It was a good learning experience but I dont have enough time to finish the game I had in mind.

For my game, I decided to make it a puzzle game, where you have to elude the monsters in your attempt to survive. However, I’m not very good at puzzle games, heh. Therefore, what I have is a primitive basic item hunt where you gotta get all the items without dying from the monsters. There’s a few interesting ideas in there, that I don’t want to spoil yet, but I’m not feeling good about this thing at all :/

I have no ideas at all, I’m a terrible game designer.

Added in a few more crafting recipes. Ran into an issue where crafting tables aren’t working again…. getting null responses from a argument that was giving me the correct thing before. I have no idea. I’m ignoring it for now as I’m starting to feel sleepy and can’t think perfectly straight. I also made it so jaguars only attack you at night… and the battle scene gets the night time effect as well now.

There.

When your ship crashes on a lonely planet and your survive, you try to find others…

Left,Right / A,D: Move
Up / W: Jump
Down / S: Upgrade

Collect all blues to see another ending.

This was my fourth Ludum Dare – and I have to say, my worst yet.

In the other LDs, I had a lot of motivation. I liked my idea, and I worked on them until the last minute, putting details and fixes for insanely rare bugs in. Especially last time, where I couldn’t stop playing my own damn game sometimes.
This time? Nothing of that.

It’s not fun for me.

The last times, I always had great ideas. They jumped in my head and I instantly took them. This one was used because I had no other idea.
I wanted to go a lot farther when I discovered something, but I lacked motivation. In the end, this just ended up as in incredibly short 2D platformer.

Full postmortem and timelapse coming whenever I feel like it, I’m going to play Cave Story+ and Team Fortress 2 now~ :3

I have still have nothing :< But I’m still coding at  lvestream.com/Iprogramandstuff

Well this is the finished interior. I know it feels empty and all, but I think leaving only one single prop inside the room makes you wonder “why is that there?” while filling the room with props would force me to figure a way to let players know the painting is important, and there’s not an app for that! I mean, there’s no time

My skills as a painter totally surpass my skills as game developer, heh.

So it took me ages to come up with an idea for this theme as I found it generally un-inspiring. I mean I could have done a grey pixel platformer about the sadness of being alone; but that’s pretty stale.

So, this:

5 hours and I finished my game. My first LD, btw.

You’re completely alone. You should find some friends to beat the game.
Controls:
UP/W – Go up.
DOWN/S – Go down.
LEFT/A – Go left.
RIGHT/D – Go right.

Nuprahtor’s comment:
“Breaking the fourth wall”

You can take this as a hint.

The solution is quite nontrivial. Have fun!

Here is the first “complete” version of my game. Basically, the first version I would be happy to enter into the actual competition. My livestream stopped around 1/3 of the way through day 2 because it was causing lag in my game that I first suspected was my pathfinding and kept me from adding new features for a good hour or so. Anyway, it’s java so it can be run on anything as long as you have the natives for it (lwjgl). It has windows, mac and linux natives with it so it’ll be fine unless you use solaris (you’ll need to overwrite the linux ones).

Download: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/30361085/debuggame.zip

Also, here are a few screenshots:

I didn’t want to reveal too much, so you only get a look at the basics from those pics 😛

Much shorter timelapse for today, I had much less to do. My finished game can be found in the entry section titled “Freerunner”.

Well I’ve finished the platforming engine, enemies are done, goals are relatively obvious, mechanics are all working, most of the levels are done and I’ve just got sound to do!

Doing a test run now to make sure everything works, probably will find and fix a few things (or add things I’ve forgotten) and then onto the audio!

My second Ludum Dare, (first I forgot about until the second day) and I think I’ve done spectacularly well.

Here’s sort if “in-progress” post. Hope I’ll finish this in time 😀

Well, I’m not going to cover any major details about gameplay and story, right now I’ll just tell you that Present Continious is first-person and I’ve just finished placing waypoint in about 40% of level:

And that’s supposed to be a “teaser” screenshot 😀

And now I’m going to make some Actions in game. Should add sort of “playability”, and possibly – even “replayability”! Cheers

Tags: Present Continious

When in doubt, redesign. I started actually playing with the “elude the monsters rather than kill them” mechanics more and I’m actually really enjoying the end result. Not sure if I’m going to make it for the main compo or the jam, but this thing WILL get finished soon. And I will be happy about that.

I can’t believe it. Only 8 hours left. I am extremely disheartened, I really thought I had something going for this game. I know now I won’t be able to finish it, I’ll barely be able to get a demo out in time. Although I will finish this after the compo is over. Being a pseudo-perfectionist, I did everything wrong I could’ve done:

not a good idea to use smart level design in order to play the game.

not a good idea to create a 3D game

don’t spend too much time on graphics

Atleast the demo should offer a whole 3 minutes of playing time:

Shame that I have to write this post but since I have had some “bad” news,  the Ludum Dare for me has come to a screeching hold.

I have thought it deeply over but I do want to finish up the theme build before the next Ludum Dare.

So for now, Team Aphelion signing off

this is getting close to the end !!, add the main screen, story screen changed the game over, killed some minor bugs of the viewport, now missing the soundtrack, sound effects and build the final map.

go go go !!

Tags: almost there, canvas, html5, progress, splash, story

Now I’ll run it on windows, and try to add sounds. If everything works as expected, I’ll post it and start to think the post-mortem.

Okay okay.

I’m getting excited now.

The game now runs from beginning to end, the plot works properly, I’ve added particles and player death (and checkpoints – there is no gameover – that would suck on a small game like this).

Now it’s just polishing polishing polishing.

Time to put some proper textures in for the scenery, make everything look better, and add noises!!!!!!!!!!

*pumped*

Woop well that’s my finished with that frankly uninspiring theme, not amazingly happy with my game, but at least made it a bit satirical I hope ^^

I don’t know what I get done until ludum dare finishes. But I’m sure there will be no music or sound because I need this time for story mode.

I have a demo on http://dl-web.dropbox.com/u/2720564/LudumDare22/index.html

Well, our progress doesn’t go Boink just yet, we’ll tackle sound tomorrow. But we have made great strides towards an actual playable, even fun, game. Try it yourself!

Also for tomorrow is:

• Walk cycle, so our characters don’t float like master yogi anymore.
• A heartwarming, tearjerking (okay, cheesy) story. We’ve got a draft ready.
• General polish
• Moar particlez!

If you’re doing LD48: you’re a braver human than I am, and I wish you luck in the last few hours. For fellow LD72’ers: good luck tomorrow!

I’d never rigged a character before. Struggling with 3ds for over an hour now and I have a feeling this won’t work at all :/

Heres the build at 8.5 hours left, its starting to look like a game, but its still all placeholder and no fun. Im in the middle of laying out the maze, placing enemies. Still havent started on the final art or sound, which is worrying!

www.frankiesmileshow.com/LudumDare/Build3.zip

My idea for the story of the game was too long to be viable in 48h and honestly, I’m not coming up with as many puzzles as I thought I would be able to. So I’m focusing in quality over quantity and, for those interested, I’ll make some more puzzles, and finish the story later.

Well, there’s still 8 hours left, I better get back to coding 😉

Good Luck everyone,

89Cookies

Ludum Dare is in fact a decent crunch simulator.

Still steps away from my release but I’m so sleepy and tired…

Yeahh… so I’ve made the introduction and most of the game engine…
OH AND ALSO THE OPENING MOVIE.
All I need now is the ACTUAL fighting stuff.

Not writing a lot this time, just gonna work now.

Good luck guys.

So, I finally have an idea of what I want to do. It’s a little late, but I feel like I can still pull something off in the next 8 hours.

The real work start now.

Updated my game with some tweaks and art additions. The world feels slightly less barren now. And also including the most amazing flower I’ll probably every draw in my life.

At this point the game is “done” in that it plays and there’s a beginning, middle, and end to the story. I’m going to see how much I can expand that with the remaining 8 hours or so. There’s 1 or 2 big things I’d like to get to, if I have the chance!

I have been pretty busy with University related stuff, interviews and work. But I feel that I have to make something for the LD hopefully it will be playable even though I only have about 3 hours to complete it.:)
I should keep it simple, lets hope it works out.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3340

So my game has all of its initial scope filled out, which means it’s time to playtest and polish! Impressions and feedback on the current build would be greatly appreciated! (Tap X to advance text and fly.)

I’ve added a player so my game is finally playable! I don’t think I’m going to add any art, it’d inevitably look programmer artsy, I’ll stay with this abstract style. I’ll try to add a simple particle system though so the player creates sparks when he moves, which might look kinda nice. (And it will be my first particle system, so I get to learn even more! )

First I’ll make the whole thing winnable though – I need a level end sensor. And a winning screen. I may add pushable physicle objects (crates etc.) since I’ve made the jump apply an opposing force as well, which currently doesn’t affect anything.

I found my piece of paper which I drew my first idea on late at night. The next morning I drew much the same on paint. I thought you might want to see them.

Ahh, good night’s sleep and some good food really helps put one into a good mood for bug fixes.

Here’s this morning’s changelog!  I’ll be updating the site with the latest version and clearing out the hiscore tables as soon as I can.

v1.1
 Bug Fixes
 - powerups on how-to menu fixed
 - score position in game over fixed
 - fixed crash when placing blocks on either side of self and wall
 - enabled hack protection for a known exploit
 - powerup spawn range readjusted
 
 Balance Fixes
 - f-bomb duration halved
 - fbomb lifespan 0.3 seconds
 - fbomb range lowered to 200%
 - max pwr increased to 80
 - pwr regen per second increased to 6
 - block internal cooldown reduced to 5
 - block pwr cost reduced to 3
 - block lifespan increased to 3 seconds
 - Hugg speed decreased to 10
 - Orphan speed decreased to 14
 
 Misc
 - Added main menu button to scene select

I finished my game Fatward. Well, less of a game, more an interactive story. There is few actual gameplay other than wandering around and figuring out what’s happening.

Still I am proud of the end result, and mostly of the graphics and the music. I think I did a pretty good job on them. Take a look here at my entry. Timelapse video included.

Also, the game does have a kitten somewhere, although I hate kittens.

Soon after completing stairs to the final boss (and the final boss himself) our heroes promptly died of fatigue. They were later found and resurrected unceremoniously by Gabriel’s mother, who decided that to shove pancakes down our throat was some sort of ultimate cure to sleepiness… We’re still tired, but full.

We’re back on track after a half  hour of powernapping and some food/energy drinks. We will beat  this.

And so the heroes continue their epic journey to defeat the Ludum Jam and claim their rightful place among the gods of the internet… Help them conquer their one true obstacle, Kittens! xD Not really, i’m just extremely tired still…
Moar stuff laterzzz. :3

After a 17 hour burn yesterday I’ve made some excellent progress.  First, all the art is in and it’s got it going on 😉  I just wrapped up a music track, which leaves me with the following:

• Title/Intro Screen
• SFX
• End/Victory Screen

And…if I was really feeling crazy I’d go through and redo the player animations, because they’re a little shady right now.  But we’ll see how much time I have left after all the above is said and done.  And here’s a screenshot for you fellow greedy gamedevs:

I submitted.  I’m done.  I’m really glad that’s over with.  It was fun, but wow am I tired of working on it.  I usually work on gamedev stuff very sporadically.  An hour here and there.  That’s probably why I never finish things, but I have fun working on my little projects.  This, while fun, was a lot of work.  On top of that I have pneumonia, so that doesn’t help.  But I’m just glad I could submit something and say that I did it.  I look forward to voting this year and playing all the other awesome games you guys came up with.

About 8 hours left, and I still have a ton of things to do. So I’m going to scrap some planned features.

I have added an inventory, allowing you to carry and use up to 5 items. I’ve also added support for effects, which can be used in potions, or on weapons. I’ve also added the possibility of having ammo for weapons, discarding them when they’re used up.

I’m going to add loot drops and chests, and an inventory management system. After that, I’m going to add a character creation screen and maybe item shops. Finally, I’ll spend my remaining time on adding content, such as monsters, maps and more items. Oh, and I also need to create music and sounds.

Sadly that means I’m going to scrap the whole party based story concept where people die and you’re left alone. I’d rather focus on more content at the moment. Besides, technically you’re alone in the dungeon so the theme still fits, sort of. Maybe I’ll continue working on the game after the LD finishes to add more stuff. I’m happy that I kept it very modular and relatively clean code-wise, because that will help a lot in the long run.

Now we’re talkin’.  This is starting to look very cool!

We have an app icon and a title screen:

Now it is time to level build until the clock runs out.

Cross-posting with http://blog.tacograveyard.com/ld22

I ended up having to work all weekend for my “day job,” so no Dare for me. Next time I will clear my schedule in advance. Good luck to everyone who is participating!

“Follow” is complete, and we’re just testing it now! I’ll submit it in a few hours, as I have to go somewhere. The game is basically a simple point and click adventure with a movement mechanics and weird item dropping controls. The primary focuses for this have been the graphics and story.

This has been my very first Ludum Dare (very first game making competition, in fact!) and I’m extremely pleased with the result. =)

I think that's something to do with your mustache...

I had other things to attend this weekend, therefore I have set aside a few hours for LD. Thinking vaguely about the theme yesterday and coding now for about 4 hours, it’s my pleasure to introduce you Super Animal Friendship Club:

PLAY ONLINE

TODO:

• sounds and music
• difficulty

Tags: flash, progress, screenshot

Another 7 hours asleep. What a late night last night, and definitely not particularly productive after the last posting. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be another coffee break this morning before I get down to any polishing.

I think that rather than create more new levels that I should tweak some of the ones I already have. Level 4 isn’t that inspiring. It’s mostly just level 3 with a trick floor. Maybe I can rework it? Same for level 1, as it is so simple. Maybe I can introduce switches earlier? Maybe have them drop blocks rather than open doors? They can really do anything…

(-o^_^)-o

I think I’m leaving sound and music on the cutting room floor. I really have no idea how to start on production for this, and part of where all my time went was playing with 8 bit sound generators, and I’ve got nothing to show for it.

I think if I were to pull an all-nighter then maybe I could finish this game in time for the competition, but it probably wouldn’t have any fancy graphics, sounds, nor kittens (I would like all three of those) and I probably would also make some terrible design decisions while I’m at it. So I’m probably just going to keep working for a little while longer now and then do the rest tomorrow.

I’m confident enough to share a screenshot today (I wasn’t yesterday because it would have looked exactly like the first screenshot of my last LD game). Boxes!

disclaimer: not the actual resolution of the game

What’s really annoying though is today I’ve come up with two ideas for the theme that I like way better then the one I went with… Why couldn’t those thoughts have happened yesterday :'(

Anyway, good luck everyone still working on their games. I am remaining optimistic!

There is now a kitten in the game.  If you can find it then you’re probably the best player of 2d overhead 360 degree shooters ever to live.  And here’s a quick screenshot of the final boss.  The game can now be completed from start to finish!

Starring: Ninja, Pirate, Skeleton, Ninja Pirate, Skeleton pirate, Ninja skeleton, pirate ninja skeleton and also some ghosts… (sorry, no kittens)

So… enemies are finished, they can die and hunt me in the levels… Now just inventory, some doors and crates a and create few fullsized levels and I’m done. Maybe even in time, if not, I’ll put it as a jam entry.

Day #2 of Jamming this thing! As we’re going for the 72h, this is about 2/3 of the way. It’s going a little slower than before, mostly due to mental tiredness. We also decided on a temporary name (pretty sure it will stay):

Phil is also working towards some detail and foreground/background layers:

It’s really hard to show the (non-almost-black screen) feel of the game, as it relies heavily on interacting with environment to momentarily explore it. Here’s the above layer on it’s own:

Unfortunately Phil couldn’t be reached for comments presumably due to falling asleep while having blinked for a little too long.

Tags: LD #22

Because stereotypes and cranky old cat ladies are fun.

Al Own is Alone with A Loan

I have the game mechanics down but there are still a lot of things I need to get implemented before I submit. Hope I make it in time. 😀

Tags: a, alone, game, loan, screen, with

So far I have 5 different levels, they all work, with obstacles such as lava and spikes. Soon I will add acid which will make the game even harder.

There is no stopping me – now onto the scenery!!

Hit a massive snag with sprite-loading. We’re using transparent PNG spritesheets. For, say, the font, the SDL_Surface* _font is loaded, and displays as transparent with no problems.

When blitting parts of _font onto an empty SDL surface, there is no transparency:
SDL_Surface *surface = SDL_CreateRGBSurface(SDL_SWSURFACE | SDL_SRCALPHA, width, height, 32,0xff000000,0x00ff0000,0x0000ff00,0);

SDL_BlitSurface(_font, &srcRect, surface, &destRect);
results in:

I’ve tried every combination of masks imaginable, including _font->format->Rmask, etc., to no effect.

If anyone has any idea what I’m doing wrong, I’d love to know, even though we’re very unlikely to make the jam deadline at this point.

Just woke up. There’s 7 hours and 30 minutes left to the competition.

Adding enemies now. Considering simply having them asplode if they get near the hero, rather than actually attack him. Not only is it a time saver, but everyone loves explosions, right? …Right?

*HACKHACKHACKHACKHACKHACKHACKHACK*

There’s no way I’m going to make it in time. I quite much did the same mistake as last time – do NOT spend time integrating proper saving systems without really knowing what to do!

I’m quite sure I’ll release this as a half-assed thing and do another game for the Jam.

Around 9pm last night I found myself working on a moody platformer with droning chiptune music and gray squares for graphics, and decided I should sit this one out.

Good luck everyone!

Finished the gameplay for AWAP early this morning, around 5:30am. Now just working on some graphical and tutorial issues. Making it more presentable. Here’s some more screens of the gameplay and the gameover screen. Hope you like it!

The “display message” system is ready. Now it’s just a matter of writing all of them.

Have a cat.

Inability to make the bed aside, I have to make this into a game now. “I’ve got a rocket, let’s go!”

Fourth enemey added in… what I didn’t tell you about the third? Maybe you’ll just have to play the game to run into that one 😀

I also added a lot more crafting….  I’m thinking I should add in some sound here pretty soon.

The game’s started to come together now – hopefully it’ll be fun once it all works!

There’s enemies, with sprites, and you can now win and lose, which is nice. I made an effort to design the sprites that are really easy to animate, so that I didn’t need to spend time making characters run. I like how it’s turned out!

My next jobs are to get some background tiles done, implement the points/score system, and then tweak the gameplay to make it a bit more… exciting!

These are the changes since the last report:

• Player graphics and sounds
• Fix Floor borders.
• Arrow graphics and sounds.
• Arrow shooter graphics and sounds.
• Barrel sounds.
• Save point sounds and graphics.
• Exit point sounds and graphics.
• Burning Effect.
• Title screen.
• Ending screen.

Tags: compo, progress, update

So, all enemies are created. The story is written. The mechanics are programmed. 2-Player Deathmatches work. There is but one thing left to do: Level Assembly. Simples. I need to put objects into rooms to create levels. I also need to make the end bit where the big twist happens. T minus one hour. Good luck everyone. These last 5 hours are where Skyrims are made.

-Pixelsheep

I made it, i’ve finished a game in under 48 hours! It may be simple but this is my first game ever. I’ve had a very nice weekend and I look forward to the next Ludum Dare!

 http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8385

All features are in ahead of time, all that remains is deciding on an ending condition, maybe a boss fight will suffice?

Now with 100% more explosions!

Nearly there, final push.

With a few hours to spare.

#feelsgoodman

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7685

I look forward to playing as many entries as I can, and am glad I could contribute to the fight to break 600!  Good luck for everyone who is still working!

Today we have accomplished a huge amount, from almost finishing the engine to getting the vast majority of the art done. Tomorrow we will be doing level design and bughunting, and having our release. Expect a very decent top down shooter/dungeon crawler

Intro Screen + sound + game name = awesome!

That’s how I finally called this thing.

It haven’t gone so well. I had a really good idea for the game but was too much for two days. I’m really tired right now, and I’m not making any big changes to the game. A title screen, maybe.

You can see it on place now:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=2462

I will post a timelapse later, too, and possibly a post-mortem thing this week.

Can anyone on Windows check out my little game “Am I Alone?” and say me if you had any problems running it? I am on Mac and checked it only in virtual machine. Thanks!

AmIAlone_1.0.1.exe

Built with OCRA from source: https://github.com/semaperepelitsa/am_i_alone

It kinda animates:

Yeah, right! Probably rigged it wrongly. Guess rigging is *not* one of those things you can “learn” in an afternoon.

3 hours lost on this is too much, giving up animations. Hovering characters will have to do…

I gotta go back to London but you guys can see what I’ve done so far.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3923260/bootstraps.swf

post any bugs here I guess.

So as I want to spend more time on making my amazing dessert tonight (picture’s will go up once I’ve baked it) meaning I’ve got for another naan pizza but just plain tomato and cheese

I’m working on all the art now for my game, here’s a grub for fun

Tags: foodphoto ld22 ludum dare ld48

I’m either REALLY good at making mazes, or hopelessly retarded. I had trouble getting out of my own maze.

Anyway, I lost track of time. I haven’t checked the clock since I woke up. And I refuse to do s — Aww, it’s 3:40 PM.

Anyway, here’s what I have to make now:

• Some kind of weapon
• Ending
• Kitten easter egg

• Collectibles
• Cutscenes or some other form of storytelling…

Well, it’s been submitted. I’m quite happy with the game. No audio though, I’m no musical (or sound effect) maestro. Just a simple game about a cat, collecting glowing milk bottles to escape a number of mazes. Enjoy, Download For Windows

Less than 7 hours left and I still don’t have any objective in the game. But there is at least some sort of gameplay now.

Most of the time I spent (or maybe wasted) with fine-tuning different effects in game – I am happy with the graphics now. I also created a small soundtrack. It’s good if you consider the fact that I suck at making music.
If you want to try it yourself, here is what I got so far: Download

Ok, so I’ve been busy this weekend, but I managed to get a little bit done.

I have a moon rover and it can be commanded with only the space bar (through dots and dashes a la morse code).

My collisions are still busted.

Tags: code, moon, morse, rover

I am done!

Find my entry here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3866

Not really the reference implementation of the theme “alone”, but I like it. Mostly because it is much more playable than my previous games, which had mayor bugs.

Thanks for the event everyone – I am really exited to play your games!

The game is finished and making it’s way across the intertubes. Soon it will be ready to be beamed into your face.

Here’s what I have so far. Unfortunately it’s not a game yet. Maybe I’ll be able to get something fun to play tomorrow for the jam.

Tags: gameplay video, video, zombie

Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…

I have barely anything to make a game out of, and there’s only around 7 hours left.
I could join the jam, but I don’t really want to. Thinking of learning lua + love2d instead of pygame.

I’m in the process of recording shit so I can make sfx for my game… as my game needs a fart sound, I recorded some farts with the mouth. I thought you’d like to hear them (gets better at the middle, most of the farts suck :P)

Fart

Making actions for game… What they would look like is secret, which actions they are – secret too. Hope not too many secrets 😀

I’ll had to find some time to make script, responsible for crowd moving, but that’s not a priority now.
And one more thing – I’ll try to record sounds using my cell phone or mp3 player… Weird, but it could work. I’m totally lame at soundmaking, and I really know how game could be transformed with sounds.

The time! I really had to be carefull in feature making – I got to upload sources and game, and it takes noticable ammount of time because of my sloooooow connection.

So, core meks, core meks and core meks again!
Oh, and I also did 2 sprites for actions, but that’s secret 😀
Goals and time:

1. Actions, 4 of them to do (at least), 1 done = 1 hour;
2. Crowd script = 1 hour 30 mins;
3. Improove physics = 15 mins;
4. Record sounds = 20 mins;
5. Beginning and ending = 1 hour;
6. “Arm” = 20 mins;
7. Uploading = 30 hour.

Tags: Present Continious

I finished my entry and submitted it, but low and behold, there are no download links.  How are people going to play it? Please fix this ASAP. Thanks in advance.

Yeah, there is not much progress at all.

I don’t have a good pixel art program working on OS X (Lion), and I can’t figure out how to remove the magenta in Flashpunk. *Sigh*

Almost there. Definitely not as much polish as I initially intended, but it’s playable now.

What’s behind it?

You play Dr. Autofober making an experiment about test subjects’ loneliness. You have to prevent them from meeting by placing walls and kittens. Placing a wall close to a test subject will induce panic which should be avoided. Screenshot:

And also:

hey bros check out this sicknasty piece of works

controls are: arrow keys excluding down

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8640139/releases/kittybox.html

Just finished my first ever entry.
It was good fun being a part of this competition.
I would like to wish good luck to everyone who is approaching their final hours now.
I may enter Ludum Dare again next August.

Almost at the end of the compo and now I’m seeing what failed for me. There are positives like the learning process and how the LD motivated me to move my lazy ass, but other things that prevented me to the full completition of the game are permanently present:

-Let me say first that the design was a game in 3D. I definitely wanted to explore a 3D world, and the theme “Alone” helped me with some nice ideas for this.

–I didn’t know the libraries very well. I wanted to use SpriteManager so I shouldn’t need to make models in 3D, because I don’t how to use Blender or similar apps, but I can make quick funny drawings in Paint.Net. The thing is that SpriteManager was more of a pain in the ass because of my lack of expertise and using it in a 3D world was a huuuge mistake. Even making animations is weirdly complicated, so a 3D world populated with 2D animated enemy sprites or 2D objects was a no-no from the beginning. I didn’t realise about this until too late.

–I wanted to make a Third-Person perspective game, that is your character is always in front of you on the screen. I had never done this before. Creating the camera system for collisions and knowing when it is hitting a wall and accomodate accordingly, rotate the character, look around with the mouse, everything was a very fun experiment, very expensive time-wise, but educational and fun nonetheless!

-I said to my family that I would be busy all weekend, but my father came to visit us and I couldn’t let the opportunity to get a drink with him pass me by. In this case I don’t regret the time I used instead of making the game. Also I can only see my nephew on the weekends! Now that is a lot of time!

I can’t share photos (or a demo) because the game can’t be named “a game” right now, it still needs a lot of work to make something playable and entertaining. Time to sink some more time and analyze the possibility to deliver the game for the Jam. An extra 24 hours can do miracles!

I’ve got some behaviours going, I got almost all the art ready I just need to draw a few other hell dwellers, and I’ve already have a idea for the core mechanic 😀 (FINALLY, I was going nuts).

Tags: html5, Phares, WIP day 2

Just ‘Out’ is what I decided to call it. I figured, the brief story here is that you’re trapped alone in a building whose security systems have activated, and you’re trying to get out. Fun!

A lot of gameplay is coming together. I have a player, input handling, charges that can be planted and triggered to disable sentries, sentries that move around and detect you causing a loss and level reset. The biggest problem I foresee is level design, but I may have at least something playable real soon now!

I am behind (we knew that when I _started_) BUT.

the plotting idea I had worked – I had to debug it quite a bit as I made some mistakes in calculations, but the idea worked and I was able to finish it in – well, actually, faster than before. Doing it by hand would have been faster, yes, but it looked pretty crap and I could not have done the next bit – calculate distances. Which is gonna be a BIT tough – thinking on how that works and how to relate this ‘grid’ to the, well, I have to reverse the grid now into a different array oh wait that’s simple, let me go do that now.

  Spent the last hours implementing a system so you can pick up eggs for use in the ritual. Gameplay means searching the eggs and placing them at the ritual place for now thats ok.

I’m pretty confident to make this happen for the compo.

The island is pretty big so i wanted to add more stuff like being able to fly to save you time…

Finally came up with a title for my game, and I drew the title screen. Now if I can just finish it!

It’s becoming pretty apparent that I’m not going to make the game I was imagining two evenings ago. However, I think it’s okay. I certainly learned a lot as this was the first game I’ve ever made where I integrated a physics engine on my own. I’m hoping I’ll be able to polish what I have and add some levels. I think it will be better at this point to make a reasonably interesting game with crappy art than a crappy game with mediocre art which seem, unfortunately, to be my options. Maybe I can add enough to the background or some brief intro to at least express that this is occurring on an abandoned space station. Which was the reason I decided to do this game as I think that expresses the theme of being utterly alone in the black of space. My original plan was to have the player investigate why the space station was abandoned in the first place, and eventually find out that a portal had been found to some sort of alien world, tying into the larger theme of “are we alone?” in the universe.

But it looks like I’ll wind up with more of an abstract platformer, or a prototype of the other game.

I’m thinking for the next LD I’ll try to get a team together and do the jam. I asked an artist friend of mine if he wanted to work together on a game for this jam but he was too busy this weekend. Like I said I am not an artist and making art is a real chore for me, but I think the game would be improved by it.

My remaining to-do list:

High priority:
 * Implement some of the levels I designed on paper
 * Add in-game play instructions on level 1 - maybe an image
 * Title game, don't forget to change program title also
 
 Medium priority:
 * Allow player to mantle around corners in climb mode
 * Make a little more effort on the level art... static BG image might work
 
 Low priority:
 * Restrict jump aim to 90 degrees from contact normal in either direction
 * Replace jump line with line & cool looking cursor
 * Restrict cursor to set distance from player
 * Implement jump charge by holding mouse
 * Story? Maybe not at this point...
 * See if there's some way to keep the player from phasing through walls (the jump restriction will probably help with this)
 * For final distribution, package each OS version seperately

Making a game about a thing that has to eat all its friends to survive.

The physics is looking pretty solid, but like usual I’m waiting to the last minute to gameify it all.

Well, my game has victory and game over screens now

All I need now are a couple hastily drawn pictures, music, and sound!

On Sunday, I had to head back to my Mums house for Christmas, so I figured, hey,  I can finish my game off on my netbook. I installed unity etc on my laptop before leaving…

But forgot, unity needs internet activation before you can use it… So for the ~5 hours I was on the train, I couldn’t work on my game, so I don’t think I’ll have enough time to get my game in a state I’d actually like, since I’m pretty far behind as it is.

I shall try and carry on regardless.