First time doing this, hopefully everything will go according to plan. Hopefully I’ll have a plan so everything will go by it.
So far I intend to use processing with possibly one or more of its libraries. Aren’t 100% sure yet, I’ll probably have 1000+ ideas before the theme is announced and get a mindblank right after.
For graphics I’ll go with gimp and/or random items around the house and a photo camera, and for sounds I’ll probably bang pots together and record it.
Far from playable, far from the common man being able to identify its purpose, still nameless, but with a main character name.
Also screenshots:
screenshot 1, they revolve
screenshot 2, 2 hours later, they spin better
Protip: do not install beta versions of ubuntu the day before ludum dare
Onwards to victory!
Tags: protip, screenshot, update
Most of the functionality is done except for:
more orbiting, more graphics, more interaction
Tags: progress, screenshot, to do
This was an intense couple of days, and felt more like a week had passed. It being my first ludum dare I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve made games before, and I’ve made games with deadlines before, but the ones I’ve finished were not much.
As the time of the theme’s announcement came closer I wasn’t worried too much, I had some vague ideas on some types of games to do. One game could fit several themes. Then the theme was announced: escape! I have to admit that this was one of the themes I overlooked in my mental preparation as I assumed people will want to avoid a pile of room escape games. I didn’t want to do a platformer because I assumed that there will be enough little jumping men and floating platforms from other competitors. So I sat down started pacing around the whole house and tried to think what I’d like to escape from: cities came to mind, then I thought that’s too much of a cliche since the whole world would want the same. Now that’s an Idea.
First let's get them spinning
First thing’s first in an orbit-based game: get the orbit working. That worked easily enough. Geting them spinning around eachother was trickier though.
Then get them spinning around eachother
The coding went a lot more smoothly than I had anticipated, the only slight issue was in switching orbits where Urth (I’ve been told repeatedly that it looked like a hairy circle in its first incarnation) would randomly teleport around.
Probably my favorite level
By the end of day one I had 6 finished levels and escape mode. There were still no menus, no sounds, no interface of any recognizable sort, and at this point I hadn’t slept for well over 24 hours, not due to a lack of trying though. I’d sit in my bed, lights off and sleep wouldn’t happen. Instead what happened were the storyline overlays. Then sleep happened.
Day two started with implementing some suggestions from preliminary testing, adding the artwork, doing the menus, and generally improving the game play experience.
Music and sounds were a headache. I rarely add sounds to projects, so this was mostly new and uncharted territory. Some fumbling with lmms wasted several hours, so I just went and picked up my dusty old mandolin (no I can’t actually play it other than one song: Planxty Irwin) and banged and pinched on it (the sound effects) until I eventually managed a slow tune (the music). Some tweaking in audacity made it bearable to listen to.
Ready for my world tour, fetch my manager!
With that out of the way I still had some hours to spare. Since I became addicted to the Escape game mode, and would play it repeatedly for minutes on end instead of doing actual work I decided to make a high score table so others can show off their planetary avoidance skills. This only works in the applet though, the compiled versions will save your scores in a text file.
Escape this if you can
To conclude, some advice:
I’ve gotten a little addicted to my own game, but much to my frustration I’m not the one with the high score. Since I’ve been playing it between ratings I decided to upload a short gameplay video.
The goal in this game mode is to get as far away from the central star as possible. There’s also a story mode which has puzzle elements to it. I might upload a play through one of these days.
VIEW VIDEO ~ VIEW GAME PAGE PAGE
In case anybody wants to try beating my score even more, it’s worth nothing that only the web version submits to the leader board(and only after adding a name).
Urth has a rather high difficulty, especially in the puzzles available in story mode. These require both planning and reflexes, and may seem impossible. What works on paper doesn’t necessarily work so well in the field, and I’ve learned that by repeatedly failing to finish my own levels. Of course some tweaking there and there helped, and feedback from the community helped identify the particularly tough levels which needed ironing out.
Without further delay I present one set of possible solutions to the puzzles:
I don’t doubt that most players devised their own solutions, and if anybody would like to share theirs I’d love to see them.
After finishing my game I noticed that I had plenty of spare hours left so I decided to add a scoreboard. Unfortunately that meant communicating with a web server, which to my knowledge meant I had to sign the thing.
Signing applets involves some console work, but most importantly it involves an annoying popup asking people to let the thing run. In my mind that’s nearly as bad as a installer and I didn’t want anything of the sort, besides I tried that on a previous project (which come to think of it was also a 48 hour game) and that resulted in people not playing it a all.
From some android work I’ve done I remembered I can call links to pages even if the app has no permissions(the browser handles the links), and I wasn’t too surprised when I found out that an unsigned applet can do the same.
Basically what I did was call
link(“http://example.com/scores.php?name=Andrew&score=asdfg”);
(processing function, no Idea if it’s the same in reglar java) where ‘asdfg’ was an encrypted version of the score. This coupled with making each score unique prevented floods on the scoreboard.
The function spawns a popup window, and I’ve noticed that even if chrome blocks it, it still preloads the score page causing the score to go through. This may or may not be a security issue.
If anyone knows a better, or just different way to have an applet share its internal data I’d love to hear it.
I like making charts, it’s a… thing. So I took some time to see how coolness is spread out over people, and how many ratings each person received. I might make updated versions on the one week mark and when it’s all over. Also I might make something regarding ratings received/coolness, but for now I got my fix. These values are from sometime today.
After a process which was longer than it needed to be I’ve finished up a first installment of the post-compo Urth(for android only at the moment). And it works. Let’s have a look at lessons learned:
Main menu: Merged two buttons and added a new one
The level menu now matches the main menu and has pagination
A sneak preview of one of the new levels
Tags: android, postmortem, progress, screenshot
4This entry was posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2011 at 7:03 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’ve found my raw sounds still on the phone, and I’ve uploaded them to soundcloud with the intent of posting them, but something came up and.. well.. I’m doing it now 😀
There were two soundtrack ideas, I went with the second as the first sounded too annoying, I’d like to hear opinions on that if there are any. Good choice, bad choice, that sort of thing.
Sound effects and first draft music
These then became audacity-ed. The impact sound for example is most of the impact noises above overlayed. And yes, all of these originate in one way or another from an old dusty mandolin.
This would probably be my second animation.. ever. Finished one at least. I’ll hide these behind the more button as they’re rather big. First and second drafts:
And the semi-final sketch:
I’ve submitted it but it doesn’t show up and the form is gone.. I’m assuming it’s a bug.
Anyway, while I sleep collect my thoughts for a better, fancier post with words in it that people will understand, you can play ‘Redeye’ here:
Idea
My ld21 entry urth scored high in innovation (4th) but not so well in everything else, and worst of all in graphics (267th). The general goal was to improve on that, while still keeping to 48 hours only.
Theme
I’ve made this to fit 5 jams, namely:
– miniLD 29 – horror
– GPCv8 (Game Prototype Challenge) – armor & pollination
– Mysticism Pageant (Super Friendship Club) – mysticism
– Story Game (Experimental Gameplay Project)
– Music Interpretation Contest (GameJolt)
Most of the themes are reflected by story rather than gameplay, which can be rather confusing as the story isn’t obvious from the beginning, and takes quite a bit of playing to sort out.
What worked
I’ve never finished a platformer before, any my closest attempt was a worms clone 6 or 7 years ago which I lost due to a HDD failure. As a general rule I’m not very fond of platformers in general, but I wanted to walk a mile in the other man’s shoes before criticising him (after all, if it went badly I’d be a mile away and have his shoes). The good news is that I now have reusable code (sort of) which I can indeed reuse should I chose to make more platformers.
Similarly, I’ve only done 2d frame by frame animation once or at most twice before, so I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to pull that off in so little time.
I’ve tried to add a sense of anticipation to the presence of the red eyes. I’m not sure how obvious the effect is, but the light intensity fades and movement becomes blurred as redeyes approach. The intent was to provide a subtle hint which would be picked up subconsciously and trigger an undefined sense of discomfort.
I’ve also discovered workarounds to some problems I’ve had before. Behind the scenes stuff.
What didn’t work
3D failed me once more. I wanted a 2D platformer with 3D scenery, but I ended up with a 2D platformer with 2Dscenery rendered in 3D. Problems ranged from the mesh not fitting properly, to blender not saving texture information to obj files and to unnatural slowdowns in rendering. Maybe next time.
I intended to have a background consisting of sliding panels which were to give a sense of depth. Mountains, plants that sort of thing. I noticed that I wasted too much time on that with no respectable results and decided to abandon it. It’s probably better that I did.
Sounds were also supposed to change as red eyes approach, heavy breathing was supposed to take place in darkness, but the sounds would get cut out. I rarely work with sounds so I need to look into that. Good thing lmms saved the day with some handy effects.
The death screens have a slight screamer effect which I dislike, so I tried to fade them in to smooth transition. They are intended to look disturbing and not intended not to shock. I’m not sure if I succeded.
My laptop (brandishing the cursed gma 500) apparently runs the game at half the speed. Since playtesting was done on that, the end result might be a bit too fast. I need feedback on that. In addition I had to change renderers in the last minute as there seems to be an issue with processing and openGL applets.
Fun was had.
Feedback, positive and negative is equally welcome.
My choices:
So that’s clear enough. Going with Urth. Urth had a little head start on the android market, so I’ve fixed it by strapping beta to the end. How does that fix it you ask? Well it doesn’t really fix it actually, but I’m October challenging with the non-beta (gamma? 😀 ), which I intend to have for non-mobile platforms as well. The to-do list is huge so I’ll not post it for obvious reasons. But I am going to say that I’m working on a ‘user friendly’ level editor and online level database of sorts. After that’s done the visual elements are going to have a once-over and then a twice-over to try make up for the low ranking on visuals during the compo. For the moment you can get to the latest version of the game by searching “urth” on the android market.The level maker is now (mostly) usable, other than a few missing graphics buttons and the ability to add powerups to planets/stars. You can make a level, test it and save it. There are no screenshots because it doesn’t look that different yet.
I suspect I will have a working version to share this weekend. Meanwhile you can play the ld21 version here or get a more polished version from the android market.
…Is operational and online, and located here:
http://software.o-o.ro/urth-level-editor/
Lord Kitchener Wants You*
YOU!
To make levels!
But seriously, I’d appreciate feedback on the monster.
You can currently make and test levels and save them online. Loading other levels will become available in the next few days for testing purposes.
______________________
*Lord Kitchener doesn’t really want that, but I do 😀
Tags: editor, progress update, urth
In spite of a lack of updates things were done. Great things, wondrous marvelous things! Such wondrous and marvelous things that the human mind can not comprehend! Unfortunately we’ll have to talk about those some other time, since this post is about Urth.
As you may or may not remember Urth scored less than desirably( in LD21) in graphics with an overall 2.65. Needless to say that was given priority. Next up was audio, as that wasn’t great either. After I’ve narrowed down the priorities I’ve naturally decided to start working on something entirely different: the level editor. And what a glorious level editor it is! is it? it may be, it’s like asking a chef how good the food he spent all day cooking is. And by chef I mean amateur cook. And by amateur cook I mean someone who poured himself a bowl of cereal. Now I feel like eating cereal, but I must finish this post first.
The music… well I’ve taken the liberty of outsourcing the music to this chap right here so go and listen to his stuff (and like it!). I’m not posting the music here, you’ll have to wait till I submit the game tomorrow, or the day after. If it’s not done in the last few hours it’s not a proper jam at all.
So what have I got to show other than talk of cereal and a link to a music man? Well what’s left? The graphics! Good answer, shows you were paying attention. And what better way to show off graphics than by showing them! No, not a video, but close enough… screenshots!
Let’s begin:
The updated main menu
The pretty-fied level selection menu
The awesome-ized escape mode settings menu
Gameplay screenshot with 100% more magnets
More gameplay
This may not seem it, but it's from escape mode
There are numerous fixes optimizations and tweaks, but nobody can see them so nobody really cares. Next I’ll finish up the win-linux-osx ports and off to markets they go.
That’s it for now, until next time!
Tags: music, progress, screenshot, update, urth
Well no not ALL the things, but some of the things. Some of the things is better than no things at all.
It’s currently available on the android market and pending in a bunch of other places so I’m sitting on versions for windows, linux and osx. In all honesty I focused more on getting it ready for the igf (student edition) and less about scouting marketplaces.
“Is this the part where you tell us to buy it?” the crowd asks. Well yes actually: “Go buy it!” Or at least +1 it on the android market or tell your friends and family and that cousin George you haven’t spoken with since 3rd grade about it. Yes the one with the bigger thumb on his left hand.
Some of the features will roll out to the free (ad supported) version relatively soon (the updated graphics and music), while others will be kept a version behind(mostly new levels and such).
And here’s a trailer for you(can someone please tell me how to embed videos? the code just gets eaten up)
Thanks for reading 😀
Tags: android, linux, osx, postmortem, trailer, urth, Windows
I became unhappy with my work for day one and scrapped it (it was boring). So with a day to spare I’m taking the quick, easy, and dirty way out and doing interactive fiction( isn’t meant as an insult to graphic novel makers).
I’ve had my mind on making a graphic novel engine for a while and so I took the chance to make one now. I doubt sounds will make it in since I still have to think of and make a game using said engine slash framework slash whatever.
So my graphic novel thing is done. I can’t brain right now but I will say that the method I chose to do my scripting in is horrible. I’ll probably redo it in the next few days.
In case of freezes please let me know.
There will be a more comprehensive post-mortem soon. Meanwhile:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-30/?action=preview&uid=5432