I finally finished! It’s 6:36AM. Time for bed!

Please let me know what you think

PLAY MY GAME!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3289

Wow.

I’m getting tired now, there are 6 hours remaining and in it I’d like to achieve the following:

• Sounds
• Music
• Images that have ‘states’ so I can show which way the player is looking
• Stick the loading sequence in a background worker or at least yield some control to the UI thread
• Player health bar
• Boss health bar
• Kitten
• Alternate ending
• Pre-load assets

So Head South is now free to roam the infinite wastes of the internet.

If you haven’t played it, it’s available at http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7835 . If you vote after playing, please be kind; this was my very first Ludum Dare entry.

What did I love?

Making the art
I’m not normally one for 3D modelling, but I managed to whip up 16 separate models in under 48 hours. That’s got to be some kind of record.
I deliberately kept everything low-poly, and not just because it’s ‘fashionable’ to be lo-fi in the indie games scene. I did it because I spent a lot of time playing on my PS1, and as soon as I finished making the first little village huts I realised that was the art style it was reminding me of. Set all textures to ‘point’ filtering, optimise those models and relish the pixels.

The music
The music actually only took me about an hour to do, but it’s something I always enjoy if I’m in the right mood. I opened up a synthesiser, tested a few notes and then hit record. Aside from a couple of test tracks, whatever came out of me at that point was what you can hear in the game.

The coding
Okay, so it’s nothing impressive at all and the bulk of the gameplay mechanics (looking/moving) were pre-written Standard Assets that come with Unity. I still wrote 10 scripts of my own, and I think I did pretty well to cram all the functionality I needed into them without them becoming unwieldy. Commenting was, sadly, not done. No doubt I’ll regret that at some point in the future, but I like to live in the moment.

What would I do differently?

More of a game
There are plenty of things to be proud of in the final release, but I have that nagging feeling that it will turn off a majority of people simply because there isn’t really a win/lose condition. It’s more of an interactive story; you can choose who to approach, and you can choose how to interpret that person’s situation. That being said, if even one person plays Head South and genuinely feels something then I’ll have done my job.

More life
Probably the most fun I had in the development process was after I was done creating a landscape. I got to play God for a little while and create people with stories. There was a lot of passion that went into creating things like the little lost submariner, and I wish there was the time to do more. More to explore and see, and more to think about.

More expanse
This is linked to the above point, really. I fluctuated between different terrain sizes, but I think I should have stuck with the larger ones. They take longer to traverse, but they have so much more scope for interesting things to be going on.

I’m sure there are plenty more things that will come to mind. Probably while I’m trying to go to sleep. If I think of any other major points of evaluation I’ll stick ’em up in another post, but otherwise I’ll wait until the votes are counted and evaluate based on what people said. I can’t wait.

My audio sounds great, but unfortunately my poor old computer can’t handle compiling it every time I test, so I haven’t even heard it myself yet. Otherwise, all the little things are getting done and/or fixed. Things are going so well I could almost go to sleep now, get up in five hours, compile the game and submit it.

Woot.

Seeing everyone else’s games makes me sad that mine isn’t as good, but it’s my game and I love it and I will submit it with pride. 😀

Here is the first build for testing. Simply double-click it on Windows, java -jar alonegame.jar on Linux, and whatever you OSX folk do, do what you do.

Tags: test

Well, on Day 2 of the Jam I managed to make a few new weapons, work on enemies, listen to the music my brother composed for the game, and more stuff.  I don’t remember yesterday all that well, actually.

Today, I’m hoping to add a lot more weapons, more levels, hopefully a title screen and level select, scoring, game balance, and the put the music into the game.  Things are looking up.  I hope.

Well…  things are looking grim for me finishing the Jam on time.  I’ve barely got a renderer going, but this is my first time EVER making a game so it’s understandable.  I came into this excessively under-skilled and it’ll be a miracle if I have a game to submit in a day and six hours.  But….  the good news is I love the direction the game is going.  I really came into this expecting to learn a lot over actually finishing, but finishing would be nice.

I’m just wondering, though.  If you fail to submit on time could you still put the game up for others to see?  I might finish a few days, maybe a couple weeks after, but I’d love to get some feedback.  In other news, I’ll try to have a prototype or whatnot submitted should I run out of time.

Wish me luck!

Status: Developing Menu interface.

I’ve added a kitten easter egg. If you encounter the kitten, you can make it follow you around for the rest of the game.

With just 6 hours to go, I’m going to spend the rest of the day adding menus, an endgame, and possibly some simple sounds.

Kitty!

Since I last posted I have added 3 functioning teddies and a level 2.
Art has also improved.

I’m going to create level 3 and submit!

“alone I art“ is a game about spending valuable time alone with art.

You’re a shady character in a museum. You love art. You love it so much that you need to steal it. But to steal the art, you need to be alone. You can’t have anyone spot you stealing or carrying the art in your trench coat, or you’ll never be allowed be alone with art ever again.

Here you can see how some of our gameplay mechanics work. The AI and pathfinding are on their way.

We’re confident this game is going to be at least as fun as the process of making it.

Tags: 72h, alone I art, jam, LD #22, Make A Game

Definitely behind, but implementation is nearly finished to a minimal requirement. Some sustenance to set me up for the final panic-crunch.

Meanwhile baby is burning up the place:

Definitely going to change the wall texture soon…

Tags: foodphoto, unity

Info and more here
Cardiac and fireproof Kitten alone in Alps after a plane crash 

or

PLAY

Managed to put something together in less than 24 hours! Post-mortem, reflection and analysis to come later.

It’s a dark piece of coding… but I’m happy with it…
fishbrain…. sleeeeeep… now

Stuff that needs to be done:

• Placing trees around the island, might do it randomly.
• Make it so you are not Jesus (aka: cant walk on water).
• Display the total fuel count.
• Some kind of game ending screen and title screen.
• Make atleast a sound for chopping trees.
• Make wolfs attack you and wonder around.

We are making great progress with our little contribution to ludumdare 22.

Tags: Four Friends Alone

Finally got it up after a long night’s rest.

Check it out!

Tags: timelapse

I’ve GOT to show that to you. I feel pure awesomeness looking at my work. And I wanna share it with you!

Tags: Present Continious

God Damnit this is getting realllly annoying:

I’m thinking of giving up and dropping to Jam, but I wont give up just yet. I just have to really really focus on creating stuff, Unfortunately, This means I have to drop Fiddling with UV maps, thus I will  have to simply “stand” alignment issues…

Anyway, Back to work.

Feel free to Demo Available  Also trying to figure out where and when to do the Whole lockCursor event.

I’ve decided against the actual compo, only because half of my game is broken, honestly, and went with the jam instead. Well, it made me panic a little, and I think I punched something valuable too. Considering it IS my first, it’s expected, honestly. But I’m still in. Even though I’m out, I’m in.

With just 6 hours left, I’m way behind schedule and I’m not going to make the LD48 deadline.  Here’s what went wrong – hopefully for others (and myself) to learn from:

1. I did the warm-up, but didn’t go far enough.  I really should have gone further and tested every system possible.
2. For this LD48 I wanted to use more robust, and more flexible data management than my previous LD48 entry.  A few of my systems I thought I could build quickly with JS instead of C#… How wrong I was.  Unity’s slight differences to canonical JS became a major pain when I started using more advanced techniques.  When it was time to build on those simple JS frameworks, it just turned out that they just couldn’t do the job.  Ultimately I had to use System.Collection.Generic lists for everything, but I lost about 4 hours overall figuring that out.
3. I opted to use a 3rd party library for sprite management in Unity.  The library worked perfectly, but I just wasn’t familiar enough with it to use it correctly the first time out.  I kept running into what I thought were “issues” — but they weren’t issues at all, it was just my own lack of experience with the library.  LD48 is probably a bad time to be learning how to use a new tool.
4. And finally, (IMHO) the artwork that you need to do a 2D game can actually take significantly more time than a 3D game — it’s more difficult to represent 3D objects in two-dimensional space.  Gradients and shadowing can help, but those are extremely manually-intensive processes.  I’m pretty good with Blender, so in the future I may actually build simple 3D objects and just take snapshots of them from different angles to create my sprites.

6 hours to go (so allowing time for build, submission etc. I need to be done in about  4) and it’s starting to come together. Last time around I settled for just finishing, this time it might actually be quite good

What’s done:

• Map generator
• Player movement and camera system
• Enemies are in, working and can hurt you.
• Suitably atmospheric audio loop for background music.
• Sound effects when being attacked by killdroids.
• Kitten detects when you get close, ready to follow you home

What’s still to do:

• Kitten movement – needs to follow you back out of the city. At this point, that’s about the only hard bit left
• Player death when health is drained. Right now it just keeps on going down.
• Title screen
• Win/lose sequence

Ok, my internet was down for the last few days as we were behind on payments, and we only just got it back up and NOW ONLY 6 HOURS REMAIN! GAHH!!! Also audio on my computer that has Flash isn’t working, so now I can’t test the sound I made. Great. Just Great.

Well there’s just over 5 hours left, game is getting there, yet I’ve still not posted any screenshots. Last ludum dinner is leftover chilli from last night on top of two lovely jacket potatoes.

Here’s hoping that my game is ready in the next 3 hours so I can have some sleep tonight rather than stay up super duper late like I usually do.

Anybody who can provide me with a video of them playing through and completing “Rox Gunner and the Cavern of Loneliness” on hard mode within the voting period will personally be mailed a box of cookies.  That’s how confident I am in its difficulty.  The story is essentially done, just some minor touching up and searching for bugs.  Screen shots to come.

I just found a page of insults in latin:
http://www.ou.edu/ludilatini/insultshandoutFall2003.htm
We can use these for the verbal spell casting.

It’s T – 5,0… I can’t finish my game in time. This was my first and definitely not last Ludum Dare competition.

I have learned a lot about speed coding and designing.

So here is what I did make:

Ludum Dare 22 – Alone in Space

Timelapse will be uploaded soon.

Download Executable

Download Source code

After around 20 hours of work I finally finished A Life Apart!

It’s a short (very short ;D) exploration game about making amendments for your crimes in life. I’m fairly happy with it, even though my time got cut short due to work. I hope you all like it!

Check it out here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3595

Finally finished & submitted the game. This has been such a great weekend! I even added some kittens, just for added play.

More words about the game will be added to another post, after I rest a bit. I’ll probably check out a few other entries now.  I am ready to take the rest of the evening and relax, and invite you all to check out ‘Parcel Walk’ on the submissions page. http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3375

Thanks Ludum Dare!

Tags: easter-eggs kitten-challenge

http://software.o-o.ro/ld22/index.html

Other than some rogue images, sounds and a win conditions (and some stuff on the host page) it’s msotly there.

Does the text display? Any GUI suggestions? Any other ideas/thoughts/suggestions/bug reports?

I finished my entry, and I must say I am quite pleased with the result. I saw some small problems with it after I uploaded it, but I am too lazy to change it now

I’m exhausted, but Arzea has been submitted. I’m planning to do a general writeup (including things like design decisions), a timelapse (soon!), and a full postem. Watch for those!

Play or download the source here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=4155

Now I take some much needed rest and maybe see a movie or something.

I planned to make 5 levels, but I couldn’t continue working on the game, so here it is with 3 levels and half of the planned story. It is playable with a surprise on the end.

Entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=2465

Made with: 
– Unity3D (C#, iTween)
– cfxr
– Audacity
– Garage Band
– Photoshop

Timelapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ItVDEzuzY

Tags: easter-egg, kitten-challenge, loot-alone, timelapse, unity, unity3d, video

My maps now generate roads!  Example:

Only about 5 hours left, and I still need…. the rest of the map……

Well there is no way I will be able to finish my game in time for the deadline. I had a nice idea but it probably wasn’t such a good idea to plan on making a platformer within 48 hours with no previous knowledge on creating an engine that supports gravity.

Over the course of the next three months I will perfect my gravity code and will therefore be prepared to enter the next Ludum Dare!

Great experience this my first Ludum Dare.

If you asked me a week ago if I could do a complete game in a weekend I would have said No Way. I’m used to months of developement, with plenty of time in between where inspiration or motivation drifts.

With the focus of the deadline of LD, things were different., I’ve been able to do my normal life (family and what have you), but all my spare time have been focused in the game. And I can say now that, except for a few minor details, it’s done! Will be posting after tea.

I’m done. I have not finished my game but the last thing I want to do now is programming. All the motivation is gone and so are fun and excitement. Yesterday I worked for about 20 hours and today for about 12 hours and the ‘thing’ I managed to create by now doesn’t even deserve to be called a ‘game’. What was the problem? I don’t really know.

My progress so far: A nice working base for a game. The  game itself isn’t really existing: 2 halfway working levels (including solid, non-solid and ladder tiles … at least they worked!) and the player’s character that doesn’t do anything but following your keys (no jumping and stuff like this) – that’s not really a game.

What went wrong? As said before: I can’t say, but there are some things I want to change in the future:

• doing the warm-up
• planning the program: I went straight on to the programming. In the beginning I wanted it to be a shooter, many hours of exhausting coding later I thought the theme would fit better to a simple puzzle game, but when I saw I wouldn’t finish on time, I changed everything to a “do this – do that – press this button – use that item” game. If I focused on a single game idea from the beginning I would be cheering right now. All in all the programming was a waste of time.
• paying more attention to graphics: Until some hours ago I just used my dev sprites (grid maps, hitbox sprites etc.). When I finished the first level I already had a bad feeling about the time. When I began with the second level some time ago, I thought about giving up.
• structuring the code: Because this is my first LD I was extremely stressed from the beginning and just did the code. If a teacher or a professional looked at it, they would commit suicide, that means: One big main function and a bunch of structs without methods, getters/setters and inheritance.

It’s really a pity that everything worked out as feared. I wasted my weekend sitting in front of a computer and doing useless stuff.

If anybody cares, here are some screenshots of my dead birth:

(That weird rectangle with zeros and ones is a byte. Yeah, you are playing a byte.)

#1 and #2 show The Byte in a nightly city, the first and only working level.

#3 shows a devmap. Yellow tiles are ladder tiles, black tiles are solids and the pepper marks the end. (the map is called “The Outskirts” because it was supposed to be an extension of the first map, before I gave up)

Hopefully this post can help someone, otherwise it would be another waste of time.

See you in the next LD48, aVoX.

now its time pack everything and publish the final version !!!!
good weekend of coding, drawing, coding, testing …

Tags: final, html5, LD22, progress

Hi people,

I’m done. This was a taxing challenge, but I am proud of what I just created. I present

5 DAYS

A game about being stranded in on Mars with barely any ressources.

Go Play | Entry-Page

-Matthew

Tags: 3dsmax, max, unity, unity3d

So the game is 99.99% done, all that’s left is to tweak some things like visuals and player borders. There’s plenty of time left so I’m thinking about adding another level before submitting.

Until then, here is the basically complete version of the game. Again, feedback or bug reports would be most appreciated!

Things were really coming together rond abouts midnight last night.  Today, I’m making progress, but I’m starting to get sloppy.

Got the difficulties balanced a bit, now I win amost instantly on easy…

and die almost instantly on hardcore… that’s balance…

Tags: Kitch, LD22, screenshot, xna

My entry is starting to look like a game! Still a little dull to play though…

If it is big and shoots big lazers at you its a boss right?

Death beams!

These spawn every 6 waves, just to really wreck your day.

Now, i finally go to bed.

My little game about Grue is almost ready.

But, on another computer i have a very strange bug:

So, i hope is doesn’t prevent to enjoy.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17815739/GIFG.rar

Latest screenshot:

You can view screenshots of my game here. All the way from programmer art on a black screen to shaded programmer art on brown noise and lights!

I’ve noticed by making a black background, white border and non-black inside, the game looks a little like a Demotivational Poster – Should I try to avoid that? Make use of it for clever game-over sequences?

Establishing game design using "paper prototyping" methods

Each chip is a unit type – Black bases are cities, White are Mayans, Blue is Fertile Swamp, Red is Maize, Green is Jungle – Mechanics and variables and game play are all worked out and tried by hand. Looks solid. Digitally, we’ll tweak the balance when AI and auto-refreshing are all in place and running.

This is going to be truly unique and surprising, “double-edged-sword” game play.

… with 5 hours to spare.

I’m a little surprised that I finished. And I’m actually really happy with how my game turned out. It could be better of course, but it’s not bad for 48 hours.

I’ll post some more thoughts later (and my time-lapse video), but for now I need to get away from this damn computer.

Play Spawn

No image this time. I’ve been working on some polish, adding in a couple easter eggs, and fixing a few things.

I’ve got most of the game feature complete to where I want it for the LD. I’m also trying to work on some sounds now.

Here’s a brief synopsis of how “There’s Waldo” came to be.  Some LD guys and I were in a google hangout, and I bounced a bunch of ideas off of everyone, one real good one was a reimagining of “Where’s Waldo” with none of the people except Waldo, and when you click him, it says “there’s waldo” as if you didn’t know.  The game is completely defeated this way, but I think it says something about “alone” vs. “not alone”, besides being hilarious.  So anrdres and I bring you ‘There’s Waldo’, thanks to everyone who helped put this together so quickly and for the chat.

http://t.co/ciPUrpCo

Another idea we had was to make a big splash screen for a multiplayer game, and then have it say “couldn’t find friends to play with” and it just shows you sitting there at that screen.  I figured this was a modern way to show how alone affects gameplay in some games… if you can’t find anyone to play with, the game is totally useless.  Also batted around were things like playing a team sport as the only player on the field, the score still moves and you have the ball but that’s it.

Tags: LD22

Wow crap, this is starting to look like a game now. Not mentioned in topic: platforms work now. You can’t shoot anything yet, sadly, and there’s no storyline at the moment.

See if you can get past all 254 killscreens. Download dev dump #004 here.

Rice with tomato sauce and cheese. Beer.

Tags: foodphoto

What I have done of LD22. So much to do in so little time. ARg. Now to build a level.
Playable here: (speed needs to be fixed… )

http://davidjokinen.com/ld22/

I learned a lot throughout this Ludum Dare.

Preparation is key. And I don’t mean by programming the game before the compo starts, but by knowing your tools inside out. I spent a lot of Saturday messing around because I didn’t practice enough with Slick2D. That was noticeable by the peaks and lows my FPS had. It went from as high as 3000 to as “low” as 200 FPS because of a few changes. I’m pretty sure that I won’t do that much better the next Ludum Dare, but I’m confident that eventually I’ll master resource management.

Clean code is good code. Yeah, screw that. I tried maintaining the cleanest code possible throughout Saturday and spent more time “cleaning code” than writing code. I stopped writing clean code on Sunday. I’m not saying “screw clean code entirely” but in a Ludum Dare situation it can get hectic and it’s better to output code fast instead of clean. It’s not like I’m maintaining this game after today.

Make it playable as fast as possible. I read some developers preaching this and to be honest, it’s cool and fun when your game is running and changes you made are instantly testable. I switched from a platformer to a topdown view during the course of Saturday. I felt platforming wouldn’t have been as fun and as smooth as topdown would have been. Know your limits applies.

One thing I didn’t do was participate that much in the community. That was a choice I made when I started. I wanted to focus on game-making entirely. I think I wouldn’t have finished my game if I was reading around and trying everyone else’s game. Not to speak of internet distractions…

All in all, my game isn’t that much fun. It entertains you for a minute, or two if you’re a slow player, but I’m glad I made it.

Special thanks to caranha for assistance and lols.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3164

and submitted it!

post-mortem forthcoming, after a couple days of getting comments from people (and trying other people’s games)

things I have done since submitting:

– read reddit

– played and tested other people’s games (guys you should go do this they are so grateful for it)

– wrote a bot to keep a log of submission counts every ten minutes, results here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5227720/LD22/entry_counts.txt

It’s a game! Not a very long game, in fact it has just six levels. All I’m going to do now is add some “You win!” / “You lose!” messages, polish it some, and publish it. I’m not going to do the second half of the game as I planned unless some extra time materializes somewhere.

(The weird glitches are from the screenshot.)

So, I added an inventory screen. There isn’t anything you can do with the items (yet); just read the descriptions and wonder who’s been littering everywhere 😉

I didn’t post another update last night because I was rushing to get as much done as possible; I wasn’t sure whether I’d make it. Things are looking good now, all I have left to do is create a couple more areas, a “game won” screen, and maybe improve a few minor things. I’ve got all the sound effects done, as well as the background ambience (although it seems FlashPunk has trouble looping audio perfectly). I’m definitely having fun writing all the text that goes in the notes, logs, and boards; if you play the game, be sure to read them all to get the most out of it.

Anyway, as usual, here’s a screenshot. It’s from the first area:

Screenshot of area 1

Click here to play!

Hope you all enjoy, I had a ton of fun working on this. Feedback and crits are really appreciated My first completed Ludum Dare! >:D

– Ian

Here is my progress so far for my shootmup boss battle game. Sadly I won’t be able to finish it in time :(.

Alone In Space is Finished, and submitted, you can see/play it here. The Online High Score Table is located here, when you finish submit your score and see how you stack up against other players.

This morning I finished Sound, added music, and revised a few minor things.

There are still some issues. The game will sometimes crash and give a render error. I’ve been unable to figure out what it does that, so I’m submitting the game with it anyways.

I’ll post a Timelapse and Postmortem later in the week. I’m happy with the game overall.

I just finished my FIRST Ludum Dare game (and the first published one also!)

If you want to play it, please go here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7059

There’s no way I’m going to finish in time, so I’ve given up.

Trying to complete what would be hard with all 48 hours in much less isn’t a good idea, especially when you haven’t slept enough. I’m too tired and the engine too buggy to do the Jam, so that’s it.

Good luck all, I’ll enjoy seeing what people come up with, I’m already amazed by Notch’s WIP.

I’ve got a nice world map done with a lot of sub levels but still need to add some kind of gameyness to it in the next 4 1/2 hours…

Now I have a moving (hovering, not animated) NPC that can be killed. Too much to do, probably won’t finish in time.

I lost a lot of time, but I got level loading working, and a basic horrible in game editor.  

I’m running out of time here and things are getting a bit crazy at my house, as we need to clean it up entirely, so I’m doubting that I’ll be able to make the compo deadline. I don’t want to abandon this, however, so I’m going to shoot for the jam if I start running out of time. It might be the best move in general, honestly, but we’ll see what happens.

This is my first time participating in the Ludum Dare competition, and so far it’s been a really cool experience. I’m working on a side scrolling space shooter. I decided to use the love framework for this, which was an interesting choice, seeing as I’ve never used lua before. I think I made the correct decision however, as my game is looking pretty good. It is finished, but I want to do a bit more play testing before submission. I will include a screen shot though.

(first preview, second preview, third preview, fourth preview)

Here is my fifth preview of my game. It’s basically EVERYTHING except proper level design (The level there is a test) and a timer on levels which I completely forgot haha.

I’m REALLY proud of the sfx, I made all of them by myself! (except the spikes one which is sfxr )

Here’s the original idea, basically it’s about dragging your companion’s dead body back home from a very unlucky expedition.

Play it here: Rolpege LD22 (Alone) – Preview 5

You control the character with arrow keys / WASD / ZQSD / ,AOE

You drag the body with the down arrow key, S, O, Space or C.

… or what kept me busy instead of LD:

As a final touch, cookies are supposed to be joined with a strawberry jam.

Tags: foodphoto

I am Defeated:

I will still submit a game, but I doupt it will have anything I intended to have, As much as it pains me to leave it so unfinished atleast as I planned for my original plan. I was mainly aiming for the mood part, But I can see that trying to achive that in Unity would take a whole bunch of polish.

I am too tired right now to try focus properly on further assets creation. I am going to polish up the existing assets and add more Textures to the scene, but I seriously cannot make more assets within the amount of time remaining….

Here is a list of assets I would still have to create:

• Random Family Car *
• Truck of Pet food *
• Lockbox *
• Phonebox *
• Vandalized Phonebox *
• Diner interior
• Counter with a workable Cashmachine (with pressable buttons, drawer) ** (just counter now)
• A Couple of Notecards *
• Closed Cardboard box full of “Kittens”
• 4by4
• Monster of the Shadow *

* Are cut out from the submitted version

I definitely wrote my self into a corner: I would have create a couple of large scale assets still – before being even able to begin doing map it self, But I will not have enough time to create the following objects, and then design some sound effects. Should have definetly done a smaller scene.

I will put more details during the post-competition.

Probably the biggest fault I ran into was simply the fact that I was not completely familiar with Unity 3D, and cross object communication/identification, as well as fiddling around trying to do object animations through script, instead of simply making animations for the objects.

Fortunately, I came to this competition with the goal of learning, and So I did: A whole bunch actually especially when it comes to user-object interaction and the sort..

Ugh. I reached a total brick wall (hehe) and couldn’t think of anything to do with the game. I realized that I would have to make a lot more gimmicks in order to keep the dungeon interesting, and I simply don’t have the time to implement all of that. So, I’m releasing it as-is.

I did, however, learn a lot from the competition this time around. jMonkeyEngine is a bit impractical for 2D games with very basic entity behavior, but it can be done, and it is otherwise fairly robust. I feel as though if I had the time, I could very easily create a full, 3D game on the engine. I also learned how to do physical collision using ray-casting, and for the most part, the implementation in the game works perfectly (except for a little exploit that I wonder if many people will find… it was very fun to play with in testing).

If I hadn’t decided to build the game for the purpose of learning jME as opposed to taking an easy route and using Swing or Slick (like Notch is doing), I probably would have made it far more complex and long.

Oh well. It was fun, and I’ll try to compete in the April competition if AP studies don’t get in the way.

Tags: burnout, jmonkeyengine, post-mortem, submission

It basically works. It’s missing so much from my original idea, but that’s the way it is. With so little time left I’ve desided to finish up what I have and make sure I can package and host it.

Once it’s hosted, then I can try and fix the bug that makes the game crash randomly. 😛

And heres my desktop. As you can see notch uses my other screen.

Counting pixels and typing all the relevatn stuff into textfiles is “great!”, perfect when you are tierd.

Nope, it could not handle the filesize.

Well, im probably done now, not much time or energy left, ill just upload what i might hand in here:

http://speedy.sh/QCjJx/Final1.rar

I have completed and submitted Super Animal Friendship Club:

PLAY ONLINE

Total coding time: 5-6 hours

Enjoy!

Tags: final, flash, progress, screenshot

Finally submitted the finished thing!

Ending was a bit rushed, but the cat easter egg is just how I want it to be, simple, but ridiculous

Here’s the entry’s page

So I made my dessert, and as usual it’s yum! It’s a cherry clafoutis and is so light and fluffy and addictive.

I’d bought some cream so I couldn’t help but make something great for LD22 Also here is a worm from the game Hoping I can get it all done in time! Not long to go now.

Tags: foodphoto ld22 ludum dare ld48

Well, I felt that I did pretty well! This is technically the first game I have ever made (lol) which sounds weird considing how it turned out.

Ontop of that, I am rendering up the timelapse to be done by tomorrow hopefully!

Hope you guys manage to check out my entry =]

Nearly done! Maybe someone can test the game for last minute changes?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39448/gdx/ld22/ld22_play_v3.jar

Hello Linux user,

I need the help of linux user to test if my entry run correctly. I am using the SFML 2. I want to make sure that SFML is correctly link.

You can download it here.

Thank you all! 😀

A moving NPC that can be killed and a basic score counter.

Killing NPCs and living longer will increase score.

Concentration will go down faster if more NPCs are alive and up slowly if you’re alone.

No way it’ll be done in time.

So…

from the start I didn’t have high hopes about completing the design I went with, and for the last few hours I’ve just been in a ‘just get enough stuff in there to show the intention’ kinda blitz.

But you knw what? Everything’s come together so well in these last few hours I’m in danger of actually haveing a game on my hands :3

(You WISH you were alone!)

4 hours to go: Let’s do this!

Dexter

I’m almost done with my first ludum dare! I just added semi-ambiguous room titles which tells the “plot”, which I’ve been meaning to do since I started.  The only things I need to now are to hide a kitten somewhere, come up with some sort of title for this game and to make some sort of audio.

Gotta some newfound interest in this project!

www.frankiesmileshow.com/LudumDare/Build4.zip

The maze is complete, though there is no proper ending, just a character telling you its the end. Its pretty huge to explore, but with no tiles all the rooms look sort of the same!

I can now finally make some art! 4 hours for art is very short, especially for placing tiles all over. Theres gonna be some ugly tilework in there at the end. Lets go!!

I’m so happy with this. I know it’s not a great game, and only just fits the theme, but I like what I’ve managed to accomplish with such little time.

I’ve done all the hardcore bits of it, all that’s left is the pretty stuff.

I think I’ll do that tomorrow though. I can’t enter the Compo because my friend is helping me with art, but still. Gives me more time to think and make stuff look even more purdy.

I really can’t wait to show this off tomorrow.

The game itself is nice, but my coding is still horrid. ;D

Also, good luck to all the compo peeps! Just a few hours to go!

I’m afraid I must shamefully bow out. May a thousand needles pierce my body and my organs liquefy (or something similar – doubtful that will happen, though).

Unfortunately, too many things went wrong from the start. The theme alone (see what I did there?) was enough for a major brainfart, and I lost Friday evening simply thinking about what to do.

I did come up with a design, though… which was then gracefully shredded to pieces and flushed down the toilet (wanted to do a survival/Castaway type game on a desert island). I then moved on to doing a side-scrolling 2d shooter, where overgrown manimals of all kind attacked the player and randomly exploded.

Now, even if the concept isn’t half bad (let’s call it “minimalistic” for the politically-correct folks out there), I kept encountering seemingly simple, yet mind-boggling problems. Admittedly, I haven’t done simple XNA sprite animations in a while, but this weekend made me feel like I should be going back to school (or subliminally learning animation code while sleeping).

So there I am. With 4 hours to go until close, animations that aren’t showing, no music or sound effects, no weapon sprites made yet, some serious lack of sleep, a massive headache and a caffeine overload…

I wish the best of luck to the other participants. I learned so much this weekend, and will be more than prepared to tackle the next Ludum Dare.

Engage~

Tags: final, progress

Woooooooooo! Ludum Dare 22, first attempt, conquered! Congrats to me and everyone else who is/was/will be able to complete the challenge. For me, I just stayed up 20 hours straight doing this thing, and now I’m off to an early 6am bedtime.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7360

There’s my submission. There’s an exe for the Windows folk and an in-browser HTML5 version for the more daring. Just be aware that the HTML5 version isn’t fully tested and can’t be put into fullscreen. You need a keyboard; arrow keys and ctrl key specifically, and a mouse. Backspace to skip the intro cutscene.

Thanks for the comp, well worth my time! Good luck to you all!

Even a power cut won’t stop me! I have a laptop and mobile internet!

Way behind on everything. Lots of problems and bugs. I am new to coding and thought this might be a good motivation booster.

It was! I worked nonstop for hours, and anytime I ran into a problem I would normally dread and quit working for days, I tackled it and fixed it. (Until they all piled up and the deadline was 4 hours away)

Anyway, I am very motivated to keep learning Javascript and keep using Unity, and hopefully make some games over the next 4 months. Annnd of course I will be much more prepared next Ludum Dare! LD23, here I come… in 4 months. 😉

I did make up a little demo for everyone to play, if they care.

Not hardly finished at all, plenty of bugs, and just ugly all around. I did plan on going somewhere with this but it was just not happening… not now, at least.

The game was going to be like this:

You’re flying through space in your super awesome space ship, and then you crash! On some deserted space station in the middle of nowhere. Luckily you hit the escape pod and now you’re in your robot-like pod. Your ship is on the complete other side of the station. You have to get through the station and get back in your ship.

The “space station people” who used to work here were much bigger than you so that’s why the proportions look so crazy. I had plans, I really did… buuut as I’ve already said. I bit off a bit more than I could chew at the moment. 😛

So here’s the demo.

Controls:

Move: W, A, S, D, Space jumps.

Lights: Left shift turns them off, “C” turns them on. (I was just too in-experienced to make a toggle function. One of the lower priority things. Haha)

Doors: Left ALT opens, “Z” closes them. (Very buggy, there were of course going to be triggers/keys, but I didn’t get that far and so I just gave you a way to get through them)

Annd “X” does something special… if you get there, you’ll need it to get to where your (non-existent,  because I didn’t put it in there :P) ship is.

Also, one of the doors does not open or close. That is intentional. It was supposed to be locked. There is an alternate route…

Alone in Space

I am looking forward to playing all the other (finished) games! And good luck to everyone, for LD22, and LD 23, in 4 months. 😉

It has been a really interesting weekend for sure.  Thankfully, I made the deadline and got an entry submitted.  “The Library of Madness” is a little roguelike prototype done in Python with pygame.  It may not be much, but it was a lot of fun to work on!

Perhaps even more fun than the coding is watching the time-lapse videos of all the screenshots compiled over the 48 hour competition.  I threw some music in and it’s a blast to watch everything happen so fast after so many hours.  Thanks to all those that dropped by the livestream and said hello!

You can check out all my time-lapse videos here or click the youtube links below.

Day 1 Time-lapse

Day 2 Time-lapse

Day 3 Time-lapse

Tags: timelapse

Just like the last time, I finished my game 6 hours before the deadline.

Finding the idea took me around 3 hours, the graphics 2-3 hours, same thing for the sounds effects, the rest was for coding and writing dialogs (especially writing the dialogs).

I would like to do a What went wrong, what went right thing, but according to me, everything went right. The game is what I wanted it to be, it’s my second one, and I’m pretty proud of myself.

Don’t know if the game is fun, funny or moody still, but it’s mine, and I love it.

Thank Ludum Dare for making this happen. I would have never thought I could actually make games.

(The game is here : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=1874)

I have submitted my final game (source is with the download).

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8682

I hope you all enjoy it!

Tags: easter-egg, kitten-challenge

Best Friend

It’s about a boy and his dog, as cliche as ever. There are two endings to get, and the dog is stupid. Control with the arrow keys, press M to mute the music.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13349757/LudumDare22.swf (Looks best in standalone flash window)

Here’s the source: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13349757/LudumDare22.zip (You must link it to flixel 2.55 as an external library, with photonstorm’s powertools 1.9 installed if you want it to compile)

And here’s a timelapse of the making of Best Friend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOY8cDkqlSY

Did I submit that right?

In an earlier post we showed you that purple-haired Maya Acolyte who is your main consort.  Here are the two other sprite types: the Warrior (2nd Stage – Post-Classical) and the Conquistador (3rd Stage – Colonization).  Both are troublesome and represent a lot of bloodshed for you and your people. (after all, you just want to be left alone)

We had a little hiccup in the server, so these haven’t gotten up till now.

It’s done! It’s actually done! With sound, music, animations, kill/win-screens AND content! Now I’m just going to let a friend try it out for a while, then it’s upload time baby!

Have work in less than an our. Still need to polish and make some music. Ah well, wish me luck!

I’ll be honest, the level design for the early levels is pretty simple and was mainly built to teach players the rules of the game world. Only after I started making level 5 did I start to get truly imaginitive with what I could do in the game. I’m particularly happy with the proof of concept that level 7 represents, in which you must use the Hug Monster to complete the level, but it made me look back at other levels and feel like they were lacking… especially level 4!

Level 4 was just a straight copy of level 3 but with the ability to knock the home platform out of reach. I like the floating platform idea, but I felt like I should have been more imaginitive with the rest of the design… so I revamped it completely. It’s not as tricky or complex as levels 5, 6, or 7, but it’s finally worthy of being its own distinct level.

I also had to spend some time working out the kinks in my smooth camera following algorithm… in that there *is* one now. 😉

(-o^_^)-o PLAY THE HUGMONSTER DEMO – with a newly imagined Level 4 o-(^_^o-)

Additionally I took care of a couple of stages in which falling out of bounds didn’t actually kill you when it should have.

I’ve completed and submitted my adventure/puzzle game, Station 7. In it you must explore the abandoned station and try to find a way out.

Link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=4024

Really enjoyed this weekend’s Ludum Dare. Everything managed to come together towards the end. I noticed the mutants became so much more interesting when they could move by two squares instead of just one.

Click here to play!

I’m looking forward to hearing comments on the game. I’ve been working almost entirely on Greedy Bankers over the past year and it’s refreshing to try out some new ideas. I’m not expecting to get great scores for this, but I’m glad I tried the ideas out and I think there’s definitely something worth expanding on here.

The most important thing is that I had fun! I want to do more prototyping, and this was a great way to pump-prime myself for more experimenting!

I’ve been recording footage of the game as it progressed and my thoughts as I developed the game. I’ll be editing it and posting it up on youtube tomorrow

Good luck to all the other entrants and a Merry Xmas!

And now, the moment at least 4 of you have been waiting for…Kitty Alone!  Enjoy!  (And vote :D)

Kitty Alone