps you moving.

I’m really looking forward to the next LD. In the mean time, maybe I’ll actually finish some of my other projects for a change of pace.

Obligatory timelapse:

I’m currently adding more areas, after which I’ll start implementing monsters and traps specific to those areas. I also implemented some monster ‘types’ or ‘elements’, as indicated by the fire skeleton up there!

Hey guys I made a timelapse!

Here is my timelapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6LQBMw-wZE

It’s been an educational LD for me.

Here are a few of the things that I learned:

• I can’t stand developing more bland action games
• I am okay with developing something that is not difficult to play, even if it doesn’t have any sort of combat
• I spend loads of time on making sprites for enemies. Comparing the time I’ve spent spriting characters for Evening to the time I spent spriting characters for Little Ninja really highlights that for me
• It is more important to have a game than a thing with sound. That’s a tough one for me, but it is something that I have to learn.
• I should come here with some codebase prepared. It wouldn’t be much, but it would let me get to making the actual game much faster.
• It can still be LD if I’m in the jam, it’s just a more laid-back LD. I got it in my head not long before LD that the jam just somehow wasn’t LD (Whatever that actually meant), and denied myself a laid-back, social experience. Next time, the jam’s the plan, and the compo’s an optimistic outcome.
• It’s okay to only have one playable character, and it’s a huge time-saver. Even though I seem fixated on having spear/distaff in my games, it’s not needed for everything.
• I understand now that I have a fascination with female leads in my games. That’s not something for me to “conquer”, but something for me to simply break from now and then.

I also gained a few other things over the weekend.

Yesterday I received a DSi-XL as an “early Christmas present”. “Christmas present” meaning “thing that my mum bought for me with the money I was receiving from my relatives for Christmas”. We aren’t really big on holidays in my family, so the practical idea of just getting the thing when she already had the money and was shopping anyway, then just give it to me when we got it because having it and waiting for it is the sort of holiday tradition my parent aren’t huge on.

The DSi-XL, for those who don’t know (And I’m sure there are those) is a DSi (DS with front and back cameras that can download software from the “DSi Shop”) with very big screens. It also comes with Flipnote Studio. And on top of that, a big pen-style stylus (In addition to the normal DSi stylus)

I will probably be using Flipnote Studio to make mockups of things from here on, and I will probably start posting those mockups once I get good at making them.

I also gained a tiny bit of understanding in what Jonathan Blow calls “exploration design”. When designing Evening, I originally intended for it to be a screen-by-screen platforming challenge, but changed my mind while playing with features during early testing. Not that folks here would have seen that, as I’m sure you can guess.

Finally, I have a game idea that’s unlike things that I have done before. I really do. I’m excited about it. Something that’s actually semi-original for a change.

The post-mortem for Evening comes after the break.

Evening – Post-Mortem (Jam Version)

Summary:

Evening was originally supposed to be a low-stress run-and-jump game featuring a series of screen-long challenges leading to an ending that used the theme in a “poetic” way. What it ended up being was an incomplete but fertile prototype.

What Went Well:

• I was very deliberate in doing something that felt different than the platformers that I have made in the past, and did indeed make something that felt different to play.
• The animations for the girl were pretty good, though I still feel I could have done better.
• The art style I chose to use for the girl turned out pretty good
• I actually had something to submit for the jam!

What Went Badly

• I didn’t work nearly as hard as I could have in the last 24h that I had. I slacked off for most of that time and wound up with something that wasn’t nearly as good as it could have been
• The girl and the terrain have a visual mismatch that I felt didn’t look right. In trying to make the terrain look organic, I made it look really weird and rough.
• The graphics were incomplete, and would have added to the game immensely.
• I didn’t add in ledge-grabbing, so the “game” wound up with spots where the player would not quite make it up a jump, but could have grabbed the edge and pulled themselves up if I’d put that in. That mainly bothers me because I really wanted to put it in originally, and feel bad that I didn’t.
• The game lacked any sense of “discovery” at all. This is mainly because it was incomplete, but even the original idea was kind of lame.
• The girl’s jump animation took too long to run. I should have sped it up and maybe dropped a frame from it. It got a bit frustrating sometimes.

Overall Impressions

Evening was fun to work on, and a nice departure from Little Ninja. This game taught me that yes, I’ve been making platformers that feel fundamentally the same for a long time. Even Probe and Little Ninja feel a lot like platformers that I used to write in Python/Pygame.

Evening has some promise with a bit of tweaking, but as-is it just isn’t a real game. Still, it was game-like and I managed to get it to that point for the jam.

The controls worked fairly well, but could still use some tweaking, and some of the animations take longer than they should (Notably the pre-jump animation). Notably, I do want to separate high-jumping from crouching. As one comment playfully pointed out, you could well have the girl crawl on her hands and knees the whole time so she could jump higher. That’s weird and I don’t want that kind of behavior to give such an advantage.

Because it was an LD entry that was started with 36h left in the jam, it wasn’t very ambitious. The post-jam version will be much more interesting.

Where to Go From Here

Evening has some promise as a game provided that some things are tweaked. I fully intend to work on it and try to turn it into A Real Game.

I will add some features to it and make the level design much more complex. At the moment I’m thinking of putting in items that give new abilities along the way, and making the level design less about “go right until you win” and more about following a complex path. That means adding a vertical component to the level design, which isn’t a huge problem for me.

I will be switching from a continuous view (IE: Camera scrolls freely over the whole game world) to an area-by-area view (IE: Camera scrolls freely within set areas, and then scrolls between them when the player enters a new area)

I will probably redo my sprites for the girl, because I want her to be about 2 tiles tall. One bit of weirdness I ran into was that I couldn’t put in an overhang that was 2 tiles high, because the player would have to crouch to get into it (Her hitbox is 75 pixels tall when she is standing up) and that wouldn’t look right.

I will definitely redo the terrain. It looks really weird and I don’t like it. I will choose something that is visually simpler and actually matches the look of the game.

I have a lot of hope for Evening, and I think I can turn it into a fun game. I’ll periodically post demos as I go. (Probably not as aggressively as I was doing for Little Ninja, though…)

Peace

— Mr. Dude

Is there a way to know what people are rating my games, and is it against the rules to change the background music of my game?

Figured I’d toss my rocking little time lapse up.

Click here for the youtube vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY55gj7rGhQ (can we embed here)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY55gj7rGhQ

If I didn’t play around so much with the editing I might have had more time for a jam entry, oh well had a blast with it.

Post-Compo build and Post-mortem to follow!

I beg every developer here to think global !

Please, WASD keys are not funny on a non qwerty keyboard ! There’s a number of games I cannot rate because I cannot play to them because of the WASD choice.

I quite don’t understand why you won’t use arrow keys instead ?

Thank you all for your understanding !

I’ve just uploaded Scarab Amazing to Kongregate:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/bernardfrancois/scarab-amazing

Within less than half an hour, it was played 97 times.

Is this the first Ludum Dare made with Unity that appears on Kongregate, or do I have to change the title of my post?

Yep, its real!

Iv posted a timelapse, a post mortem, a final submission and i am now finishing the games levels and style as i was aiming to.

Here is a picture of the first part of the game, the actual explanation of what is happening.

Intro animation sequence (scary lighting!)

And the first pass look of the first level (id say ill do one more pass after this for polish) :

Game first level

So, watch this space. I am adding the other 6 levels i cropped and the boss level.

Tags: postLD

I’ve just released a post-compo version of Q-Bers which includes the following:

-Puzzles after level 16 are not quite as difficult

-Cubes are a bit larger

-I’ve fiddled with one of the puzzle pictures and made it a bit easier, although not quite as pretty, to solve if you get it in full rotation mode.

Try it here, or checkout my original competition version here.

The time-lapse movie for Scarab Amazing is available now on YouTube:

Lots of folks in the LD community have non-qwerty keyboards, and it can be difficult for them to play some games due to some keys being far apart in one layout that were decided on a layout where they are next to each other.

I myself do what I can to use keys that are placed similarly on most keyboards.

The question I have is: Which keys are more “safe” to use in control schemes? Meaning, which keys tend to be in around the same place in most layouts?

I’d appreciate a general sense of this, as I really don’t know. I live in the US, where non-qwerty keyboards are very rare, so I really don’t have a sense of this.

Peace

— Mr. Dude