I think I will give this a try.

For Programming:

I will use VS2010 (C++), and SFML (OpenGL).

I may or may not (depending on the theme) use Box2D, Lua, GLEW, AssImp (asset importer), LibNoise

I will probably use the game engine I have designed for one of my previous games, which includes:

Math, Quad Tree Scene Graph, 2D Dynamic Soft Shadows, Entity and Game State systems, Path Finding (A*), and Animation system, and other base code

For art (graphics): Flash, Photoshop, MS Paint

For art (sound): Audacity, Wolfram Tones

Well, I decided I will make a top down shooter in which darkness is your enemy, with no other fellow human beings around.

It will use the soft dynamic shadows system I developed.

So far, I have tile based maps and a the lighting system is working. The player walks around, and his feet move.

So, I chose to make this game retro looking to hide my terrible art.

I used this shader, I hope that is OK: http://coding-experiments.blogspot.com/2010/06/pixelation.html

Here is how it looks:

I now have some enemies. Yay!

Here it is, as of 4:30 today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6vWyP-zs90&feature=youtu.be

Alright, I have all weapons, and 6 different enemies (1 of them is ultra rare)

now I just need to randomly distribute the weapons around the map.

I didn’t know there was already a game called “Alone in the Dark”. Now it is “Alone in the Shadows”!

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

These is a kitten in the game…somewhere!

When I first submitted my project, it depended on the VS2010 Runtime Environment. I then re-submitted it using a static compilation (before the deadline), but that caused it to crash on many PCs. So, I am reverting it to the old version that required the VS2010 Runtime Environment so more people can actually play it. I hope this is OK.

This will be my second LD. Last time I used C++, but people usually do not want to download stuff (I am guilty myself), so this time I will be using LWJGL (java) and posting it as an applet.

I will use a basic framework that I have created for other games in the past.

For the artwork, I will use Flash/Photoshop/Sketchbook.

If I get to doing sound, I will probably use Wolfram Tones and sfxr.

If figured out what I am doing, but I didn’t get too much done so far.

Anyways, here is a screenshot:

Since my art is terrible, I thought it would be best to slap on some shaders.

Java is being a pain… My map editor’s character encoding randomly became all messed up (shows up as Chinese or something in the file), so I cannot make maps.

If anyone knows a fix for this, let me know!

Phew, that was intense.

I survived my second LD. Hopefully I do better than last time!

Here is my entry:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=7769

(In all likelihood)

This will be my 3rd LD.

Language:

Last time I used Java with LWJGL, but the applet thing made it come out all glitchy. I might try the applets again, but I will probably just have people download it this time (not in browser). I will probably not use C++ as in my first LD, since it takes so much longer to develop (undesired in a composition about making games in a very small time frame).

So, Java, with Eclipse.

Programs:

– BFXR

– Audacity

– Flash (drawings)

– Photoshop (maybe)

– Wolfram Tones (if the license allows)

My idea for “You are the villain” is kind of like a backwards version of Mario.

An AI tries to beat levels that you set up traps in (including the bane of all side-scroller heroes: spikes!)

You must prevent the AI from winning.

The AI is actually a neural network, trained by an evolutionary algorithm. I know that these are not exactly popular for games, but it has been working out so far.

As a test, I rewarded them for getting to the top right of the screen. They figured out how to jump on platforms pretty quickly:

Unfortunately I will not be able to complete my game in time for the compo, so I will have to submit it for the jam.

Maybe I shouldn’t have watched so much YouTube :/

Well, here is how it looks like so far. The framework is done, but there are no levels yet besides a test level.

Phew, I barely made it this time.

Now that I finished the game, I wish that I would have added more items to make the puzzles more complicated.

They are all super easy right now.

But, it is still fun to watch the neural network AI try to beat your deadly levels (especially when it explodes)!

While programming it, I kept on turning down the number of generations that the evolutionary algorithm ran for since it ran slowly even in release mode in VS2010.

But, when I took it out of the IDE and it performed absolutely no tracking anymore, it ran much faster suddenly. So I could have afforded more generations.

Oh well, the AI is still capable of beating the levels as intended most of the time even with so few generations.