I’m going to get sleep for an early wake tomarow (gotta take the dog to the vet). I will sleep and when I get back I will vork 3X as hard as I did this night.

I did work on it a little bit: Basically you are a random person thaat finds the grim reaper in the middle of the medo. Hes says what the theme is and disappears. Soon evil things (I don’t know what they will be) will wall from the sky and you have to use the power of the seed’s flower to beat them. Soo the seed will evolv and you came make more flowers, cross breed them, and create super flowers.

Is it a good idea?

Good night,
-pants

All done!!!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-20/?action=preview&uid=4407

…I think. Got a good idea in my head, here are the random scribbles relating to the forming idea:

Hi,
I am doing Ludum Dare. This is what I have so far:

I hope to make a great Ludum Dare game.

So a meme really took it eh?

It’s a nice open ended theme, but I can’t eek out a creative or gimmicky design around it. So as per the usual I think I’ll use the LD as an opportunity to test out some technologies I’ve wanted to play with (Flashpunk and Flint. Also buffering inputs). Going to go with a simple side scrolling feline beat em’ up. Something pretty similar to Dad N’ Me.

A snapshot of my inspiration

Totally a brawler

How do you creative folks manage to knock out non-derivative LD titles anyhow? I need help working my creative muscle.

Tools

• Photoshop and Paint.NET
• sfxr
• Likely some sort of online music generator (http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata possibly)
• Flash CS4
• Flashpunk and Tweener(unless Flashpunk has some built in tweening methods) for my libraries.
• Flash Builder
• Chronolapse – Yay timelapse!

Any suggestions on good sprite sheet / pixel art tools? Should I use Graphics Gale?

Oh, and a parting workspace snapshot:

I had a choice between cleaning my workspace area, and sleeping. Which of the two I chose is self evident.

Tags: delcartion of intent, deskphoto

This isn’t the theme I wanted, I was hoping for Anachronism or Non-Euclidean rhubarb. But a day or two ago I thought of a fun game that I could do based on Take this! It’s dangerous to go alone.

It involves a person going out into the brain eater infested outside, and bringing (or not bringing) their brain. Hmmm….

After every level, It’s Dangerous To Go Alone Take This Physics Breaker.

Since Physics Breaker was /way/ a better theme.

Original idea dump follows.

CAVE JIMMY 2: PHYSICS BREAKER

Platformer where it gives you a random physics breaker from a set, you have to use it to unlock more, various level sets etc. I do have working platformer physics left over from a past LD game.

—————————
Idea #1 —
Conwiz gives you a Conspiracy. You apply it judiciously to NPCs in dialog stuff to persuade them to give you money, etc.

Idea #2 —
YOU ARE ISLAND 2: TAKE THIS
It’s like You Are Island but slightly less crummy, involving real gameplay and not super tons of combos and goofy pixellation – a random bonus item at game start.

I’ve decided I’m going to do it in first-person 3D. I don’t know why I punish myself like that, but hey ho. I was all set to do a 2D old-school game, but then the theme kind of threw me a little.

It’s going to involve the player being stuck in the middle of a forest or something, and there’s going to be zombies. Or ghosts. Not sure.

I think it’s going to involve light as well. The possibility of kittens has not been ruled out.

Okay, I’m in. But I’m hungry. I’m going to make bread.
Messing about with this dough has given me time to  think about the theme and I’ve gone through a couple of ideas before settling on one that’ll be fun to make. It’s a game which relies on online user generated content, so it’s probably going to be a complete clusterfuck, but I’m looking forward to giving it a go (since I’m pretty much a total newb when it comes to database crap, etc.).

My current goal is to get the basic save/load script working before this thing comes out of the oven.

Here’s how it’ll work:

• Main menu for starting a new game or loading a game, possibly for adjusting options
• Pause menu for saving your game and exiting
• “Cinematic” screen for the “here take this!” and possibly other interludes (like YOU WIN or YOU DIE), sometimes with text at the bottom that allows you to say “yes” or “no”
• Randomly generated main play tile area with grass, stone, river, lakes, trees, plants. Should be pretty big. Scrolls as you move around like the SNES zelda
• Tiles can have objects on top of them such as entities or objects
• Entities can carry objects
• Entities can place carried objects on the tile in front of them
• Entities can move in 4 directions and play a simple move animation
• Entities can play other simple animations consisting of a few frames
• A HUD displays resources (plus drains) and the current king’s quest and the day and time of day
• Entities can attack, attacked things get hurt until they die
• Upon death, the entity changes to an object or goes away
• Upon the death of an object, the object can change to one of any random number of things, or can be impervious, or go away, or can change to something that depends on who hit it or what weapon they were using when they hit it
• Entities need behavior tracking (simple state machine prob?), pathing (A* plus steering?)
• Some kind of director to spawn resources and enemies and wild animals and friendlies
• You need a simple set of tools (weapons, building tools) that you can switch between
• Projectiles (for archers/hunters)?

And I got some basic collision and tiles done!

In my game you won’t actually control this guy, though. I’ve got a nice idea planned out that involves a cat. You will be the cat, given to this guy by some old dude with a beard, and you will accompany this guy on his quest for whatever I come up with. While he struts on, encounters foes, and gets stuck by puzzles, you will be the awesome cat sidekick who saves the day by sneaking past foes and striking them from behind, climbing and crawling to parts where he can’t get to so you can bring back important items, and generally be a badass cat without animations. And in the end, glory shall be all his and not yours.

I have chosen an appropriate name for my game concept and run it past my marketing department. They say it’s a go, and they’d like me to stop talking to them as if they aren’t imaginary, cause it’s freaking them the hell out.

The game shall be called “Flea Bitten”, and it shall be infested with fleas. But not just any fleas mind you.

I can ask this next question, only because I feel completely safe and secure inside my game dev bunker.

What if…. a zombie had fleas ? We all understand that a zombie biting you results in enough zombie juice to turn you into a walking corpse. But I don’t think that the opposite has ever been explored, as human beings have evolved enough to realize that zombies don’t taste good.

But our little friends in the insect world, in my best estimations far from being educated by the likes of George Romero on the Zed. So… I’ll leave you with that for now…. well, because it’s really all I have right now!

Update from the bunker -- Game name chosen -- "Flea Bitten"

So I’ve got an idea mostly sketched out for a top-down adventure RPG (very original I know). The twist of sorts is that the character is unarmed – perhaps even pacifist. And his enemies are very much not.

I’ve created a basic engine, where the player is controlled by the mouse, and levels are loaded from text files.

I’m also streaming on livestream, at http://www.livestream.com/thristhart. The quality is terrible because my internet is terrible. So that’s cool I guess.

Ok, first of all my main concern is the theme, but instead of making a random game based on any of the other theme candidates, ill give it a try and try to make a game with the actual theme of the compo.

(do notice im analizing the theme as i write)
First of all, what the heck is THIS? at first it could be a weapon of some kind, something that helps me in my quest.. yeah, sounds nice but too normal. A weapon could be a sword or an AK-47, so maybe not a weapon..
It could be something more friendly, something that helps me to achieve the quest in a more easier way (after all the theme impies a quest for sure) That could be a peak if i have to digg, something to jump higher (a pogo maybe? haha sounds funny) or maybe something to dive in deeper..

Now, the object can only be deduced by knowing where we are going to, since you wont give a toothbrush to someone who is going to kill zombies.. unless the zombies need a teethbrush and they need to be willing to get it..
Now, where, where in hell can we go??? maybe we need to rescue our girl who was kidnapped by a big n ugly monster, and in the way we slaughter other littler monter’s.. so we leave the kidnapper to the last.. Sound good to be, but i guess it a bit of a cliché.. (clichés are awesome)

Mmm keeping this line of thought the theme is quite doable.. i guess i changed my mind from when i started writing this post (yeah, i can change my mind pretty quickly hehe) So, ill keep poolishing the “Where” and then make a “What” ..The girl and the monster sounds like the best option so far 😛

Theme. The Force is strong with this one. Although you can probably just make any single game with a tool and say, oooh wait, it’s dangerous to go alone, take this <insert random tool>. Be it weapon, magic staff, vehicle, football, companion, etc. But hey why not, we had more generic themes before, turned out fine.

This is a declaration of maybe, maybe not, since tomorrow (and by extension today) is national day of awesome here in Finland, and I may succumb to peer pressure and actually go outside with people for fresh air and social reinforcement (it’s dangerous to go alone, here take this friend/beer). But I guess the main festivities start later in the afternoon so I may hack up together a small joke game or something until then.

Tools. Lua for sure, maybe with LÖVE or my own lib evöL. Other tools will be according to random inspiration.

Seems there’s a lot of people in, which is good because more games, and bad, because the chatter on the IRC channel and compo blog will be hard to decipher. Also each individual gets a lot less attention, especially newcomers. It’s a harsh world. Dangerous out there. Ha. Anyhoo. Good luck all, kudos for the keynote, and remember to keep hydrated.

Quickly I realize I’ll want to NOT have to fight against my development tools. While I enjoy Chicken Scheme and think it’s the future of my own programming environment, it’s just not ready yet. I want to draw things on my tablet and use them but I don’t even have images ready in Gloss yet: it make take a few minutes to add them, or a few hours if I run in to some unexpected snag (such is the nature of programming). And, I’m being made aware of the fact that most LDers run Windows, and a Mac OS binary won’t be properly appreciated by the widest audience. So, I’ll be using Processing for this LD. One click to run, one click to distribute a “binary” that runs cross platform on Mac OS, Windows, and GNU/Linux. I think I’ve assimilated Lisp programming style well enough to do things the “Lisp way” even in Java, so as much as it pains me to go from one end of the programming language power spectrum to the other, I think this is a good choice. And Processing is the right choice, because as Reas puts it:

I want programming to be as immediate and fluid as drawing and I work with software in a way that minimizes the technical aspects.

I can’t think of a programming quote I agree more with, or that I think is more important in this early age of the practice.

So far I have modeled the main character and zombies, animated the main character and started to add logic to him. Right now you can walk forward and back, and shoot. Time to get some zombies in there.

-JaydenB

I picked first-person platformer as my genre. Somewhat like Mirror’s Edge, so expect to plant your face against a number of walls and fall off of high places. Unity can handle the 3D rendering, I just have to code the gameplay and drop in some original assets (taking my camera out hunting for textures tomorrow). Here’s a screenshot that tells you absolutely nothing about the gameplay:

It’s past midnight on my coast. Time for some shut-eye.

Ok, 2 hours passed and I’m done with map editor – now I have to start working on actual game. We’ll see how sweaty is it going to be at this part I’ll write something more about details of my game later but so far I can only say that it won’t involve any killing around so let’s hope I can still bring lots of fun.

Map editor done with saving and loading maps

Late post but i’m going to be using C++ and Allegro with Code::Blocks.