I’ve finished!!! my first LD :D:D:D

Online version –> http://madflame991.blogspot.com/p/gather-10-keys-to-escape.html

Zipped version –> http://gamejolt.com/data/games/5932/files/ld21_gather10keys_madflame991.zip

This game about a girl, trapped by addiction to a Nintendo Virtual Boy, collecting items that remind her of her previous life to escape back to it, is just about done

All thats left is some nice text explaining things like what the 3 abilities do, and why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Feel free to test!
http://splixel.com/b/LD21/Splixel_LD21.swf

I spent a weird amount of time of my first full LD Jam day in the shop for my car (doodling on my laptop/Wacom with people staring at me like I was making a bomb) or lying around lame/sick, but I did churn out level and player graphics.  I hope I kept the watercolory look of the concept art.

We’re still using crops from my original concept art for the boss and enemies, but progress on the game overall looks pretty encouraging.  We’ve got two types of enemies, one flying and one grounded, that both attack the player and a big bad boss.  I’ll be focusing on making the boss more alive and scary today, both with code and art.  Now, it occasionally shoots red dots now whilst hovering around on the left side of the screen.  While hazardous, that’s not exactly the scale of threat I was hopin’ for :).

Things are going pretty well. I’m finished the basic programming and now I need to work on the art, maybe some music and design all the levels. I’ve decided that if I get to music, I want to use GarageBand on the iPad. I’m very aware of the time limit at this point but I’m enjoying myself.

Yeah, I’m too tired to think of a title for this post.

Anyways, here’s a screenshot of what I have so far.

Still have a lot to do in terms of gameplay. Worst case scenario is that I won’t have enough time to add in some sound, a new tileset, and a title screen. Heck, I don’t even know what I’m gonna call this game. Haha.

So, yeah. Bing bang boom.

Chryssalid Autopsy

The darkness!!

Aside from feature creeping as usual, my drawing hand RSI is making it very difficult to work. Here’s the progress so far on Chryssalid Escape. The goal of the game is to sneak out of Alien Containment and reach the exit. X-COM soldiers stand in your way, but perhaps they can be used to increase your numbers? See previous post for more details.

Chryssalid Escape WIP 2

Screenshot. Bit of a mess. The perspective isn’t really working as good as isometric, and the walls should not be exactly 2 tiles high (they do overlap).

FEATURES SO FAR:
—————-
+ Ambient sounds. Very easy to make and remarkably similar to how X-COM sounds.
+ Footsteps. Other sounds are waiting to be used.
+ Graphics for 16 floor tiles, 5 wall tiles, and 4 Chryssalids. Using X-COM sprites as inspiration.
+ Map (128*64) in multiple layers that can be scrolled and edited a little ingame (mouse). Loads data from Photoshop Raw (which is my map editor).
+ Units (characters) with action points. Can Move, turn, strafe, collide.
+ Brute force Line of Sight rays. Hidden units not drawn.
+ Simple Immediate Mode GUI. Keyboard can also be used.
+ Data structures for the various units (mostly unused atm).

TO DO:
——
– Add (and layout) all buttons for control (mostly using keyboard atm).
– Button Gfx.
– Title screen with art, New game (reset all), Resume game, Quit and all that.
– Win and lose conditions (count Units, step on exit tile). Finish art for win screen.
– Rest of the Wall, Unit, Obstacle, Effect Gfx.
– Figure out where to store corpses and destroyed obstacles.
– Enemy roaming ai (use existing movement methods).
– Enemy stalking, noting target points.
– Enemy shooting and projectiles.
– Make sure the camera is focusing on visible enemy action and projectiles.
– Minimap. Pixmap that can be updated. Click on it to scroll.
– Edge scrolling instead of the wonky map click scrolling.
– Chryssalids bumping into obstacle and enemies should use existing damage function. Obstacles might need resistance values.
– Chryssalid Zombie and Cocoon transformation timers.

NOTES:
——
+ 805 lines of BlitzMax Code
+ Tiles are 48*32 px, asin(2 / 3) = 41.8103149 degrees (90 = up).
+ Using lots of constants to set things up, so I can change resolution and such somewhat easily later with the game adapting to it.
+ Art drawn at 4x in Photoshop.

The XNA version of my game now surpasses the Unity version.  What’s working:

• Player display
• Player movement
• Player collision with items
• Background Board (no wall collision yet)
• Door key displays
• Player can pickup keys

• Wall collision
• Door display (Locked and Open)
• Level transition
• Enemy display
• Enemy following
• Enemy killing you
• More Levels

I’m feeling like this list is too long to finish in 7 hours and 15 minutes.  I also have a lot of chores around the apartment that need attention. So,  I’m going knock the “can’t ignore” ones out and then hopefully I can sprint to the end!

LD21 Screenshot 2

Sorry for this delayed post. A lot has happened.

First of all, my fam’s at a camping retreat, so i’ve had to relocate to local coffee shops. This is big, because now i can only dev on my netbook. GRAGGHHH.

Also, me being new to Flixel, I ran into a couple of bugs (one of them took 4 hours), so not much has happened framework wise.

On the brighter side, I created a new enemy, 5 more levels, and everything works! (hopefully).

Planning to add – 1 more weapon, 6 more levels, and a super-awesome secret mode to my game!

Now that the basic game is done and I added some eyecandy, I’m doing some little gimmicks. For example, the ending screen will show you now which path you took while trying to escape:

Will someone beat this score? Maybe, we will find out, because I am starting to work on the Online Highscores now! Wooo!

My game is almost done, pretty much. I am almost done, pretty much. Slowly going insane. Need a burst of energy.

It’s 5am, 3 hours until I have to get up for work. May regret this in the morning.

Here’s two work in progress builds – one from yesterday evening when the site was dead, one from just now.

Play in browser: WIP Build 0.1: Basic tutorial and gameplay.

Play in browser: WIP Build 0.2: Changed to Mouse controls and added leaderboards!

The game is called ‘Vault’ and it’s about a bankvault style prisonvault. The gameplay is iffy, really only interesting if you try to optimize your moves, which is why I decided to spend a really long time figuring out how to integrate Mochi leaderboards. Now I got to add a few new hazards and make levels…. and sound and music. Phew.

Tags: leaderboards, mochi, progress, vault, wip

Mmmm Pizzatime:

There are now 2 complete levels and the game can almost be completed. Now working on the bossfight.

Its not easy to escape – zombies need no parachute…

Just finished the level generator for Escape Velocity. It now takes me 30 minutes to make a decent level, compared to the several it had taken previously. Just working on the tutorial level so theres for sure something to play before I move on to add the doors and sounds. My goal is to have atleast 5 playable levels included with my submission. If I get those done, I’ll spruce up the level generator and set it up so you can place subsystems.

So, my todo list right now:

4 more levels

Sounds

Doors/Keycards

Animation

This is a screenshot from yesterday, that I was going to post. Anyways my game is coming along good, I have all the gameplay elements I wanted in place, scoring is working, and I came up with a clever way of presenting the score.

Since this screenshot was created I have created a new character sprite, with a animation. I also added pickups to the game, that give a small boost to your score. All that is remaining is to add a few sound effects, make a video, then submit it.

I submit my entry for the 21 Ludum Dare. The artwork is awful. But I happy to have submit something . I hope you like it.

My entry here

All it needs now is a title screen… And maybe some sound.

Seeing as how I’m taking a short break (enjoying some three-year old curry soup; still good) and blogs are possible again, I thought I’d apprise the few interested parties as to my progress.

Yesterday I set a goal to get 70% of the game logic in place before going to bed. I’d say I hit that milestone, despite tons of trouble with collisions and camera issues (I’m entirely at fault, naturally). Currently, I’m cleaning up the remaining interactive parts of the game and I hope to have all cutscenes drawn and coded by midnight (local time, GMT+1). The remaining time will hopefully pass with voice work and music.

I like where the game is headed, it’s actually trying to tell a story. Now I just hope the rest of you see that as well 😛

Work tomorrow and it starts to get late. I need to put some kind of “winning” screen and make game-level a whole lot more interesting. I really think I managed to make a ok game though, it’s just lacks length 😛 Well… se you in a couple of hours!

My wife and child came back today which cut off a lot of my programming time. Also it made me cook a very delicious dinner of which I made a picture.

sliced turkey with cream and chanterelles, green beans and potatoes - everything fresh from the marketplace

Now back to my LD game.

Tags: foodphoto

Ok, it’s probably a good time to take a break and post an update. I’m at five guys eating a nice cheeseburger and some peanuts. Dig Dug, my Jack Russell, is barking in the car. I’m saving him one of the patties. The wife is gone for the day at the spa.

Yuummm, these burgers are really delicious.

Anyway, it turns out I’m doing my first platformer. It’s very arcady like Mario Bros or something like that.

You just have to figure out how to escape the screen by doing a bunch of arcady things like getting shot out of a cannon and jumping over baddies and so forth.

Ended up using stencyl which is awesome. No coding whatsoever done so far. For graphics I’m using the stencyl editor and graphics gale. I give stencil an A+. It’s a bit buggy and crash prone but besides that it really lets you get done to the task at hand – making fun games.

I think this will end up being my best game in terms of fun if I finish it.

Well, I better finish this delicious burger and get back to it.

Good luck guys!

It seems that I have an issue in my game with the fps and it is very strange.  It drops from around 2000 fps to 40 fps right when it loads the first level yet there isn’t much being rendered.  It has something to do with the tile sheet that I load but I don’t know why.  Anyways, here is a screen of my game.

Look for the submission for more info! I’m done.

My first Ludum Dare was a success

Tags: journal

I’ve finished my game more or less.  Has all the basic things I wanted to get done, don’t have any more time for polish, silly real life.  It is a little bloody, ESRB might not be impressed.

Basic premise:  Stop the Best Koreans from escaping to Worst Korea.

Good luck everyone!

After 28 and a half hours of straight game development, this beautiful creation is complete. I’m quite proud of it 😀 stayed up all night and until 4:30 AM the other night. Good luck to everyone!

Here is some food I’ve eaten over the second half of the compo:

coconut bar

a pita pizza (think pizza w/o sauce)

 Also: Almost done!

Tags: foodphoto

So i’m alomst there 😀 almost everything works, not 100% but it works. Added some extra graphic features and created some better levels. addded scores and a game over window

Now i only need to do this:

• Add some sound
• Fix bugs and create more levels

Gettin’ that polish going!~  I’ve added a title screen, as well as a way to control if a Human or CPU controls each of the two sides.  Also my AI is getting smarter!  It’s still quite beatable; my search depth is… next to nothing really, so it only gets as far as predicting your next move and making some vaguely intelligent guesses as to what kinda of things improve its position.  I’ve still got about 6 hours though, and pretty much the only thing I’ve got left to do aside from AI improvements is adding some movement animations to help see what’s going on.  I’m actually at a point where I’m about to ask some IRC peoples to help me test.  If you’d like to help with that just let me know; I’m Luthwyhn in IRC.

Here’s a shot of my title screen!

I hope everyone else is getting done too!  I’ve been too busy to keep with with chat more than occasionally.  Keep up the good work, though!

Tags: AI, awesome, game, pygame, python, tablut, viking

Now to tie in the theme with the beginning and the end….

Also need to tie in the game title, and then make many more levels (which involves scribbling in Paint.net).

6 hours to go! 😀

Just finished up the game! It still needs music, if I can figure out how to make that work, and some polish and playtesting, but the game itself is done. Now I can shower…

I’ve completely changed the mood of my game. I had a title screen which was… kind of… imperative, the player having to execute orders, but that was just too aggressive. The mood is now much more relaxed, or even a little bit sad, because of the soundtrack, which I love (who said it’s just because I’m the one who made it ? 😛 ).

I’ll have to change the title screen to match the music, and then I’ll submit my entry ! That should be doable in 6 hours.

PS: I would have liked to attach the title screen music to this post but WordPress refused to do it. So you’ll have to wait for the finished game to listen to it ! 😀

I’ve got enemies, obstructions, a weapon to pickup and one placed in the maps. Little things that send you flying and lots of stuff, its looking like a real game now, with 10 levels, 4 of which are tutorials, but still. Hopefully have the basic game finished for the entry time, then work on it more over the next few months to be a more complete game! 😀

Last night I finished the level layout and player movement path. Now I am setting the location of the enemies.

Latest Build:
http://www.monkeydev.com/unity/ld21/

Well, I have run out of puff – and nearly painkillers. My teeth are killing me but I have completed a game in 48 hours – didn’t think that’d happen! I’m pretty pleased with the result – can’t imagine it’ll win any prizes but it’s a nice little concept I think I could expand later.

So, what have I learnt?

• Your first idea, isn’t always your best. I went with my first idea this time but I had 4 or 5 along the way that would have been better (at least I think so). Stuck to my guns to get something done
• Creating sounds is easy – creating good sounds is hard and takes up a long time. I’ll definitely factor that in next time I do Ludum Dare (yes, I want to do it again!)
• Creating music is hard (even bad music). It’s difficult to find good tools. It’s difficult to have any idea where to start. Sourcing freeware music is much much easier. Still, there are procedural generators out there – even if the output is a bit naff.
• Having a schedule for 48 hours is pointless, just go.
• Coding fast is fun! (I think already knew this)
• What you think of your game isn’t always what other people thing of it.

Tags: post-mortem

[WARNING! INCOMING WALL OF TEXT!]

Woo! I was done for ages.

This was a fun LD, but also an too easy one for my taste..

“Escape” didn’t challenge me. It didn’t challenge me eet all.

Now, for the dev process of that is totally uninsteresting exciting!

DAY 1:

So, the first day started with me sleeping 2 hours longer than I wanted to. I hate snooze buttons. After I woke up I started my computer, got some breakfast, looked at the LD-Site – BAM – Idea for escape! Okay, to be honest, my idea was based on a cheap 1 hour game I made the day before called Jumper. It had the same concept. Without parallax. And that, children is, why it sucked ^_.^ So I drew a block. And another one. Then I wrote my 0815 Platformer Engine out of my head, removed the possibility of moving and failed to set it up correctly 5 times! All because of not adding the variable ‘jump = 0;’ to gravity code. I fail. Anyways. Later I added some graphics and started with the parallax base to give a feeling that you’re actually not just standing there, with a run animation sticked on your head. Now it was time for rocks >:D
They were also just animated things, but they moved at a speed of 4 and got generated by the player every 3 seconds. Then I added more graphics and the different screens for menu, game over and all that.

DAY 2:

Today was.. kinda lame, to be honest. I refined graphics, raged about the server melt, added one pick up, submitted as 7th person, and that’s about it.. Lame. L A M E! Then I went swimming. Fun. Really.

And yeah. Play here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=2494 (Links don’t seem to work properly, atm.)

I actually have a machine running VS2008 and SFML, but for some reason the executable file just pumps gibberish in the console and doesn’t display a game.

So if someone with more VS2008/SFML experience out there is willing to give it a shot and compile it for Windows for me, I will be eternally grateful.

Let me know if you can help at sugardood@gmail.com or as a comment to this post. I’m just adding the sfx at the mo, so it’s not ready quite yet…

Decided to withdraw from the Compo as I just didn’t have enough motivation, my idea was quite ambitious, and I just wasn’t making much progress.  Still continuing on with the project and may have something ready for the Jam.  As there are less restrictions in the Jam, I’m using my company’s game engine for a little extra help

Good luck to everyone still in the Compo (the Jam too), and hope you’re all having fun!!

I am very sad, because i can’t enter. My game’s physics sucks, and so does the rest of the game.

Here is the source, media, etc(Should compile with std java aswell): Download source

The reasons for not making it are as follows:

• Had Notch’s Livestream on another screen
• I suck at physics
• Eclipse failed on me. After 19 hours i remembered i could try netbeans. That worked.
• Youtube.

Hope you other guys got more progress!

– Petterreoa

Hi, here’s my game. It’s called Routine, and it’s about trying to escape routine and dodge responsabilities in order to define yourself.
The world is procedurally generated, but it’s always the same. It can be won (at around distance 8000 3000).
It still needs tweaking (it’s pretty difficult to manouver), but it’s playable and I’m liking where it’s going.

UPDATE: Now pressing SPACE tugs the head. And the elastic-ish formula is more friendly.

Link to play the game: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2646816/LD21_Routine.swf

Any feedback is well appreciated and encouraged! Thanks!

A couple of screenshots:

I’ve got just a couple more hours before I need to stop due to a dinner I’m going to tonight, but things are coming along well! The game now has a tutorial, storyline,  the ability to restart and load different levels… the whole nine yards.

All that’s left is actually designing and creating the levels, and a bit of tweaking!

The plot:

You are benevolent temple spirit who is tired of seeing adventurers fall to their doom in the ancient Mayan temple to are bound to. Another adventurer (name Jones) has just arrived, and he’s already got himself in trouble – a giant boulder is chasing him, and he’s got to make it through a giant gauntlet of dangerous traps. Like all adventurers, this one is very stupid and just runs blindly forwards! It’s your job to alter his path by placing walls in his way, and also protecting him from arrows, lava pits, and more. And don’t forget to pick up treasure!

I have been almost ready for some time now, couple of hours. I asked my friends to try that the zip works and that the game works, technically.  I suddenly just had to make new picture for success screen after I had all packaged up, but hey, that’s that

Yep! I finished my new game, The Villainous Villa. It’s about escaping a mansion, or villa if you’d like to call it that. It’s quite villainous.
I’m really happy with the music in this game especially, so I might put that up for download later.

It's a screenshot!

Here’s the entry link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/
And here’s a link straight to the game: http://ericsmusicandstuff.com/flash/ludumdare21.html

Whoop whoop.

Tags: final

Excellent. I’ve replaced all my placeholder graphics now:

And it looks a damn sight prettier. I will now move on to sounds effects and then music. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to leave time for music during LD before, so this is a momentous occasion indeed. I’m going to hit sfxr for some placeholders and then see if I can record some sounds that don’t all sound like me hitting the mic on the desk…

Tags: graphics, screenshot, sfxr, sounds

Hey ho! Finally finished and uploaded my entry.

This was my first finished game EVER, and also my first time in LD. I’m very proud of it, please, sugestions are very welcome.

Player now takes damage. Will add a huge explosion when the player dies, because we all know that wagons explode violently when they die. It’s just the law of the jungle or something.

Im almost done! posting screenshots of my game and storyline soon. Have to add: Fire, sounds, some sprite adjustments and better puzzles. Its in Black and white because i like Gameboy style games. (and its based of drawings in black and white.

It’s time to turn this puppy into a game. I’ve cut out my third trap due to time constraints. I’m even considering dropping my third monster as well. Right now I’m in polish phase, which means a front end, sound, music, and art. Maybe if I have time I’ll bring back the third monster.

I’ve completed my first round of art. If you can call it that.

We have just a couple things to fix, and sound to add. It is looking nice! We used Python, Pygame, PhotoShop, PyDev, Eclipse, and Saros. The game is going well! Ludum Dare: Success.

A picture of the game, fairly early on.

Hi guys, if you have the time, please test out my game http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2122500/Escape.swf

I want to know if it is working smoothly on other people’s computers. It lags a little at the start but it would be okay after a few seconds.

And of course, a screenshot!

Thanks!

Alright!  After many tries partaking in LDs, I finally managed to post an entry in time.  It sure was …interesting.  Not a lot I could use later codewise but as an experience it was fun.  If anything, I realized I need to code more to keep in practice!

Escape… is my cleverly named title, here’s a screenshot of the final thing.  It’s …something.  I’m not quite sure what.

So I finished, well I say finished, I’ve done enough that I’m calling it finished, it’s not quite what I originally envisioned but it works and I learnt a lot.

It was good to take part in LD48 and I hope to take part again.

I’d like to thank everyone who helped me out a long the way:)

Game entry link is here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=801

Hey guys,

its my first Ludum Dare and I got the game  finished.Yeahh!!  The game is a rogue like adventure game where a dwarf is lost in the mines and tries to escape without dying. Don’t expect too much. I haven’t added much content, but the replay value is ok I think.  I still have a bug in the tileset, but my brain is not able to figure it out anymore.  I have no music, but self crafted some sfx :).

Please  try and rate it, thanks!

(Can’t get embedding to work…)

Here’s the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhWYc-e4Zmk

Tags: 2D, final, journal, timelapse

Done and done!

Available here!

I don’t really like how it turned out. Theres tons of stuff I’d like to add, but I have no more time left. Like bosses and better graphics and better everything and more weapons, you get the point. Yes, I realise in the source its a bloody mess of objects and sprites. The names went from ‘objBox’ to ‘lolman’ in a few hours.
The game is pretty easy, I should hope.
Anyway, I had tons of fun making this game. I’ll be sure to participate next LD, hopefully with a C# or Java game. 😛

Over and out, Naarkie.
(Yes, I know I sound constipated in the voice overs. *deal with it*)

I’m tired, hungry, and satisfied that my game is now actually a game. There’s still no beginning, and no end, but you can jump between platforms and avoid flying pieces of debris. My To:Do list gets ever longer, and time gets ever shorter. I’ve now got less than 5 hours remaining.

Although the player is now blue, it’s not a huge improvement over red. I want to get a player graphic into the game as quickly as possible. I also need to fix the camera following the player, add some effects to give the player some impetus to get moving, and probably a lot of other details too.

A start. And an end. And a name. And sound effects and music.

Got to run. Got to escape!

All over but the random gen and the polish.

Almost there.

Arrows, Z to jump, X to Ikaruga

Try it out here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7216965/LD/ITIAMOSIWE.swf

Here comes a teaser for the background story of my game:

Tags: pygame, python, screenshot

Drugs.

Right, my plan for the next 5 hours:

Finish balancing – 30 mins.

Add more drugs (yes.) – 1 hour.

Update graphics – 1 hour 30 mins.

Polish/more drugs – 2 hours.

Or something.

Play it here: http://natpat.hostoi.com/LUDUMDARE21.swf (arrow keys and Z to punch)

Well, less slacking off. Might have been able to do more, but with temperatures well above 27°C , I just took it easy. Also, BBQ yesterday and only waking up around 13.00 didn’t help either… (but no hangover *cheer*)

TimelapseDayTwo

Pic:

Escape the Fate, a suicidal puzzle game, is now done with a handful of hours to spare. I’m surprised I made it considering the roadblocks. It was certainly a motivating experience and I’m willing to do it again.

Not right away, though.

Escape the Fate: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5551

Tags: pygame, python

After 40 hours of hard labor, and 28 hours still ahead, our little project is working out quite nicely.

We’ve got graphics, sound effects, mines, rockets, turrets, and highly amusing physics. What more could you ask of… well, of our game.

It’s more or less a topdown agility shooter puzzle flyer of sorts. And we haven’t got a clue what to call it.

Unfortunately, the sparkles and damn hawt action don’t show up on screenshots.

It may look simple, but dear GOD this is a hard boss D:

I am going to switch to the jam, as I can’t keep up with it, and finishing it now would just make it look shabby. Anyhoo, I’ve got the gun done, the movement, the sheep and the health and scores and stuff. Pics tomorrow, now I sleep.

Tags: gmae, jam, switching

Enemy AI. CHECK. Multiple levels. CHECK. Sound / music. CHECK.
I want more gameplay elements in there, and is therefore adding pushable crates. Will hopefully be able to finish that before the deadline.

Tags: update

Stranded is an arcade-style game where you are a tiny brown spider living in a research lab, and you’ve recently gotten a new resident… a teenage girl was  throw into the room last night by some very angry men.  She cried and screamed all night, pounding and kicking at the door, throwing things around the lab.  She finally exhausted herself, and fell asleep on the floor.  She awoke this morning, sobbing.  She wants to run.  She wants to Escape.  You will help her Escape, and free yourself as well.

You can play it now here:

http://sandbox.lakehomegames.com

And you can see my entry and leave comments here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=4703

#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

This is getting a bit stressful. I’ve been busting my ass off since yesterday, my project isn’t that ambitious, but I fear I won’t make it for the main compo deadline, I will for the Jam’s though, but that pisses me off as that was not my intention

I’m liking the game so far, no name yet, it’s a somewhat trippy puzzle-adventure game. Here’s a screen. Back to work!

Tags: s, screenshot

Well, as it turns out, my netbook’s graphics card’s lack of Linux support has doomed my entry from the start.

I’m really upset about it.

So here’s what I’m going to do: I’ll think of something for tomorrow and do it as a jam entry. It won’t be pretty, but it’ll be a game.

Until then, I’m out. Not forfeiting, not quitting, but letting this game go for now.

I’ll post again in the morning.

Peace, love, and another day’s fight,

— Henry

Scripting enemies is very time consuming. I am 1/2 way through it, an I may not finish in time.

My android app is coming along! Just got enemies animating. Need to finish plugging in assets, implement two or three more large features, then generate some levels and screens! Damn, I’m coming down to the wire again, but my entry will be a lot more sophisticated this time. This one has been fun!

Tags: android, escape, final escape, java, LD21, ludum dare 21

I did a lot of work and have little to show for it, but I have a solid frame to build my game on. I’ll explain my game a little bit more. You are a king and you have to escape a city with the help of buildings around you. A lot of gameplay is inspired by Age of Empires, so think of that. I have units that can move and attack each other, and pretty solid controls.

I’m partway done with the GUI. What I mostly have to do now is art, AI, the GUI, and some loose code to tie that in. The art part is a little hard for me but I’ll try and get it done. Maybe I’ll take 72 hours and make a really polished game.

Well, here’s some crappy art so you see what you’re in store for.

I find when I run my game that the FPS is terrible, also not always winable and glichy as hell. So I not going to compete in the compo. But here is my entry for posterity. But I plan to finish this at some time and make it a proper game.

http://megaswf.com/serve/1164242

Arrow Keys to Move, Enter to restart. Goal is to get out of the well.

OK im tired but happy, here are some pics, its all HTML5.  Time laps and details to follow later, after sleep.

I think I’m done, at least within the compo time limit. I could spend the last few hours trying to fix more bugs, but I’m not very motivated so I’ll share some early postmortem thoughts instead.

I have a process I’ve developed for game design based around these concepts:

1. The way people become interested in a game is through its pieces. Good pieces = instant tutorialization and obvious mechanics. Therefore I now always start off by making good pieces and a fitting playfield for them. In the past I didn’t do this and my games sucked. Now they suck much less.

2. I try to achieve good game dynamics using the available pieces(or tailoring the pieces a bit more to fit). I use a very specific definition of a game dynamic, which is the intersection of two feedback loops produced via game mechanics. In general, the more intersections that occur, the more compelling the gameplay is going to be. Game events that occur outside of a feedback loop should only exist to support the fiction of the game pieces. That said, I don’t follow this rule too rigidly – it’s a model that I’m trying to test, not a dogmatic order – and I try to name and categorize what I’m achieving in broader terms. In this case the theme of “Escape” suggested someone nearly powerless, trying to escape hazards.

Starting from that little kernel of an idea, I drew some inspiration from other games: the “Deathrun” maps seen in some FPS games, Tower Defense games, Transformice… It seemed inevitable that I would do a multiplayer game where you had a whole group teaming up to get past a “big boss” type.

So I drew up my game’s playfield in Pro Motion, making some early assumptions that I’d have a low-res, single-screen game running more-or-less strictly on a tile grid. I was a bit worried that the playfield would be too small, but it turned out not to be an issue. As I drew I quickly decided it would be an ice cave rather than a generic cave, because the ice cave would suggest more interesting pieces. (as someone remarked, I could have done a lava cave instead. Different game, maybe that’s “Heartbreaker part II.”) Quickly I nixed the nascent generic obstacles I had first thought of(spikes, gun turrets, etc.) and replaced them with their ice-cave equivalents: icicles, slippery ice patches, and a yeti. I thought about the obstacles as I drew up the character portraits. First I did the Ice Queen – an obvious villain for the cold setting I was developing. Then I soon decided that it was tending towards a magical feeling, so instead of generic runner characters with torches or something, I opted for the counterpart Fire Mage. The “broken hearts” setting came out of that – I had been wanting to use the title “Heartbreaker!” for a while, though I had had a much different kind of game in mind for it. I had some trouble getting the portraits looking good, but left them for the time being.

By this point it was getting a bit late into my first evening, but I pressed on to set up my base code at this point. It’s all dribs and drabs from earlier projects – the build system, some timer code, the scene initialization process, the Player.IO connection code(the cloud service I’m using to host this and run the multiplayer APIs), the algorithm for collision, the sound management. I finished with just a tiny bit of proof that I could make a real-time multiplayer game – I’ve never tried doing a complete one start-to-finish, though I’ve worked with multiplayer/network code in other contexts.

The next day, I basically pounded away at the game until it succumbed to my will. It’s not pretty code and has some major architecture flaws, which is why I’m unmotivated to try a bugfix now. The biggest flaw is that out of inexperience I tried to push too much data into too little state, resulting in desyncs between the mages and the queen’s viewpoint, and various bits of oddness with how the characters move around(e.g. when a piece is brought onto the playfield the mages can be killed by its tween animation – a very unexpected game mechanic). Also, Flash is generally poor at networking for games – it supports some obscure stuff(various kinds of streams and proprietary protocols) and it has UDP in the AIR client, but if you’re making a web game you’re basically stuck with TCP, which means things periodically go berserk as the reliable delivery “catches up” with the game.

In any case, by the end of the night I had everything in a more-or-less playable state, which I mostly credit to player.io having a sane API and a decent service. I even had some players who got addicted to the game, buggy as it is. So I went to bed, and when I woke up(a few hours ago) I immediately got to work on some sound and music assets in Renoise, cleaned up the portraits a little, and got it all integrated. And that’s where I’m at now…

I’m a bit torn between trying to rearchitect the code after the compo is over and make a bigger game out of it, or just moving on with my main project, Moto. I guess I have some time to think on the matter.

I’m wrapping it up now because I have some stuff to do tonight and I figure I’ll just submit what I have so far, since I won’t be able to get much more done anyway. Overall it was a great weekend (even though my end product didn’t have anything to do with escaping!) 😀 Good Luck to the rest of you finishing up!

Arachnid Escape: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=1022

Another Ludum Dare beaten! YAY! \o/

You’re trapped in some kind of endless corridor, with two hooks and lava chasing you. Best story ever, right?

Try to escape the advancing lava with your hooks and swing around obstacles in your way, as the wave gets faster and faster, until just a single mistake seals your fate as you are engulfed in the hot doom.

Think you got a good score? Submit it to the online highscores and compete with all the players!

PLAY IT! – VIEW THE HIGHSCORES! – VIEW THE ENTRY!
Post Mortem coming tomorrow. Maybe.

Hi, everyone!

So, I recently submitted my first game for Ludum Dare 21 competition – Maze Escape, I’m very proud of myself, cuz I finish it and code everything I was planned

Because I recently moved to another city I haven’t any workspace in my new apartment, I only have a table, a chair and my MacBook 13″. Before this moment I didn’t use it for the development and this is my debut. For creating my game I used this tools:

•     IDE: Flash Builder 4.5 (any alternatives are welcome)
•     Engine: FlashPunk
•     Art: GIMP

My game doesn’t contain any “mad skilz” art or any sound, I think for the first time I did good enough

Thanks to my friends, who tested this game during this two days, and thanks to all Ludum Dare competitors, guys, you rocks!

Tags: ld48, ld48_21

Qua-tzar is a simultaneous turn based multiplayer game where opposing sides are trying to get their BITs (small squares) to the spaceship (long white rectangle) at the other side of the board. The TZAR (large square) is the only piece that can capture BITs. The DOM (diamond) cannot be captured, nor can it capture other pieces. The advantage DOMs have is if multiple pieces move to the same tile, the DOM will beat the others in a competition. If two pieces with the same priority attempt to move to a tile, neither one will move there. If this doesn’t make sense I will be writing better instructions soon.

Next step for me is to polish the game and if there is time I’ll start adding more special pieces. It looks like I’ll be able to finish it on time.

Click the screenshot to play it (Unity 3D plugin required)

Tags: unity

I have spent a little short of 20 hours on active development. This is roughly two fifths and not quite the 48 hours. Then again I haven’t broken my 1am-10am sleep routine and did take a break or two (or more).

Since my first post, I have been partly polishing the existing features, partly struggling to add new ones. New large ones include a few more objects, a minimap, lighting, sounds, and tutorial and menu screens. In the end, I rather go for a finished, brief game, than a feature complete, but too rough-around-the-edges game. Then again, I went for a “sandboxy” gameplay, so you cannot really tell something is missing until you try it first. Here’s a screeny:

You can download it here (Requires XNA and .NET):

http://blog.capdb.net/SoulHellscape2.zip (my LD48 entry)

P.S. sfxr is awesome, I did not expect to have any sounds in the game, given very little prior experience with sound effect creation and total lack of musical hearing.

Tags: CSharp, xna

Well, due to forces beyond my control I must throw in the towel on this one.

It was a great experience so far, however, and I learned alot by trial and error. I most certainly will try to enter the next one.. That is if the site doesn’t explode.

The idea I had was a cool one I think, and I still plan to actually finish it so I can share it  (and have a little bit of reusable code for next time).

One interesting thing I DID accomplish was in fiddling with collision code I somehow created a Marching Squares algorithm. Go figure.

And while I’m sure this post will quickly be lost in the flood of posts, to Everyone who is still competing I say GO! GO! GO!  Have fun and finish a game.   LD is a great Compo.

Tags: fun, squirrel, towel

Hey guys, I’ve just finished my first Ludum Dare game, Abscond. You play as a serf who has to feed his family and pay tribute to his lord while constructing a boat to escape. Here are a few screenshots:

You can try it out here:
http://harrism.com/abscond/

Don’t forget to vote, thanks!

So, I spent a huge part of this weekend trying to come up with an idea I like. I technically settled on this current idea some 6 hours ago and have been working nonstop since then. I’m quite sure I’ll get a one-level mini version for the compo, but I hope I have the motivation to finish a proper version for the jam!

Here’s some stuff from the game (Due to lack of ideas it resembles more than a bit ‘Apocalypse Adventure’, my earlier LD game (frown)):

That's one high bounty on this baddie!

Veeery empty at the moment. Hopefully I'll get some stuff to add before the deadline!

I have to admit that all games I’ve started on was not finished. This time it is different and I just released my first game. Although, even if it isn’t so well for the world, graphics or sound are not everything. Maybe it lacks good gameplay as well. And puzzles.

Anyway, at least I finished the basics. Therefor I can put this to my portfolio of made games. Even without the source, the only thing you need to do to make your own maps is how to handle a basic image editor and how to script in Lua(No biggie as the code can be copied and edited). Enjoy it as I enjoyed while making it.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5698

If bugs are found, please comment as quick as possible.

hello everyone hope you’re doing fine. sorry i haven’t introduced myself, i was all scared cuz this is my first time…

my name is Alexander Bladh aka @xobust, I’m 14 years old I’ve been hobby programming since i was like 11.

i live in Sweden , just as @notch :P.

this time i made my game in c++ and sdl on a  5 years old pc. it was a lot of job nut in the end it was still very fun : )

and her is  a screen:

my entry

was way to tired to make a proper pic,  in Sweden the clock will soon strike midnight and my school starts in two days.

Finlay thank you for making this competition its a very god practice /Alexander.

Goodness! I can’t believe I’ve gotten so much done in 2 days. I don’t think I’ll be able to do everything I’d like to with the remaining time (so I’m still going for the jam), but I’m quite surprised, I didn’t think that something like this was at all achievable for someone at my skill level. I am happily disproven

Anyway, I’m not calling the game done just yet. I’ve made progress though.

The bulk of what I did today is not visible in this screenshot.

But the bulk of what I did today also doesn’t take very good screenshots!

I am really done with my game. For the third time I dared to make a game, and for the third time I submitted it. But every single time it feels exciting anew.

The floor is made of LAVA

So here is a screen of my game. As promised I really made my Moustache Chick. She is real and she is awesome. Go moustache chick.

Also I used my theme of hearts, the floor is made of LAVA. And, as you can already see in the screenshot, there is one hell of a lava floor in my game. Even worse, the lava level grows steadily. But that’s just “Moustache chick in LAVA mayhem” being itself.

So check out my site here to play it. Oh, and while you’re already there, play it. It’s one tough game but has 8 static levels. And from there on it is one endless auto generated hell like you have last seen in Diablo. Good luck

I had a very limited mount of time for my first entry into Ludum Dare. Hence I submit this programming monstrosity:

http://www.physmo.com/ludumDare/

there is a link to the code on the page. Please do not attempt to learn from the code: it’s terrible! 😀

code: processing [java]

graphics: photoshop

nick / www.physmo.com

I’ve submitted Safari Park Escape; you can download it here.

I was way too ambitious, and it’s lacking all of the mechanics that were going to make it interesting (like individual inventories for each animal, random items, reinforcements in the battles, ranged attacks, fog of war, high scores…). But it is a complete (if limited) game, with various possible end states.

Anyway, time for bed. Not sure if I’ll come back to it to add all that stuff in (the code’s a disaster); I’ll see how I feel in the morning.

After WAY too little sleep and way too much programming my Ludum Dare 21 entry is finally done!

Even though this is the first stealth game I’ve done I gotta say it turned out quite nicely.

It only takes a couple of minutes to finish so why not give it a try?
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=3537

Anyways, a time lapse will be up in a couple of hours.

/HighQuality

I submitted Maze++. I’m quite pleased with it. I’m pretty tired.

Trying to avoid producing something the same old maze escape game while writing a maze escape game may not have been a good move, but I’ll wait for comments. If I’m lucky the extra features will keep this game interesting, despite it needing more work.

Bam! not that many status updates….why? server was DOWN :D. the brighter side of this actually is that it shows that a lot of people are in for LD, and that’s good stuff! thanks for the guys of LudumDare to take care of this matter so fast^^

so here are still a few images from before that i wanted to share. showing progress yesterday evening and some images i made with graphicsgale

It’s called Close Your Eyes.  I think it’s a fairly reasonable prototype for something. Who knows?! It’s time to go cook food!

Sitting in a quiet room, with the rain pattering outside and a clock ticking loudly in the corner, it’s hard to feel the type of catastrophe that my game is trying to convey. Likewise, when my character – pieced together from the photos I took earlier in the day – looks sanguine, it’s not ideal.

However, it’s a character, and it’s animated, and it will suffice.

Next, I’m adding some effects – hopefully no longer than half an hour. Then I’ll try and get a start and an end. And tweak the camera, and think of a name, and submit before the server crashes.

3.5 hours left… Then I have to go set up hosting for it.

Whee!

Added death, and multiple stages, corrected loading problems associated with both of those…

Two stages drawn. A little overly difficult… I’ll tweak damage and healing a bit.

Ok, I’m not really giving up. I’m at the point where I’m happy with the game and I know theres gameplay that I could edge out of it. However, due to growing frustration with it, I need to take a break longer than both the game proper and the jam have provided. I’ll definately be in for the next jam, and I’ll be sure to continue working on this game once my brain cools down.

Just a note about the level editor. I don’t have the paitence to add the planned ShipComponent adding functionality at this time, so if you for some reason feel crazy enough to create a level, use the existing level as an example. You’ll need to manually append a underscore and the locations of the components for it to work. Infact, at this point, you can pretty much mess with the game to any extent, since its all really just a framework manipulating the assets, allowing them to be interchangable.

Yay for modability I guess!

So my game, Vector Dash is done ! I kept a diary over the past few days of what I was working on. Along with the time lapse which can be found on my page, it might give some insight into what was going through my head.

1 day 21 hours 3 minutes left

I decided to go with an asteroids style game. You are trapped in an alien planet or ship or something and you have to navigate your way out
without touching the walls (or else you die). Also I will probably put in some things to shoot.

So far I have a small red triangle that moves vaguely asteroids ship like. Next up is the 2d camera system so my game isn’t confined to the screen.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8017/55861069.png

1 day 19 hours left

The 2d camera system is implemented, the player is now constrained to a textured level. Level texture tiling is not in place. Will decide later whether I want to do this or not, i’m not too sure. I am going to try and catch some z’s now and think about how I am going to implement the basic level format.

1 day 11 hours 14 minutes left

Just woke up. About to start work on the maze that the player is trapped within. Must get the core gameplay done within the next 12-16 hours or i’m dead.

1 day 10 hours 4 minutes left

Got level tile mapping in place and loading a layout of tiles from a bitmap produced in paint. Now for collisions 😀

1 day 4 hours 10 minutes left

Lots done since last entry. Achieved :-

+ Title screen
+ Restart after shipwreck
+ Multiple Levels
+ Game End Screen
+ Collisions
+ Basic shooting

Will begin work on other game elements now, like the enemys 😀

22 hours 32 minutes left

More achieved in the last six hours

+Particles
+Explosions
+Enemys
+Graphic improvement
+Global diffuse color
+Sound effects

Still lots to do. The next task is to fix the most annoying bug. The dodgy player / wall collision.

18 hours 54 minutes left

+ COLLISION BUG FIXED (WAHEY !)
+ Improved Title screen
+ Player / Turret collisions

I’m going to bed, will be prepared for final stretch tomorrow

8 hours 9 minutes 30 seconds left

Lots of updates

+ Revamped level design
+ Added level text
+ Improved visuals on the death message and level ended
+ Eated dinner

4 hours left

ALL FINISHED

I have uploaded the game, and published my entry as well as put the various videos on youtube. LD 48 #21 has produced the needed pressure to kick my butt into gear and i’m very proud of the end product.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=4933

Tags: LD48 #21 Finished Done

So it happened. It was in the hat. We have less than 4h and I have only a story, some basic movement, test tiles and a sprite what isn’t animates right. No question I can’t finish this and more over I’ll not give out such a shame to anyone.

But as I wrote in the only post I made before this. It’s the first time I try to make a game for the NDS. And the first time I worked with tiles not just on the NDS.

Btw I made a lot of code:

• – tileset loader (and learned tiles well)
• – sprite loader
• – sprite move handler (hardcoded, so it needs some generalization)
• – sprite animator (it works, just I use it wrong somehow)

The next LD will be a lot easier with all this already done and learned. I’ll finish it surely for Function and will put it on my website RBWorld with some programming  tutorial if requested.

It’s 0:30 am. I’m tired. I think I just watch notch how he finish his dungeon crawler before sleep.

Here is what I’ve got in one little screenshot:

Somehow, i still don’t know how. ( i think eclipse did it) All my images where deleted. i tried to recover them using an recovery tool, but it didn’t work
luckily i posted something for screenshot Saturday, so i could reconstruct the images easily… still it costed one hour precious time.

Unfortunately, this 48-hour game compo has been more of an 8-hour game compo for me, due to being out of town, packing to move out of here, etc. etc. etc.

But I’ve managed to get something going by limiting myself to a simple click-driven game with basic shape drawing and SFXR for sounds. I had planned on being more ambitious, drawing some artwork, and recording audio — but I didn’t have the time and motivation between everything else…

BUT I shall battle onward! Three hours to add a little polish and more gameplay variation. Excited to see what everyone else has come up with!