After the last few hectic hours of finalizing everything, I finally submitted my game, Escape from Monster City!

The game’s homepage contains links to every version you could want- windows, linux, mac, applet, jar, webstart, as well as the source.

I’m really looking forward to playing everybody’s games as well as getting feedback on my own. This was my first Ludum Dare, and I had a lot of fun!

Now I should probably go eat…

My entry: http://code.kevinworkman.com/EscapeFromMonsterCity/index.html
Timelapse: http://code.kevinworkman.com/EscapeFromMonsterCity/timelapse.html

I only worked for about 12 hours, so instead of making a video, I took screenshots as the program changed. You can check them out if you feel like it!

This was my first Ludum Dare, and I’m pretty pleased with how everything turned out, especially considering that I had never used Processing prior to the contest- learning it was half the fun!

I stuck with the bare minimum considering the time constraints, but I’m surprised to see how many other entries were pretty similar. I guess that’s the nature of working around a theme, but I think next time I’ll work at coming up with something a little more different.

There is one bug left in the final version that causes the program to freeze occasionally- this is due to logic I attempted to write to prevent monsters from spawning inside buildings, which doesn’t work anyway. Lesson learned, next time I’ll stick with something that definitely works instead of trying to implement algorithms I know might break things.

Also, I didn’t have time to implement a goal, or score, or an ending, which I think hurts replayability. I did manage to throw in a title and game over screen, which goes a long way to making the game feel more legitimate.

However, I think I came pretty close to my original goal of capturing a creepy mood, so I’m happy with the outcome. I wanted to create a spooky feeling as the player rounds a building and almost runs into a monster, and I think I came pretty close to that. Yay!

I’m also satisfied that I met the theme, which is extra awesome because I wasn’t really thrilled when it was revealed (I was hoping for evolution or adaptation). The main focus of the game is to escape the city, with the added terrifying mini-games of escaping monsters that wake up. Yay again!

All in all, I had a bunch of fun, and I love the Ludum Dare community. Awesome job to everybody who managed to put together something in 48 (or 72) hours! You guys are all rock stars.

I keep seeing posts or chat entries that say things like “I used the extended submission time (12 hours) to add XYZ to my game”.

Is that valid? I know the competition is a bit laid back, so I’m not too worried about it, but does this bother anybody else?

I’m kind of kicking myself, because I purposely stopped a couple hours before submission time to make sure I had everything deployed correctly, which meant that I had to stop myself from fixing a few bugs, one of which occasionally freezes my game. If I had also used the extended submission time, I’d be a lot more confident that everything in my game worked. But I didn’t want to abuse the extended submission time.

Oh well, I guess I’m just ranting and wondering if anybody else feels the same way. I still had fun, so I’m not getting too worked up over it, but it does seem a bit unfair. Oh well!

Hey all!

I can’t figure out a way to search the games by the technologies used to create them, and I’d love to see what else other people have created using the same languages as me.

It’s really inspiring to see the awesome things people can do, so if you used Java or Processing, I’d be really happy to take a look at your game!

Edit- Here’s a link to my game, available as an applet, web start, runnable jar, and OS-specific executables: Escape from Monster City

Tags: java, processing

As I’m going through everyone’s post mortem, I click on the links to their entry pages to play and rate their games. But the page it takes me to doesn’t have the rating form. It does allow me to leave a comment, and it shows my dashboard bar at the top, so it knows I’m logged in, but the rating form is just missing. I have to manually go to the “all entries” page, search the name, then navigate to the entry page that way, and the rating form shows up. Is anybody else having trouble with this, or am I doing something wrong?

Hey again all,

I’m looking for a specific game that I know I commented on, but I can’t remember the name of it or the name of the developer. Is there a way to list all my comments?

This would also come in handy for keeping track of the various conversations I’ve entered in comment threads.

I know I can go to the comments section and search my name, but that only returns the most recent 20 comments. Is there a way to see them all?

As I’m going through and rating your games, I try to keep a mix of less-rated games (for fairness) and more-rated games (to check out the more popular ones). I’ve stumbled upon quite a few really awesome games, good work everyone!

That being said, do you have any favorites that I might have missed? Have you seen any games that you think deserve particularly high ratings in a particular category? Or even just games you’ve enjoyed for no specific reason?

I’ll start things off with a link to my favorite so far: Coin Runner

…er, it would be good for business if I had a business (or ads), that is.

My entry is bringing in quite a bit of traffic (quite a bit for me, anyway). Thanks again to everybody who checked it out.

Hey all,

I’ve been putting together a website devoted to helping out indie Java and Processing game developers, and one of my motivations is to make it easy to deploy a game for competitions like Ludum Dare. Just upload a jar and a thumbnail image, and you’ll have a decent-looking website to showcase your game as an applet, webstart, or downloadable jar without ever worrying about web development. This will especially come in handy for competitions, when you might not have time to create a website as well as a game.

I’m also working on adding tutorials and ad revenue sharing so that people can hopefully make some money off their games, but for now the basic functionality is there and might prove useful to somebody. I’m still working everything out, so I’d love to hear any feedback you have!

So, check it out if you feel like it: Static Void Games

See you all during the competition!

LD: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23-warmup/?action=preview&uid=5364
Game page: http://staticvoidgames.com/play/?game=LetsBounce

I just submitted my game for warm up weekend. Now I’m even more ready for LD23!

Let’s Bounce!

Dear Significant Others,

We’re sorry. We’re sorry we’re going to be ignoring you for the next 48 hours while we program our games for Ludum Dare. We’re sorry for continuing to ignore you for the next week or so while we play the games other people created for Ludum Dare. We’re sorry if we come up with a good idea and continue working on our games even after Ludum Dare is over.

We’re sorry for missing happy hour on Friday, and we’re sorry for cancelling date night on Saturday, and we’re sorry that it looks like we’d rather be staring at a computer screen, typing away furiously instead of cuddling and watching a movie with you on Sunday.

We’re sorry for neglecting mundane chores like doing the dishes, taking out the trash, cleaning, and doing laundry in favor of programming. There’s work to be done! So we’re sorry if our apartments turn into rooms from katamari or if our personal hygiene suffers as a result.

We’re sorry that our heads will be full of code, game logic, colors, pixels, and sounds, and we’re sorry that it might take a while to get that out of our systems. We’re sorry if you ask us “what are you thinking?” and our response is some nonsense about finding the right balance between mood and theme and dividing time between underlying basics and aesthetic polish. We’re sorry if you catch us staring off dreamily into space.

We’re sorry, but if you didn’t know that our brains worked this way before now, it’s an important lesson to learn. And if after this week you still want to be with us, you could use the next Ludum Dare as an opportunity to enter this world together! A few months is plenty of time for us to teach you the basics, and nothing could be cooler than writing a game with (or against!) your significant other.

So, again, we apologize in advance for paying more attention to Ludum Dare than we will to you, but keep in mind that you could be using Ludum Dare to spend some quality time with us! We really do love you and – oh sorry, I have to go refresh the frontpage again now.

Sincerely,

Every boyfriend or girlfriend doing Ludum Dare this weekend

<3

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2012 at 3:33 pm and is filed under LD #23. 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.

Many of our games (including my own) took the theme in one of a couple directions: you’re in space, you’re in a game with space restrictions (a platformer with small levels, a game on an island, etc), or you’re a bug/microbe of some kind. That’s inevitable given we all used the same theme, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and many of those games are awesome, fun, and creative despite sharing similarities.

But I just played spectrumTrap by sugarlollipop (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12988), and she took the theme in an entirely different direction. It’s not exactly a game, but I love the creative twist on the theme. It was really refreshing after playing different versions of similar games for the past few days.

So, has anybody else come across a game they thought did something creative with the theme? I’d love to play more of them, but I don’t know how to search for them amongst the masses. Weird games, non-games, whatever. I’m not looking for games that ignored the theme, but took the theme and did something different with it.

tl;dr: Embedded video ads are really annoying, even if you can skip them. You might want to compare your ad revenue to how much traffic you’re actually driving away when people just close your game when they see the ad, especially since most of the people playing your game are offering you helpful feedback, for free, in their spare time.

I’ve played over 100 games, mostly web versions, and I’m starting to get really sick of watching loud embedded videos (especially since it’s the same video for Max Payne 3 over and over again) every time I want to try out a Ludum Dare entry for a couple minutes. Even if the movie is skippable (not all of them are), you’re still adding a loud (usually unmutable), obnoxious barrier that makes it harder for people to play your game. And since the people playing it are doing so in order to give it a rating and offer you some helpful feedback, for free, in their spare time, you’re basically trying to make a profit from them helping you. It seems a little rude/selfish/whatever, which definitely seems to go against the spirit of Ludum Dare.

It’s getting to the point where I’m probably going to start skipping over games that force me to watch an embedded ad. I don’t want to do that because most of the games here are really awesome and the people who made them are rock stars so I want to give them some feedback, but if I’m annoyed, then chances are other people are annoyed too. Also, some people have older/slower computers that might play your game just fine, but lag because of the video. So you might want to compare your ad revenue to how many potential players are just closing out your game as soon as the ad starts.

I understand the need for indie developers to get some return on their games. I pay for hosting and offer it for free to Java and Processing developers, so I get it. And I do run ads on my site, but I try to make them as unobtrusive as possible- right now, just banner ads at the bottom of the screen. I will probably never play embedded video ads.

I’ve been giving developers the benefit of the doubt since most of this complaint is about games hosted on kongregate, and I’m not sure if there’s even a way for you guys to disable that ad. But I’ve also seen embedded ads in games hosted on sites like dropbox. So I figured I’d issue a friendly “hey, that’s kind of obnoxious and might not actually be good for you” gripe to give fellow developers some feedback.

Anyway, does anybody else feel this way? Or am I just getting tired and grouchy after playing so many games?

This entry was posted on Monday, May 7th, 2012 at 7:34 pm and is filed under LD #23. 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 played several games with awesome soundtracks, and I’ve been downloading them when they’re available. I want to share the songs I’ve found as a sort of LD23 Soundtrack, but I need more songs to make a full album!

So, were there any games that you thought included great songs? Did your game use an awesome soundtrack? If so, let me know and I’ll give the game a play and try to include the song (along with credits to the developer and song writer, of course) in a forthcoming post with a link to download the soundtrack.

Here are some of my favorite soundtracks:

Tiny Tim’s World by tacograveyard

Prince of Leaves by evilseanbot

Hamster Bowling by tfendall

ACTION SCIENCE DOG by bburbank

And of course the obligatory link to my game, A Pale Blue Dot, with phat beatz by MC Carl Sagan:

I just uploaded my entry to this weekend’s mini-LD, check it out if you feel like it: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-34/?action=preview&uid=5364

Defend the radar station! Detect incoming enemies, click to launch a missile, and last as long as you can!

I’ve got the basic engine behind my game done- you control a black sheep, and each level is a pasture you’re trying to escape. But the pasture also contains other sheep (and shrubs) that can get in your way. The other sheep move when you do, and different sheep can move differently (some with you, some opposite you, some always left, etc)- so you have to use the herd’s mentality against itself to get to the goal.

The pre-art version of the game looks something like this:

The trouble is, designing puzzles is REALLY HARD. I don’t know where to go from here. I have a few puzzles that explain the basic principles of the game, but I’m hitting a dead end when I try to come up with meaningful, not-too-hard, not-too-easy puzzles. I thought this would be the easy part!

Any suggestions on how to design puzzles? Any ideas come to mind that I might expand upon?

I spent the weekend programming a puzzle game called Black Sheep. The goal is to fight the herd’s mob mentality and escape the pasture!

Edit: Although the submission period had expired (it was only 9PM, I swear!), I emailed Folis and he gave me a link to the submit page and I was able to upload my game!

Check it out here: Black Sheep

Hello fellow Ludum Dare-ers! Warning: blatant self-advertising ahead!

As some of you may know, I run a website devoted to indie game programming in Java and Processing at StaticVoidGames.com. I’ve designed the site with programming contests like Ludum Dare in mind. You no longer have to worry about time-consuming deployment or web development, so you can spend more time focusing on the fun part- actually making your game!

Just follow the step-by-step uploader, and you have a decent-looking website showcasing your game as an applet, a webstart, and a downloadable jar. At the very least, it’s better than putting your game on dropbox or mediafire. Not only is it free, but developers can actually specify their own ad codes to make money off their games!

I’m working on adding new features (I just added a notification system) and tutorials all the time. I’m very open to suggestions and I love hearing your feedback! But even as-is, the site is useful to both pros who don’t feel like dealing with deployment and web development (especially during the crunch time of Ludum Dare) and complete novices who want to take a look at the tutorials and source of real games for help.

So, check it out! StaticVoidGames.com

Good luck during Ludum Dare!

Hello fellow Ludum Darers,

I just added support for LWJGL to the Java hosting site I run, Static Void Games.

It seems to work for me, and I have a tiny example “game” to prove it: http://staticvoidgames.com/play/?game=LwjglTest

But I don’t actually know anything about LWJGL, so I’d love if somebody could test it out by uploading a real game that uses LWJGL and making sure it works as both an applet and a webstart. If you don’t want to actually host the game there, you can always delete it afterwards. For more info, I posted a short blog entry here.

Thanks!

PS- FIVE HOURS LEFT!

I’m finishing up my jam game, and I just need some quotes on religion and spirituality, especially in regard to science and evolution. Anybody have any favorites?

I’m more in need of quotes in support of religion and spirituality, so those are especially welcome!