1st LD

After passing up the last 3 dares, I think I’m going to give it a try. I am a 17 y/o who has taught himself for the past 3 years, but never actually completed a game. I am going to try this dare because I really don’t have anything to do this weekend, but if something pops up I might just have to throw in the towel, but I’ll see what I can do. I’ve spent the last few years really just making and inventing methods to do things and creating demos. I have yet to come close to “finishing” a game, and hope that this time I can put the effort to do something more than just creating an engine and adding basic detail. Here’s whats in my arsenal:

Language – Java

Environment – Eclipse

Art – Gimp

Sound – sfxr

Lib – (most likely) lwjgl, especially if I decide to go 3D.

Good luck to all, and my the odds be ever in your favor.

Well here I am, with a little over 24 hours left, and I have made much more progress than I would have expected. The idea that almost immediately popped into my head was that you are a prisoner convicted of attempting to assassinate the king. King Friday, to be precise, who is the greatest king in the land. You escape your cell, and work your way through the castle to finish the job. It was my excuse to make a crawler, which I had been practicing making for the past week or so. This gave me more familiarity and it was fresh in my mind, so I have made quite a bit of progress. I just hope that adding subsequent areas won’t take up too much time, since I appear to have a pretty decent engine working.

Realized I was moving fast, but had to put in a solid block of coding, so I did. For about the last 4 1/2 hours were spent without a break, and I’m glad I did. I could see there being another 3-4 hours of work before I can at least call it playable from start to finish. After that… details, and lots of them. I have many ideas to add some humor/depth to it, such as having to kill granny Smith (or butcher the sleeping children prince + princess) to unlock the next floor. I hope everyone is doing well with this! Here’s 2 screenshots to show some looks.

I’ve got nothing to do this weekend, and now that finals are over I can relax. I’ll be in, unless I get distracted and decide not…

Java + LWJGL

Eclipse

GIMP

Sound…?

I like what I have so far, but I think I’ll have to leave out like 75% of the gameplay I would have liked to include. Hopefully what I have is at least good =) Ended up messing around all day instead of working so I didn’t get very far. Here are 2 GIFs of what I have. Intro and first sequence. Theme of my game: You live in a dictatorship where you only have one job, one leader, etc. You also only have 1, randomly assigned, button to control you’re actions with.

Intro

First sequence

Finished my second LD, here’s what I think of my experience.

The Good:

-Despite not working most of Saturday, I still got it done for the most part.   -Finally resolved the issues I have always had when distributing   -Completed it   -I really improved in the sound category, I made a quick background song using just my guitar, a crappy mic, and Audacity.   -I couldn’t find any bugs, so thats good   -Thought my game was somewhat humorous   -Took a two month break from programming, managed to know what I was doing when I came back for this dare

The Bad:

-I really didn’t have very much gameplay…   -Didn’t work enough, could have included a lot more   -Should have focused less on telling a story, more on making a simple game that’s fun.    -Overall, I think I could have done something much better

For the Future:

In the future, I hope that maybe I will finally make the switch to Unity or something, because what I know now isn’t the greatest for building games. I should start working less on cool engines (such as my voxel and terrain engines), and focus more on fun gameplay and finishing games. I think I have a lot of ability, but I’m using it in the wrong spot. Maybe the next dare I’ll be prepared for a different approach to the competition.

Good luck to everyone’s entry!

My entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=18565