Pitch: Negative Space, the video game (with a hint of MSPaint).

Concept – taking up the gauntlet thrown down by the critically-acclaimed video game development studio Treasure and their esteemed framework “Ikaruga”, Ghost Police is an experiment in the expansion, destruction and possibly protection of parallel worlds. Following on from the “Negative Space” game-play mechanic/s devised by video game designer/entrepreneur Sean Howard, Ghost Police tasks you with commanding ships of clashing natures in a monochrome battlefield that both fighters are ill-equipped to survive alone.

Product so far – enclosed is an engine test that allows the player to either use One Ship or Two – One Ship mode lets you ‘flip’ between black or white on the spot at the right-click of a mouse, while Two Ship switches control between either fighter and asks you to blaze the trail ahead for your partner. Currently the level design is functional at best and no scoring, damage or enemy system is yet implemented, but the player is given free reign over the bullet brush – scroll the mouse wheel to adjust the size of your ‘ink’.

Demo v0.3

IN PROGRESS:

• four-colour palette allowing for complexity in conflicting backgrounds – clear and iconic, not muddy and confused
• original chiptune music
• three levels and boss fights
• Minefield mode – encouraging the player to navigate an 8-bit wasteland in search of treasure and traps

I iced my ‘Ship’ project. Stuck it in the carbon freezing machine. I’ve decided it was too large in scope for one month. The good news is that I’m not giving up on the challenge, and the even better news is that I’m not doing a 180 degree turn. It’s more like a little detour, a side trip, and pretty much 90% of what I have already completed can be used in the new project.

The paused project is a side-scrolling platformer with RPG elements and an open world similar to The Legend of Zelda. The problem with that is generating the content. Way too much work for one dude and a computer in a small time frame. I’d like to come back to the project sometime, as I think it would be fun to actually be able to spend time designing levels instead of rushing through to complete them in a semi-arbitrary deadline like the end of the month. I felt that it was best for myself to drop it early instead of pushing through and not having any time for a backup plan. Though, now with a third of the time gone, I will have to redouble my efforts.

The new project will be more of an arcade platformer. I envision Donkey Kong and Pac-man. Single screen (or close to it) levels. Sounds good in theory. We’ll see how implementation goes. I should be able to have a prototype set up in a day or so, and maybe a screen shot. We’ll see if it’s entertaining and what kind of tweaks I should make to raise the fun factor.

A quick MSPaint mockup. You run around and collect stuff to unlock the goal, while avoiding the boss attack and his minions.

As some of you may know by now I’m setting a goal of making 12 games by the end of 2012, basically one a month.  To facilitate this I set myself a task of coming up with 36 game ideas that I could turn into possible one-month games.  Now I need to decide, and I would like you to help me.  I’m going to go for two rounds, the first round I want to get it down to 24 game ideas, and then finally get it down to the 12 I’m actually going to use.  I will use the ones that receive the most votes.  So I would like to ask you all to vote in the comments and pick the 24 ideas you think could most likely be done in a month and you would think would be fun.  Just by writing down 24 numbers for the ideas you like.  I will wait a week for the first round, and then create a new list of the top 24 games that were voted on (even if they only get a few, I will still do it).  Then I will narrow it down even further, later.  Since this post is going to be long I’m going to put a page break here.  Please read the whole post and vote.  Thanks.  (If I get enough votes quick enough I might even try to get one of these games done for the October Challenge).  Most games will be played on a single screen, which means it’s going to be non-scrolling.  If there are any scrolling games the level will be randomly generated.  Please click “Read the rest of this entry”.

1. Turret Gunner – Your goal is to clear the playfield of all enemies by shooting them from a turret in the center of the screen.  The enemies come from all directions.
2. City Defense – Your ship is the only thing standing between you and the destruction of your city.  Destroy a mothership above before it destroys the city below.
3. Space Gem – Collect gems on various planets, avoid robots that move up, down, left, and right, while you can move diagonally.  This is not a maze game (like Pac-man).
4. Space racer – Try to get the best lap times in your racing space-ship.  Try to avoid black holes and supernovas.  Use warp pads and worm holes to help you.
5. Dog Show Obstacle Course – There’s a dog show coming up, so you need to pick a breed and teach it to walk through a doggie-obstacle course.
6. Laserpath – Arrange mirrors to fire a laser at a target
7. Deep Sea Treasure Hunt – Swim underwater to find treasure, avoid dangerous sea creatures and pirates.
8. Egg Catch – Using an egg carton move it along the bottom to catch eggs falling from hen houses at the top.
9. Star Catcher – Use your catcher which looks a bit like a dream catcher, to grab stars to get energy to open a wormhole to the next level.  Avoid shooting stars.
10. Tracer – Trace squares on a random grid to mark the squares.  Mark all the squares to move to the next level.  Beware baddies also on the tracer lines.
11. Tunnel Flyer – Try to navigate a treacherous cave tunnel, and shoot anything that moves.
12. Gemfall – Match-4 falling block game.
13. Bubble Blower – Blow bubbles and gain points for how long they last and how high they go until you run out of soapy water.
14. Paddle Ball – Hit objects arranged in rows 3 times to remove them with your paddle and your ball.
15. Long Tails – Eat objects with your snake to grow it’s tail and try to make your opponent crash into your trail.
16. Miner – Dig in a mine to uncover gems until a timer is done.  Then with another timer try to collect as many gems as you’ve uncovered.  Bonuses for uncovering and collecting all gems.
17. Cops and Robbers – You’re a police man trying to catch multiple bank robbers and put them in jail.  Run around platforms to catch up to them then take them to jail at the end of the platforms.
18. Circle Pong – Keep a ball in the center of two rotating circular paddles.  Score points for bouncing off each paddle.  Try not to let it fall out of the circle.
19. Chicken – Figure out how to get the chicken to cross the road, either walking, or riding on something.
20. Flood – Try to jump on platforms to escape a rising flood of water, see how high you can get.
21. Conveyer – Try to exit a room full of conveyer belts, and try not to fall to the bottom where certain death awaits.
22. Escape 2048 – Collect energy balls in a maze in the complex of an evil scientist who built killer robots and use the energy to shoot the bots.
23. Exploding Bumper Cars – A demented clown has taken over the bumper cars in a carnival and rigged them to explode.  Try to ram your opponents to get them to explode before they get you.
24. Hangman – Only instead of the traditional hangman picture, try different ways to die or lose, and create some cool winning animations.
25. Speedjig – Assemble a jigsaw puzzle as the puzzle pieces are falling from the top.  Get one puzzle piece out of place and lose a life.
26. Gold Runner – Run around a room with platforms and ladders and collect gold.
27. Escorter – A ship is moving around the playfield and your goal is to escort it to safety by clearing the space of mines and ships.
28. Alien Abduction – shoot flying saucers as they come down to pick up people walking on the ground, otherwise tractor them until you have safely rescued the humans.
29. Wall Ball – Another paddle and ball game. Bounce the ball on the upper wall to score, make sure not to lose the ball.
30. Something like pinball – Use flippers and bumpers to rack up a high score depending on where the ball touches.
31. Tank Command – Use your tank to destroy an enemy tank.  You can only shoot one bullet at a time.
32. Bomber – You’re a WWII bomber and you’re trying to destroy targets below by dropping bombs on them, avoid cannons on the ground and enemy fighters
33. Animal Hunter – Try to shoot wild game for food ala Oregon Trail, but make sure the animals are in season and that you don’t shoot endangered species.
34. Polar Squishers – You’re a seal trying not to be eaten by polar bears.  Get rid of the polar bears by squishing them between two blocks of ice, using your nose to slide the blocks across icy platforms.
35. Pod Shooter – Direct a moving “pod” into the open spaces of a maze, and shoot your opponent by touching energy fields.  You can’t move the pod yourself but must change direction when you’re allowed to.
36. Classic Board Games – Checkers, Chess, Go, Parcheesi — Would possibly make this as one game, might not be doable in a month.

Here are the game ideas.  If you have any questions feel free to ask.  Please vote on the 24 most likely to be done in a one-month period and the ones you’d most like to play by listing the numbers in a comment.  I will wait a week unless i get a lot of votes early.  Thanks!

I’ve been playing with Stencyl in the past few days, and I’ve decided that I will make a practice game.

I decided to check out Stencyl because I’ve thought for a long time that I don’t like point ‘n click game development tools. After trying Stencyl, I’ve decided that I was wrong; Stencyl is loads of fun!

So, the practice game.

The premise is this: Two adventurers are delving into a dungeon to defeat a dragon. You switch between the two and try to get both to the exit of each level. The character you aren’t using at the moment is guided by AI and you can give commands to the other character, as well.

There are two characters: A guy who can throw things and a girl who can wall-jump. They are used together to solve puzzles and navigate the levels. Their abilities will factor into the final boss battle, as well. They also each have a sword and a shield.

I’m hoping to have this done by Sunday night.

Peace, love, and inspiration,

— Henry

(Edit: Quick spelling fix)

I always wanted to make my SEUCK remake into a touchpad app, so you can create games ON your iPad/Touchpad. Now that I have my HP touchpad and development is so much faster and easier, I started finishing it.
I hope to bring it quickly enough to the market to get a $ from it. I also hope that people are willing to buy it.

Plan is to make a touch-only GUI to create full games and make an exporter so you can “sell” the created games for iPhone and WebOS phones (Pre2,3, Veer…)

I also plan to bring at least one proper game as a reference/tutorial.

Current status: It’s working pretty much with touch input only.
I added a lot of ace features like:
-shots/players/enemies have “elements”, so water can attack water and such
-I plan to bring powerups
-I need an option screen for the controls of the mobile devices

GACK sprite editor

Here’s a new video! Some new features! Still bare & incomplete!

1. Tone change code
2. Surrounding terrain
3. Texturing
4. Lighting
5. Menus
6. Game modes
7. Volume change code

Yeah I don’t think this will happen by the end of October but I’m going to keep trying. I’ll probably post a video once 1 and 7  are complete.

I’ve been thinking: Why did I decide to start a new game instead of improving on an old one? Why did I decide to make the new game in a language I rarely use, using a library I’ve never used before?

Answer: For the challenge! I decided to use FlashPunk, and put my game up on Kongregate to try to get the & through ad revenue.

I’ve got very little done, but here’s the basic idea: You will be presented with various building/landmarks/monuments, and will have a short amount of time to deface them with spraypaint. As of now, drawing works, and so does switching nozzle sizes of the can. That’s about it. :p

I just managed to sort one of my problems while trying to implement tone changing code. It turned out that I forgot that using every second character from a string containing sound data doesn’t give you just the left channel, well not in a 16 bit stereo file. I used the excellent audioop library, that comes with python, to split the data and now it’s playing seemingly correctly although incredibly fast.

Oh well better get back to sorting this problem out.

It turns out my filter had something to do with the previous speed problem and not using it doesn’t seem to affect the sound in any other way so that’s gone. Now it just skips and jumps a bit which is annoying, that may be down to my calculations of the duration and time stamp of the returned sample or because doing real time ffts is too demanding.

Alright guys so not much has changed since yesterday. All I have been working on is the overall scenery and esthetics of the main town. I had created all the weapons earlier today but I later got the blue screen of death and so i lost my work of weapons. Luckily i do still have the textures ready made. Here is a snapshot of the town. The waterfalls in the background are animated textures.

Next step? More towns, Complete weapons, armor(Coming soon!), ranged weapons etc.

My previous post was about starting and choosing between finishing my LD20 entry (link) or possibly my failed LD21 experiment for the October challange. Based on that i originally thought that my LD21 idea deserved more work, that the LD20 game would have “half” the work done by just porting and that i needed “app store experience” i went with planning to make the LD20 game for October challange.

Work went fairly well and as of today i was a few days behind but i had put a lot of time to spare at the end of my schedule, i also figured out a great idea for updated iOS controls and a bit of a difference in the gameplay to make it more accessible. Great so i go out on app store to what the price point of similiar games is… and what do i find at the top of the paid charts but this game that was released on the 6th of october!

Now this isn’t exactly the same game i was going to make but the similarities are close enough that i suspect that my game would have been dismissed as yet-another-clone. (My game would have been more towards a classic RTS with controls more reminicent of flight control and a bit more “realistic” gameplay)

So where does that leave me? Well i could try finishing the game for Android instead, betting that they don’t have an Android port hitting soon and doing something on Android for the very first time. Or i’ll cut it and go for making the LD 21 game or some other idea. I’m still open to input and am heading to bed now to sleep on this, but right now i’m heavily leaning on dropping the current game and plan, but do i really have anything better to do? Got some conceptual ideas around the LD21 experiments and old mini-LD ideas but not concrete enough and nothing that immideately says “great game”.

I’ve been working hard to complete the october challenge using my LD21 game Escaparazzi, and one of the steps was to enter it to a game dev contest.

Now I need your help, one of the judging phases requires public voting, so I was wondering if you could spare a minute of your time to go to the contest webpage and click “like” (highlighted in red), in return, you’ll get my eternal gratitude 😀

(also you can play the latest version of the game using the button highlighted in green)

So it turns out ffts on the fly is no problem, a quick check with timeit suggests I should be able to do around 1500 a second of the size I’m trying to do and I only need to do two per frame ie about 120 if we’re locked to vsync. The problem was that pyglet seems to take sound data twice as often as it “schedules” things if you set them up using pyglet.clock.schedule so I was giving two different data chunks for the same start time.

Hey guys, I’ve been realizing that I think there’s really not much more that I can do with Game Maker. I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions as to what platform I should move to next. Something similar to Game Maker but maybe a little more advanced.

Tags: game, maker

As we near our first milestone, OPifex Entertainment is almost ready to roll out our engine and begin building our game.  The concept and game design have been finalized, so all that’s left is to put the pieces together!

It’s a good thing our game Splat! is going to be relatively simple.  This allowed us to use the first half of the month to work on the Rough Edges engine, which is named after our next, much larger project.  The engine is built using SlimDX, which gives us easy access to the powers of D3D 10 and D3D 11.  While we take the slightest performance hit for using C#, we more than make up for it in development time.

Since most of the work is done by the engine, we’re going to use LUA to script the game into place.  Through the use of the engine’s powerful API, sculpting a game has never been more fun, or easy!  We highly recommend using the highest level tools available to you and your team’s skillset.  Development is fast, and more likely to be completed.  Using C# and SlimDX is our way of cutting out the headaches of most programming tasks while still holding complete power over our creations.

We’ve started some animations and other art assets, so here’s another teaser. This is blob man!

Blob Man Running from Garrett Hoofman on Vimeo.

We hope Splat! will be an exciting color mixing game that everyone can enjoy.  Keep a lookout for more frequent posts as the OPifex team starts the final sprint in the last few weeks of October. We wish you the best of luck, because remember, we’re all in this together

My name is Jim Peterman, and I am a video game music composer studying at St. Olaf College. I’ve worked with zillix a couple of times on Ludum Dare projects, and am looking to write more. I can write in a variety of styles, and have a large number of sound resources with which to supply a game. I am used to writing under a time crunch, and generally write a piece of game music in two hours. I only ask for money if you make money on the game.  Check out my portfolio:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Zillix/endeavor
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Zillix/p-i-g
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Zillix/summit (same music as endeavor)

If you are interested in working with me, email me at petermaj@stolaf.edu.

http://renesd.blogspot.com/2011/10/export-scripts-for-app.html

Last and probably final update to my Hieroglyph-deciphering game.

http://www.ninjadodo.net/temp/LD19/rosetta_v8.zip

Replaced handwriting with a font, tweaked puzzles, added some sound and various other changes. More info in the TIGS forum thread.

Tags: Egyptian, Rosetta

We finally decided give the first step and declare our intent to to enter in the October Challenge. More info about our entry after the link:

http://rs.gam3dev.com/2011/10/13/declaration-of-intent/