So my friend Ian and I made a Christmas album. I know it’s after Christmas, but I was out of town, so Happy New Year Everyone!

I finished the songs that I posted for the LD Christmas Album weekend (‘All I Want for Christmas is Presents’ is now all Phil Spectoredy, yay!) and recorded a few more. Then Ian did the lion’s share of everything else (He even made an incredible 8-bit song, The Ice Storm, that makes me wish I could us him for Ludum Dare’s). Anywho, here it is:

http://www.devonscott-tunkin.com/nonweb/xmas_album.zip

Tags: album, christmas, music

Hey hey,

This isn’t Ludum Dare news per se, but I figure it’s right up everyone’s alley.  I’ve been asked by the organizers to let you know about Global Game Jam, taking place on January 30th 2009.

http://www.globalgamejam.com

Unlike Ludum Dare, this is an actual event taking place in 49 (currently) locations all around the world.  RSVP, show up, meet some new people, form a team, and build something in a weekend.  True to the spirit of the compo.

Thanks,

Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

PS: Mini LD #6 is next weekend, hosted by matrin

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2008/12/21/minild6-collab/

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2008/12/22/minild-6/

Be there!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under LD - Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Some of you probably want to see the framework that I planed for MiniLD#6 collab competition. Well, here are the first screen shots.

The framework is made in python 2.6 and pygame, I have learned how to do it from keeyai’s CGL, but I haven’t used any code from it, because I found it too well crafted for it’s own purpose, and not flexible enough to use it for my framework.

The current framework source can be downloaded here, under Download, and more screen shots can be found under Glog. ( I know the site is an ugly mess, I am going to get to that).

I hope a lot of you like the MiniLD idea, and a lot of you decide to enter. It will be fully opened, so even if your game won’t run with my framework, you are welcome to pick out one of the themes for yourself.

For a simple explanation of the compo rules, look at older post.

Tags: binary loader, LDCollab

Here is a link to the wiki entry for MiniLD6, where you can see the start time, read the rules, select themes,…

Please leave comments if you think i missed something, or if things are unclear.

Tags: wiki

The themes for miniLd #6 are up. Link

Have fun.

I will participate to this new challenge. The main theme is “monochrome” and I have choose the second theme “build the level you play”.
My idea ? A background in green (yes, it is really beautifull, the green) and a small character who need to go in a goal.
With your mouse you can make a segment which is dark. The character can move on this, but he is few lazy, and stupid, like a lemming. But be carrefull, segments become gradually light and when the segment has the background’s color, it disappear ! So if are not attentive, he will fall and, if this fall is too long, you loose ! So, I must begin the code …

Tags: MiniLD #6

I have added a score limit to the rules. You are only allowed to give a max of 1000 points in your game.

I have picked ‘Trains’ as my secondary theme for this Mini LD #6.  “Monochrome” is the primary required theme of the contest.  Instead of making a full game for this competition Matrin has tasked us with a limit to make the game a single-level.  Everyone who submits a game will have their game be one of the levels in a game “wrapper” that will join them all together.  The common theme being monochrome.

I want to create a game that will be of limited scope yet still fun and not too small.  I am trying to work out what size the level should be of my monochrome train game.

My current idea is a kind of 2d platformer that takes place running along a moving train.  You will have to watch out for tunnels and obstacles that would sweep you off the train if you are on top of a train car.  You will have to move quick enough that you aren’t on train cars that will become disconnected and drift backwards after a time.  I’m going to impose a time limit through the fact that if you don’t reach the train engine in time to stop it you will die due to train crash.  You will start at the end of the train on the caboose and have to work your way along.  I may make it old west themed as well.  You will have to fight off bandits on your way to pull the brake at the front of the train.  Perhaps I’ll have a minimap at the top that will show the trains progress on the level so you can know how close you are till the end instead of just time limit.

I’ll be using Ruby / Gosu gamedev library again for this competition.

Here is initial mockup:

Tags: mono, monochrome, train

I’ve decided to have a go at the MiniLD – this will be my first 48hour challenge, so my main aim is simply to have a working game at the end of it, and I’m not aiming too high.

I’ve chosen the theme “infection”, and I’m going to be working in Python with PyGame.

The idea I think I will go with is very simple – you play the part of some kind of medicine fighting off infections by zapping them somehow (I still have to work that bit out… I’ll see how the graphics turn out)

Ok, so I’ve got an idea for a lil game that I’ll whip up tomorrow. It’s going to use The Tower secondary theme and will be brought to you by the color Pink.

I’ll be using my usual c++ with allegro.

I have chosen the theme Balloon!. I think my color is going to be yellow. I’m itching to start coding even though I’m not supposed to yet. Normally I use C++ and SDL, but I’m considering using Flash as its capabilites might be better suitied to my project, though I’m not sure how to go about it.

If I do use C++ and SDL I’ll use my special library, which I am releasing right now here, if it’s not too late to be official. Please respond if you know for a fact this is valid or invalid! This is my own library, PlatyGame version something or other.

EDIT: I just realized this, apparently the compo already started.

Tags: Balloon, C++, monochrome, PlatyGame, SDL

I’ve been laying down the code since my last post and I already have a screenshot to post.  Basically the traincars currently come flying out of the left and head to the right past the various cactus, rocks and other western detritus that I will hopefully add for ambience.  I’m really liking the look of it so far.

Now, I have to code a player cam to track the train cars through the world coords.. fun fun!

Tags: gosu, mono, monochrome, ruby, screenshot, train

Right, so I’ve got my first few sprites done (two dangerous bugs, and the medicine that is going to be your weapon against them). I know technically this is more like “toxin fighter”with the chemical warnings, but after a whole load of attempts at drawing bugs I decided to go with things I could draw…

I’ve only added the basic code – collision detection etc. – but I’m quite proud of the graphics (I can normally draw graphics about as well as I can ride a unicycle). I guess the “monochrome” theme has been a blessing – it definitely makes sure the colour(s) match.

Now I’m going to start working on the gameplay a bit more – the simplest way would be to go with a space-shooter type game, but that’s a bit unimaginative. On the other hand, at least I know that would be fun, so if I can’t come up with an addictive idea I might resort to that.

I wasn’t going to start until tomorrow but I had nothing to do so I decided to implement a small tech test to see if what I wanted to do was at all doable in Flash. Space is filled with planetary bodies, starts and what not and it’s up to the player to feed the suns and make them grow to encompass each other (or something). Anyway, it’s all implemented with bloobs using flash’s bitmap routines. It looks a little something like this:

Oh and the color will definately change! 😀

Tags: bloobs, growth

Well, I think I have my basic idea drawn up. You’re a small mining drone of some kind, orbitting around the sun. You fire charges into the sun that blows out valuable plasma, which you collect in your ship. But you have to let it cool down a little bit before you gather it, otherwise it’ll eat away at your (constantly dwindling) shielding. Three buttons — speed up, slow down, and fire charge. You speed up and slow down at an angle perpendicular to gravity, and because you’re orbiting, speeding up makes you move up (away from the sun), and slowing down makes you move down (closer to the sun). If you touch the sun, you take damage very very quickly, but closer is also safer (other than hitting the sun) and richer, since the best plasma is the plasma that’s been blasted away from the sun, and cooled down as it drifts closer back down to the sun. If you collect no plasma whatsoever, your drone will be destroyed in two minutes, but every bit of plasma you collect (even that which has cooled down) reduces your shielding a small amount. Your job is to find the best middle ground between staying alive longer and collecting more plasma.

Now I’m going to play some Left 4 Dead while I think about more specifics.

Tags: Sun Diver

This is the state I’m leaving “infection fighter” in before getting some sleep (it’s 3 am here) – the basic code is done and thoroughly bug-checked, and it’s currently working very similarly to asteroids – although I’ve got a few ideas to spice the game up a bit that I hope might work really well …

The player is the cell in the middle (or at least that’s supposed to be a cell in the centre), and you can tell the rotation by seeing where the nucleus is facing. The pill on the right has just been fired.

I’ve got a prior engagement tomorrow (hence deciding to make such a simple game – and needing sleep), but hopefully I’ll have time to add at least some of the features I’m planning, try my hand at recording some sound effects and tie up the bits like scores and lives. And even if I don’t have time to do all of it – judging by the amount of time I’ve been wasting playing it it could be really addictive.

Generally my Ludum Dare experience is a lot of fun so far!

Tags: pygame, python

But Balloon Game will be amazing, you’ll see.

I’m not sure what kind of game I’m going to make or even if I’m really going to try to compete.  However, I did hack together the start of a little program, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.

I haven’t decided upon a theme yet, so I don’t know what kind of gameplay I’ll have.  At first I was thinking about the theme ‘Random,’ so I wrote up a little random terrain and trees generator.  I didn’t know what kind of colors I wanted to go with so I tried it with both day and night options.

I personally like the night scene more than day.  I noticed that “Light and Darkness” is one of the options, but I’m still not sure what I might do.  Currently there is no way of dynamically transitioning between day and night.

The themes I might be most interested in are, “Construction/Destruction” (Perhaps building cities on the mountains … or something?), “Indirect Interaction”, or “Swarms” (UFO’s?).

I guess I’m going to sleep on it.

Well, things are getting off to a slow start this morning as I have been dealing / fighting with 20%+ packet loss on my cable modem…. *sigh*   Anyway– after a few hours it has cleared up for now.

On the monochrome train front, I have been sorta zoning out watching my current tech test demo.  There is no gameplay yet, but I like how it sets the stage for the coding yet to come.

I currently have a wide world of train landscape with cactuses, rocks and tracks.  Populated with a boxcar only ghost train right now.  The train chugs along to the right and will run for approximately 2-3 minutes (not locked down yet) before crashing.

The player (yet to be drawn / coded) has that amount of time to race from the caboose to the train engine to hit the brakes!  There will be obstacles of various types along the way (yet to be drawn / coded).

In this demo, you can press the left and right arrow keys to move the viewport back and forth.  When you stop, it keeps its slow advance.  My current idea is that the viewport moves just *slightly* faster than the train so that if you don’t creep along with it you will also get swept off the back of the screen and fail that way too.

Here is a win exe if anyone wants to see my monochrome train test.

Tags: demo, gosu, mono, monochrome, ruby, train

So .. best game ever .. or something.

It’s a typing game.  Type the text in the center of the screen.  Quotes are from Tom Sawyer.

Have fun, or whatever  Again thanks to DrPetter for sfxr and to thirdcog for making an OS/X port.

I finally got around to create a primitive edit mode. So now I can start building the level.

A shame I have no good ideas for it.

Tags: editor, journal, screenshot

I just finished implementing parallax scrolling background objects for my game.  There is currently a nice cloud layer, a far plateau layer, and a near plateau layer all that move by in different speeds based on their distance.  I’m really quite happy with it so far.

I find I am not making much gameplay progress because it has been so relaxing for me to watch the train and dessert go by.  I have to start implementing some game play now!

Here is the latest test exe if any windows users wanna check it out! Left and Right arrow keys move viewport.  ESC to quit.

Tags: demo, exe, gosu, mono, monochrome, ruby, train

I decided to go with the theme “Swarms.”  Here is a mockup of what the final game might look like:

I already have the people and aliens running around.  They don’t exactly “swarm” in any coordinated manner, but I’m not going to worry too much about it.

After lunch I’ll impliment the player’s ship, tractor beam, tossing aliens, and alien ships.  I’m just going to hack this together as quickly as I can.

Well, I missed the start of the competition again, but this time I don’t think I’m going to rush to get something done. I think I’ve entered 4 programming comps in the last month and a half, and I need to get away from the computer.

However, you can see my entry for the Java 4k Game competition, if you like. Basically you’re a guy in a spooky house trying to scare ghosts away from your friends before your friends are “eaten.”

Run in an Applet

Run in Java Webstart

I got back to work about two hours ago (although I did stay up for an extra hour or two last night after saying I would sleep), and the game is coming along quite well.

Most importantly, I have managed to add some of the extra gameplay ideas I had yesterday. The gameplay is now some kind of mix of asteroids and puzzle bobble – with an infection theme, and in glorious monochrome…

I’ve also added a score (as you can see in the screenshot), and some basic sound effects – my musical skills are best described as NULL, so I’m not sure I’m going to add much more, but perhaps I’ll generate something with DrPetter’s sfxr if I think it’ll fit in (I found the debian/ubuntu binary package here if anyone’s looking for one as I’m getting unmet dependency problems installing libgtk to compile from source at the mo.)

Still to do – lives, deaths, writing the score to the file, and some better physics – but it’s come along.

Tags: infection, pygame, python, sfxr, ubuntu

If you look closely.. you see the hero of the monochrome train!

I have now added three train car types of various heights.  You can now fall off or in between cars and die.  The train cars detach from the train when they hit the left side of the screen.  The velocity of the car is transfered to the hero so he drifts with them correctly.  He can now jump between all the cars with the jump from lowest car to highest being possible but tricky.  The game is over if you fall off and die or if you get swept off to the left of the screen.   You are supposed to advance to the head of the train but there are no enemies yet or win condition.  Only death…. and that is not handled gracefully.. if you ‘die’ the game ends abruptly.

For the brave, here is the current windows build exe.

Use arrow keys to move left, right, and jump! ESC to quit.

Tags: demo, exe, gosu, mono, monochrome, ruby, train

justnoticed the compo an hour a go.  Will do something quick and experimental for tomorrow

towlr? I barely knew ‘er!

Tags: Add new tag, colour, monochrome

Almost final version of my monochromatic Zombii (NOT zombie) game. It’s a classic top-down shooter in which you have one goal: kill all zombiis. Enjoy.

So, just found out about this tonight and thought I’d make up for the fact that I still haven’t finished my LD13 entry yet 😀 I’ve got an idea for something using the “Minimalist” theme; will start work on it tomorrow morning (I’ve only got till 5pm here, so it’ll probably be fittingly minimal, heh).

I thought I’d post the game in it’s current state as I’m heading for more sleep – I’ve updated the physics a bit and tweaked the game logic, but I have to make it tougher, save the scores to a file, add some kind of game-over screen, and dig out an old windows box to see if I can remember how to make an exe from python (py2exe?).

[same screenshot as before – except with lives]

Feel free to have a play and comment – You’ll need python and PyGame – then just run main.py

You can download it here…

It’s a simple idea, but I hope it’s fun (I’ll make it tougher to play by the end).

Tags: demo, infection, pygame

It’s amazing! It’s wonderful! It has potatoes.

Get it here. Uses C++ and SDL. Written & compiled in MSVC++ 2008 Express edition. MS Paint & GIMP for graphics. SFXr & Musagi for the sound & music that didn’t make it in.

Note: this is the Debug build because for some reason the Release build refuses to compile.

EDIT: See new post (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/01/11/balloon-game-update) for version that should actually work.

Tags: Balloon, C++, monochrome, musagi, SDL, sfxr

Here’s my entry. You control a spider that is in dire need of getting more legs. Sort of.

Download
Windows 32-bit binary with D source

Instructions
Collect all powerups to complete level. This will give you a time bonus.
If time runs out or if you fall outside the world, the level ends, but you are left with the score you got for any collected powerups.

Controls
Enter to start game.
Esc to quit (also at level over etc).
Left click/hold to set target. Speed based on distance.
Right click/hold to set target and jump.

Hints
You need to walk slowly to round edges.
You can only sort of jump away from the current surface you are on.

Source
Some source was previously written, but only sort of texture loading, font rendering and some init code.

Uses GLFW, FModEx, sfxr and some other stuff.

Also, note that the title bar is a total lier. The game did not take 32h to make, but 40h. That math is tricky stuff.

(For the framework stuff, the score is read from and written to ‘score.txt’.)

Tags: D, final, fmodex, GLFW, opengl, screenshot, spider

I’m only starting really, but here’s a progress shot:

Still need to implement… well, everything… 😮

I’m really not in control of the design process here. I’m making up restriction as I go along, constantly changing directions. The good thing is however that as I add restrictions, the amount of possible out comes drastically shrink. Currently the game is about being a cell and trying to eat other cells to grow, while looking out for “bad” cells, that will eat our shrink you.

All seen from the perspective of a microscope. It does it look kind of interesting, but it is far from fun yet.

Tags: bloobs, cells, growth

Well.. my working title is evolving a little from “Monochrome Train”.   Anyway, here is the update:

I have been working like mad during this miniLD#6.  I worked 12 hours on Friday, 17 hours yesterday, and now I have a little over 5hours left to at least wrap up the gameplay.  At this point I’m going into triage mode again like many LD format competitions force us.  In a last minute rabid attempt to cram and adjust all the critical features that will turn a project from a demo into a  game.  This being my third LD type event I have yet to feel that I’ve suceeded within the timeframe.  Not sure this time will be any different yet but at least a big difference is that this time I have been able to play my game a LOT more during creation.  Probably to the detriment of the timeline a little.  I guess that is a good sign though.  Anyway, 8am EST is almost here and that is when my crunch time begins.  I have made a critical todo list to accomplish during this time and we’ll see how it goes!

CRUNCH LIST:

• score file handling to support matrins compo requirements
• detecting most primitive form of ‘you win’ condition when reaching locomotive at head of train
• enemies – spawning, moving, fighting, dieing, dodging (of some type)
• simple player / enemy animations for the logic I have coded so far (right now there is no animation)
• simple event sounds
• tiny train like soundtrack loop (update: DONE @ 9am)
• how to page?  I am confused on this because due to the matrin framework requirement– I was planning on using his idea of the 400×400 image in his framework to provide how tos… but I also want people to be able to know how to play if they just download this level from the blog without the loading framework.. so there is the connundrum of sorts.
• animations for train wheels and locomotive parts and steam cloud

Current screen shot above and current windows build here.  Use arrow keys (left/right/up) to move or gamepad stick with button 1 to jump.

Seeya all on the other side! 😉

Tags: blue, crunchtime, demo, exe, gosu, mono, monochrome, ruby, train

edit: windows exe released.

monoclimb – windoze .exe and source distribution – python, pygame, pgu required.

THE MENS ARE ATTACKING YOU’RE BASE. YOU ARE FAST ENOUGH MOUSE CLICKER TO DEFEAT ALL THE MENS. THREE MINUTE TIME LIMIT FOR BEATING ALL OPPOSING ARM. YOU MUST SHOOT ALL THE MENS.

it saves its score in score.dat or else it gets the hose again.

Tags: climb, final, minild6, monochrome, monoclimb

DOWNLOAD TROMMEL! TROMMEL.zip (source + exes)
(updated since compo: only use score if score.txt is already present, remove unused GLSL var, small bugfix, ati ghost image fix, added icon, double pixel bug fix (aesthetic), and ati fix for that fix. yay opengl)

Score file is score.txt in the same dir as the exe. If score.txt is not present the game only counts moves.

Tags: final, screenshot, towlr

I’m fairly sure this is going to be the final version of my game “Infection Fighter” – I could carry on tweaking the gameplay forever – it’s too easy to win right now, but I think I’m more likely to decide on the best way of fixing that after the competition.

I haven’t finished packaging the windows version into an exe (and I probably won’t be able to find enough time as I’ve got to make up for spending most of my weekend coding), so windows users will need to have python and Pygame to run it – like the rest of us 😉

You can get it here. (69Kb)

Tags: final, infection, pygame, python, screenshot

Finished! (requires Python + PyGame) Since the first release there has been added:

• Power ups (rockets and plasma guns)
• Better rect class that supports floating point numbers
• Score now caps at 1,000
• More level tweaking
• Various improvements here and there

Enjoy =)

Tags: final, not zombies, pygame, pymike, python, zombiis

With you final entry for MiniLD #6 i would like to ask you to also define which file you want to use as the score file. I forgot to mention this in the rules, sorry.

Tags: score file

Subtheme: Color

Windows exeuctable here (2mb)

Embedded flash version can be played here.

Will upload embedded flash version in a couple of minutes.

No score file.

EDIT: added cross

(also : big thanks to terry for his help in getting me started w/ as3)

Tags: burn, final, screenshot

Protect and grow your cell core to reach 1000 points or die!
Click-fest guarenteed!

• Online version (score not capped)
• Zip including win exe, source code, game art.  (2 MB)

Post your scores in the comments section! My best is 400 something.

Tags: as3, bloobs, cells, final, flash, growth, source

Here is the final mini-ld #6 version of Monorail for windows.

STORY:

You are the Hero trying to reach the head of a runaway train to get to the locomotive.  You start at the caboose and work your way along fighting off the bad guys who have taken the train over. You have to be careful not to fall off the train cars or get swept off the left side of the screen with a disconnecting train car.  Also, don’t get shot!  You can get hit 3 times before you die.

CONTROLS:

Use left/right/up arrow keys to move and jump, spacebar to shoot

Use Gamepad stick and button 1 to jump, button 2 to shoot.

BUGS / FEEDBACK:

I’d love to hear any bug reports or feedback as I’ll be developing this game for a while longer still.  I listen to all suggestions and do work on these projects long after the compo deadline.  I will likely post an updated version before too long that is post-compo.

THOUGHTS:

This was my 3rd attempt at the 48hr competition format.  I think I am fairly pleased with the results.  I love how these competitions really let you bootstrap a concept in a really short amount of time.  I spent 35hrs of the past 48hrs working on this game!  While some people might not ever get why anyone would want to ‘work’ so hard on their weekend– it is SO worth it!  😉

Tags: final, gosu, mono, monochrome, monorail, ruby, train

I’m posting this a bit late because I’ve been out most of the day, but you can consider this my partial entry into minild6.

I didn’t finish any of the gameplay and its missing half the art and all the sound and music I made. I was trying to stick to the limitations of the original gameboy since it went well with the monochrome theme. All you can do right now is walk around with the arrow keys and make a road using the spacebar. I’m pretty sure if you try and make a road offscreen it will crash, but I haven’t tried it. Anyways, let me know what you think and I’ll try and finish it up some time.

Download

Thanks to pekuja for compiling Balloon Game! It should work for everybody now. I also included SDL.dll in the zip. No changes have been made to the code or graphics. Get the new version here.

See old post at http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/01/10/balloon-game/

Tags: Balloon, C++, final, monochrome, musagi, SDL, sfxr

I will just apologize in advance, as the next level may shock and dismay..

Cannon Hearts Tower is my entry for miniLD6, the secondary theme is ‘LD12: The Tower’ and the tertiary theme is ‘miniLD5: Cover someone else’s game’. This is a cover of Sivart13’s game for LD12:  “Cannon Hates Tower”.

Use up and down to aim your cannon and hold space before releasing space.

This mini game will be used in the LDCollab framework as a single level, with the other miniLD6 entries.

This first version does not use score files.

The Max Score is 1000. Post your best score in the comments. I’ve gotten 650.

Download: http://sites.google.com/site/roboticarts/cannon-hearts-tower

And with a great success. With 11 finished entries, more than I could hope for. I will pack the games in a package and post a download link around 18.1. The games run on windows, and should also run on linux (some with wine). They mostly make use of python and pygame, so that will probably be a requirement to run the finished bundle.

Thanks for perticipating, finishing an entry or just hanging around. It was great. 😀

Tags: over, success

This is how it turned out. For anyone who hadn’t played the games from the last miniLD, or if you missed any or just want to play all of them over again, here they are, all bundled together in a neet package. You need python 2.6 and pygame to run on windows, plus wine for running on linux.

link

Enjoy.

PS: It’s still buggy.

Tags: collab, compilation, final, framework

I’m curious.

We did a little bit of promotion for the Global Game Jam, but I’m wondering if anybody actually did (or is) attending.

Do we (perhaps) cater to the “too lazy to go outside” crowd, or the “I don’t have time for that” crowd?

Or maybe you were there, representing the big LD?

Your thoughts in the comments.

Hello everyone.

It’s my first first time here, so my only goal will be to get something done in the next 48 hours (or actually I got about 46 hours left as I started at 21.20 GMT+2). I will be using Python with PyGame and Rabbyt. I’ve already got something up and running.

It has a tilemap and lightmap. Lights are done by drawing black tiles over the actual tiles with different opacity. It’s slow, only ~40fps with my computer, but it’s enough. I’m not going to waste compo time optimizing this (yet).

Hello everyone, hamburger here. This is my first Ludum Dare, and I’ll be working in Flash.

I’m officially going to start thinking about the compo now, so my deadline is 8:21 PM EST on Sunday.

I don’t think I’ll participate this weekend. I have no idea what cryptozoology is! I’ll get inspired and write a game outside the compo though.

I decided to participate after all.  I think I began around 8pm EST.

A mysterious screenshot of my cryptozoology game.. 😉  Time to go to bed.

Tags: cryptozoology, game, gosu, prototype, ruby, screenshot

my first ever soft body… thing:

Cryptid Single-cell Organism FTW!

looks a bit like fl0w I gues but I DONT CARE! =p

Tags: cell cryptid

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 at 4:35 am and is filed under MiniLD #07. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I’ve got 32 hours left. My game has now player with a lantern (that’s why I need that lightmap).

Python source is available at: http://olli.sikstus.com/minild7_32h_source.zip

The first LD since I bought myself a tablet and I’m spending it away from home. Oh well, another game with crappy graphics from me (not that using the tablet would make them much better anyway, but it would be more fun).

I don’t really have an idea but I’m tired of not coding so here goes. I’ll start as soon as I post this, so I’ll have a convenient time-stamp. But first breakfast!

Later: here we go!

You go little lizard dude. Also trees!

When it’s a finished, pixelled tile set I’ll put it here for you guys to steal too. 😀

Here is the finished tile sheet, in bmp form. You should replace the background color, of course. Possibly make it transparent. If it’s transparent, there’s room for TWO additional ‘flavor’ tiles.

Progress, ho! First screenshot of tHMSBiHMZQ; an isometric adventure game.With fruit! Built in Python/Pygame instead of Ruby this time. Shaking things up a bit — but not too much.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this, but getting there is sure going to be fun. I’m aiming a little higher than normal, to see if I can cram in a bigger game in 48 hours. This is about 6 hours in.

Tags: early, isometric, screenshot

Hey all, haven’t yet decided how involved I’m going to be in this mini-ld, I’m not feeling rediculously commited, but we shall see.  I’ve spent the last couple of hours working on a system to generate a load of semi-randomized species of odd pixel insect flying things.   Kind of a poor mans version of this sort of thing http://www.davebollinger.com/works/pixelrobots/

Seems to be working okay, so heres a first screenshot thing:

Good luck all

Finally getting started. See below a shot of my paper mockups from last night. Today I start my programming in AS3.

I decided to make a game about conceptualizing cryptids (unknown animals), so I’m trying to build a sort of semi-random animal generator as my game. I have a wants list and a needs list, and I’ll be lucky to make it all the way through the wants list.

It’s kind of playable. You can die 😛

Windows executable: http://olli.sikstus.com/minild7_27h_exe.zip

Python sources: http://olli.sikstus.com/minild7_27h_source.zip

Use WASD to move.

A giant man-eating, martini-sipping serpent. The snake is moving and looking sharp; gameplay is a little more elusive at this point. It’s a Python/pyglet window. Official end time would be sunday at 18:00 GMT+1.

Martini not pictured.

– Simon

Tags: martini, snake

Nothing earthshaking or groundbreaking from me this compo, I’m afraid. Progress is happening, and I’m adding useful stuff to the engine — fog of exploration, embarking/debarking, and dialog! — but don’t expect anything innovative.

Current state of tHMSBiHMZQ:

I have a very simple scaleable paint by pixel tool up and running, which is meant to form the core of my gameplay. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s pretty on the inside, programatically speaking.

you can play the latest version here:

http://www.sophiehoulden.com/randomstuff/celly09.html

Tags: cells soft body

Well, progress has been pretty good today.  I’ve been using LÖVE http://love2d.org/ for the first time to do this, and it’s been a very pleasant experience so far.

I’m up to the stage at which I’ve got something that is basically a complete, if unexciting game, which is a really nice place to be at the end of day one. Still not sure how motivated I’m going to be tomorrow, but ultimately I’d be okay with going ‘final’ with what I’ve got now, so I’ll be happy even if I barely touch it.

A screenshot to show how things look at the moment:

The idea is you sift through undiscovered lifeforms, naming them as you go, and ultimately hoping against hope for a sample of one particularly mythical species to arrive. It’s distinctly casual in nature, to the point of being more a toy than a game. That sits oddly with me, but I think trying to force challenge into it wouldn’t feel right either, so I’ll guess I’ll stick with the way it is.

First, I present you an awesome screenshot!

Second, you try to figure out what my game is about!

Third, I tell you! The basic setup in my game is: You’re a photographer hunting for specific properties in strange animals. You might for example be given the task of taking photographs of creatures with the legs of an elephant and the tail of a lion. You zoom around the savannah trying to find animals that are weird enough to make the cover of a magazine and if you manage to fill the film with great material the score will also be godlike!

So far I’ve got the base for the creature creation and camera. Tomorrow I’ll probably first work on identifying which animals are in the picture you just took. Then I’ll just have to slap on some scoring stuff and more content (as you can see the animals aren’t very different yet :P) and presto!

Tags: cryptozoology, work-in-progress

Someone asked me how I made these tiles. I drew the pattern for the tree’s tops on graph paper, the rest is just pixeling in photoshop. Nothing fancy, the same thing could be done in paint.

My work in progress is up at http://davidrlorentz.com/files/cryptidia_v01.html.

Tomorrow I aim to make the game internet-enabled, and add what little bit of polish I can. The bizarre output is there to stay, though. This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever worked on.

Hi, I’m new here. I’ve been lurking and playing ld games for a few years, but this is the first time I’ve put up.

My entry is far from done. If you’d like source or the work in progress, here’s my release page.

The 48 hour deadline has been great. I don’t have much gameplay, but I do have things working under Windows, which is a great relief. I didn’t leave Ubuntu until earlier this evening, and never having done python dev on windows I was certain this would be my downfall. Thankfully, py2exe is pretty much the most awesome thing ever and Cython is great for wrapping GL, so tie it all together with Box2D and pygame and I have something that looks game-like.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes already. Most notably, I wrote physics and a quadtree before convincing myself I was being ridiculous. Now Box2D is in an all is happy. I had great organization and coding discipline for the first 3 hours; now everything is mush. But a game! Tomorrow I might actually have a finished sort-of game! Hooray! I suppose the rest of you have been on this emotional rollercoaster before.

So, like always, I think up a way too ambitious game mechanic and fail to realize it before its too late

Anyways, the above shot shows my progress so far. Every graphic is placeholder, and basically all there is to the game at the moment is controlling the arms of an undersea-monster. I spent pretty much the entire first day just tweaking the physics parameters, and im still not satisfied 😐

Here is a current screenshot from my simple cryptozoology puzzle game.  It is coming along fairly well schedule wise.  I have 3 of 4 crpytid puzzles completed and just need to draw one more so that is good.  I still need sounds and maybe score a little game soundtrack for it too later.  Need a menu, perhaps highscores just for practice coding that and still searching for a title I like.

I’m glad that I finally picked a game scope that allowed me to have something playable early on and really gave me time for polish, tuning, and asset creation.  As this is my 4th LD (2 full, 2 mini) maybe I’m FINALLY learning something about scope.  😉  If anything, I probably went too far on the side of simple but we shall see.

Tags: cryptid, cryptozoology, gosu, puzzle, ruby, screenshot, update

Keeping things minimal.  Just going to work on this for a couple of hours probably, in flash as well.  I found the topic relatively uninspirational, but I’m sort of happy with that, because it gives me an excuse to toss off something small

(some of the other stuff here is looking pretty nice…)

Hello, LD world! Here’s my first LD entry

I’ve been subscribed to LD for a very long time, and always had in mind “I’ll do LD next time”, “I’ll do LD next time”, … Now, even though it is second day of MiniLD #7, I’ll do it THIS time Just a simple game, just to be there, just to try it out.

Now, one more thing I want to try is Python. I use it from time to time for some scripts I need, and I generally like it as a language. What I want to do is feel it in “the real thing”.

Finally, I’d like to try myself as an artist. On my jobs I do pure programming (plus management being lead programmer on all projects I work on). So, let’s see what I can do as an artist.

See you soon with some pictures…

Final build. I’ll be honest; I’m an hour late. So, yeah, I spend 49 hours on the game.

A Windows executable is available here (6Mb). Source is included, so if you have Python and pyglet 1.1 installed it should run anywhere.

Instructions:

There are 5 martinis in the game. The first sepent to get all 5 wins. The only way to gain martinis is to steal them by attacking the opponent serpent. To attack, simply click with the mouse. After an attack, a period of time must pass before a new attack can be launched. The cusor lights up red when the cooldown is over and the target is within range.

Edit: Play as the Coral snake, choosing the Milk snake for opponent and go for easy mode, for you first couple of plays.

-Simon

Edit: On a development note, I am pleased with the outcome – I’m especially glad I took out a couple of hours to do all the instruction screens and messages. BUT, if I have 1 regret, it is that I didn’t make more serpents to choose from. The framework is there, I just needed to paint some textures and find some fun paramter values. Oh well, that’s the horror of The Deadline for you.

Tags: final, martini, pyglet, python

Well, it looks like I’m not going to get any further on my entry, pretty bored with my idea now. Having said that this *is* a complete entry, it’s just not as fun/interesting as I’d hoped it’d be.

So yes, here it is: fauna.zip faunasrc.zip

You can browse through the vast array of remarkably similar species, and name them to your hearts content, there’s even some internet based sharing of names, (but it’s decidedly flimsy, and involves lame command prompt windows popping up momentarily).

*sigh*, not my finest hour, I think I might stick with a more conventional game idea next time around, and/or only enter if I’m actually feeling fairly commited. It was good for trying out LÖVE though.

Obligitrary screenshot:

Tags: final

There has been reports of big hairy man running in the woods. It must be a missing link of evolution! You have to capture it with your stun gun.

Controls:

WASD – move

Left shift – target

Mouse – shoot

Python: http://olli.sikstus.com/missing_link.zip

Win32 (no sounds because I had problems with py2exe and pygame.mixer): http://olli.sikstus.com/missing_link_win32_nosound.zip

I have actually coded only few hours today. I had lack of motivation because my game didn’t turn out very fun to play. But I quickly finished it, so it’s playable, not very fun though.

Tags: final

I’ve just finished making pictures for my game. It’s gonna be sudoku-like game. After drawing 5 images, I saw it would take me lot of time to draw it all, so I’ll simply flip 4 images Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Ok, that’s about it. Now, let’s do some programming…

Hi everyone! I just finished my first LD-entry.

My goal was to make a simple 2D-game where the player is supposed to catch butterflies with different kind of nets and weapons. As I didn’t have as much time to code today as I thought I had, the end result is rather simple but I’m really happy I managed to finish something! Hope you enjoy it!

I used Python 2.5 and Pygame. The windows executable can be downloaded from here

Thanks!

Tags: final

Play online

Windows version + source (2.5mb)

Tags: cryptozoolology, final, pinapple22, soft body

Have the basic game engine done, I think. Have some levels done, need to do more. No sound effects yet. Need to work on level-loading now (currently hardcoding, which won’t work).

the game itself is turning out, happily, much nicer than I had anticipated

Official Download Link

The Crab-eating Macaque is pedestrian, but the Bird-eating Macaque, he’s top shelf in the respectable cryptozoologist’s trophy cabinet. Naysayers on the Wikipedia say that Crab-eating Macaques also prey on vertebrates (including bird chicks and nesting female birds), implying that sightings of Bird-eating Macaques are simple misidentifications. But the respectable cryptozoologists know better; best stay nimble, well-fed, and out of their way.

—

I’m done, yay! I’d say this is more toy than game. When it came to writing a score display and a proper win mechanic I ran out of time and steam. That said, there is a lose mechanic; you can recover by pressing R to restart everything. I also fear that if the game runs too long without a restart it may slow to a crawl or crash. But I’m done, in something like 47 hours, so hurrah!

Now to check out the rest of the entries. Many thanks to our host for giving me a goal I could actually hit and many thanks to the rest of you for providing an inspiring bit of competition.

Tags: final

A Cryptozoologist’s dream, finding  still-living Dodo bird in the middle of a jungle.

This is my first Ludum Dare entry.  I wanted to make a sort of top down puzzle action game, and after much coding this is the very brief result, which doesn’t amount to as much as I hoped, but is good enough for my first try.

Link to Windows executable: http://www.geocities.com/sarum90/MLD7LastDodo.zip

Alternative link: http://sarum.110mb.com/MLD7LastDodo.zip

Now also available at: Zompire Dracularius

Programmed in C using SDL and OpenGL

Tags: Cryprozoology, final, sarum, The Last Dodo

Hey folks- finished my game:

• Windows build
• Mac build
• Source (linux build instructions in readme, requires Gosu available from RubyGems)

CONCEPT:

You’ve received 4 scrambled images of possible cryptids:

Use your Crypto-Computer ™ to unscramble them!

You have 1 minute to complete your task before the
evidence is lost forever.  You will receive a
30 second bonus for each cryptid you discover.

Each cryptid image is made up of 4 individual pieces.
Unscramble each cryptid by clicking on the numbered boxes
to rotate a distinct piece of the puzzle image.

* Left mouse button for clockwise rotation.
* Right mouse button for counter-clockwise rotation.

Enjoy!

Tags: challenge, cryptid, cryptozoology, final, gosu, mac, macosx, osx, puzzle, ruby, source, win, Windows

Here’s my submission.  This is my first compo, but I think you’ll like this.  I have included WinXP and Debian binaries in the zip:
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jmb97/SDL/Dino.zip

I had to forget about sound to get it in on time.

Please leave descriptive comments of your reactions and impressions!

Tags: dinosaur, final, platform, SDL, sprig

Ok so this is what I could come up with only 5 hours of work. I’m only able to kill one or two Hunters with my original Yeti :D. Bare with me, as this is the first ever competition I enter, and my very first Pixel Art which took me forever to learn.

I hope you like ! 😀

Space to Shoot.
Up and Down arrows to move up and down.
Esc to quit.

Download ( exe )

Tags: final, minild7

I made an adventure game! It’s called CZQ because I couldn’t think of a name for it. I followed the usual rules (all assets made during the 48h) which means it doesn’t have any sound, feel free to sing while you play.

It’s quite short. The graphics suck. The menu and victory screen suck a little less because I made them just now at home with my Gimp computer.

Use the arrow keys to move around; bump into stuff to interact with it; press the space bar to dismiss a dialog.

Python + pyGame: download. No binaries, if somebody wants to make some I’d be grateful.

Comments are very welcome.

Tags: adventure, cqz, final, mini ld 7

And so my first LD entry comes to a close!

Play it at http://davidrlorentz.com/files/cryptidia.html. Also posted at Kongregate. 

I would describe this game as a cross between mad libs and the Spore creature creator. Emphasis on the mad libs. Everything is randomized, including the number of arms and legs and the position and rotation of everything. I didn’t get a chance to network it (I was going to hook up a database to pull in random parts from other players online), because the outside world intervened. So you’re just gonna to have to keep drawing all those arms and legs yourself.

If by some miracle you manage to create something attractive or at least entertaining with this ridiculous tool, please post screenshots! I doubt it will happen.

This game was coded from scratch in ActionScript 3, with art created in Flash and music performed with Anvil Studio. Full source code is available here. A windows executable is available here.

Enjoy!

Tags: actionscript, cryptidia, draw, final, flash, mini ld 7, paint, pixel art

Hi, first Ludum Dare here.

This game is a TD, a.k.a. Tower Defense, which means that a whole lot of enemies (i.e. peasants – evil, evil peasants!) move along a fixed path, and you have to stop them from getting to the end of that path (the ominous top-right corner of the screen) using whatever means possible. The method I recommend is building sea monsters along the coast, as that’s all the game lets you do. Poison towers slow enemies, ultimate towers live up to their name. Happy peasant hunting!

Python 2.6 + pyGame: download.

Comments appreciated!

Tags: final

Well well, seems like I finished after all!

Developed more or less actively for around 10-15 hours. Had a bunch of other “very important” stuff (such as watching Mario Lemieux videos on youtube.com) to do and somehow didn’t manage to concentrate. Should’ve probably gotten a “game version” earlier, since my dev enthusiasm rose significantly after I got to the making-it-cooler part. (I coded all the boring parts first, which pretty much killed my productivity.. )

INStRUcTIOnS:

Try to take pictures of creatures with the right properties. Be careful and fast or your time and film will run out!

The mouse controls the camera, left click takes a picture, wheel zooms in and out (zoom isn’t really that useful unless you’re playing hardcore :P).

N starts a new game and Esc quits.

Extra hint: the more animals that satisfy the requirements you get in the same shot, the better your time and score bonus!

EDIT: FORGOT THE LINK YOU DUMBASS! The game itself

here’s some screenshots of some fun creatures I created using hamburger’s Cryptidia entry:

First, the program asked me to create something huggable…

Next, it commanded I draw something “you could put a beard on” and that it also need “ripped abs” .. these suggestions are hilarious.

Well.. my devil walks upon a table, a stick and something that looks like 1/3rd of an utter.  I like his arms.. heh.

Anyway– I definitely enjoy these drawing type programs.. thanks hamburger!

Tags: baby, beardable, cryptidia, devil, hamburger, huggable, screenshots, teddybear

here ’tis

Tags: final, screenshot

Well I did participate, and I”m dropped postings here and there, but I’m guessing that they were all the wrong places.

I’m just posting to see if this is even the right spot.  I found the toughest part was writing things from scratch. I’m use to having snippets of code which I copy and edit to make it work and move on to the next features.  Therefore, I was stumbling over lots of bits of code to write them from scratch.

I would like to have the limits of “From Scratch” Writen out better.  Could I have copied working code snippets from my personal referance library?  How about take a starter engine I’ve done and slap new art on it and then go in a new direction with it?

Link: None it’s just a triangle you can move around a black screen! because I didn’t use my person code snip-it reference library. *pouts*

This is that thing I’m making.

http://jemgine.omnisu.com/

Some time has past but I still wanted to finish my LD13 project. Maybe some of you remember the big 3d-bug I published! Hehe…well the game is still not very intuitive but I added instructions, fixed lots of bugs added some graphics and models! I would say it looks almost like a game! And that was my task! I learned a lot as it is my first game I finished.

Have a look here:

http://thomas.trocha.com/wp/?page_id=19

plz read the instructions in the game before starting!!

Here is a video-tutorial how to survive the first three levels. Maybe that will help to get a clue what the game is about :D.

http://thomas.trocha.com/wp/?page_id=88

Now I can start finishing my miniLD Cryptogame! (On LD#14 I will finish in time! I’m sure 😀 )

CU, ToM

PS: I want to thank everyone who tried to figure out what the first version was about! I know that must have been a hard time that surley was followed by massive nightmares! 😀

Tags: post-mortem

The 2009 7DRL is happening in a few weeks. The goal is to make a roguelike in 7 days (which is like years for hardened LD48ers like us 😛 ). The event takes place March 7th to March 15th.

Info here

Tags: 7drl, roguelike

Hey guys! I took part in the Roads Ludum Dare, but unfortunately withdrew my incomplete entry, Pathways. I’ve since finished it, and I thought some people here might be interested in it based on some of the comments that I got back then…

You can download it here! (windows only for the moment, I’m afraid)

On a totally unrelated note, there’s a contest-like-event taking place this weekend that I’d like to let you know about – RPGDX are hosting a 48 hour RPG making jam! The theme is LoFi. More details here, if you’re interested!

Tags: other contests, pathways, roads

Well after an incredible amount of work I have finally released my first Flash / ActionScript 2.0 game! You can play it here if you’d like. I hope it is cool to post here because it is relevant in that the original game play idea came from my Cryptid Puzzle Challenge entry in the Mini-Ludum Dare #7 competition back at the beginning of the month.  I also wanted to really share it all with my buds here at Ludum Dare! 

TurnStyle is a unique visual and memory based puzzle game where each of the 15 puzzles are original illustrations that follow a complete story arc over the duration of the game.

Every puzzle is made up of individual pieces which have been randomly rotated so that they are scrambled each time. You must work quickly and efficiently to rotate the individual pieces into the proper alignment before the timer runs out.

There are easy, medium, and hard difficulty puzzles mainly guided by the amount of individual image pieces that make up each puzzle and the way that I break up the images into pieces.

Personal best records are stored locally for score and rotation count per puzzle. Global high scores may be submitted to the Mochi Leaderboards at any puzzle progress screen. You are able to retry a level if the time runs out.

I haven’t submitted it to any portals or whatnot yet so it is living at it’s mochi-ads home right now.  I’m using their encryption, version control platform, advert api, and leaderboards/facebook api.  Seems pretty easy to setup.

I will try to post more about my adventure in creating this game and learning Flash over at my personal site but for now this is finished!

Tags: actionscript, as2, flash, free, image, memory, mochiads, online, puzzle, turnstyle

Hi there I’m just getting ready for my first Mini Ludum Dare this weekend, just setting up the blog and going to get some code and drawing practice in to limber up, not sure how I’m going to get a game done in 48 hours but let’s go for it!

I’ll be mostly using BlitzMax, some art packages and lot’s of caffeine!

My current games can be found here, but they took me a lot longer than 48 hours!

Right have I got enough caffeine, milk and healthy snacks!

Tags: hi, MiniLD, minild8

THEME: MASH-UP!
Select two previously existing LD entries ( see them here: The Grid ), and make a game that combines them!  One of the two may be your own entry if you wish, but they can’t both be.

What does it mean to mash up two games?  That’s up to you!  Maybe you’ll have the player from one game face the enemies and world of the other game, or you’ll combine gameplay elements from both, or you’ll steal the theme and setting from one game and the gameplay of the other.  It’s up to you!  Use whatever you want from the two games to create a horrifying two-headed freakbaby! Your game can be remarkably similar to one of them, a perfect blend of both, or nothing like either, as long as deep in your heart you were intending to combine them.

Standard LD rules apply, so even though you are working from someone else’s ideas, you’ll have to create all the art, sound, and code yourself rather than stealing theirs.  So find your two favorites, and get to work!

You have until 3pm PST on Sunday to get ‘er done!

Tags: mash-up, mini ld

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under MiniLD #8. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.