Yay, first post.

Also first time participating ;3

Anywho, stuff I’ll probably end up using:

Language: GML

DLLs: 39DLL, SuperSound

IDE: LateralGM as much as I can, probably ending up using Game Maker for a lot of it as well.

Graphics: Paint.NET, GM’s in-built sprite editor, possibly Seashore

SFX:  Bfxr, Audacity

Music: MuseScore and Gashisoft’s GXSCC

I want to end up using my Mac as much as possible, but until I’m a little more experienced with Java, GM limits me mostly to Windows, since I’m a lot faster using it.

Heck, whatever I do eventually, I’m looking forward to participating for my first time a lot ;3

Just a little program I made that could be useful, http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/203391-particle-engineer

It’ll probably run under Wine, but just let me know if you need a Mac port made and I’ll make some sort of wrapper.

Features:

– Generates random particle systems

– Allows tweaking of particle systems, sfxr-style

– Quick and easy particle system creation

– Export to .txt or .gml

– Preview particle systems quickly without having to run, edit, run, edit…

Hope you find it useful ^^

Well, apparently YouTube doesn’t want minors using Hangouts on Air any more (I’m 16). That’s nice of them.

On the other side of things, two hours into the competition, I’m up (4am here :D)

Gonna start drafting ideas and see what crazy things come out.

Tags: drafting, evolution, livestream, woke up, youtube

Progress so far

So, I’ve finished making platform physics, and also I was too tempted to implement Companion and Kittens in at the same time… so the player now has an evolving kitten as a companion throughout the game x3

Menus work nicely, and there’s a LOT of particle effects.

The first level will be a train which should explain some sort of basic outline of the situation. Upon completition, new areas will be unlocked causing the kitten to take new forms, e.g. in the glacier area it will transform into a yeti….

Scrolling text at the bottom is working brilliantly and the kitten will follow the player 8 steps behind.

If I have time I’ll stick in some online stuff, but for now, more levels and seperate sprites for each direction.

Tags: companion, kittens, ld24, particles, progress

So here we go, it’s shaping up.

The enemies now can change colour, and shoot globs of goo in that colour. I have yet to get them to evolve, but whatever.

There’s a second level slowly coming into existence, involving a glacier. It doesn’t look quite as pretty as the train level yet but I’m working on it.

Level unlocking works, and there’s now a way to win the first level (by defeating your first enemy)

Enemy AI is slightly improved (they can jump properly) though they seem to get stuck on the sides of things.

Here’s a screenie:

Screenshot of the Glacier level

As you can see, I’ve added a new tileset for the new level and healthbars area there.

I completely rewrote the method of fighting a while ago and instead of pressing space and having the sword spin a bit, the sword now stays in a radoius of 64 of the player and follows the mouse.

Clicking will hit the enemy, cause a knockback and they will flash red like before.

So now let’s get the Yeti AI to work so we can evolve our kitten into a yeti 😛

Tags: glacier, kitten, progress, unlikely companion, yeti

Well, it’s been a good day.

UK time, I woke up at 4am, which was 2 hours after the competition started and I’ve been up since.

I’ve made a lot of progress and pretty much the entire game mechanics is laid out now. The companion AI is almost done, though I somehow managed to break the sprite flipping when the kitten switches direction.

The glacier level is now pretty much done, so I’ll work on the last few levels, evolving monsters (in addition to your evolving companion) and perhaps a bit of polish, bugfixing, and if I get lucky, online multiplayer tomorrow.

The “story” sorta works. There’s a scrolling chatbox at the bottom of the screen that displays things as they happen. I need to work on my writing skills a bit 😛

The enemies now take advantage of their blend mode and flash the opposite colour upon being hit. They also change colour depending on where they are, which is nice.

So, here’s a final screenie of the Glacier level before I go to bed (I might rename it Mountain later, it isn’t really “glacier”-y enough to be called a glacier :3)

Glacier level in it’s current state

Delete all the tiles and then replace them somewhere else….

So, how would YOU move Mount Fuji?

Well I’m making levels pretty fast, but not as fast as I’d hoped.

I’m taking about 2-3 hours on each one and I’m going to make a boss now, before the final scene.

Spiders in the woods level aren’t as polished as I would of liked, but I’m almost an hour behind my schedule.

I’m going to do two more levels before working on my saving mechanics, sound effects (and maybe finish the music), credits and possibly achievements.

Forest as it currently stands

The boss fight’s pretty much done!

Now all I need to do is the final scene (the ending) and then all the little tweaks and gimmicks I can fit in.

Aiming to submit around 2 hours before the deadline.

Dragon boss fight

Yay, I have something playable and somewhat done now.

So, I’ll polish and add features and gimmicks until midnight, then publish!

Just writing the last few pieces of music… they’re 8 bar loops and I’m writing the entire game’s soundtrack in minor keys.

After that, I’ll stick some credits in and get it submitted. Nearly there, and 3 hours to go!

I’m not doing achievements, they don’t feel like they’d fit any more. Online multiplayer’s a complete no as well, especially given the time, but I might add that after the competition’s ended at ome point if I can be bothered.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=14242

It’s now 12:30. I need to get some sleep.

I’ve ironed out pretty much all the bugs I spotted, and the game has a “proper” soundtrack!

I’m hoping all those particles will cover up how bad my art skills are ;3

At the moment, I’m happy to call it “complete”. Sure, it could do with some better sprites, online multiplayer, better saving, maybe even achievements, but it works and it’s fun.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll get on my Mac so I can get to work porting this. I’ll see if Winetricks manages to support SuperSound alright.

Well, after failing to livestream I said I’d make a timelapse. Which is exactly what I’m doing. I’ve gone through the screenshots and removed ones of say, facebook, or my screensaver. There’s just over 1000 of them.

I’ll stick in the video once I’ve exported it.

Here is my timelapse.

Thanks for being awesome everyone! This was a great experience, and if the next time is in hols I’ll definitely enter again.

Well, I don’t have the full time to do something, but with the theme announcement I was in two minds as to whether to do something.

I haven’t participated since LD24, and I’ve learnt a lot since, so I’ll be using:

Language: Java

IDE: IntelliJ IDEA

Graphics: GIMP

Music: MuseScore

Other tools: git, maven, standard stuff.

I plan to make something simple, but easily expandable, so that I end up finishing the mechanics quickly and level design can finish when it wants to.

Okay, I have something working.

So, after starting 12 hours late, I got something alright done.

General movement mechanics are done, tiles are done, map editor is done, collisions are done, losing the game is done.

All that needs to be done now is a basic text box that tells you what’s actually going on, perhaps some menus of some description, finishing the music, and some more object & level design.

The game is generally focused on exploration – you control a robot to explore caves to find different treasures, evading touching the walls.As you continue to explore, the music should progress in complexity, as should the caves, which should gradually become harder to navigate. The further you get from the initial start point, the larger your score should get.

I’ve considered doing a proper event system & plugin loader, so you can expand upon the game fairly easily. I’ve done similar things before, so it shouldn’t be too hard to implement.

Well, I have another free day tomorrow, so it should be fairly easy to get most of that done in time.

I’ve finished my game in time for the compo – I’m actually pretty pleased with what I came out with, after starting late I didn’t expect to come out with that amount of content.

You can download the finished game from http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=14242 – play it and see what you think 😉

Here’s a little sneak preview:

Enjoy!

You can now play Descent at http://lucariatias.github.io/ld29/

After a few headaches with Java applet security, as long as you have your java set to allow unsigned applets, it runs.

It doesn’t quite have all the features of the standalone version, but at least it’s working.

Firstly, sorry for neglecting to write a post mortem last time I entered in LD24, after the first couple of days of voting I kind of disappeared and didn’t come back till recently.

Secondly, if you haven’t played Descent, have a look over here

Here are some screenshots:

A little bit about the game:

Descent is a sort of odd game. I didn’t really know what I was going for, I just sort of went along with what I was doing to see what came out of it. I ended up with a sort of paper plane/flappy birds cross that was much moodier than either, and centered around exploring underground caverns.

You play as a sort of droid, and you’re meant to pick up various treasures. At one point I planned to do a short cutscene at the start whereby a couple of archaeologists launched you down into the cave, but I decided against that idea and instead to focus on the mechanic itself.

What went well:

The controls.

I managed to develop a pretty unique control system, and it’s quite an interesting thing to play with and get used to.

The graphics.

It’s a very simple style, walls and corners are smooth, and there’s a static lighting effect. The text somehow seems to add to the feel of it.

The mechanic.

The end result is not really something I’ve seen done before.

The menus.

I got these done incredibly quickly, and they don’t look half bad. There’s a considerable amount of options to explore, including enabling/disabling music, sound effects and lighting, and changing the difficulty.

The plugin API.

Would do again. This was less work than I expected, and includes a decent system for plugins to hook into. It was also a lot of fun to do.

The map editor.

This made map creation considerably less difficult, and also allowed me to release something that other people could use to create maps.

What didn’t go so well:

The controls.

Although it’s a unique system, perhaps because of this, a lot of people disliked it and how it handled. A few alternatives I’ve been thinking about have been pressing a key gradually steering you towards a point or using the mouse and clicking where you wanted to go (which I couldn’t get to work within the 48 hours). I’d like this to be a modifiable thing in the menus somewhere. Meanwhile, if someone wants to make a plugin to switch the PlayerController, feel free 😉 just might need to use reflection to do so

The map loader.

For some reason, this took longer than expected. The end result wasn’t bad, but I had to go through numerous hoops to get something that worked. Glad it’s there, not so fun to implement though

The difficulty.

A lot of people have been complaining about this – while I can clear the included level in one run on normal difficulty, collecting all of the artefacts and scoring 600+, not everyone can do this it seems. A lot of people got stuck on the initial couple of rooms. Which is a shame, as the music develops a lot as you continue on. I’ve been thinking about making easy “snap” to each direction, change normal to the existing easy, hard to the existing normal, and insane to the existing normal with one life. (Also, hard and insane are pretty much impossible currently)

The music.

Although a lot of people liked this, I wasn’t happy with it personally. It was fairly randomly bashed together, and wasn’t really something I enjoy listening to most of. There are nice sections, but I don’t enjoy the overall feel of the piece.

Anyway, look forward to joining in again some other time. I’ll try and make LD30, but no promises.