I am getting really excited about next week’s Ludum Dare.  Before theme voting begins, everyone should think for a bit and come up with some fun themes to add to the list.  I personally find that voting for themes is such a hilarious experience when I’m reading them out to my family and we collaboratively decide what to vote up or down.

As most veterans know, EVOLUTION always comes in the top ten.  Always will.  Nobody knows why, but it must be all the scientists among us.  Other common top tens include KITTENS.  Therefore, I propose a mashup of the two themes:

Kitten Kitten Evolution

Now that, I dare say, would be an awesome theme – like Dance Dance Revolution but indie style!  =)

Here’s some motivation for ya. It is all about the fact that you can’t expect your first attempts to turn out as great as you dream. Keep at it, don’t give up, make a dozen games and eventually you will be amazing at what you love. I’m still learning this lesson: I remember my first couple games – how they turned out was OK even though I was sure they would be incredible. It was (and still is) a humbling experience. The key is to not get discouraged and don’t aim for perfection, especially at the beginning.

Tags: motivation

“A man has only one escape from his old self: to see a different self in the mirror of some woman’s eyes.”

Clare Luce

“The greatest escape I ever made was when I left Appleton, Wisconsin.”

Harry Houdini

“The horse may run quickly, but it can’t escape its own tail”

Russian Proverb

“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”

William Blackstone

“This is a place where I can escape to fantasyland.”

Elaine Vogel

“If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.”

Ram Dass

“Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher’s the poet’s equal there.”

Emile M. Cioran

“Creating a character on or off the stage is an escape.”

Roger Moore

“Death, after all, is the common expectation from birth. Neither heroes nor cowards can escape it.”

Ellis Peters

“It is a pity that we cannot escape from life when we are young.”

Mark Twain

“Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.”

Christopher Fry

“Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”

Ayn Rand

“A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”

Albert Einstein

“Faces that have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.”

Walter Scott

Tags: motivation, tips

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 7:16 pm and is filed under LD #21. 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.

KEYNOTE TIPS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHD1QBP4ww8

I’M IN MOTIVATION: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYuOrCnokCQ

PURE WIN AMAZINGNESS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaIvk1cSyG8

Tags: im in, motivation, tips, video

This entry was posted on Friday, August 19th, 2011 at 11:41 pm and is filed under LD #21. 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.

It took me an hour and a half to come up with anything to fit the theme of  “ESCAPE” but once I forced myself to sit down with a marker and a piece of paper, I soon had a simple little thumbnail sketch of what I wanted to make.  I’m using an ultra-simplistic concept that fits the theme and I’m quite happy with it. As my first progress report, I’m happy to say that I’ve finished implementing the basic gameplay mechanic. I’m using HTML5 and box2dweb and am creating a physics puzzler for web, windows exe and android (compiled to .apk using PhoneGap). It took me about two hours to code the entire thing from scratch.  I’d never tried any work with box2d before, and I stumbled with bodies and fixtures and sensors but I’m really happy to say that my basic gameplay testbed and proof-of-concept is complete: we have a “main character” that can bounce around and the engine detects when you touch a “key” which unlocks a “door”.

This means that I am “done” the low level engine and have the rest of the weekend to make it look pretty!

Tags: android, box2d, html5, PhoneGap, progress

Did a little post-compo work on my LD48 “pinball” game, Bounce-onium: Escape from Prof. Kitty von Doom’s Laboratory – there are now 25 levels, a level select screen, cool chiptune music and most notably: SPIKES!  Lots of polish added – for example, your mouse/ball now spins properly and there are lots of new block types that can be used for level designs.

I’ve also used PhoneGap to compile my HTML5 + box2d source code into a native Android app and it runs GREAT on my phone with super smooth FPS.  Coming soon to an app store near you… =)

Anyone who made an HTML game, be sure to check out PhoneGap – you can compile your app to Android, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, etc.  Completely free, open source goodness.

Tags: android, PhoneGap, screenshot

So far the games I’ve played have been AMAZING!  But there’s one thing I miss…

Now that things have returned to normal, it sure would be nice to have the sidebar back.

Perhaps it could be turned into static html that only gets updated once an hour?

More importantly, the new improved sidebar needs one extra feature:

Tags: cache, donations, sidebar

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2011 at 10:16 am and is filed under LD #21. 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 would love to see someone make THIS game for the horror miniLD:
(the winner earns a bottle of “redrum”)

(from http://gametoilet.posterous.com/gametoilet253-shining-flag-come-and-race-with)

I’m happy to declare my participation in this month’s most awesome game jam: the ZERO HOUR jam.  I may live in Canada and have to suffer with the Nov. 6th daylight savings time date, but just for kicks (and because jamming with friends is half the fun) I’m doing it tonight.  The jam starts in 45 minutes and lasts one hour.  My plan is to hack my bullet hell shooter engine to make it a top down arena shooter called 999 zombies.  Wish me luck! =)

EDIT: Here is my final submission!

http://www.mcfunkypants.com/0hgame/

Tags: 0hgame

Life is so great. My Stage3D Flash11 gamedev book was just published today!

Easy-to-remember links for sharing with people verbally:
http://mcfunkypants.com/amazon
http://mcfunkypants.com/book

Shortest possible links:
http://amzn.to/tYmiSf
http://bit.ly/ptMfmP

I’m listed on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Stage3D-Molehill-Programming-Beginners/dp/1849691681/

Here’s my page on the Adobe website:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/author_bios/christer_kaitila.html

Here is the product page at the publisher with more information:
https://www.packtpub.com/adobe-flash11-stage3d-molehill-game-programming-beginners-guide/book

Full table of contents with all topics listed:
https://www.packtpub.com/toc/adobe-flash-11-stage3d-molehill-game-programming-beginner%E2%80%99s-guide-table-contents

The free sample chapter PDF, chapter 8:
http://packtlib.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/1680EXP-Chapter-08-Eye-Candy-Aplenty!.pdf

Demos of each chapter including the final game I teach readers to make:
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-1/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-2/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-3/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-4/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-5/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-6/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-7/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-8/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-9/
http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2011/flash11-stage3d-book-chapter-10/

Anyway, just thought I would share the happy news. I’m also 95% done my second book “Game Jam Survival Guide” which already has a contract and ISBN number, and a third is in negotiations!

I’m so grateful for all the good luck I have. I could not have done it without +David Barnes +Maitreya Bhakal +Terry Paton +Thibault Imbert +Ryan Speets +Alejandro Santander +Mikko Haapoja +Evan Miller and so many more of my gamedev colleagues here, on g+ and twitter. There’s a bit of each of you in the book.

I must have saved the universe in a previous life since so many good things simply fall into my lap. Okay, a little hard work doesn’t hurt… but overall I feel like the luckiest guy in the world on a daily basis. Perhaps just believing that you’re lucky makes it so.

Kind regards,

Christer Kaitila
aka McFunkypants

blog: http://www.mcfunkypants.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/McFunkypants
google+: http://gplus.to/gamedev

P.S. This is how I feel right now:

Tags: Book, flash, Life is great, McFunkypants, Stage3D, SuccessStory

Check it out: an infographic from postmortem data! (click to zoom)

For the book I am writing (Game Jam Survival Guide) I did an in-depth analysis of posts tagged as post-mortem reports on the Ludum Dare website. This is just a rough copy and I’m hoping to incorporate your postmortems from this time around for the book so that the sample size is bigger – so remember to write a short, concise post-mortem after you submit your game next week with “what went right” and “what went wrong” sections, preferably in point form to make data collection simpler.

Some of these statistics really surprised me, while others merely confirmed my gut instinct. To draw some conclusions from the data, everyone should be familiar with their tools and frameworks prior to the jam. Most people loved coming up with a plan based on the theme, but many forgot to set aside enough time for art and level design.

Get people other than yourself to playtest it so it isn’t too hard, doesn’t have lousy controls and lame enemies, and is easy to figure out what to do. Don’t bother with physics unless absolutely necessary. Prepare to deal with time-management issues, cut features and focus on what’s most important. Keep your plan simple. Finally, and surprisingly, if you include music and sounds effects you will be much happier with the final product.

Good luck during next week’s LD22 compo. Remember, if you need more time, can’t share your sourcecode, used any clipart, prefabs or samples, or want to work in a team, you can join the JAM and enjoy an extra day to work on your game without worrying about the rules.

Have fun! I can’t wait to check out all your awesome games.

Kind regards,

Christer Kaitila
aka McFunkypants

Blog: www.mcfunkypants.com
Twitter: @McFunkypants
Google+:  mcfunkypants.com/+

Tags: motivation, postmortem, tips

Just wanted to join my fellow honoured gamedevs in declaring my intention to join this weekend in Ludum Dare 22. The themes so far have been absolutely amazing and fill me with ideas. I’ve been doing a lot of hardcore, low-level coding recently with book projects, client work and 3d gamedev, so I’m going to take a break and go LOW TECH. Here are the new tools of choice for me:

HTML5, using Ippa Lix’s lovely JAWSJS canvas-based 2d sprite lib.

No grid, no tiles, no level editor: all art will be hand drawn.

No IDE, no server, no database, no 3d: just a text editor and photoshop.

Low bandwidth, low resolution, low workload: simplicity is my goal.

No physics, no AI, no multiplayer, no optimizations: so simple it runs well.

No installer, no plugins, no downloads: an .html file, a .js file and a png or two.

No stress: I’m aiming to finish a playable working prototype a day early.

Lots of sleep, lots of playing with my baby son and going out with the wife.

Lots of free time playing Skyrim and going outside.

I’m not here to win, I’m here to grin!

Happy holidays, everyone! Can’t wait to play your games.

Here’s something to motivate you:

Tags: motivation

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at 2:18 pm and is filed under LD #22. 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’m looking forward to watching everyone make amazing games this weekend. I have a request: please connect with me so we can encourage each other to do amazing things! Be sure to post tons of screenshots on twitter using the #screenshotsaturday and #LD48 hashtags.

I’d be grateful if you followed (I’ll follow you back!):

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcfunkypants

Google+: http://mcfunkypants.com/+

Tags: Google, ld48, screenshotsaturday, twitter

This is an official challenge to all Ludum Dare gamedevs.

This weekend, your quest is to put a KITTEN somewhere in your game as an “easter egg”.

This “kitten challange” will be like a meta game in which everyone tries to find the kittens in each game they play. You know you want to.

Do it – for the love of kittens. For the love of meta. For the love of all things LD48.

Edit: Dock was cool enough to make an icon that you should put in your game title screen or game thumbnail screenshots so we know to look for your kitten:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/12/16/1-kitten-badge/

Finally, be sure to post to the blog using the “kitten-challenge” and “easter-egg” tags.

Here are the tragic results of theme voting. Where’s the kitten love?

1. Alone+227
2. Randomly generated+206
3. Evolution+41
4. Parallel dimension+14
5. Forgotten places-29
6. Falling-77
7. Moon-105
8. Tunnels-108
9. Consequences-113
10. Decay-116
11. Dreams-118
12. Underground-125
13. Time-travel-133
14. Teleportation-148
15. Self-replication-170
16. Territory-284
17. Mechanisms-291
18. Antihero-325
19. Reflection-417
20. Shape-shifting-477
21. Kittens-481

Tags: challenge, easter-egg, kitten-challenge, kittens, motivation, theme, tips

Greeble is an HTML5 game where you are the captain of a crashed spaceship. You are ALONE but need some help to survive. Collect the cryo-keys to activate the stasis pods in order to free your friends.

What went right?
Was very familiar with my tools, both engine, language and art creation pipeline. The amazing JAWSJS game engine was a breeze to work with. Had a very easy time making the art, since my level editor was just photoshop. Enjoyed screenshotsaturday, twitter and google+ as a means to stay motivated. I did well in the time-management arena, and planned ahead of time. I used placeholder art during programming and coded everything first in an ugly room with rectangles for characters. Only after the first day (when all coding was done) did I dive into the art, so I had tons of time to make it real puuurdy. I spent 75% of the time on the art and was feature-complete the coding by noon on Saturday. Total time spent on the game: 14 hours.

What went wrong?
Ran out of time before I could add sound effects. No user instructions or intro. No GUI. Had to cut features and simplify to finish on time. Got a bit stressed about it on the last day, racing to finish. Drawing the level took more time than I predicted. Overall, had TONS of fun regardless.

About the game:
Features pixel-perfect, non-grid platforming, bounce-pads, transparent glass tubes, a fun retro “scan line” effect, silly AI followers and A KITTEN. Your objective is to navigate to the exit where you will be rewarded with a trampoline party!

→→→→ CLICK HERE TO PLAY! ←←←←

Use the ARROW KEYS to move around. Try to find a way to revive all your friends (including the hidden secret kitten, which signifies my enthusiastic participation in the “kitten challenge”) so you can all bounce on the trampoline at the end.

I had so much fun making this game. I even had time to hang out with friends, go for a hike, and decorate my house for the holidays! There is a lot of room for improvement but overall I’m really happy with the final product. Created using ippa lix’s wonderful jawsjs game engine.

The word “greeble” comes from the original Star Wars ILM special effects artists who used the term to describe generic “tech” bits and pieces that adorn sci-fi hulls. There are thousands of greebles in this game’s level art.

How it was made: I drew two “techno” textures as the base texture for all the world platforms (one brown and one silver). These patterns were covered in “greebles” (panels, buttons, wires, lines, etc.) In photoshop, I made opacity maps for each and turned everything transparent. Then, I drew the game map itself by drawing black and white pixels on the alpha (opacity) channel so that certain parts of these materials would become opaque. An effect filter that added a little emboss to the edges completed the look.

In the game engine, the entire world map is one gigantic .PNG image, which is layered on top of two parallax-scrolling background tiles (set to move slower than the foreground). The retro “scanlines” effect is merely another overlay image that sits on top of everything.

This is the entire map image I drew, as used in the game (click to zoom in):

… and this is the scanlines overlay I created:

Making “Greeble” was very inspiring. I now have an HTML5 platformer game engine that allows me to create freeform worlds in photoshop. No tiles or level data files required!

→→→→ CLICK HERE TO PLAY! ←←←←

Ludum Dare is so much FUN. It is amazing what you can accomplish in a speed-coding weekend.

Tags: html5, postmortem, screenshot, video

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2011 at 10:11 am and is filed under LD #22. 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.

Merry Christmas – Happy Holidays! Just for fun, here is the snowy SANTA version of my LD22 game, Greeble. Can you revive all your Santa Claus clones? Can you find the Christmas Kitty? It was made in HTML5 and runs at 60fps in all recently updated browsers. Enjoy! Hope your holidays are filled with friends, family and fun!

http://www.mcfunkypants.com/LD22/xmas/

Tags: christmas, holiday, html5, post-compo, xmas

Participants of Ludum Dare 22 were asked to fill out a survey on their experience. A whopping 747 people filled out the survey.

Thanks for taking the time to fill it out!

I love this enthusiastic and supportive community.

Here are the results (click to zoom).

Survey Results: click to zoom in.

An in-depth analysis of the data will appear in the upcoming book, the Game Jam Survival Guide. Briefly, people had a lot of fun. The majority were either first-timers or not experienced game jammers. Most are happy with their games, of which about half work in a web browser. In order to finish on time many people had to cut features and simplify their designs. Not everyone was as familiar with their tools or basecode as they should have been, but only a few tried to learn a brand new engine.

Most games did not run on mobile devices, but many were cross-platform. On average most people did not spend time watching TV or movies, going outside, visiting with friends or playing other games.

Contrary to expectations, almost nobody drank coffee, energy drinks or alcohol. Virtually nobody used version control (such as SVN) or time-management techniques (such as pomodoro). Surprisingly, not many reported having difficulty with packaging, installers or submitting.

This infographic would be complemented by additional stats work. For example sorting the results by the most common response, or by questions with the most “no, not at all” answers would show some interesting trends that aren’t hinted at in this chart. Overall, however, even this cursory examination of the 747 survey results sheds some light on how Ludum Dare game jammers spend their weekends.

Tags: infographic, McFunkypants, postmortem, tips

WOOT! CHECK OUT THIS AWESOMENESS! My book publisher just sent me this image. I’m very excited to announce that my latest book, The Game Jam Survival Guide is 100% done, edited, proofread, and laid out. It should appear on all online book stores the first week of April.

The Game Jam Survival Guide

Tags: awesome, Book, McFunkypants, motivation, SuccessStory

Update, April 15: Awesome! I just scored a 40% off discount code for Ludum Dare participants (it won’t last forever!): “gjttsgeb” at http://link.packtpub.com/31Eodu

Update, April 12: Apple just approved the book for the iTunes iBookstore! http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-game-jam-survival-guide/id516248330

WOO HOO! I’m excited to announce that my new book, The Game Jam Survival Guide has just been published! This book is essentially a love letter to the Ludum Dare community.

It includes interviews and advice from LD48 superstars such as PoV (Mike Kasprzak), Fydo (Chris Hopp), Phil Hassey, Pekuja (Pekka Kujansuu), and Chevy Ray Johnston (two time winner of LD48), as well as other game jam experts such as the people who run the Global Game Jam.

I also include the infographics from the surveys we all did last Ludum Dare, and packed the book full of the Haiku poetry and funny anecdotes that you all sent to me a few months ago. Finally, I went hardcore into the ways to achieve game jam success, including tons of “what NOT to do” as well as specific advice about tools, time management, design, how to deal with the theme, how to finish on time, and more. Right now the best price is on Kindle, and it is available in hardcover paper edition as well.

I can’t wait to join everybody later this month at LD23. Good luck and KEEP IT SIMPLE! =)

The book is available in paper hardcopy, .PDF, .mobi, and .epub formats.

You can pick up a copy right now from the publisher, as well as
Amazon,
Amazon UK,
Kindle,
Kobo,
Safari Books,
Barnes and Noble, and
iBooks on your iPad.

Here, just for fun, is all sorts of information about what I packed into the book, copy-n-pasted from the publisher’s press kit:

Overview

Enthusiastic and light-hearted, glimpse the excitement and frantic creativity of game jams.

Motivating, encouraging and infectious, it is sure to help you reach the finish line.

Follow this handbook from brainstorming an idea, over bitter obstacles and on to the sweet finish line: a complete, playable, fun game.

Each stage of game jams is described with task lists and anecdotes relating common experiences, the trials and the tribulations of past game jam champions and losers.

Packed with interviews, tips, tricks and wise words from Ludum Dare and Global Game Jam organisers among other well-known game jammers.

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Before the Jam: Prepare Yourself for Success!
Chapter 2: Hours 1-12: Your Quest Begins!
Chapter 3: Hours 13-24: Deeper into the Jungle!
Chapter 4: Hours 25-36: Breaking Through The Wall!
Chapter 5: Hours 37-48: Getting to the Finish Line!
Chapter 6: After the Jam: Fame and Fortune!
Appendix A: Game Jams
Appendix B: Game Engines
Appendix C: Helpful Tools
Appendix D: The Community
Afterword
Index
Preface

What you will learn from this book:

• Preparing for the jam: conquer the theme, pick design aids, prototype quickly, choose the right tools for the job, and cut the right corners.
• Bombastic brainstorming: power up your idea generator and run with a theme, gain more votes and please the masses.
• Building a game jam entry: pick your weapons, follow your plan, cut the bells-n-whistles, scramble over “the wall”, submit a game on time, and with a little luck, attain fame and fortune.
• Why Mike “PoV” Kasprzak (Ludum Dare administrator) thinks game jams are a good introduction to the realities of the game industry.
• The reasons why Dr. Mike Reddy (organizer of the Global Game Jam) thinks designing on paper is essential.
• The best ways to find creative inspiration and develop an idea to fit a theme according to Eric McQuiggan (founding member of The Dirty Rectangles) and Chevy Ray Johnston (author of the FlashPunk engine).
• What Foaad Khosmood (director of the Global Game Jam) suggests you do to ensure you finish before the deadline.
• The worst way to prepare according to Pekka “pekuja” Kujansuu and the best way according to Phil Hassey (Ludum Dare administrators)
• What one piece of advice Jason P. Kaplan (founder of the Game Prototype Challenge) would give to newcomers.

I want to send a massive and grateful THANK YOU to everyone in the Ludum Dare community. This book was written for you.

Tags: Book, McFunkypants, motivation, postmortem, SuccessStory, tips

Though it goes without saying, I’M IN. My toolchest will include FlashDevelop, BSFXR, Photoshop, CoolEditPro, Flash 11 Stage3d. My basecode for this event is this very simple homemade 2d stage3d sprite engine. No physics, no networking, no real animation apart from sprite movement. Heck, it doesn’t even have joystick support yet. The only thing I like about it is that it is fast and small. I’m also hoping that everyone votes for the best theme of them all: CASTLES IN THE SKY.

Good luck, everyone. Remember: AIM SMALL and PLAN TO HAVE FUN!

– McFunkypants