I just about managed to get something done for Candy Jam, the graphics are horrible but everything else works OK. Just wanted to support the cause really, anyway give it a try here if you’re interested. Thanks!
http://seconddimension.itch.io/the-abstract-candy-saga
Just been voting on the theme and finally starting to get excited for this weekend. Also, this week I have managed to find some time to sort out a Soundcloud page. I uploaded my previous LD and CandyJam game soundtracks, looking forward to writing another track over the weekend! Have a listen below if you’re interested
I have created 3 playlists for this weekend’s LD29, and it occurred to me that maybe I could make them collaborative and some people might want to add stuff to them?
I’ll link to them below, they will be by SecondDimensionMusic.:
I tried to make it an eclectic mix as a starting point, but I guess I am pretty Indie in my tastes (Arcade Fire, The National etc). Still I’ve never done this sharing thing before, so it’s an interesting experiment
(So being collaborative I guess you could just add a bunch of Justin Bieber tracks, but I am willing to delete them as fast as you can add them)
We are in, 6th LD in a row! We are a man down at the last minute, so it will just be the two of us; me doing the game and the music, James doing all the art.
Here are our weapons of choice:
Follow us on Twitter @seconddimension, and check out the new website I did at seconddimension.co.uk
We have also set up some public Spotify playlists, searchable under #LD29, and some collaborative ones that you can add stuff to, links are here: Super Mixtape, Relaxed Mixtape and Instrumental Mixtape.
Finally – Workspace and Cats:
7
This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2014 at 1:46 pm and is filed under LD #29. 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.
So I’ve been getting the game running and James has been working on concept art, both are working out better than we would have expected. Hopefully we can bring them together soon. Lunch time I think
Another screenshot, great work by James on the art so far
Walk cycles are taking longer than expected, going OK though.. here are a few
Well we needed a bit of submission hour to finish off a few bugs, but we got there in the end. We both definitely need some sleep now, as it’s 3am here, so will do a better post tomorrow. For now here is our game:
The music I did for our game Kitsuni is now on Soundcloud, it’s got a nice ambience I think, although it’s a bit sinister.
3This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2014 at 12:51 pm and is filed under LD #29. 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.
Our post-compo version of Kitsuni is now playable! It should have fixed a lot of the issues with the original, although it is still very much a work in progress.
If people like it or are interested in seeing more, then we may continue to develop it into something much bigger.
Play it on our page HERE
Hi everyone
I’m pleased to announce that we’re in again for this LD, a bit later than usual. We will have less time for this one, as I am currently on a mountain in Scotland, so won’t be able to start on the gameplay until this evening after a 6 hour drive home.
Here is where I currently am:
Tools will be pretty much the same as last time:
No cats this time as they are staying with a friend, although I might sneak in a few archive photos. Good luck everyone!
Just submitted for the Jam, phew. A lot of things went wrong over the weekend, including missing most of Saturday and the rest of the team having to drop out, but despite that I managed to get something playable. I also wrote some more original music, which is also something I like to do during LD. Only problem is that without the team’s resident artist, it fell to me to try and make graphics, so don’t expect them to be even 10% as good as last time!
Still, the game feels pretty fun with a 360 pad, have a go at the link below, thanks. Also well done to everyone who got a game submitted
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=14838
Rift Knight Post Mortem
A Post-Mortem for my LD30 game Rift Knight, a fast-paced action platformer. Play it Here
Part 1: The Story of Things that Mostly Went Wrong
Despite it all working out in the end, there was a time on Sunday when I was really close to giving up. Initially this was going to be a team effort with 2 of us, but James has to drop out almost straight away (he is still recovering from a detached retina, so he is forgiven). So on Saturday night I found out that I had to do all the art myself as well as the gameplay and sound, and I had already lost time as I was travelling back from Scotland most of Saturday. I stayed up really late Saturday getting the movement and platform mechanics working, but was a bit worried about finishing everything. Sunday I got up early and made music and sounds, as I knew I could at least do this bit. That went well, but after that things started to go downhill. I tried to create some graphics, and ended up scrapping everything and starting again 3 times! I gave up and worked more on the gameplay to try and get that ready at least. By late Sunday night I tried doing some more artwork, only to hate it again. At this point I had a black & white game with some squares jumping around a screen, and although I knew I could use the Monday and submit to the Jam, I was very close to just throwing in the towel.
Part 2: The Story of Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat
Monday morning I woke up very early, so decided to sit down for one last attempt at making the game work. I played through the one level I’d made and thought that it actually felt really fun to move around, so it was worth trying to finish it off. Knowing about my terrible art experience from the rest of the weekend I decided to leave that until last (better to submit a finished game with no art than risk the whole thing failing).
So for the first half of Monday I created a few more enemy types, designed 5 levels and did a bit of a tutorial. I put in some blank title and intro screens too. So after lunch I had an essentially playable game made of black and white squares. Then I set about trying to make some graphics. Attempt number 5 went a lot better, with the enemies I stuck to my normal style of drawing the weirdest things I could in a simple child-like way. I animated them in really simple 3 frames by just moving legs up and down. Luckily they were moving so quickly in the game that it didn’t matter. With the main character, I ended up creating each body part as a separate layer in paint.net, then I would copy the file and rotate them accordingly. This is a new technique for me and it worked really well, so I ended up with some almost convincing movement animations. From there things got a lot better, I put all the animations into the game and added some screenshake effects and it all started to feel pretty good. I threw in some very quick text for the beginning and end of the game and I finally had something that felt worthy of submission. I tweaked a few things, uploaded and submitted with about 4 minutes to go before the Jam deadline on Monday night.
Conclusion
The main thing that went right was the way the game feels. I spent a long time tweaking all the movement variables to try and make it feel fun; I wrote down “joyful movement” on a notepad right at the start, and I think I came fairly close to getting that right. It’s definitely not perfect, but a good starting point.
The other thing that accidentally went right was the graphics. I still think the game looks a bit rubbish, and art is not my strong point, but I was pleased with my animations. They were simple 3 or 4 frame animations, but they did fit with the controls and conveyed a nice sense of movement.
I was fairly happy with my music again this time, I was worried it got a bit repetitive but I think it fitted the mood of the game.
Finally, despite all the problems, I’m glad I managed to pull it all together by the end! I got 5 relatively playable levels with simple beginning and end screens, so I ended up submitting a short but fully complete game.
In hindsight I am really happy with my entry, as it’s the first time I have made something I would consider genuinely fun in terms of how it feels to control. I would like to build on it, so this game will definitely go on my list of ongoing projects. Plans are to expand the main game as well as adding challenge and speedrun modes. It could possibly be a pretty fun local multiplayer game with some tweaking as well, we’ll have to wait and see.
Thanks to anyone who has already played it, if not you can give it a try here
Behold, my game Rift Knight in glorious GIF format!
I think it looks better in motion than in static screenshots. This would have been up sooner, but it has taken me a week to get this GIF to work here on the blog, for reasons I just cannot figure out. Oh well, it works now, give it a try at the link below:
Turning in for the night, going to try and finish things off for the Jam tomorrow. It hasn’t gone very well this time, had to scrap a lot of the first day’s work because it was not very interesting to play really. Having said that, the music and the artwork are coming along, just going to be a rush to get any actual gameplay finished.
Anyway night all, have a screenshot of whatever the hell this is…
So we submitted our game, hooray! Also, it’s approaching 3am here in the UK, and I am so very tired. I just poured myself a glass of wine, then put both the bottle and the full glass back into the fridge. Then I looked at my hand for a while wondering where my wine was. Thanks Ludum Dare, you have broken me.
Anyway, here is our game. It is called Alpha Circuit and is mostly about being an anti-virus program and destroying tiny malware monsters. I think that’s what it’s about, who knows.
Well done everyone who finished, and thanks for trying our game. Link is HERE
It’s the earliest we’ve ever managed to have a clear idea of what the game will look like, now we just need to get moving on animations and movements. Here, have a screenshot:
We’re in and we’ve made some progress! We’re thinking along the lines of a single screen game where you’re a giant cave monster, and you have to manage a sort of hectic monster nursery (crèche/kindergarten). See below for some preliminary sketches…
We submitted our game just in time, as is traditional. We went for a 16bit-style platformer this time, with a little alien guy who can transform into various things. As usual there were big plans for a story of power cuts, daring escapes and heroic rescues, but we greatly under-estimated the time it takes to makes levels. Really pleased with the music though, check it out HERE
Sorry this is off topic, but just wanted to share… So I was in the middle of rating games this weekend, but I had to stop as my wife was like “I don’t want to panic you but I’m having a baby”. Apparently this is more important than my coolness rating!
So here she is, baby Millie, who has a lot of wires in her so we’re going to register her a 1 quarter cyborg.
