So we’re making a platformer!

Here’s a cool rain effect to kick off with! I already took care of sound effects and such.

We also have the basic ground sprite and some floaty white pixels.

Hi,

I won’t participate in the current MiniLD (no time), but here is something to inspire you all: Parity is a Flash animation I found years ago, perhaps even before 2000 … I don’t know. Back then I found it to be pretty scary, and if you dim the lights and turn the speakers up you perhaps will know why.

It’s dated, alright, but IMHO the animation shows why sound is very important for this MiniLD’s theme.

yeaaaa-

I would love to see someone make THIS game for the horror miniLD:
(the winner earns a bottle of “redrum”)

(from http://gametoilet.posterous.com/gametoilet253-shining-flag-come-and-race-with)

So Mati and Itamar came up with a sketch for a puzzle, here it is! 😀

Yup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue4rOCNZd8E

I’m using chronolapse to do my timelapse, and I was wondering what I should set the capture rate to, as well as the frame rate for the video…

What do you guys think?

This would probably be my second animation.. ever. Finished one at least. I’ll hide these behind the more button as they’re rather big. First and second drafts:

And the semi-final sketch:

I’m in!

After a fairly successful run in this past Ludum Dare (#38 humor, #39 theme, #57 innovation), I’m giving the MiniLD a go.  My goal this time is to finish the mechanics with enough time to spare to actually put in graphics and sound. I guess the theme is perfect for that- while I know I’m going to have a tough time with horror, if you don’t have graphics or sound, you don’t have horror.  It essentially forces my hand in the direction I want to go!  I have less of a coherent idea this time than last LD, though… I guess it’s time to do some research.

where doing it man

where MAKING THIS HAPEN

It’s not.

I am currently teaching myself java coding, (believe it or not I’m in Elementary School) so I would be pleased to know any tips. In fact, I recently commented on Notch’s PoC about using one image for multiple GUI’s. That would be an answer I really want.

Tags: java, please help, starting, starting java

Good morning everyone,
I am happy to say: I will give it a shot. I am in. HOORAY. Fun. Coffee’s ready. Make games.
Will focus on making this a horrific experience rather than a horrible one ^^

Let’s do this. Good luck to everyone!

Theme & Ideas
The theme is just wonderful. I love it. There are a lot of possibilities game-design-wise, but it all can go over board if the setting ain’t right. So: what could horror game mechanics be? As we heard in the talk (someone posted the video yesterday) by one of the Amnesia guys it is essential not to give the player means to fight back. I like the idea of being chased around a lot.

Lately I have been hearing about Roland Barthes a lot. I will try to make somewhat of a multiform-something, so that there isn’t a single solution or a single “storyline” in that game. Wait a minute: I just realized this would get too big.
Stay small, stay focused!

What is possible in the given time? I am off to look for my mechanics…

I had entered my game “The Prisoner” for the All Talk mini-LD #27. Although it took some time (an additional 2.5 months — I had to rewrite the engine), I did finally finish my game. The final version can be played here.

Here’s how the new UI looks:

Tags: final

A good factor of horror is the player’s wild imagination. We took that in account in our game. Actually, the player may interpret the game however they’d like.

You’ll see in the game for yourself.

Mini-LD happening, starting now.  I might’ve done little bit of work earlier …but let’s keep that just between you and me, alright!

Here’s a little screen.

Blitz and I will probably not be in the Mini LD \\, because I need a lot more time to learn. My “learning project” is going to be a small platformer with the main character as a popsicle. It’s basically going to have everything I can fit, and everything I learn. If you’re interested, here’s where I’ll be keeping my progress: http://www.create-games.com/project.asp?id=2203

Edit: Here’s a video of me playing the first(and only) level!
Level 1 of Boris the Popsicle!

Tags: boris, popsicle, the

I just want to ask if my graphics are LD worthy. If not, I will have to get an artist!

Judge my graphics!

That is the name of my MidiLD project this weekend.

I have the beginning mechanics worked out.  NPCs can walk around. If they are insane, they open the windows and let the ghosts in. Oh noes!!! |(0.0)|

The graphics are from another visual novel I did last year.  I am hoping to redo them tomorrow.  Gameplay first!

Susan

indie(Radio); Broadcast #15 starts in 5 minutes. We’re doing an interview with Maple, who was one of the members who made Next Time I Won’t Trust The Man In The White Van.

If you’d like to listen in, please go to http://www.indieFunction.com/radio.php. If you’d like to talk to us during the show, please jump into our IRC channel, #indieFunction on the irc.afternet.org network: https://qwebirc.afternet.org/?channels=indieFunction.

-Bret Hudson

Quick note to everyone who wants to participate:

You can’t test your own scary game. You already know when there’s a scare, a creepy moment or a scary sound. You cannot tell whether it’s a good chill down the spine or not.

To overcome this, you need a small group of testers, of various reactions and tension. This way you’ll be able to tell if your game’s a good scare or not.

One of my testers stopped playing in the middle.

Good luck to everyone and can’t wait to see the entries! 😀

Agh I am so glad I finally made some progress in my code.
This was the absolute proof to myself that “you sir, suck at coding” (me talking to myself – not to offend anyone). I mean all I wanted to do was some gravitational pull influencing movement. Oh hells. This is definiteley going towards horrible ^^

Anywho – here’s Mr. Polar-Freud:

So now on to the rest. Big things await. Try gettin’ some actual gameplay in there – then ART! (and then ofc sound which is essential to this theme)

I’ve got a little bit done, I’ll upload a test version in a little bit…

It’s more of a tech demo at this point…

Screenshot!

that’s 10 AI moving randomly every other frame, I need to expand the light, you can only really see the character…

Tags: screenshotsaturday

If only I knew when I stopped being productive. Anyway – at least there’s something to show in the ol’ graphics department – again trying around with some color effects.

So this is the “game” thus far… I wanted to set my game during the day – heavily relying on fog (much like SIlent Hill I think).

I am wondering how such (<-) a color style can contribute to the feel / perception of horror and whether this is gonna be a horror game after all. It sure doesn’t look like it yet, although I considered the theme rather carefully I probably didn’t spend enough time on preproduction. This very much looks like an experiment – I hope I can finish and am eager to find out about it’s results.

Good night for now!

I got a first version done, with a first level, I think that’s it for tonight!

Check it out here!

Let me know of any issues please!

Tags: prerelease

I technically have a game.

http://www.thecatsweb.com/AllAreInvited/

I need to do the artwork and add sound effects and generally make it scarier.

Night all!

Susan

I began writing the novel a few days earlier, maybe I should start typing,
 I'm about to finish...
 
 The night is turning to day, but I can't place the words on the typewriter,
 so I get up from the desk, then walk to the window to lit a cigarette...
 and right there and then the break of dawn.

I know this sounds like some old, worn and tired Cat Stevens song, but maybe,
 somehow, this is the right inspiration.
 
 Did you ever wake up to find things changed, a day like every other day,
 yet the dawn breaks at a slightly different angle, forever changing your
 notion of time?

This is the intro to my game, I feel like I've got a terrific story going, yet I do not
 have a clue how to make something like "Typing of the Dead" in Flixel.
 
 I got to be able to turn the story strings into an array, then check if the player has typed
 the proper key, but for that I need to check the array and asign to each string to a
 FlashEvent.keyCode or something like that.

 Does anyone have an idea on how to do this?

Hi all, please check out my beta version of my new game and plz report any issues. You can find the game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-29/?action=preview&uid=6681

Time Lapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs8fD9-27mw

I’ve submitted it but it doesn’t show up and the form is gone.. I’m assuming it’s a bug.

Anyway, while I sleep collect my thoughts for a better, fancier post with words in it that people will understand, you can play ‘Redeye’ here:

PLAY REDEYE

So, Cosmic Heist was my entry for the recent Ludum Dare compo. It was a major success by my reckoning, as it was completed in time. That aside, however, I would like to write a little about how things went.

What went right

I spent some time coming up with a couple of interesting(ish) ideas, but ended up throwing them out before settling on what became Cosmic Heist. When I designed the game that actually ended up being made, I actually cut out tons of things, and cut even more as I developed it. This is one area that I really want to improve (I, like many others, am horrible at the “cutting things until it’s right” part), and I feel I made some good progress during this compo. I was able to reject tons of ideas, some good, some bad, but all non-essential.

I had a decent personal code base to start from, and already knew all about the language, libraries, and tools I used beforehand, so I was able to jump right in.

I left some time for play-testing and bug fixing/tweaking near the end, but ended up not needing very much of it. The game was small and simple enough that it wasn’t too buggy by the end, and my wife and I tested it some as I worked on it anyway. However, I would definitely leave this buffer time again anyway, because it really kept things stress-free.

The menus ended up looking/working/sounding great, and I added a cool animated menu background near the end that I really liked. I’ll probably use some of the work that went into that stuff off into the future in other projects.

The music turned out to not suck as much as I thought it would. That was actually my highest-scoring area in the competition, and I am still somewhat unsure what to make of that. This was my first time really making any music, and I don’t really have experience playing/reading/etc. music either. But it doesn’t sound too bad, so I am counting that as a nice success.

The controls are really fluid, and are my favorite part of the whole thing by far. The way you control the ship is great, and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I actually didn’t spend much time tweaking that, and by implementing everything I needed for it, I had a whole system for various enemy ship movements, too.

What went wrong

The player’s ship is a bit oddly shaped. This makes it hard to see where you are going. I didn’t realize this at all (duh! isn’t it obvious! the ship points in the direction I drew it to point!) until people began commenting on it. Certainly something that would need to be fixed.

Some people kept looking for the shoot button. I didn’t make it very obvious (at all) that there is no shooting in the game. You just pilot your ship, and enemy ships try to plow into you.

There were a couple of features I wanted to get in, but had to cut due to time constraints. I wanted enemy ships to shoot at you, and every level was supposed to start at a shipyard, from which you had just stolen a ship.

There might be a problem with the Linux build of the game, as one person mentioned they couldn’t get it to run. Unfortunately, it runs fine for me, but I only have two machines to test it on, and they are both almost identical in both hardware and software. If anyone has or can test the game on Linux and tell me if it a) explodes, b)doesn’t run at all, or c) runs fine, I would greatly appreciate it.

Conclusion

All in all, as I said, I was very pleased with the outcome, and I even got some people to play my game, so that was really exciting. I hadn’t ever participated or followed LD until now, so I didn’t have any idea what to expect. I honestly didn’t think anyone would even see my game! Thanks to everyone who rated mine. One thing that I regret is that I didn’t have time to rate any games myself. I did play a few, and they were all great. Next time, I want to set aside some time to rate a good number of games.

Links

Ludum Dare entry

Cosmic Heist on Cheese and Bacon (my website)

Cosmic Heist on Google Project Hosting (MIT License)

Tags: 2D, C++, compo, LD21, linux, postmortem, Windows

Idea

My ld21 entry urth scored high in innovation (4th) but not so well in everything else, and worst of all in graphics (267th). The general goal was to improve on that, while still keeping to 48 hours only.

Theme

I’ve made this to fit 5 jams, namely:

– miniLD 29 – horror
– GPCv8 (Game Prototype Challenge) – armor & pollination
– Mysticism Pageant (Super Friendship Club) – mysticism
– Story Game (Experimental Gameplay Project)
– Music Interpretation Contest (GameJolt)

Most of the themes are reflected by story rather than gameplay, which can be rather confusing as the story isn’t obvious from the beginning, and takes quite a bit of playing to sort out.

What worked

I’ve never finished a platformer before, any my closest attempt was a worms clone 6 or 7 years ago which I lost due to a HDD failure. As a general rule I’m not very fond of platformers in general, but I wanted to walk a mile in the other man’s shoes before criticising him (after all, if it went badly I’d be a mile away and have his shoes). The good news is that I now have reusable code (sort of) which I can indeed reuse should I chose to make more platformers.

Similarly, I’ve only done 2d frame by frame animation once or at most twice before, so I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to pull that off in so little time.

I’ve tried to add a sense of anticipation to the presence of the red eyes. I’m not sure how obvious the effect is, but the light intensity fades and movement becomes blurred as redeyes approach. The intent was to provide a subtle hint which would be picked up subconsciously and trigger an undefined sense of discomfort.

I’ve also discovered workarounds to some problems I’ve had before. Behind the scenes stuff.

What didn’t work

3D failed me once more. I wanted a 2D platformer with 3D scenery, but I ended up with a 2D platformer with 2Dscenery rendered in 3D. Problems ranged from the mesh not fitting properly, to blender not saving texture information to obj files and to unnatural slowdowns in rendering. Maybe next time.

I intended to have a background consisting of sliding panels which were to give a sense of depth. Mountains, plants that sort of thing. I noticed that I wasted too much time on that with no respectable results and decided to abandon it. It’s probably better that I did.

Sounds were also supposed to change as red eyes approach, heavy breathing was supposed to take place in darkness, but the sounds would get cut out. I rarely work with sounds so I need to look into that. Good thing lmms saved the day with some handy effects.

The death screens have a slight screamer effect which I dislike, so I tried to fade them in to smooth transition. They are intended to look disturbing and not intended not to shock. I’m not sure if I succeded.

My laptop (brandishing the cursed gma 500) apparently runs the game at half the speed. Since playtesting was done on that, the end result might be a bit too fast. I need feedback on that. In addition I had to change renderers in the last minute as there seems to be an issue with processing and openGL applets.

Fun was had.

Feedback, positive and negative is equally welcome.

Game page | Play directly

collected 11 diamonds and could escape from the prison

Horror, that is. Creating a feeling of suspense, dread and perhaps unpleasantness.

In my game you have to find 3 artefacts to open the door to the outside. You move in darkness, carrying a small lamp. Lanterns light up when you reach them and are save havens, where you cannot be attacked by the monsters, which chase you once you come to close to them.

I like the idea of the light-element, which not only helps you see, but also repells the monsters. Unfortunately, this game needs way to much polishing to be in an acceptable state.

I still learned some interesting things though :-), and will put this in the “prototype”-folder.

I’m looking forward to playing the other games, and seeing their takes on the genre.

-Matthew

Tags: 3dsmax, max, unity, unity3d

Second (pre)release, and there is now a level 2, and the cutscene moves automatically (before you needed to hit enter, but I forgot to tell people that!)

New version has been uploaded, I hope you guys like it!

And so I’m done… I’m kinda happy with the result,  I managed to finish all I planned (which is  first time  for me). This time I’ve concentrated more on the atmosphere and less on the coding… although I spent about half a day writing one stupid program for map generation… If it went faster, I could have more levels and/or content…

Kudos for everyone who’ll guess how I got the  idea for the  “blinkers”  

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-29/?action=preview&uid=5242

The game didn’t come out too good since we ran out of time, but expect better results next time! 😀

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-29/?action=preview&uid=6685

I started on something, but it wasn’t going anywhere, and I ended up getting sucked back to my older project, which is driving me mental and I want to get finished asap. Might give another try on tuesday : P

Look forward to playing all of the other entries tomorrowwww (and throughout the week as they may come in).

(also, big thanks to whoever modified the sticky post to link to submission stuff : D . I LOVE YOU MY SECRET ASSISTANT )

Trace_Dump

MOAR PROGRESS YAY!

All the game logic is finished (as you can see from the beautiful trace dump screenshot), now it’s time to give feedback to the player, add graphics and finally sound

The only thing i’m lacking is an XML parser for the text, but I can put the current short story in there without much hassle, yet it would be neat to make the code reutilizable so I’ll leave that for later.

I finally finished Sleeping dogs lie!

Try it out, and let me know what you think!

Timelapse is here

So I’ve been working on a game where you’re walking around in the dark with creepy things that can hear you, and know you’re there.  And will chase you around screaming.  I started with the idea that horror is about the anticipation and avoiding the scary things.  I’m not sure how that’s going so far. 

It’s nearly 48h since I started, and the core is done, but I’m missing important parts of the game.  It isn’t really playable at this point.  On top of that, I’m feeling super awful like I’m coming down with something.  I probably need to go to sleep.  If I feel better tomorrow, I’ll take advantage of the MiniLD “or whatever” schedule and finish this up.  I’d really like to actually submit something…

I just couldn’t finish in time. Even if I worked through the rest of this night –  I just wouldn’t be able to pull it off. The scale of my game was too big I guess. So I pretty much failed – still, I am planning to finish this in the next few days – but I wasn’t able to fit it in 48h.

The game is called Shroud. In it you control an old man awakening at his campsite in the middle of a foggy forest. In search of his fellow travellers he gets lost between the trees. Behind the fog there’s something watching and waiting.

Anyway here’s a small preview of what I got this far:

Good luck to the rest and congrats to those who already finished =)
And off to bed I go… until next time!

Well, I was planning on doing something for this mini compo, but real life caught up with me. With half of my Saturday gone and almost all my Sunday taken up, I pretty much got nothing done.

I was planning to make a text adventure game (old-school, think Zork) in Inform 7. In my idea for the game, the player is in an old hotel which has lost it’s electricity. There is also an unspecified monster in the room next door, which will eventually wander around after the player.

Well, that was the plan. I ran into some problems early on, which, when combined with the burden of real life, kept me from finishing in time. My next couple of days look busy too, so probably no real development time there either.

Sorry I couldn’t finish. I think I will continue to work on the idea sometime, and will make absolutely sure I have time to compete in LD #22!

Good luck to everyone else!

So, I didn’t manage to produce a finished game within the timeframe of 48 hours. In that sense, this miniLD was a “fail” for me.

I did however manage to make something which I think has some potential. I think I’ll carry it over to October and thought that while it’s not ready to submit, I’d drop what I have here.  Try it out, it has issues and there are no winning/losing states, no animations, but tell me what you think, how the controls feel and whatever, that’d be a help going forward with this project!

Web-version (Flash) here

Comment here or send your thoughts via twitter!

See ya in October Challenge!

Official time is over, was on a holiday this weekend. Need to go to school. Need to work. But still, I have some time so I will try to make a game before the submit time ends.

What I have so far:

• An idea
• Some graphics
• More graphics
• Very small start of code
• And a idea in the trashcan.

So I had this idea, maybe give us a code to implement into our game that awards the player’s profile (if exists) with a custom trophy, just like you can do now (manually)?

This could be a great feature for the ludum dare website, as it would attract more people to join and it would be fun to have! 😀

Okay, my entry’s up:

Afraid of the Dark

Windows and Linux-64 builds.  Linux has been up for quite a while.  Man, building on windows is a pain.

Anyway, I didn’t get a chance to do as much with the game as I would have liked (so it goes), but I had fun exploring creepy being stalked around a dark room dynamic.

Still going on the Mini-LD. It’s my first time, so I figure I’ll get the blatant cheating out of the way now; it’s been more than 48 hours on the wall clock. I probably only have 12 hours of dev time so far, so I’m running with that. =)

Javascript is a tricky mistress/master when you’re not accustomed to working with it. I’m learning the CraftyJS framework at the same time (for the second time). Got the concept for a data-driven horror-ish story game pretty well worked out and more than half-implemented. It’s almost interactive now.

The premise is that the player is a location that has experienced something wrong. My sample case is a house which experienced a tragedy. Some folk have chosen to spend the night at the house, and it’s your job (as the house) to communicate the tragedy to the occupants through metaphysical actions. Your basic set of actions can produce different outcomes based on the person and the part of the house they occupy. The player learns the story through the experiences of the visitors.

Tags: craftyjs, horror, javascript, location

My first Ludum Dare game, Madness, may seem a little cheaply made, but I have reasons why it doesn’t have power-ups, or enemy intelligence:
I started working on it on Saturday after tea, just after installing openSUSE. I added the basics and implemented lasers. On Sunday I was near to completion when the computer froze and wiped the game (i was editting it when it froze – thankfully a back-up was made of it on Saturday) – I had to try and re-implement enemies in an hour, which I did.
However, they deleted themselves after like 3 frames. So then I go on to Monday, which was school, tea, computer 1h, scouts 2+1/2h, computer 1+1/2h.
So, that’s why my entry’s not so good and not so well-developed as the others.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off the game’s lost and won screens and add in more enemies – I promise!

Tags: 2D, explanation, game, javascript, madness

Too much traveling around the country with shitty satelital internet conectivity due to Fiestas Patrias (and being to drunk around the clock due to them too), made me miss the mini LD deadline.

But I’ve made some great progress on the “typing of the dead” like input, so I’m gonna definately get the game into Experimental Gameplay Project. (I would love to give you a playable version, but if I do, it would comepletely spoil the surprise ending :-p)

With only few hours left before I go to my bed a quick update of what I have until now. Want to finish this, but I go sailing tomorrow. But this is what I have until now: http://games.corne.info/AngryBat/1/

What works:

• Jumping humans
• Flying bat (controll with arrow keys)
• And thats it.

Lucky I had enough time to finish this game. Didn’t had enough time to add what I wanted to add but it is a working game

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-29/?action=preview&uid=4506

There are already some nice games I hope you like mine too.
Now I go to bed. Good night.

Corné

Tags: flashdevelop, haXe, paint.net

So many placeholders. My goal for this evening is to finish the “go” button logic that executes your actions on the characters and rooms each night, dress up the placeholders a bit, and get a story put together that can evoke some horror from the player. That’s probably enough to submit for this, though not enough to satisfy me. I might keep polishing it for a while after the mini-LD with an eye toward this month’s Experimental Gameplay and Super Friendship Club.

I was able to formalize the story module format last night. Everything’s in CSV spreadsheets; characters, rooms, story fragments, story-specific game configuration… This lets me almost completely separate content from logic, and should let a person build a story module without learning/modifying the code.

Screen shot below. That’s the basic interface once you’ve started a story. Clicking a room gives you a menu where you can “lock in” an experience type for the night (e.g. noises, dreams, physical manifestations). Once the actions are locked in, the “Begin” button will start the night. You’ll get accounts of the night’s goings-on from the characters the next morning, which will help you understand the story you’re trying to tell them.

Very nearly operational

Tags: craftyjs, horror, javascript, location, placeholders, screenshot

Hello everyone! I just started using Love/Lua the other day. I’ve gotten through all the ole HELLO WORLD programs and such, but I’m having a really hard time finding ways to learn the language. I played a few of the games on here and it’s only heated my excitement to start using this! I’ve got a few years of C++ under my belt so I’m no stranger to programming nor syntax. I’m just looking for a baby-steps intro into doing more exciting things. Thanks!

Well, the title says it all really. Anyone interested in doing a relaxed collab for the October challenge? (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/09/27/the-october-challenge-begins-a-guide/)

I’d be primarily interested in collaborating with an artist, seeing as my artistic skills are very lacking, but I think it’d be nice to work with someone else, regardless

I work in AS3, so if you’re a programmer too, I’d obviously prefer if you did too. 😛

Oh, and if you want to see some of my stuff just check out http://natpat.net 😀

Gah.  I spent about 48 hours on this last weekend, but the collision (which SHOULD have been simple) took me so long to debug (and there are still plenty of bugs) that I didn’t get any time to include actual horror… or gameplay, for that matter.  I’ll put up what Flash-work I got so far, but I’m done hacking this thing together.  See it here if you’re interested.

I was actually going for what McFunkypants jokingly referred to a few posts down- the horror of drowning.  That is, I noticed that sequences in many games when the player character can only be underwater for a certain period of time get really tense when the countdown clock is approaching 0 (as in Sonic 2, for example), so I wanted to capitalize on that and add some scary enemies, sounds, and music (I got one enemy done, but none of the sound/music, and I was SO looking forward to that).  Hold the arrow keys to swim slowly, and tap the spacebar to paddle once (tap repeatedly of effectively swim faster). The blue bar is the drowning meter, and the red is health.  I’m hoping the rest is self-explanatory.

The plan was to have the player swimming from surface to surface in order to breathe, as the paths between the surface areas got more difficult to navigate and infested with creepy stuff.  I only got to finishing one path, though, and a little stub branching off of it.

At least there’s the October Challenge… I’m looking forward to actually polishing a project for once.

Well I really need to sleep. But I feel like I need to finish some crappy game that I started, but it’s going to take forever. D;

Hello, I was thinking of making a flash game with someone, so if you what to work together post a comment below and will get right to it! (tell me what program you will be using) Ok that is everything I have to say goodbey now…

While studying OpenGL 2, which is gaining widespread availability in mobile devices, I released there were few free/open (as in: anybody can share and contribute) resources on the subject – and too many outdated documentation on legacy OpenGL 1.x.

So a few fellow contributors and I set up a new set of tutorials based on modern OpenGL, through the excellent Wikibooks project (CC-BY-SA).

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming

The code samples are in the public domain.

I bet quite a few LDers have something to say on the subject – we would much welcome proof-reading and comments

Hi! 64Digits is having its annual game making competition, Scary Four Digits.

There’s some (very) modest prizes up for grabs, but it’s mainly for fun and everyone’s welcome, novice or pro!

If you’d like to find out more please visit 64digits.com. Here’s a direct link to the comp:

LINK TO COMPETITION LINK TO COMPETITION LINK TO COMPETITION

Thanks!

im benjabby. i (attempt) to make games, but usually fail, i always give up, i have a series of games im working on, the Orcarage series, featuring orcarage; a strategy game. orcarage rpg; a platform rpg with about 50 classes :3 orcarage legacy; a SSB-like game. orcaragecraft; a minecraft inspired game :3 and finally orcarage-the board game, an isometric boardgame :3

I’ve been building a website for listing dame development events for a while now. It’s not finished yet but it’s starting to shape up, so I thought I could show it to you now.

The site has a neat calendar thing that shows all the events I know about. Clicking them shows a bit more information. Annoying time zone conversions are made for you. In addition, it has a feed that reminds you about the events two weeks (or when they are added) before they start.

Since the website is not finished yet, it has some problems and it’s missing features. Daylight saving time is causing troubles in conversions right now, but I’ll fix that later. Please let me know if you find any other bugs. I’ll add a way to change the time zone because it may not detect it right. Then I’ll need to add tags for events, so you could, for example, get notifications only about competitions in which you could use Python or have a prize.

Currently this is missing a name (just “Compos” now) and I hope you could help with that. Do you have any descriptive name ideas? I can’t buy a domain before I find a good name. And if you are interested in updating the content, contact me.

Click here to enter.

Only events that are available to everyone on the Internet are listed now. In the future, if others are interested, I might add a section for local jams too.

October is upon us, and it’s time to kick off the October Challenge 2011!

The October Challenge is a special Ludum Dare event I started last year. More and more people are making games today thanks to Game Jams and events like Ludum Dare. As a result, more and more people have declared “I want to start selling games too”. Well, it’s time to stop talking and start doing. Put simply:

Finish a game — Take it to market — Earn $1

That is your goal. That is the October Challenge.

Disregard all the usual Ludum Dare rules (no restrictions). Finish any game you previously made during a game jam, something else you’ve been working on, or heck, something entirely new. But we know you can make a game. Your goal, if you choose to accept it, is to not only make something, but to finish it and earn money from it. That’s all. No specific rules or platforms. Make good on that goal or promise to start selling games.

Finish your game before November 1st, and submit it to your respected market. That is the challenge. And once you earn your $1, you’ve done it! Easy as that. You’re now a pro.

I’d like to invite everyone to share resources and discuss markets and business models. I’ll help collect your links over the next couple days for others to find. If you need a place to start, you can check out this guide I wrote for last years event.

Also, do share your progress on your upcoming game with us here on the site. I’ll be opening a submission form soon to collect a list of completed games as they happen.

Keynote Invitation

What’s a Ludum Dare event these days without a keynote? Here’s me saying the same thing, in video, with strange editing and ambiance! Give it to your friends who HATE to read.

That’s all from me. No more waiting. Time to get started. Go go go!

Tags: keynote

I’ve been getting a number of messages about opportunities people can utilize to reach the goal, so I’ve decided to collect them in one place. If you’d like to share one, post a comment below or send a tweet to @mikekasprzak.

Opportunities

• PC (Windows & Linux) – Desura – Looking for quality indie games
• PC (Linux) – Gameolith – 90% royalty rate until December
• Web – Intel AppUp – First 200 quality apps win $250 USD

Launching or Closing Soon

• All – Independent Games Festival – Highly regarded event with cash prizes, due Oct 17th
• PC (Windows & Mac) – Indie City – New Indie Games portal coming soon
• Web (Flash) – Flash Player 11 – Launching Soon (3D). Release Candidate Available

Marketplaces

• Mobile (Android) – Android Marketplace – Android phones and tablets ($25 one time fee)
• Mobile (Android) – Amazon App Store – Amazon Fire Tablet (First year free then $99 year)
• Mobile (Apple) – iOS App Store – iPhone, iPod touch, iPad ($99 year)
• PC (Mac) – Mac App Store – Apple’s built-in App Store ($99 year)
• PC (Windows & Linux) – Desura – PC Game and Mod storefront with a Steam-like client
• PC (Linux) – Gameolith – Linux gaming store with 70% and 80% royalty rates
• Web (Flash & Unity) – Flash Game License – Put your games up for auction
• Web (Flash) – Flash Portals – Too many to list. Many can be contacted directly
• Web – Chrome Web Store – Sell content to Chrome browser users ($5 one time fee)

• Mobile & Web (Flash) – Blackberry Developers – Phones and Playbook Tablet
• PC & Web – Intel AppUp – Windows and MeeGo (Linux) devices
• Mobile & Console – Microsoft App Hub – XBLIG and Windows Phone 7 ($99 year)

Payments

• Amazon Payments – Payments powered by Amazon
• BMT Micro – Long time favorite of many PC/Shareware authors
• Google Checkout – Payments powered by Google
• Google IAP – In App Payments by Google
• Paypal – Old Faithful

Resources

• Mobile – Streaming Color’s iOS Developer Revenue Survey

… and my intro video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFY6-IsPs-Q

Hello Ludum Dare! I failed you last time. But this is a new challenge, with a bigger time span and new motivation! I have no idea what the game will be, but it WILL be finished this time. And I will make $1. That’s final.

Also, I recommend listening to the Binding Of Isaac soundtrack as you code. It’s quite soothing.

And I just said them. Here are some more words for you: I’m in.

I have no idea what I’ll be making, or for what platform, but I’m not going to let that stop me!

Right now I am thinking about making a flash game and getting the $1 via Kongregate ads, but I’m not sure how much it it possible to get like this. Does anyone else have experience with Kongregate and their ad revenue? I would be grateful for any pointers/tips.

Good luck and may the Source be with you!

This is my first interaction with any Ludum Dare, I’ve only heard of it recently, but I plan to enter the December competition and also this one.

I actually already have a game! (TAM TAM TAM)

But I always thought I would try to polish it more before releasing a paid version or doing any kinda of advertising. But I wanna participate in this challenge, so I’ll aim to make my game “payable”!

This is my game:

Link to the Android Market: Naipe Orders Free Beta!

The title screen of Naipe Orders

It’s an Android Game! I’m kinda of an story-centered game designer, so yeah. If you guys do play it, please leave your opinion on what it needs to be done(between a free and a paid version) to be worth an dollar!

Now we try to balance our lives between college and this challenge. GO!

Hey! I’m hoping that this will the motivation I need to get, you know, at least some semblance of a game up and running. A sidescroller where you play as a sort of bounty hunter exterminating an infestation in the bowels of the city. Perpetual boss battles, and hopefully some light RPG + strategy elements. Not the most original, I know, but I’m gonna focus on mechanics for now (+ art design, swanky style, etc).

I’ll keep any interested parties updated frequently here. I’m sorry it’s so ugly! D:

So I thought I’d finally get involved with Ludum Dare on the next gamejam but this October Challenge is great and I’m working on my game/tool already so why not start now!

I’ll be working on a game tool named CraftStudio which someone called “the Minecraft of game engines“. It’s a multiplayer tool for making games, in real-time. Instead of just terraforming maps à la Minecraft, you can also build your own cubic 3d models collaboratively, paint them and (will be able to) setup your own behaviors, scripts and stuff. You could call it a “multiplayer low-end Unity” and you wouldn’t be far off! It’s for all of us people who like to craft games (& movies) just because we can, and I’m building it with newbies in mind! (you can tell I’m excited by the number of exclamation marks I’m putting in this post!!!)

A Super Meat Boy model built in CraftStudio!

Right now I’ve already pushed out a free pre-alpha build (that you can grab at http://craftstud.io/). The basics for modeling are in but it’s pretty limited. I’ll push (automatic) updates about once a week.

So, my self-devised goal for this October Challenge will be to get CraftStudio out of pre-alpha into alpha land, and start selling it at the same time!

You can follow me at @elisee (more general stuff) or at @craftstudiodev (exclusively CraftStudio-related!)

Tags: craftstudio, game tool, october challenge

This will be my first entry into a game competition, but I have just 3 hours/week for game dev, so I’ll give myself a year.

Got a whiteboard this week for my home office so i could put some planning on there for the October challange!

Not 100% yet on my focus (i will spend a day or 2 to look at my current projects and see what’ll be feasible to finish with 90%+90% until the 24th to have a few days to actually make money and be possibly approval time for some App Store), got my LD20 entry that i’ve pondered on porting and some other projects that i feel have gotten somewhat on their way. My failed LD21 entry is also high on the list since it had great potential, shouldn’t be too work demanding and should work great on iOS.

Let’s see where we end up!

Cancer Wars 100% of revenue for cancer charity!

Going to put Cancer Wars up for the October Challenge but with a twist the game is for charity, it’s already out there on Kongregate, so you can play it there and know that all add revenue is going to charity.

It’s made with Unity but is not quite 100% complete, please play it because I could use some helpful feedback on what it needs to give it the best chance to make the most money for Cancer Research UK.

Will work on it this month and look to launch it on PC / Mac and Mobile platforms by the end of this month!

I’m in!

I only recently found LudumDare however I am incredibly excited to enter the October comp.

Anyway I’ll update on here along with others through development, I will also be updating on my website : http://www.chrisella.com

Good-luck all!

Courrier of the Crypts will have tough time delivering the letter this time!

I’ve never made a single buck with game development so far and the October challange is going to be a new experience for me. On Ludum Dare compo #20, I’ve made this Courier of the Crypts game that had only 5 maps which were boring, with no hard puzzles or anything else so I’ve decided to start working on the remake of this game, which will feautre more mechanics, new graphic style (as you can see on the picture) and whole bunch of interesting maps. Goal isto earn that 1$ at the end and have another polished, fun and finished game.

If you wish to know more about future of the young courrier, follow the path into the dungeon (which is nothing more than my blog ^^ )

Here I come!

A couple months ago I started playing with Flash and Chevy Ray’s FlashPunk. It was much easier to get into than I imagined, in part because of the great folks at FlashPunk.net and the active forum. Flashpunk, Abel Toy’s skeleton, and code from the forums helped me lower the learning curve without having to start at the ground floor, and perhaps giving up before seeing any real progress.

One of the projects I started is a side-scrolling platformer. I originally worked with my own code based from Abel Toy’s skeleton and learned quite a bit. I knew I was reinventing the wheel, and eventually moved to Noel’s APE – Advanced Platform Engine and Matt Thorson’s OGMO Editor. I’ve had a game idea running through my head for the past few weeks and have been thinking about moving forward with an implementation. This is where the Ludum Dare October Challenge comes in.

The October Challenge is a great motivational tool. Watching everyone come up with ideas, suffer through problems, make progress and come out the other end is great.

My goal for the month is to finish the game and put it online. I don’t plan on making any money from it, however it won’t hurt to shoot for that $1 goal, so I’ll throw some ads on the page. If I am happy with what I make, and it passes a gauntlet of my friends, perhaps I’ll submit it to a game portal.

The idea is something akin to Master Blaster meets The Legend of Zelda meets Mega Man. The player has just docked with a large capital ship after suffering some damage to his own little freighter/fighter. The larger ship, however, has just been attacked by aliens and what was originally supposed to be a simple repair and depart turns into a quest to find and collect parts, solve puzzles and save the capital ship from the invaders. Before the end, the player will have gone from the docking bay to the holds to the bridge to the depths of engineering, and everything in between..

So far, I already have some modifications to APE.  The first one I did was to create an alpha layer customized for each level so I can make some of them dark, like deep within the capital ship where the worst problems live. The follow up modification was to create light objects to attack the darkness and create ambiance. The second modification to APE was to give the doors a target. By default, APE goes from level 1 to level 2, etc. My doors have a target world and door, and when you go through them it loads that world and automatically puts the character to the matching door. This allows the player to visit the world in a non-linear fashion.

I have a little art done. Most of it is borrowed from my previous platform attempt and has a different theme, so it won’t make it past the art phase at most, and should be replaced bit-by-bit as I work on each of those type of objects. I want the style of the game to not be very cartoony, but of course, with 32 pixel by 32 pixel tiles, it’s not going to be anything close to real, so we’ll see how it ends up. I think I will end up being the artist, as I have no idea the extent of what will be required at this point and it’s hard to direct an artist without proper concept art and art design docs. If I do feel like I can bring an artist on board, I have a friend who I think will do nicely.

I expect to be challenged in regards to time. There may be some technological issues, I’m sure, but I think it will always come down to time. If things get tight, I may have to scale back on the size of the capital ship. I hope by the time I start feeling the pressure, I will have already completed a majority of the game engine.

October officially starts in a few hours. My first steps from here are to add more player abilities, like running and crouching. The basics of the gameplay need to be completed in the first two weeks, if not sooner, so I can start spending time working on level design and art.

So now I get back to FlashDevelop and the project code-named ‘Ship.’

The first concept art sketch of the Ship, the setting for the game.

Well, I’ve never made a single buck out of anything, really, and now I’m gonna try doing it with… a shader 😛 I can’t tell you too much yet, but it looks pretty cool, I won’t say unique but definetly interesting, and I’m just gonna try and make a game out of it and see what happens!

If I have anything more constructive to show I’ll show it here, after you’ve given me a dollar 😛

Good luck to all other particicicipants!

Long long ago ( in a galaxy far far away? ) I started a game for Mini LD 11, called Little Quirks.

Sadly, I didn’t get it finished and it highlighted all manner of issues with my engine at the time, and made me realise it was on it’s way out ( though considering this was 2009 it took me another year or so to actually act on it! )
It also crucially gave me the kicking I needed to start using source control for Ludum Dare projects, as a lot of Little Quirks’ code has been lost to the God of Hard Drive Crashing.

I always meant to go back to it, as it was a nice simple game and was fun enough even just to watch the little guys clamber over things. Granted it perhaps borrowed rather heavily from Lemmings, but my original design did differ in that you could never directly manipulate the Quirks – you could only manipulate their surroundings. This meant modifying the insides of the cavern itself, creating helper objects like springboards, and traps to deal with the nasties lurking about that’d do harm to your Little Quirks. It also opened up a few other interesting ideas that I’d have loved to pursue within the same context.

Well, now I have no excuse! 😀
My October Challenge will be to resurrect the Quirks, and get it in a sell-able state, and explore these other ideas that I had!

Now to figure out a platform…

Thanks everyone for your generous contributions! It’s awesome seeing the community come together to help keep this site afloat! The FUNdraiser is now over, so may your year be filled with many 48-hour game jams!

The donation system is still available if you really want to contribute more. At this point our hosting should be covered for over a year, so contributions above and beyond will be used at the organizers discretion. (I’ve been thinking about buying a pair of giraffes …) But really, we’ll probably keep a hefty buffer in case our hosting costs go up again After the optimization we did to the site, though, I’m hoping our costs will stay under control.

I just want to say a thanks again, this has been an awesome year for Ludum Dare and I can’t wait to see what happens in 2012!

-Phil
P.S. a special thanks to PoV (Mike Kasprzak) for setting up the donation system! It worked great!

Small gfx teaser for my October Challenge project Courier of the Crypts (CotC) . Yeah, main element (lighting) is missing here but what I want to show are the new tiles. Do you like ’em? Yes, no? I want to hear more 😀

Soon, I’ll post game feautres and differences between old (LD#20 version) and new, upcoming one so stay tuned!

Tags: Cotc

For the October challenge I’ll be finishing an iOS game I started last month titled “Haunted Hallway”. It’s a 2.5D platformer with an infinite procedurally generated level. The goal is to last as long as you can running from the spooky ghost wall of doom. It’s Halloween themed so I’m hoping to have it release a week or two before the 31st. I feel like I’m cheating ’cause I’m almost done with it, but if there’s enough time at the end of the month I might make a second game real quickly like for the challenge.

Here’s a screenshot of the iPad version:

This month I’ll be working on a platformer with lots of powerups and vehicles where you have to try to take over the world.

• Platforms
• Characters
• Blocks
• Interactivity
• Powerups

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the October Challenge this year. I wanted to join in on the fun last year, but I was way too busy back then. But I’m hoping nothing is getting in the way this year. Also, as of today I’m a full-time indie developer.

Before I get into what my game is all about, here is some back-story: I’ve grown up with strategy and simulation games like Sim City, Caesar or The Settlers and they have been and still are my favorite game genre. What I want to create is a peaceful strategy game which is not too complex for newbies, but not too simple for veterans. I had several prototypes in mind with different gameplay mechanics and what I settled on was a scenario in where the player has to build a settlement on sky islands.

Interestingly enough, I came up with the original sky island idea for LD #20 and after playing around with the idea for a bit, I decided to create a small prototype while I was at BIGJAM in Berlin. While I was not as productive as I hoped to be, I got the basics done and decided to stick with the prototype. All in all, I worked about three weeks on this game so far. If you want to know what happened so far development-wise, click here to be redirected to the development blog.

If you liked the screenshot, I uploaded a very short gameplay video to Youtube last month if are interested in how the game looks like in motion. I also want to mention that I’m not working alone on this: Christian Storcks is doing the music (a short preview of that is in the video I linked in the last sentence) and Jesse, a friend of mine, is helping me with some coding, in particular scripting and some backend stuff.

The game is going to be released for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. I am planning on starting pre-orders by October 21st and I hope someone will buy the game.

Tags: simulation, strategy, wolkenwelt

Vote and create the best Ludum Dare Apps on the Ludum Dare App List. Think of what weird app that Darers would use. What would be cool to have? What would be an instant must use? I’ll post about the technical details of how to make Apps work in the future.

Make an iOS app 

What does the app do? A better version would be: Follow votes on a LD entry on a phone

Broadcast LD status updates through any medium

People have no idea what medium means. A better version would be: Broadcast LD status updates through any medium, including irc, rss, and twitter

Discover Commercial LD Games

This is not sentence capitalization. A better version would be: Discover commercial LD games

Hey folks… This is me throwing down the gauntlet on the october challenge. I did it last year, and made some good money, so why not do another round and see what I can come up with.

I have been working on a sequel to the project that I did last year, but not that hard. This year, I am doing a brainfuck interpreter for iphone, with 2 new opcodes that allow for waiting for a timing sync and playing a note on a synthesizer. I got the interpreter working pretty quick, and did a crappy interface for it and a really basic synth back in june. You can see a video of that version of it here. After I finished that, I realized that it would need a ton more work and shelved it while my real job took off.

I came back to it yesterday, and overhauled the graphics engine with a nice new sheen of vectory goodness:

I also started work on expanding it from a single interpreter, to 8 interpreters so that you can get a few different instances running at once with different synthesizers. I don’t really want to spend too long on this project, but I think I can jam out the synths in a day or two, and then get the file loading working, and that should be good!

I should mention that this is not a game, more of a music app, but that is where my skills lie, and I think this is closer to completion than any of the games that I did this year. Also I think that it is a bit easier to stand out in the music market than it is in the game market, so that is where I am going.

I’m going to make a decent attempt at this, I have this idea I’ve been “tinkering” with for a while now, and would like to actually finish it (For once :D).

Most of my updates will be posted on my blog, but I’ll post weekly snapshots over here as well.

As it currently stands, I’m currently playing around with the concept of an editor where players can (eventually) drag and drop components onto units.

The next step is to allow new components to be placed onto “mount points” that units have.

And finally, some (programmer) eye candy 😀

(It’s some concepts that I’ve got for a set that will focus primarily on allowing customisation by attaching attachments onto other parts, and so on (An attachment on an attachment, on an attachment?))

I got a blog too.

http://folischallenge.tumblr.com/ <- That one

I'll update there, and maybe twice per week here.

That's it.

I have been waiting for an excuse to finish a jam game that I made at this years No More Sweden Game Jam. Back then it was called Tap Tap RTS I couldn’t come up with a name :P). It’s a super simple and quite colorful one button Rock, Paper, Scissors inspired RTS game for two players. You can play it here: http://timgarbos.dk/TTRTS/ but to be honest, it got horrible instructions, the core mechanics are broken, and you probably wouldn’t get it 😉  However, I believe that it do have some potential

It lookse like this:

A month ago or so I spend an evening on rewriteing the core gameplay to work as intended. I also changed the art style and symbolics to something a little more fitting: the units are now Rock, Paper, and Scissors instead of box, triangle, and cirlce. I came up with the working title Hep Hap Hup, it is not really playable yet.

It is made in Unity and I haven’t decided if I should do a Kongregate version or an AppStore release. Any other ideas?

After writing my last entry, I found a tickle in my throat that turned into the flu and limited my time in front of the computer. I managed to do a couple things yesterday, like add running and crouching, with the different speeds and jumping abilities. This morning I made some minor modifications to allow stretching of the ‘moving’ platform. Baby steps.

My first major goal is to complete the player’s abilities. The sooner I can finish that, the sooner I can tweak things as I test. Today I want to make the built-in player abilities like double jump and wall jump toggle-able, as the first step to making them dependent on equipping an item. New abilities will of course open up new areas of the world.

I believe I have some issues with the lighting in regards to framerate. I may need to optimize my lighting code. This leads into another player ability, the lantern or flashlight, that I would also like to complete today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5L_2wfs8xs

Well, I spent the last day or 2 thinking of ideas and have come up with the idea of a combination of Lemmings and a tower defence with the tower floor idea of Tiny Tower with the art style of the old Apogee games of the MSDos era :).

You can place a finite number of friendly bots which stop enemy bots in their tracks. You require to stop the enemies for a few seconds to drain their battery and cause them to die. Strategy of placement will be key as there will be multiple floors in a tower and you have limited friendly bots.

Would really appreciate feedback, cheers

Here is my first design drawing :

Will be doing a Sand Castle Tower Defense Game for Android.

Well i have always wondered why more people have not done this.

with the XNA framework It has been made fairly easy to do a release on three platforms all at once.

Phone, XBOX , Windows.

there is even a marketplace for two of the platforms.

with IndieCity launching there is now a market place for the Windows Version.

Well as of now i have almost no Game so it is going to be incredibly tough to complete this but i will work hard on this

I will target Xbox / Windows First and see what time remains for the phone version..

www.yakyb.wordpress.com

Heya, I’ll be doing the Challenge as well!

Since I don’t want to spend my time writing, I’m going to just talk to myself on video.  I’ll post them here and at my website so you can join the fun.  Here’s the first one! 

Hi World,

My nickname is P3(Pirate Cat)! I’m programming my first game in Java.  I have been working with Java for about 3 months. I program in many other languages too. I have been programming for about 4 years. Sad I have never made a game. I’m right now reading Killer Game Programming in Java. If anyone knows of good java game programming books, videos, or websites, please leave a reply were I can find it!

😀 wish me luck!

P3,

Hey! I’ve decided to start a diary on my blog (which is, by the way, just a cool name for some boring blog posts). Nah, just kidding. Someone could find them interesting . I’ll write diary pages regulary about the development (drawing, programming, marketing, etc.) and how everything goes. There will be fresh screenshots and videos with each post so it’s worth following if you like what you see below. Regards!

Image from the Diary

Tags: Cotc, diary

I’ve started work on the October Challenge. I will be using my game from LD21 entitled Viral. My goal will be to release my Flash game on portal sites and earn my $1 through ad revenue.

Unfortunately, I’ve got a massive amount of work to do to have the game ready for a proper release. More than I originally had thought I had needed to do.

A quick todo list off the top of my head:

• Refactor huge chunks of the original code, replace hacks with real code, fix the huge bugs in my LD21 release
• Replace the poor art in the LD21 version with polished art
• Compose a song that is longer than 2 bars
• Add more gameplay in terms of miniature objectives to do while avoiding the monsters chasing you.
• Add in a winning condition for a level
• Add more levels
• Polish the game!
• Tie portal specific API to increase re-playability and allow easy access to persistent stats.

The art will be a bit of a challenge; I’m not the greatest artist in the world. I have dabbled in pixel art in the past, but not to the level that I’ll be working on. The music will take a significantly non-trivial amount of time as well.

I’ve been working on a game for quite some time now and this seems like it might help motivate me to finish it. My plan is to produce what essentially will be a demo for PC’s (Mac’s are personal computers too!) it will have the most basic functionality of my game and after October I will continue to develop and add features and possibly release mobile versions.

The game takes a music file and procedurally produces some ‘terrain’ from it. The player can then fly through this terrain and how they fly will affect how the track plays i.e. speed, pitch, volume, tone. I plan to have a sandbox game and a couple of game modes where the aim will be to keep a certain volume, by controlling your height, or similar.

I currently am able to fly around in 3 dimensions in the terrain although it is not textured yet and there isn’t much in the way of physics implemented.

Anxious to finish an actually polished game for once, I’m definitely entering the October Challenge.  My target platform is Kongregate, for two reasons. The first: I’m working in Unity this time, and since I lack a business, my own website, or any mobile device worth playing games on, Kong’s definitely the easiest way to get exposure.  The second: Having hosted things there before, I’ve seen how much a game makes in ad revenue, so the $1 itself looks like it’ll be a simple task.

My personal goal is to make a game that gets more players than the few hundred you get within the first 24 hours of posting any game on a web portal, and actually keeps a few of them coming back.  Basically, I’d like a jumping-off point to start a reputation.  Maybe, if all goes well, I can use the revenue to buy some decent hosting/domain registration and finally put up a website for my development projects.

The project I’ll be working on for the Challenge is a game I’ve been making on and off since the summer.  The theme is disorientation.  To this end, it’s an abstract first person shooter set in a 3D maze in zero gravity.  The most important part, however, is what happens when you manage to shoot an enemy.  Basically, this is an entire game’s worth of Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy.  I’d like to have several different effects that could be randomly activated in order to give the game a more chaotic feel- think Treadmillasaurus Rex. The range of screen effects I can use is rather limited, considering most of them are exclusive to Unity Pro, but I think I’ve got some good, feasible ideas.

This is what the game looks like so far:

It’s not much to look at right now, (and yes, that’s a Mandrill Maze shout-out lining the walls), but it’s functional. It randomly generates a maze of any size made out of cubic rooms, you can fly through it, you can shoot at things, things can shoot at you (the only enemies so far are those red squares on some of the walls- at the bottom is a bullet barely missing me), and you can reach a goal.  Now that I’ve done the basics of the game, I’m ready to test the visual effects that will form the main draw of the game.  Maybe I’ll do some basic lighting while I’m at it; it looks kinda dark at the moment. >_>  For the art, I’m thinking of doing something in the style of M.C. Escher, as that’d add a lot to the theme of disorientation (although I know it won’t be the first Escher-inspired video game).

I think the biggest design challenge for me will be balancing the difficulty.  I’ve noticed that, in games that gradually increase the difficulty of the game by adding speed, enemies, or chaos (like the aforementioned Treadmillasaurus Rex), if the difficulty ramps up too quickly, the player gets frustrated and leaves.  If the difficulty ramps up too slowly, the player gets bored and leaves.  If a game is balanced between the two, by the time the player gets overwhelmed, they’re hooked and will want to see if they can beat their previous level of endurance. I’ll probably have different difficulty levels to make this job easier, but it helps to be thinking about this.  I’ll not only have to balance the intensity of the visual effects for this purpose, but the frequency/strength of the enemies.  If either obstacle overpowers the other, the player becomes more focused on that one, which takes away from the chaos.

The working title is “Get Lost!”. Whaddya think?

Well, I decided that this would be a good way for me to actually finish a finished game… so…

So far, I gots a random shoot’em up IN SPACE!! It’s functional, has 3 enemy types so far (not actually shown :O), and the art’s pretty decent…

I still need to build a frontend, an actual HUD, fix some bugs, add more enemy types, balance its difficulty, add the bosses, add music and sounds, and add variety and possibly some story?

Anyway, progress is progress… and I need to make sure I have enough time to actually finish this…

My personal goal: To get enough to buy a Game Maker Standard and possibly Game Maker HTML5 (uses GMLite for everything)

Challenge? Hell yes!

I was getting nowhere with my previous LD entry remake, and eventually i cancelled it. Now, just when i need something new to work on, i see this!

What i will be working on is a concept i have lying around for quite some time, which i was refining every now and then, and apparently now is the time to bring it to life! I don’t want to spoil all of it just yet, but i give you this much: it involves horizontal shmup’ness in 3D ‘n shit! Better prepare for some bad ass shoot-out 😀

Here’s what i got so far:
SpaceHunter planetary prototype

So, how would i earn that $? Easy, you just preorder it (at some point in the near future :p).

Edit: How the heck do you embed youtube videos? >:O

Well hello there. I figured that Since I’m new I’d just do a little introductory post so that when I attempt to enter something people don’t wonder who the heck I am.

I’m CorruptOne, often abbreviated as CO, or occasionally people refer to me as Carbon Monoxide. I’m an aspiring game developer/programmer/artist. I originally ( 2007) started working with RM2K, for anyone who even knows what that was, but it was unfortunatly not meant for what I wanted to do.

Which brings me to the kinds of things you should expect out of me, game-wise. I’ve been playing Metroid and Zelda since birth,  I’ve gotten a bit enamored with roguelikes lately, and I love games that make you think. I do have somewhat of a bad habit of never finishing a game, but that’s really because I’ve never set out with the purpose of making a game, just learning to do bits and pieces so that I can make up a whole.

I’ll probably start posting updates about the October challenge soon, but for now, here’s my plan:

• Procedurally generated  \\I am not very good at static content
• Minimalist Graphics \\I have a bit of a thing for these…
• Probably Top-Down
• Roguelike \\Technically associated with the top bullet
• Sort of Like Zelda(1)
• Made with Java

So, until next time, thanks for reading.

-CO