I’m in for my second time, with Flash/AS3/Photoshop/Ableton…

Ok so Evolution…I’ll just…improvise and…see what happens ! Streaming here http://fr.twitch.tv/titoulion

Sooo I’m gone on a thing about a tribe of primitif guys who are going to evolve under the influence of one of them a bit more smarter (you).

Randomly generated ground wooo !

Evolutive behaviour aow !

Etc etc…

You can test the very first prototype here :

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2012/34/1345868980-unevolution.swf

The sun is rising on France, coffee time !

Ok it seems the things is running to some weird result…So, you are a Messiah guy with a stick that can throw lightnings. You live on a small world island with your pairs. All this good people will evolve with the environmental and social conditions. For exemple, there is a violence degree that will increase if there are too many people on the same little place…Anyway you are like God you know and you’ll be able to punish the bad guys and all. For the moment, your godly dude can only destroy dirt bloc with his lightings, to transform the map and things…

And you can test this second proto here (sorry for the dum swf hoster) : http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2012/34/1345905674-unevolution.swf

My pairs and Me

This Ludum Dare 24 was my second participation to this great event. I totally love the principle of the LD compo. I think it’s all about find a simple and effective concept, that we can lead as far as possible, and polish at maximum to provide players a lovely little sincere and fun experience. We shouldn’t go into something too complex, ‘cause 48 hours is kinda short. So find a concrete idea and go for it !

The fact is this time the theme was Evolution. Not a bad theme, I think instead it’s a word that speak a lot and bring many ideas quite easily. Maybe too much and too easy. I wouldn’t do anything too obvious about evolution, especially since I was already working on a project on this theme outside the Ludum Dare. So when the theme went out I was like AOW NO, NOT AGAIN…

Finally, I started coding without knowing where I was really going. I wanted to do something about evolution in society and in environment, and about religion and leadership, with humor and things… Gradually I went on something finally too complex, with random behaviour in ten guys who tend to evolve differently depending on a number of features and action YOU messiah do. In fact it was really not concrete, and it became a sandbox experience, I think.

Sandbox here I mean there is no goal, exept the goal you want to reach. And regardless what your goal is, you have to experiment, try, restart again and again. Then, you’ll begin to understand, maybe, how it works. It’s an experience for curious and patient gamers, and I wish the players have fun trying to understand what the huck is happening.

Reading the first comment on my games, I understand the side “WTF happens ? But I laughed !” is working. And I’m happy to see that the overall incomprehension can provide some kind of fun. On the one hand, evolution is not something very “square” and concrete, obvious, so the incomprehension in the game could be a part of the experience. But I don’t want people to think that all this game is about random events you cannot influence, and that’s why I’ll try now to explain how some secret mecanisms in the game work.

To summarize the game first, you control sort of prophet holding a stick that can throw lightnings to dig or punish. You live on a small island with 10 of your pairs, who’re not holding a thunder stick but who live their live on this small randomly generated world. Each of them have somme kind of personality, with different value of violence and fear. All of them tend to happyness, but violence and fear decrease the happyness. In the game, more people have free place to move (that means a dirt block with 2 free block above), more they are happy. Plus, more big they are, more happy they become.

So ok but what happyness is about ? Happier they are, more the guys have chance to find a job. There are 3 job in the game : Farmer, lumberjack and fisherman. The farmers plant wheat that can be eaten by other guy who become bigger (and happier, you follow me ?). Lumberjack go choice a tree and they huh, turn around it. Fishermen go to a water point and begin to catch fish.

Other points…If a guy stay too much time in water, he becomes a fish. If a guy stay too much time in air, he becomes a bird. When you destroy the house of a worker, or a tree of a lumberjack, the guy becomes a rebel, and start to follow you and beat you to death. If there is not enought space in the island, there’s a chance that some people become rebels too. More a guy is violent, more he has chance to hit a pair. When a guy is beaten, he becomes more violent. A lightning in the face decrease the violence but increase the fear.

I realize that it can still a bit confuse, but hey, that’s how is the evolution, maybe…I just want you to understand a bit more the not-concrete system of this sandbox experience. The goal still yours. Do you want to make a peacefull place with golden wheat fields and happy lumberjack ? Or an oasis with fish family ? Or a bird colony ? OR PUT ALL THIS WORLD ON FIRE ? In fact you can do lot of things. If I had more time, I would have added more jobs and animals, and behaviours and things, like a rebel master stuck in a bunker and shooting around everything that moves, lava blocks that throw fire particle, meteor shower and all…I think this is a kind of experience, like most of sandbox experience, that becomes better with more content and polish.

Anyway, sorry for my broken English, I hope you’ll have fun playing this crazy game/experience/sandbox thing, earing the crazy sound and enjoying the crazy bugs, and thank you and I love you all awesome people =3

My pairs and Me

Here is my timelapse, more for fun than for real retrospective but, ok !

TIMELAPSE MY PAIRS AND ME

Anyway you can play and rate the game too !

MY PAIRS AND ME

Ahah ok now a timelapse with my screen, better…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEXH-IiJ-0U&feature=player_detailpage

I’m in again with Flash and all !

Here it is, my submission for the LD 25…VILLAIN GLANCE

Be the Villain. 
Shot your peers. 
Be discreet. 
Be quick. 
They become suspicious. 
They feel your guilt. 
If you get caught red-handed they’ll make you pay. 

ZQSD to move. 
Left button mouse to shot. 
R to restart. 
M to back to menu. 
X to mute/unmute. 

Tips : 

-The red ones are suspicious, they have a larger angle of view. 
-Global suspicion increase their rotation speed. 
-You turn dark with your guilt, and they tend to look at you.

I’m happy with the result, simple but quite efficient. Well I hope you’ll like it too !

I exported the game in .exe this time, for better performance, but game might still lag at times with the amount of people at screen.

Have a good day/night !

So I hope you had a good Christmas !

I take the time before the new year to write a little post mortem about my entry : Villan Glance

I have to say that in the beginning I was a bit annoyed by the theme YOU ARE THE VILLAIN, that seems a bit too classic, I mean in a way there would be a lot of game where you simply play the bad guy. So I tried to be in the theme not only with the scenaristic side. I thank about different things, but this time I decided to follow my own advice about short game jams : Make something simple and fun.

So I suppose that I thank what a true villain migh feel in this bad work. I realized that in a crowd the villain is alone against his victims, he has to be discreet and quick in his task. He has to work with the suspicion of his peers, and with his own guilt which can eventually make him spotted. In the game I used all these elements and combined them in a stealth-like game that ask you to look at the view of your future victims, and be careful about the shot noise you make.

The concept is pretty simple, kill all your peers without being spotted. You’re spotted if when you shot a dude in the head another dude is looking at you. The suspicion of a dude increase if he “hears” a gun shot, in fact if he is in the zone around you when you shot. I used view angle and circle area as obvious zone feedback. The red face feedback shows who is more or less suspicious, and give the player a direct indication about who must be wary. Indeed, the most suspicious has the largest angle of view, that increase the chance to be catch. The global suspicion (sum of each suspicion  amount) increase the rotation speed of each dude, like if they were like “hey, what, behind me ? no, here ? what was that ? what ?”. And if you are not a discrete villain, you become darker and darker, like if the rumors about your strange behaviour make you more suspectable (and that’s the case, the dudes will tend to walk to your position if you seem dark, to keep you in their view). All that to say that I wanted some clear basic feedback so the player would understand a bit more what the fuck is happening. In fact it still be a bit complicated at the beginning, but ok it’s not as random as my previous ludum dare entry =3

Before coding hard the body and balancing things I suppose that I wanted to test the mood, and I made and coded the particles and the death animation. That is something I’m very proud about, and certainly the funniest thing in the game, to the point that sometimes I just want to be catch to watch the result (or maybe I just want to be arrested to pay for my crimes lol). And I had gun and splash noises, and screen wizz and all. I’m pretty sure that all these polishes (ok I made them before completing the code but they are) play a huge role in the mood and fun of the game.

I coded a graph that show the evolution of the guilt and suspicions at the end of a game, but finally it found it not relevant for the player. I tried to make a score which depend of the discretion of the player and number of shots plus the time, but finally it was not very clear and I only keep the time score.

If I had more time and motivation, I could add more feature like obstacle, paranoid policemen or other villains, and sure a multiplayer mode which would be funny ! Anyway I’m quite happy with the result, this Ludum Dare was great for me.

I have to insist one more time, we should try to make something simple, but which works and is playfull ok, and make it someting good looking, visually fun, and powerfull in the atmosphere side. I mean we hardly have the necessary time to do anything too complex.  So FOCUS AND POLISH !

I had lots of encouraging comments for Villain Glance, and I am truly grateful !

Have a good New Year and take care of yourself, awesome people !

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2012 at 10:42 am and is filed under LD #25. 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.

“OH NO A THEME THAT DOES NOT IMPLY AN IMMEDIATE CONCEPT FOR A GAME, WHAT AM I GONNA DO ?  é____è”

Anyway I’m in with Flash and stuff

IF YOU WANTED TO MAKE A MINIMALIST GAME YOU COULD HAVE MADE IT WITHOUT IT BEING THE THEME YOU FOOLS

But maybe I’ve got an idea or something !  

LUDUM SQUARE ?

So now you can use arrow keys or WASD/ZQSD to move every squares of the color of the last square you clicked on (the color of the cursor shows you these color). New bigger square appears if four squares are places in a square shape, you see ?

Then I’ll add a score system so there will be a real goal, reach the highest score possible, the game ending when there are only tiny squares on the stage !

Test the current proto here : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18816204/God%20Structure.swf

Got to wake up early tomorrow, so I stop here !      GIST STRUCTURE

Hope you’ll like it, at least in a minimalist way, you fools <3

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=10821

I’m in, forever !

This time, I’ll maybe use Unity, according to the concept I’ll imagine in the first few hours. Otherwise, the classical Flash ! And Maybe Photoshop for the graph, Ableton and Audacity for the sound.

Aow !

I’ll certainly be twitching here http://fr.twitch.tv/titoulion !

Tags: stream, twitch

So, not really a surprise, 10 seconds !

Can’t wait to play all the games about premature ejaculation ahahah…

My first idea is about worlds management in which something new happens every 10 seconds. Let’s see where I can go with that !

I coded a very simple algorythme to generate some little worlds in rectangles that you can drag and drop through the screen.

Alive ! It will be a pleasure to work on the colors and all !