This is gonna be my first LD. I’ve heard about it, but never participated. I will probably use Game Maker, with the GMBed library to make them accesible for a bigger crowd. I will actually use the Game Maker Instant Play feature, since this seem to be more stable. I’ve never really finished a game, so I hope this will be a great incentive to finally do so

I’m making a jail escape text based game. I’ve got the ball rolling and I have finished one of the phases of the day: gathering resources.

This game will be written in C++ and nothing else

Third Ludum Dare for me, the first one didn’t result in anything, but the last one did and it was very fun for me. This time I’ll try  not to make a text-based game. I hope I can create something in time, but I’ll definitely have fun!

I’ll be using Game Maker for the game, Photoshop and Inkscape for the art and either Nanoloop for Android or Ableton Live for music.

So since I live in an unfortunate time zone the theme was announced 3 AM. Therefore I decided to just wake up at 8 AM and get started then. I was suprised that the theme was alone, I had expected it to be kittens. (I am happy that that is not the theme) My game will be a turn-based RPG, very much like the card game munchkin. I got pretty far already with the main codebase, but there is still a lot of work to do.

This is my post-mortem for my compo game Just Like The Others. I think my game turned out pretty good and I am definitely happy with my game.

What went well:

-Making the art, I am not an artist so I think it’s pretty good.

-Getting other people to playtest, this helped me establish a good learning curve for my game.

-Fixing the bugs, no time did I spent longer than 30 minutes fixing one.

What didn’t go well:

-When I had my initial idea, a turn-based RPG, a instantly started building it, but I was not sure if it was going to be fun and it turned out it was not. That is why there is now this game.

-Making the player look more interesting, I think he looks a bit boring.

I’m excited! Just a few days to go!

Programming

Either Unity or Game Maker 8.1, it really depends on what I plan on doing.

Sound

Ableton Live for the music and probably SFXR + Audacity for sound effects

Graphics

PyxelEdit by fellow LDer Danik! If I plan on doing 3D stuff, then probably Blender I guess.

I might do a timelapse, but I’m not too sure yet.

First blogpost! Okay here we go. I woke up around 5AM, had a look at the theme and decided it was time to get started. I didn’t really have to think long about what kind of game I wanted to make, I wanted to make a game about trading. This has been in my head for quite some time and this was the ideal time to execute it. I’m not going to tell too much about the game yet, but here is a screenshot. Soon time for coffee!

I overslept! I was planning to wake up at 6 AM, but instead I wake up at 7:45. No really big deal. I’ve come to the phase where most of the game is polish. I still need sound effects and music though. I will probably also do voice acting, because that seems fun 😛 Anyway, here is a screenshot:

Here is the post mortem for $ales, my real world trading simulation game. Check it out here.

What went well:

• Discipline, the first day I woke up at 5 AM, specifically for Ludum Dare. Normally I never do this.
• I had a solid idea very quickly, even though I didn’t really like the theme at that theme.
• I knew my software, GameMaker, really well. I had no problem solving any problem at all.
• I quickly created my art, even though there was not a lot of art involved.
• I didn’t get distracted by the IRC, I just regularly checked it.
• The voice acting, it was my first time ever doing something with voice acting in a game, and I think it turned out pretty well.

What could have gone better:

• I should have coded the economy system better, so that it can be randomized, now everything is pretty much hard-coded.
• The trading menu looks a bit boring, but I didn’t know how to fix that.
• I should have come up with a better technical system to show the world map. Right now I was limited in my sprite size due to the size of the world map.

I think it was one of my better Ludum Dares. Definitely better than the last one. I am looking forward to LD24!

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN! YES YOU HEARD IT RIGHT! LUDUM DARE  <3

I’ll be using either Game Maker or Unity 3D (or even I’m feeling really generous, FlashPunk). For 3D modelling I’ll probably use SketchUp with the PlayUp plugin. For everything graphic I’ll use Paint.NET and GIMP. For my music I will be using my new semi-acoustic ukulele and probably Ableton Live, Audacity and an audio interface to record the ukulele.

I hope that yet again many awesome games will be created in the 48 hours of intense game development 😀

So just two days ago I get a new piece of Ludum Dare battle gear! It’s a Roland SH-201 synthesizer. I’ve already played around with it quite much, and I’m loving it so far!

Good morning everybody!

This will be my first progress post for this Ludum Dare. I had a pretty bad start and couldn’t really come up with anything. After 3 hours I decided just to start messing around with Game Maker and create something based on grids. And then it was there. Suddenly, I created from just a grid… A GAME.

Currently it is a simple algorithm that generates a landscape that continually erodes untill there is no more of such a landscape. I actually have no idea what kind of game it is gonna be. But that will be alright. I hope

So I decided my game would be a procedural exploration horror game. And every horror game needs darkness!

After lots of design choices I concluded it would be better to have one archnemesis instead of multiple of them. Here is a screenshot:

Ludum Dare upcoming! My fifth LD already! This is my I’m in post!

Tools

Programming: Game Maker 8

Art: Paint.NET

Music: Ableton Live + my trustworthy Roland SH-201 synthesizer

Those are generally the things I tend to use. I hope that my fifth Ludum Dare will be just as awesome, or perhaps even more awesome as my previous Dares!

See you in the IRC!

–Sanguine

So, waking up at 7 AM and finding out the theme was pretty do-able. After a bit of wondering I decided I really wanted to make a stealth game, so I did. The game will be a combination between Hitman, Hotline Miami & Monaco is Mine.

Here is a WIP screenshot:

So as I wrote in my last blogpost, I decided upon making a stealth game.

That’s why I got started today on getting all the mechanics in the actual game. There is no featurecreep at all and there is a surprisingly low amount of features. It’s a rather minimalistic stealth game now that I look at it, but I think it is minimalistic in a good way.

After getting the mechanics in I started on level design. I first drew them out on Paint.NET and then transferred them over to the Game Maker Room Editor. Here are some of the level sketches:

And here they are in the game:

It all looks rather boring because the game lacks any sort of art. Tomorrow that will change and I will have a decent stealth game!

Yes.

This is my post-mortem for my Ludum Dare 25 game, Kleptomaniac. Kleptomaniac is a topdown-stealth game, you can check it out here.

What went well:

• I did some small things that really saved time. I made a special object corner for the walls, so that it automatically sets to the right corner dynamically. If I had to manually do this it would have costed me a lot of time.
• Level design, I mostly did level design in Paint.NET and then I would turn it into a level in about an hour. This went pretty quickly which was pretty good.
• Planning my time, I did all my code on Saturday and the art, SFX and music on Sunday.

What went wrong:

• The controls aren’t the best. It would be better if I had just used WASD instead of WS + Mouse. I realized this at a late stage in the compo, with only a few hours to spare and while implementing it wasn’t hard, it broke a lot of my collision code and so I decided that I wanted to stay with WASD.
• The music is slightly repetitive, around the fifth level it gets annoying, so I should have probably made 2 soundtracks instead of just one. I really need to learn this, because it is something I do 9/10 times.
• Making the story, the story was honestly the last thing I did. I had all my levels done and I had to change a lot of objectives just to make my story right. After all it is still a shitty story.

Overall I think the game turned out okay. It’s definitely not the best game I ever made but people seem to be enjoying it apart from a few little things here and there. I probably won’t start working on a post-compo version, because I don’t really feel like it.

Hey folks!

I’ll be participating in Ludum Dare yet again, even though I have to prepare for finals. 2cool4school I guess! I’ll be using my usual game jam setup again:

Programming: Game Maker 8.0

GFX: Paint.NET/Flash CS4/Photoshop CS5

SFX: SFXR/my Roland SH-201 synthesizer

Music: LSDj running on GBC/DS running GBC emulator running LSDJ/Ableton Live

See you this weekend folks!