Hello! In April, I watched a friend create a game for the LD, and I thought that it was really cool. I decided to learn game development. I had been learning some java before that, so looking around, I found LibGDX, which is what I will be using. To be honest, I didn’t really focus on game development at all over the summer because of distractions. All I managed to make is a menu, so this week before the LD, I will be doing some last minute learning stuff, and hopefully be able to create something this weekend.

I will be streaming at twitch.tv/dragonmaster21.

Coding: LibGDX, Java, Eclipse
Graphics: Photoshop
Sound: sfxr
Music: FL Studio

I’m just looking to have a bit of fun, so good luck and have fun everyone

It’s been one day since the Ludum Dare started, and I have done nothing ^^. It turned out that my weekend was a little busier than I originally thought. I was going to hang out with a friend, and assumed it would be for a night, and a little the next day, but we ended up going to play a round of golf, which took all day.

Depending on how I feel, I may or may not put something together. My limited experience will be, well, limiting. Earlier this week, I put together my first full game, which was actually just a copy of Pong. That itself took a while because I just learned the basics of Box2D on Monday, so it was hard to remember stuff. I don’t know if I’ll be able to put anything together at all. If I come up with a simple idea that I think I can do…sure why not 😛

This will be my first Ludum Dare. I don’t know whether I will be doing the jam or the compo. I guess it depends on what I have done by the end of the weekend, but I’ll just go by the compo rules so that if I have something I feel good about I can submit it. Last year in April, I watched @hologuardian create something and I thought it was the coolest thing so I decided to learn how to create games (I already had some experience with Java). I found LibGDX and have been learning since then (thanks to www.youtube.com/dermetfan for helping me get started).

I was going to do the Ludum Dare last August but different things came up and I ended up not making anything,

I will be using:

Language: Java
IDE: Eclipse
Framework: Libgdx w/ Box2D and Box2DLights, and Box2DSprite
Music: FL Studio
SFX: SFXR
Art: Aseprite or Paint.net
Other: Tiled, TexturePacker, BMFont

My mom is making me take a break so I thought this would be a good time to show you the level that I’ve been working on :3.

I have a feeling that he’ll be back

I’ve been making some progress on the levels. I’m going to finish the one I’m working on, make some kind of mini-boss level, and then go back through and polish the levels that I do have.

I’m feeling pretty good about my game! I’m working on a boss or mini-boss right now.

He makes stuff fall from the ceiling

And throws potatos at you that will be turned into rocks once I feel like doing so.

After I finish this boss, I’ll be going back to my other levels to polish things up in them and finish what I didn’t do, then I will add in a few more levels to the game and finish it up tomorrow!

I’m getting pretty close to being done with my game. I want to at least another level or two with a little gameplay and story. I decided to add a room with some particle effects and as soon as I’m happy with the gameplay, i’m going to go back through and add particles to stuff that would look nicer if they had particles. 😀

I’ve finished my game for the compo. It’s called ‘The Missing Potato’. There’s not a lot of gameplay in it, but it was fun making what is there. I feel pretty good for completing a game during my first time, so yay!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=25675

I’ve gotten a couple reports from my game telling me that they were unable to get past a boss because of difficulty. Am I allowed to go in and tweak the health of the boss so that it is easier to kill so people are people are able to advance in the game? This is a game that was submitted for the compo. Thanks.

I’m really happy with how this Ludum Dare went, as it was my first. Mostly everything was good for me and I didn’t really have much bad stuff which was very cool. I guess that I was lucky nothing else went wrong because I didn’t really do any planning at all.

The Good
– I was able to complete my game .
– I didn’t really have any bugs that caused me to get stuck for very long. – I had the whole weekend to work and my sisters didn’t bother me too much
-My mom got me icecream when LD started, yum!

The Bad
– I didn’t really get too much gameplay in, I was hoping to add a little more potato shooting and jumping around
-Music, I didn’t really have any tools I knew how to use to make some so I resorted to an online, simple creator thing
-I could get the HTML export to work unfortunately so no HTML

That’s all. I’m really glad that I did this because it’s really motivated me to code more games and it was a ton of fun. I learned that I shouldn’t try and code large games, but instead build a bunch of little prototypes and if I find something I really like, expand on it. Thank you all for making it awesome!

I’m in too!

Language: Java

IDE: Eclipse

Framework: LibGDX

Art: Paint.net

Music: http://www.beepbox.co/

I will also be using libgdx-utils http://dermetfan.net/libgdx-utils.php

and my own base code found here https://github.com/LegitzDestroy/gdx-game-utils

Good luck and have fun everyone 😀

I was unable to be present for the “unveiling” of the theme, and I didn’t get coding until an hour and a half later or so. At first I was pretty stumped on what to do, but I decided to go with an idea that was somewhat rolling around in my head. At first I thought it would be too hard, but I decided to go with it!

Even though the player won’t be exploring the planets, I want each planet to have a different feel. The first planet, found here is lush and has plenty of water, however planet 2 (shown below) is in the process of becoming a Mars-like planet. The different types of planets will influence the type of jobs that the  player will be doing. The gray spot is the player.

I’ve got a basic job system set up. At first it was a pain implementing it, but when I took a breath and wrote down the steps I needed to take on some paper, I was able to implement it quickly. Next up, displaying the amount of money you will earn and the destination of the cargo!

I spent last night adding in jobs and a few hours this morning fixing some bugs and making it so you can now do the jobs. I also made another planet. Placeholder button textures 😉

Now, the player can upgrade their ship at the ship. For now, there is a health, speed, and efficiency. Health and speed speak for themselves, efficiency increases the efficiency of the ship so that you can earn more money. Each purchase of the efficiency powerup increases the money earned by jobs by 15% (subject to change)

The boost purchase is a one time purchase and allows you to boost for a certain amount of time. The ship upgrade increases the size of your ship, which increases the speed, efficiency, and health, and also adds some other stuff.

I added a few things. Mainly, I created an explosion particle effect, a minimap, directional shooting, and I started texturing stuff!

Here is the first ship and you can see the minimap in the bottom right corner

Here is the second ship upgrade. There may or may not be a third ship upgrade. I’m leaning towards no.

Ludum Dare 30 was my second Ludum Dare and took place about a year after I started really learning how to program games. In April, I was happy about my entry especially for my first Ludum Dare, but I felt like it didn’t have enough gameplay, and it didn’t. I also thought that the art and music were decent, but could have been better. I set a goal for myself to create something with more gameplay, better art, and better music in Ludum Dare 30

At first, I was stumped on what game to do. There were a couple themes I was hoping to not be the theme, and this was one of them. I had guests over for about 2 hours at the beginning of the dare, and spent those two hours trying to come up with ideas in my head. Interplanetary Messengers was one of the first game ideas that I came up with. I dismissed it thinking that it would be too hard and overly ambitious, but when I couldn’t think of better ideas, I decided to try it.

Everything went smooth. I stayed up until 4 in the morning the first night, slept for 3 hours, woke up at 7 and kept working. I had trouble implementing the jobs, and had to delete code and try again a few times, but eventually I got it working, and that was really exciting. That was my first problem. My second challenge was implementing the minimap, however after writing some things down on paper, it was fairly easy to put together.

Towards the end of the compo, about 5 or 6 hours from the deadline, I thought I was finished. After playing the game, I realized that there really wasn’t any point to the game. You flew a spaceship around and delivered jobs, but you couldn’t win or lose. I decided to make it so that planets could get mad at you for not delivering to them, and they would stop delivering. That was all fine and dandy to implement, but while doing it, I changed something with the jobs that completely broke the system. I was very frustrated and it took a long time to figure out why, with lots of System.out.println calls and that. I eventually pinpointed the problem. I had a String wrong. One string was jobImage when it should have been planetJob and that broke it. Facepalming was a big thing here.

I was really happy with how the art turned out. I spent a week or two before Ludum Dare just practicing pixel art. I looked up tutorials, learned some stuff, then had my friends tell me random objects to create. I feel that this really helped me improve. The music was decent. I’ll repeat what I said to a friend, “If I had a dollar for everything I know about Music Theory, I’d be in debt.”. Making the music for me was just putting down some random notes and hoping that they would sound good together. In the end, they did, which was good.

What I did wrong

When I did the game, I was a little suspicious about planet distance. It took about 2 minutes to get to a fairly close planet, which seemed like a long time. I made it so that the player could buy a boost and a speed upgrade at the shop, and thought that might help. After I submitted the game and got some feedback, my suspicions were confirmed. The distance between the planets were indeed too large, and that made for it to become boring pretty fast. People said that they made it to a planet and died right before they actually got there, which spawned them back at the original planet, so they quit.

What I will change

I plan on working on this game to improve it and make it better. I will change the distance between the planets. They’re too far and it just took too much time to get to different planets. I also will tweak the controls. I got reports saying that the controls were a little difficult too. I agree with that too. Right now, the mechanic for respawning is that the player respawns at the last planet visited. For some people, this has caused some frustration, especially when they died very close to the planet. I might change this so that the player spawns at the planet they are closest to.

I really appreciate all the feedback that I have gotten. I also have really enjoyed playing submissions. I have played 33 games so far, and I plan on playing lots more. Great job everyone and to the jammers that are still coding: you can do it!!!

Play Interplanetary Messengers here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=25675

I’m in for my 3rd LD! I’ll be using LibGDX, Eclipse, PyxelEdit, and SFXR. Good luck to everyone participating!