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Never did a game jam before, never did a project all alone…Always be nervous to do something like, you know,  hey! There is something I ‘ve made, what do you think about it?
But : This is it! The perfect opportunity and experience! My very first Ludum Dare!
I’m nervous but it will be fun. I will try my very best even if I have little skills! They will improve, I will improve…

– yes I know ! : “there is no try…” , master yoda, I just know it but… –

I will try to survive from all of this with one rule : make it fun!  for a two words’ aim:  Enjoy it!
For the tools, I waiting the theme of this LD…Depending of it, I may use Flash or Unity or anything else…

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the theme and all of yours creations folks!

A good luck&journey to everyone!

May the fun be with you…

Hi there! There is  a litte view of my little project ( no named yet)  :

The Concept is simple :

You rotate the planet, you use Keys to create Building or Tree or another things ( if I’ve got time). When you have “completed” your planet, you will click on a button and see how your tiny world will evolve! Depending on that, you will gain more points or less.

There are still a lot of works to do on it ( on the scoring rules for example)  but I pretty confident that I will achieve my aim : Have a playable prototype !

See you and Good Luck!

My second Ludum Dare ! As for the first one, I’m aiming to release a “functional” game ( without major bug and “enjoyable”) . This time, I hope I will manage to do some sounds and animations for it.

So I will use :

• Language: ActionScript 3.0
• Engine: Flash Punk
• IDE: Flash Develop
• Graphics:  Maybe Photoshop & Illustrator or Pyxel (‘have to try it )
• Audio: !If I have times, maybe one of the existing free sounds generator !

I’m looking forward to the theme!

UPDATE :Fail to do this LUDUM DARE. Time to learn more about Flash before coming back…

<< Do. Or do not! There is no try! >>

So Ludum dare I do!

Use those tools I will:

>> FlashDevelop as IDE

>> Flashpunk as “Game Engine”

>> Any free sound creator

>> Gimp, PyxelEdit, Pickle , Aseprite ?

Ready I am!
PS : I will certainly not write yoda-like during all the LD. I swear !

 >>. Some screen from my test Scene .<<

Still many things to do…but the more important thing right now is to get some sleep!

Tomorrow will be polish and LD time!

Second Ludum Dare Completed !

There is the little….thing!

Link : Mondrianarium

Manage to produce something [check]
Manage to produce a game with a operational goal[done]
Manage to produce and have some sound [Fail]
Manage to comment correctly my code [Fail]
Manage to have fun [double Check]

>> Bed.SendMessage ( “INCOOMINNGG”!);

}

Minimalist Timeline

Saturday morning , around 6:00 CEST ( Paris), I woke up and immediately turned on my computer. After some everlasting minutes, I saw the theme : [Minimalism]…ok: Challenge accepted!

[Brain)]: “so Minimalism…minimalism….hum…[open google]…ahh!…That’s great…yep there is something there…[See Mondrian stuff]Uh?…wait a minute…oh yeah!….YEAH! This is THE THING I WANT to do!”

>>|Saturday|6:40 am | CEST|: CONCEPT DONE <<

[[  Code, code, code…]]

>>|Saturday|3:40 pm | CEST|: AVATAR CODE DONE <<

[[  Code, code, code…]]

>>|Sunday|00:20 am | CEST|: CORE GAMEPLAY DONE <<

[[  Code, draw, code…]]

>>|Sunday|02:30 am | CEST|: SLEEP TIME! <<

[[ Brain’s dream : code, code ,code…]]

>>|Sunday|07:00 am | CEST|: What year it is?What is that place?….Aah right: Ludum dare! <<

[[  Code, code, code…]]

>>|Sunday|1:40 pm | CEST|: GAME NAVIGATION (menu&stuff) DONE <<

[[  Code, rage, code…]]

>>|Monday|2:50 am | CEST| H-1h: LEVEL IMPLANTED <<

[[  Think, write…]]

>>|Monday|3:10 am | CEST| H-30m: PROJECT NAMED <<

[[  Write…]]

>>|Monday|3:30 am | CEST| H-30m: PROJECT PUBLISHED <<

[[ -blank-]]

A thousand lines of code and a blurry vision later, I had a little “game” (without real tweaking ) that I threw in the arena and went to bed.

Today, I wrote a post-mortem about it…

What went right ?

•  Using the tech:  at least enough to be comfortable for coding the whole core concept without researching and being stressed about how to do every little things.

• Having fun : what a relief it is to just enjoy the challenge, the community and all the little things that community produced.  As a result, I just enjoyed the whole LD and even more, touched from the tip of my finger this “territory”: where you built your game without be harassed by technical pitfalls or unknowns life crisis and having fun by doing it! Well it’s the key…

• Loving and quick idea/concept : or how to have a core concept about forty minutes after waking up ! Well, as a “beginner programmer”, to have a concept that you love,that  you are capable of doing it and this the earliest possible  is a rare delicacy: that allows you to be focused on the damn coding thing!But it has its hidden traps…see below!

• Mondrian : I know…It wasn’t the theme…But I do think it help me designing the concept and that concept is well adapted to the theme as a minimalist dungeon explorer!

What went wrong ?

• Too focused on the production aspect: At the point that I didn’t pass much time on the conception: questioning the theme, thinking about different ideas, deepening the core gameplay. I did have others ideas but I quickly chose to go with that’s one. It’s not entirely a negative thing to quickly choose but it became a major weakness if you didn’t clearly identify the core features of your gameplay, the ones which are literally the border between an experimental “thing” and a game(with defined rules, a goal…) .To be too much focused on the tech part ended like: – My brain : “Is it a scoring game?But you have too much to do. So…here, write a score formula in 10 seconds, it will do! Trust me…” Ahem…So this time, I did have flaws in my game design and I didn’t said :” Stop! Stop producing like a mad man and take a moment to think about your gameplay!”. Next time, I will…

•  No level Editor: Raaaaahh! I can’t use a tiled editor and I don’t have time to create my own level editor. ‘have to place every little things the old way! (by the way: thanks Mondrian for the basic Level Design.) – My brain(again): ” So we said about 4 or 5 levels? How about one fake-tuto level and one basic level? Yeah…That’s it! Oh! And you have to forget the polish&sound time because this task will take you every minutes left…Have a good night!”

What I failed to do :

As expected for a 48H project, There is many defaults but I only have one little thing about which I’m a bit mad:

SOUND !!

Why I treat you so badly, so unfairly? Because you’re not important? because I don’t have any time left to make you? It’s a mistake… Sounds = Universal Feedback,  Music = Mood levels up like hell! In my case, the solo use of the sound should have greatly enlightened what happen to the avatar entering my little white rooms. So I failed that part…(this time at least!)

What’s next?

 – For the project itself – (link)

I want to take time to polish that one. That means:

• Add sounds,musics…anything even noise!
• Change Avatar’s controls
• Add dynamics feedback.
• Insert a real Scoring formula…
• Maybe, potentially… create a level editor.

 -For the next Ludum dare-

Be even more comfortable with the tech…

…for really focusing on the concept and theme!

Make and use sound, music and noise !

Having fun again and again and forever…

Tags: journal, LD#26, post-mortem, postmortem