This is my first LD, and honestly I’m not doing so well. But even so, I got a demo!

It’s a simple platform game. You need to find things that’ll help you discover who are you and what’s going on. Right now you just walk, jump and collect stuff.

Download demo: Here

Move with arrow keys.

Sunday Morning Update: The demo has been updated. It’s so much better now. Please check it out!
By the way, there’s an item (colors) which is quite difficult to reach, but it is possible.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 18th, 2010 at 1:12 pm and is filed under LD #19 - Discovery - 2010. 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 finished uploading my timelapse. Phew, that took some time!

Ludum Dare #19 – LegacyCrono Timelapse

Looking good! We finished the concept art about an hour ago, and now we decided to color it and use them as sprites (I’m lazy). So… here’s the “Gentlefish”!

Oh, you can also see all our concept art here: http://leonmillan.com/?attachment_id=115

Top hat and monocle! What else could you want?

Whoa, it’s Ludum Dare already! Time to put Minecraft and Portal 2 aside and get our hands sore from coding!

I’ll probably stay with the same tools of the last time – Game Maker, FL Studio, bfxr, Photoshop, you know the drill. Now I have a Wacom tablet, so I might be using it as well. I’m trying to learn how to use FlashPunk, but I still don’t feel confident that I’ll be able to use it this time.

Pretty nice to see so many newcomers. Good luck to ya all, looking forward to the next week!

– Leonardo Millan

Only one day left! I wish good luck to all the participants!

[in]Sanity is finished, and you can see it here: Play!

Well, we had to cut most of the game because our artist had to leave early, but it’s still playable and have multiple endings (most of them are death…).

Get ready, LDers! July’s MiniLD  is approaching!

I hope you guys aren’t tired from McFunkypants‘ awesome MiniLD #27. It was a really astonishing edition: there was thirty great entries! That was impressive. Congratulations to all of you, and special thanks for McFunkypants, who did a splending job organizing it! *thumbs up*

Well, the Ludum Dare #21 is coming next month, so I’ll give you guys a relaxing time to tune your programming skills and exercise your game design. The Mini LD #28 will officially start on Friday, July 30th at midnight GMT (that’s July 29th 7:00 PM EST). But to make sure everyone can join the fun and got enough time to work on your submissions, I’ll reveal the theme on July 23rd, also at midnight GMT. You can start once the theme is revealed if you want to, no pressure. Just have fun!

If you’re a newcomer and isn’t sure how to get started, try visiting the Tools page to get ready, and read the Sol’s LD Survival Guide. Also,  come chat with us on the #ludumdare IRC. Feel free to ask there for help if you’re confused.

As always, everyone is welcome to join! All platforms, programming languages and engines are accepted. You’re highly encouraged to share your source code, but this isn’t a requirement. I won’t be picky about assets either, as long as you have the rights to use it.

See you there!

UPDATE: Mini LD 28 is officially over! Congratulations to all the participants!

I’m prepared! Well, kinda, I’m still in need of energy drinks and ice cream. To the store!!

And here’s my almighty operations room, where all cool stuff are created. It’s missing my MIDI controller… *sigh* Damn you, Customs.

Of course it's the same of the last time, why would I change?!

Tags: deskphoto

So you are joining the Ludum Dare #21 and you feel like recording the step-by-step creation of your humble entry. But… how?

Worry not, my gimmicky friend! The community has made available many tools for the painless production of said development video. The birth of your interactive offspring will forever be registered with the assistance of those timelapse tools:

 Windows and Linux

Linux

Other options:

• For Mac OS X, this tutorial will get you started in no time: Take Timed Lapsed Screen Shots From Terminal
• Another option for Windows is Fiona’s PyCatcher
• Kvisle wrote a very useful post to guide for Linux users: Creating a timelapse in Linux

Tags: timelapse, tips

Mindbane was my entry for the 48 hour competition. If you haven’t, check it out and rate it here: PLAY MINDBANE!

The development of this game was a mess, to say the least. To begin with, I had to work on the saturday, so actually I lost ten of the 48 hours doing absolutely nothing. Well, nothing is quite inaccurate, because I was trying to have ideas for the entry. But my brain at 4AM is barely working correctly, so I couldn’t think of anything.

When I arrived at home at 9AM and booted my laptop to start coding, I still had no idea what I’d be making. I started FlashDevelop, extracted the FlashPunk directory to the project and started working on the level loader that would import the Ogmo Editor files…

Suddenly, tiles.

Loading objects was still missing though.  At 3PM on Saturday I called it a day and went to sleep, unsatisfied with the current state of the game. Then I woke up for dinner at 7PM, wrote down some notes while eating a BigMac and went back to sleep, because I was still tired as hell.

I woke up at 1AM and made a decision – I wouldn’t waste another four hours making a level loader that would ultimately be composed of the worst programming anti-patterns mankind can think of. So I started GameMaker, programmed the main character motion and made a simple level. Then happened to me that it could be fun to use a button to disable gravity. And it was. I also added a button to stop vertical movement when falling. I accidentally found that by using that button it was possible to do airjumps. “Perfect!” I though. That’s pretty much how I decided to use the hovering and midair stopping mechanics. At that point I was already using “disassociation/escape from reality” as the basic premise of the game. The disruption of the natural laws of physics seemed like the perfect gameplay mechanic to fit that premise.

Not much happened after I got that working. It was still 9AM, so I decided to relax a bit. I made the ghoul and player sprites, tried some melodies on FL Studio and proceeded to add more levels on the game. 10PM, game was finished, with ten minutes left. Phew.

Things done right

1. GameMaker: Now, I’m sure many people would frown upon this choice, but I’m not the kind of guy that cares for technical silliness. For me, a good game is a good game, and that’s all there is to it. As I said on my Fate of Mankind post mortem: I like to make games, not exception handlers.
2. Fun first, art last: I suck at drawing. That doesn’t mean I don’t try. This time I made the wise decision of finishing all the gameplay stuff before making the game pretty. On Innocence (Ludum Dare 20) I started by drawing sprites first. That was stupid.
3. Experience: When I participate on LD19, that game was the first I made in years. Then on LD20, I used AS3 and FlashPunk – something that I never had used before. This time I played safe, and I guess that was for the best.
4. Cool game mechanics: I really like the hovering, midair stopping and airjumping… XD

Things done wrong

1. Fun first, art last: I suck at drawing. Yeah. The tileset looks terrible, and I wish I had a better sprite for the main character. I know it’s important to have good graphics, they ARE a key point when people decides to play your game or not.
2. Difficulty: I completely forgot to ask people to try it before submitting. Oh well. People frequently complain that it’s too difficult, and that’s probably true. But it’s not like I wanted it to be that difficult… For me, it doesn’t look that hard (well, I created the game after all). Next time, less spikes and more beta testing.
3. Obscure Plot: Is it clear that (spoilers ahead!) the main character is being haunted by his inner demons inside his mind while he’s in coma after attempting suicide? And the spirits you collect along the way are the good memories the character have from his past? If you played the game and didn’t knew that, I failed at storytelling. If you knew it, then disregard this one. 😛
4. My job: Seriously. Working from 11PM to 9AM on the first day was a huge waste. Just by thinking all the cool things I could have done with extra 10 hours…!
5. Not using FlashPunk: I really, really wanted to make this game using AS3 and FlashPunk, but I didn’t had a framework ready. Flash games are much more accessible and can be distributed on Newgrounds and Kongregate. Windows games, not really…

Tags: postmortem

MiniLD #32 is over for me. Although I did not made the number of games I expected to make (mostly because I procrastinated a lot this weekend – as usual), I am satisfied with the result. The first part of my completely devious game-developing adventure was to create a pack of 50 or so games, with a very retro aesthetic. And as it turned out, 50 games was a bit out of hand after putting my procrastination time on the equation, so I felt comfortable reducing the goal to a puny number of 12 games. This pack of games was titled Super Advanced Hyperst-uh… err it’s the title you see above. Also known as 12-in-1 LC Collection.

After creating those 12 little games, I decided to make something more complex. My first thought was to create a randomly-generated RPG final boss battle thing. I went as far as to create randomly named characters with randomly generated status, and a menu. And it was actually looking pretty good to be honest. Of course, the random name generator was a bit crazy, generating things like Gridobrezhiu, Equicrocro, Pigrashounen, Her and other bizarre things. Aside from that, works quite nicely.

Utekyasos is a perfectly common name... somewhere

But once I got to code the enemy, I realized it would be way more complex and time-consuming than I thought. So instead I decided to go back and make a platformer instead. At first I had no clue what to create, so I just started drawing tiles, tying things together, coding collision and stuff. Then I had the idea to include a character from my previous game – Subject 0017 from Fate of Mankind, to be more specific. Then I had the idea to make it more or less like a sequel. And then… well, just play it. If you liked Fate, you’ll enjoy Tower of Mankind.

Now with more crumbling towers and cheesy lighting effects

Aaand weekend’s over, time to rest and enjoy some games! Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the results and had a lot of fun. You can check out both Tower of Mankind and the 12-in-1 LC Collection on my MiniLD #32 entry page.

So here it is, folks! I AM TIME BOMB is my LD27 entry. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I AM TIME BOMB is a multiplayer game. Doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it alone! It’s a fast, high-octane arcade game about explosions and the hurried panic of exploding in ten seconds. You are Time Bomb, and you’re going to explode. But hey, if you’re going out with a boom, you might as well make it last. So spread explosives through the room in such way that, when you explode, it’ll set up a chain reaction. Compete with up to three friends of yours and see who’ll become the best fireworks. Simple!

RIGHT THINGS I DID

• IT’S SIMPLE: I KISSed to the core, from the beginning. It’s simple, and it’s stupid. This prevented me from going overboard. Simple colors, simple shapes. This was by far my best decision, because it let me do a lot of crazy stuff and left me with spare time before the compo time ran out!
• GOAL: Right when I started I had a clear goal in mind. My objective was making a multiplayer game. I went with that and, although the gameplay didn’t work very well after all, I succeeded in my goal. So even if it’s not the hottest piece around, I’m still happy that I succeeded!
• THEME: I stopped worrying and learnt to love the theme. I believe most people saw the theme as a restriction, a constraint (I know I did, at first). But after thinking outside of the box I came up with a bunch of crazy ideas for it.
• TOOLS: I sticked with what I knew. Game Maker 8 never disappoints me. For music and sound effects, my faithful and dandy FLStudio did the job.
• WORK WITH FRIENDS: I gathered with some friends to participate in this Ludum Dare. Each of us made a separate game, but just being together helped on focusing and having an immediate feedback on our progress.

WRONG THINGS I DID

• GAMEPLAY: I wasn’t sure how the game would be played until it was very late. Unfortunately, the way it ended up isn’t very interesting, as it involves too much randomness. I didn’t have enough time to change the gameplay, but I have ideas for an eventual post-compo version.
• TOOLS: I started using GM: Studio instead of GM8, because I wanted to release it in several platforms to make it accessible to everyone. That wasn’t a good idea because GM: Studio has problems even in its primary platform. I rolled back to GM8 soon enough though, so it wasn’t a big impact.
• MULTIPLAYER: This being a multiplayer game has its problems. First of all I never really tapped designing multiplayer gameplay before, I’m more experienced with single player games, so this was quite challenging for me. It’s unfortunate that most people will probably not even try because it doesn’t have a singleplayer mode. Plus, because it’s multiplayer, it was difficult to test it as well. Certainly not a very good choice for a LD game 😛

So there you have it. Try it now, and let me know how it goes for you. I can’t wait to receive your feedback 😀

Have a blast!

Here we go guys! Looks like there’s a lot you can do with 10 seconds – 2213 games in fact!… Hmm? Wait, you mean those weren’t made in 10 seconds? Well it is still impressive! Okay, I’m not taking a second more of your time… TO THE RESULTS!

How did I do?

You can view your results here:

My Results: ludumdare.com/…/?action=me

The individual category results are just above your comments.

Top 100 Games

Check out winning competition and jam games here:

Compo Top 100: ludumdare.com/…/?action=top
Jam Top 100: ludumdare.com/…/?action=top&cat=Overall(Jam)

Winners are decided by the Overall category.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Categorical Top 25s

Here at Ludum Dare, being the best game isn’t the only way to win. Games are rated in 7 additional categories, with a special “Coolness” category highlighting people that went above and beyond to be sure you got a vote.

Categorical Top 25s: ludumdare.com/…/?more=1

*NOTE*: You can click on the titles of the categories for Top 100 style lists per category.

Ludum Dare 28 – December 2013

What a blast! Still looking for more Ludum Daring? Stay tuned, we’re around for more soon! Follow us on Twitter or join the mailing list to stay informed.

October Challenge #4

October is coming up fast, and so is the October Challenge. Stay tuned for details; They should be coming next week.

Suggestions

If you have any suggestions for us (website, observations, etc), we continue to collect them in the comments here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/01/09/suggestion-post-2/

Thanks and congratulations everyone, see you next time!

– Leonardo Millan (LegacyCrono)