It is with great sadness that I regret to inform you all that I am dropping out of this competition. I had fun while working on it and chatting with you all, but alas, there is just no way I can finish in time, while succeeding in creating a game that is worth playing. But hey, next Ludum Dare, I’ll be back, guns blazing, and that’ll be the time you all will shiver and know that there ain’t a chance in heck that you’ll beat me. So until then, rock on.

Wow, I can’t believe I manged to finish a Ludum Dare contest entry, even if it is a mini. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do anything at all, considering I didn’t find out about the MLD until the 23rd, the very end of my weekend. After that, I had work for the remaining days until the deadline, which is why I decided to use Game Maker for the game. Anyway, enough of that, on to the post-mortem proper.

What went right:

• I finished a game for once. Whooo!
• All the basic bits of the game are in place and working properly.

What went wrong:

• Almost no polish! That’ll happen when you hardly have time to work on something that has a deadline.
• No music or sound effects.
• Didn’t do much for me in the way of learning new things.

Tags: MiniLD57, post-mortem

Granted, it’s a MiniLD, but still. Feels good man. Before submitting it, I looked at the other entries, and it seems there are two other entries with the same concept (and one with the same name >_>), but with different executions. This was pretty easy to make, that combined with the week long development period is why I finished my entry rather than ending up with a partly finished non-entry like I usually do in Ludum Dare.

Tags: #miniLD58, post-mortem, postmortem

I actually managed to finish a Ludum Dare proper! Hooray!

So, Bread Ninja. I finally got to use my “Baked Goods as Weapons” theme that I’ve thrown around a couple times on Ludum Dare.

What went Well:

• I got pretty much everything done that I envisioned for this project. I came into it smart, and cut down on the original idea I had, knowing it was too ambitious for a 48 hour Ludum Dare.
• I think I managed one of the goals I had as far as player choice. Do you use your weapons? Or do you eat them to regain health?
• I got to throw together a picture of a ninja with a bread slice breastplate, bread bowl helmet, and baguette sword.

What went not so Well:

• No sound of any kind, because I have no ability in the audio department.
• I had to cut the story bit from the actual game, because it wasn’t coming together very well, and time was running short.
• Didn’t get to have an enemy call the main character a “bread head”

Tags: bread, ld32, ludum dare 32, ninja, post-mortem, postmortem

Either that, or a program that can “record” parts of one’s desktop and save it as a gif.

Anyway, tell me what you think about my fire effect and what I might do to improve it.

Well, the first seven and a half hours of Ludum Dare have concluded for me, and after this post I will take a trip to dreamland. While I feel that I could have gotten more done tonight, I think it was a success overall. I am certainly on my way to a complete game. For this Ludum Dare I am making a JRPG, which is a bit ambitious and overall a bad choice for the compo, in my opinion, but it’s an idea I’ve had for quite some time that fit the theme perfectly. Hopefully the end result is something that does the original idea justice, and will be a good springboard into a more complete version. I leave you with just this image, showing off my amazing programmer art:

This one didn’t progress as far as I would have liked, and it’s due entirely to my laziness. I spent several hours thinking about working on the game and then doing something else instead. Oh well, it’s playable at least.

What went well:
I made a turn based battle system from scratch.
I hit my target number of different enemies and allies.
I think I made a good choice in how enemy encounters work.

What didn’t go so well:
No story of any kind.
Several missing features.
I didn’t do any balancing.
There’s no boss.

Missing features:
No evolution – I intended to set it up so that the main character would evolve every few levels, letting the player choose which way to evolve. Here’s a rough chart of possible evolutions (high attack on the left, defense in the middle, and magic on the right):

Magic / Abilities – Every time you’d evolve you’d get a new ability or spell to use.

Variety in enemy and ally attacks.

An inventory more advanced than just 3 potions.

A sidequest – I was going to hide some number of maguffins that when collected would let you fight a secret boss. Not only are the maguffins not present, there’s nothing to hide them behind either.

Tags: LD33, post-mortem, postmortem

And I’m going to use this post to explain my plans for it. Currently I’m planning to make a turn-based RPG / Puzzle Mini game mashup. When you attack, a mini-puzzle will appear on screen, and you’ll have a few seconds to complete it for a successful attack. Each class / type of attack will have a different puzzle to complete (e.g. magic attacks will have a match 3). In the last Ludum Dare, I designed a turn-based RPG, and I’ll be using the engine from that for the base of this game.

Of the ten games of this Mini-LD, I only have four off from work, so the bulk of the game building will happen then. Hopefully I’ll be able to create something fun. Good luck to everyone participating.

Tags: #MiniLD63, #puzzleRPG, MiniLD

Honestly, I don’t like the two button controls theme (it’s more of a limitation than a theme), so I’m glad that there’re two themes this time. There’s an idea percolating in my brain right now, we’ll see how it goes.

I wonder what this will grow into?

The game is growing ever larger.

Technically, this is night 2, but I only had about an hour to work on it last night, so I’m not counting it.

I am making a planet builder/sandbox game in which you have a list of actions to choose from and the order you choose them in affects how the world grows and develops. This is not something that hasn’t been done before, and, in fact, I’m drawing inspiration from a game I played a very long time ago called Sandbox of God. Ever since I played that game I’ve wanted to make something similar, so I’m doing it now. Anyway, on to the actual night 1 wrap-up.

So far, I’ve finished the first “era” of actions. However, now that the groundwork is set, I should be able to finish several more eras before the deadline. I originally intended to have about ten eras, but that may be pruned down to about five for time. Hopefully the end result is a game people have fun playing.

I’ve been it a bit of a creative funk lately, so this should help.

Tags: im in

Well, it’s something.

When I envisioned the game, it was a mix of Papers Please and a tower defense, with a dash of FTL thrown in. Because I didn’t have as much time as I wanted (and didn’t manage the time I did have well), the result is… not that.

The Good:

• It’s a solid base for the game I imagined.
• Not having animations doesn’t hurt it much.

The Bad:

• It’s easy and kind of monotonous.
• How things work is unclear to the player.

The Unimplemented:

• More threats – Fires, monsters, intruders with weapons
• The computer – It was supposed to give you info and backstory

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem

I don't have anything else to say.