On a projector!

So yes. We will  be streaming and hopefully the audio won’t completely jack and you can hear us. But maybe not.

http://www.twitch.tv/superdisk_

CLICK IT AND POST YOUR CREATION IN THE CHAT (or on the piratepad: http://piratepad.net/SOSAfyaZIp)

Post Mortem

Duran came over. Theme came out. We hated it. Went downstairs and started brainstorming on a piece of paper aptly titled:

Gaem 1:

Evolving-through-the-ages game where you’d start out at pong or breakout, then when the ball leaves the ceiling mario would jump out the other end, representing the transition through video game ages. It would end up at some sort of shooter, I suppose, as that’s what we’re at now.

Gaem 2:

PowerPong: Some sort of MMO pong game that would include a ton of wacky objects like giant chomping heads and blocks for your paddle to place. It would also take place in space… This game was more of a big “screw this” to the hated minimalism theme. Good thing it didn’t get chosen, I guess.

Gaem 3:

Portal knockoff: Some Portal game. Eventually ditched, as it was too unoriginal.

Gaem 4:

This looks familiar. Duran drew this one: it’s an ASCII guy holding a pickaxe and wearing a miner’s hat. This was actually a continuation of an older idea by me in which you’d try to survive in a canyon while finding out what’s at the core of the Earth (by digging and stuff)

Then, this mockup was drawn:

We settled for it, headed upstairs and began working. And by working, I mean jacking around. We sat around kinda doing nothing for a little bit, then our first plan of action: download a character set of ASCII characters so we could actually start making the game. This proved troublesome; finding an ASCII charset in BMP or PNG form was INCREDIBLY hard. We eventually found one on a Dwarf Fortress site somewhere, and split it with this fantastic tool: http://www.mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=02&c=6&id=8921

We made our main character, named him Richard, and got the basic engine going within the first day. We slept, then resumed progress the next day, and that’s where the “good and bad” comes in.

The good

• ASCII characters made it fantastically easy to make good art! Most enemies are just a simple character, and the final boss and some other stuff was drawn in Asiekierka/GreaseMonkey’s 64pixels game. It doubles as a nice ASCII art editor, but also a fun game.
• MMF2 was a great tool, and surprisingly managed to handle all of the diggable ASCII tiles without any lag. Yay.
• We made the final boss first, before any levels. That way, the rest of our time could be devoted to just making levels so we could just stop at any time and still have a complete game with a beginning, middle and end.
• Exported as Flash, so everyone has easier access (no downloads) and the Linux and Macintosh users can play too.
• Charles Flint’s animations look great.
• Hidden story was cool
• We also included THE MOST GLORIOUS TREASURE OF ALL! And I won’t tell you what it is! (it’s really secret)

The bad

• Game was really hard. Anyone that’s played it so far hasn’t beaten it (except for one, who was invincible from a bug)
• For some reason, we just decided to make  you restart at the title screen if you die at all, so you’ve got to have some extreme perseverance if you want to see the ending.
• There were some buggles in the Flash version, but I patched them.
• One of the hidden signs isn’t hidden. Not that big of a deal, but eh.
• Enemies kind of ramped up difficulty into crazytown once you get to the Dark Zone. Everything was kind of a deathtrap if you didn’t avoid it.
• Enemy hitboxes required you to actually click on them (you can’t hold your mouse down on them) contrary to the blocks, so most people can’t figure out how to kill them.
• The blocks can be held down the mouse button on, but everyone likes to just click them for some reason.

Overall, we’re both incredibly happy with the result, and it might be our best game yet. Happy Luduming, everyone.

Rate it here

Finally, after 2 missed Ludums, me and Duran (the creators of Obamapology and DIGQUEST) are back in the fray.

We’ll be using

• Multimedia Fusion 2.5 (Clickteam)
• Paint.NET (Rick Brewster)
• Windows 7/8 (Microsoft)

This’ll be fun!

I’m in, again. Me and my friend didn’t quite complete our game Wino last time (But its continuing devlog can be found here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40349.0)

He won’t be participating this time due to other responsibilities, though.

P.S: I’ve got a trick up my sleeve I might be unveiling tomorrow.

My friend El_Cabaro’s schedule cleared up and we’re back..

as a team, yo

Tools using:

• Multimedia Fusion 2.5
• Paint.NET
• BFXR/SFXR/JFXR or whatever’s the hippest
• Windows 7 & Mac OS
• OUR LIGHTNING FAST WITS

That’s all. Good luck everyone

Well, my friend is leaving the house now, so it’s up to me to get the game into submittable shape tomorrow. Approximately 6 hours of work time, so it’ll be a mad rush… since the game’s secret cool gimmick is pretty far from complete. You’ll all see, though! Good night, and good luck.

It’s not all done. And submission hour is soon. Time to rush.

Create a rube goldberg machine and link it with everyone else’s to create one big machine!

After working tirelessly fiddling with Javascript and the accursed HTML standard, I’ve gotten Coinslot and its various components finally fully working. Add your component to the Global Machine by playing the game!

Play it here

Ladies and gentlemen, the “online database” for our entry Coinslot:

It’s an early 2000s IBM Thinkpad.

Our game: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=11035

For our Ludum Dare 31 entry, Duran and I made Coinslot, a socially constructed Rube-Goldberg invention toy. The idea is that the resulting machine is what really happens to coins when you put them into a vending machine, or arcade game, or whatever. Hey, it was a good idea, at least.

How it worked

You create a pipe machine using our tools:

Then once you’ve built the machine, test it to watch the coins go through:

Then, submit it to our online database where it will be linked in with other contraptions to make a giant rube goldberg machine!

It’s a lot smoother than in the GIF.

What went right

• We completed the client and server in time, only partially thanks to the tools we used.
• The game actually did WORK, if you consider immense load times and buggy javascript working.
• Ultimately it was really cool to see all 23 of the machines in action.  (Of the 53 that played, only 23 submitted. Sorta leads me to believe that most people didn’t even play the game. ¬_¬)

What went wrong

• The server required almost constant maintenance on the first 5 days or so because it kept breaking down. My javascript was to blame.
• It takes ages to load, thanks to our excellent “store giant PNGs on the server” technique of data storage. (like, multitudes of minutes.)
• The database itself is just a laptop sitting next to my router.
• Clickteam Fusion wasn’t the best game making tool for this job, really. We wrestled with the collision detection for a good while before getting it finally working.
• There weren’t enough parts! With the work on the server and the problems with Fusion, we only had enough time to make a few good parts. The rest is just bland default pipes.
• Only 23 people uploaded their machine. That means the other people didn’t even give the game a fair go. Since it only takes a few minutes to actually make a machine, that means some people must’ve just quit and given it a hasty rating in the first few minutes, which sucks. I can’t really blame them though, since upon loading the page it tends to freeze thanks to my horrid Javascript.
• When I say the game takes ages to load, it takes AGES to load. Also, it might freeze your computer whilst doing so because my code sucks.

Even with all of the stuff that went wrong, I’m pleased with the game and with a little more work it could’ve been a gem. Alas, we’ve got other games to make, and it looks like Coinslot will be on the shelf for now. Thanks for making the competition a good one, everybody!

Play the game here

Me and my pal El_Cabaro are coming back for this Ludum. Hopefully we can get something more successful than last time’s entry (Coinslot: https://youtu.be/VyVGBvslfBo?t=4m10s), even though I’m still really proud of it.

Back in LD 25, with the theme “You are the villain,” my friend El_Cabaro and I made Obamapology, a game about accidentally ruining the lives of various game characters by abiding by the game’s implicit rules.

Naturally, when the theme “You are the monster” rolled around, it was time to make the sequel. Obamapology: Term 2

This time the game takes on a paper twist, originally meant to be a pastiche of Paper Mario but ended up looking more like Yoshi’s Story. Our skills have definitely improved since 2012, and you can tell by playing the two. The first one features game ending cliff falls, “federal crime” level collision detection, and a cheesy ending. Overall we were both satisfied with the game as it was but I think that the sequel is certainly a step up.

The good

• We came up with the idea immediately after hearing the theme, so there was little planning involved
• The art was honestly pretty easy to make and looks good.
• The arts and crafts were interesting to work with and shopping for them at Walmart was fun.
• I got to use the Epson scanner I bought at Goodwill for 4 bucks!

The bad

• Time logistics really got in the way of making the game, I had to bribe some dude at work to cover my shift and still had to cut 4 hours out of the first day for marching band.
• We really cut the time close on this one, wrapping up with a very very rushed ending. We’re going to release a “Director’s cut” after the Ludum is over that has the true ending.

Here are some screenshots.

Play the game here!

Let’s get capitalistic.

This is going to get hacky.

Warmup weekend game complete!

Ready to go for the real jam goin’ down.

Well, after perhaps a bit of scoping issues, we have 6 hours after school today to add in the rest of the attacksets, towns and levels, and final boss to our action RPG.

Did we bite off more than we can chew? Hopefully not! See you all at the submission hour, fellow jammers!

Normally me and my friend team up and make a game for the Ludum, but since we’re both in college now, I thought I might try something different.

I’m an amateur composer so I’m looking to flex my musical muscles… If anyone wants to collaborate, shoot me an email at yux50000 <at> hotmail dot com, or leave a comment.

Thanks!

-SuperDisk

I posted this before, but nobody responded so here it is again.

I can make some music for your game or help out programming if anyone wants to collaborate, let me know!