Hey all, this is going to be the first LD I’ve gotten up the courage to commit to. I’ve been lurking for the last few years, but only now feel like I have developed the ability to contribute something worthwhile.

I’m going to be using:

Unity3D for development

Blender3D for 3D modeling and animation

The GIMP for 2D textures and art

Audacity for audio effects

Melody Assistant for music

I will not be using any base code, as I haven’t done enough game development to have any worth working from!

Until the compo actually starts, I am going to be streaming my after-work practice sessions on my Twitch channel. I literally just set that up, like, yesterday, so I welcome any feedback on my presentation, audio balance, etc. I am simultaneously new and out of practice at some of these tools (I haven’t used Blender in several years, it’s TOTALLY DIFFERENT), but I’m going to do my best to avoid broadcasting newbie errors and time-wasting documentation references.

I’m very excited to finally be a part of this community, and I hope everyone else is pumped as well!

Tags: im in, LD27

Work is well under way for “Suddenly, Ninjas” and I wanted to share a little more about what I’ve done so far.

Here is the transcript of my discussion with my stream about how to use the 10 seconds theme, with non-rejected ideas in bold:

10 seconds per round?

10 seconds (lat/long)?

10 second long game?

“10 seconds” name of place/event?

10 seconds of music repeating

10 seconds again and again

Something happens every 10 seconds?

• Vehicle/Running speed up
  • Simple
  • Endless gameplay
  • Definite end, high score mechanic
• Ninja/Dinosaur/Alien attack!
  • Funny
  • Twitch
  • Engaging
• World’s slowest rhythm game
  • Unique (in a bad way)
  • Emergency game
• Change perspective/character – win while you’re in their perspective
  • Unique (in a good way)
  • Easy to game or unfair
  • Adventure game/maze w/ several AI “players” you alternately control
  • Low fun
• Take damage
  • Urgent
  • Race/maze/platformer
• Find cover/avoid something that lasts 10 seconds/every 10 seconds
  • Antifun
  • Intense
  • Storytelling in downtime while covering
  • Possibly do something every 10 seconds
• Turn ends after 10 seconds
  • Puzzle game
  • TBS
  • Antifun – mistakes, just missed it

10 second places?

Racing game where the goal is to get 2nd 10 times, undesirable powerups

Tags: brainstorm, LD27

I’m kinda tired which must be why I find this funny.

I decided to have a little fun today after fussing about with character models and record some “yelping” noises. It was a cause of great distress for my cat, and I’m sure the upstairs folks weren’t uber-thrilled.

I may revisit these later and process them some more, but here’s the best takes so far: Ninja Yelps

Tags: LD27

While I have gotten the full gameplay, level scripting, and much of the audio work (including music) completed, my graphics are still a disaster. Like, I’m not going to show you a screen shot. It’s still all planes and capsules, and with functionally 8 hours left (if I bother sleeping) I’m not sure how much I’m going to be able to get in the way of modelling, animating, and texturing done. The only reason I’ve put this aspect of the project off this long is that I have no practice or skill at it!

That said, I’ll do my best so I can have no regrets. I’ll try streaming again tomorrow (http://www.twitch.tv/atomic_swerve), hopefully the Nvidia updates I installed today will make my graphics more stable. Unfortunately, I’ve found that when my graphics driver crashes it takes Blender (and all my very possibly unsaved work) with it! I can’t avoid working with it any longer, though, I need to get something done graphically or the game is going to be super bland. My full to do list for the remainder of the compo:

• Create at least one human model and texture
• Create a giant hammer model and texture
• Create a running animation and an attack animation
• Finish recording audio for player character actions
• Use level scripting to create a few distinct stages
• Create at least a scoreboard GUI
• Add graphical diversity to the stages (colour at the very least)
• Possibly add some particle effects on hit
• Touch up audio (balance, remaster etc.)

And of course the final step will be to learn how to export from Unity. If I have done it before, I certainly don’t remember how I did it…and I’ll want that done well in advance of the 30-minute mark, I imagine.

…If I fall asleep right now, I am not going to wake up again until there’s only 6 hours left (oh god I am so tired why didn’t anyone warn me this would happen). I am debating trying to stay awake, but I have already seen consequences of my brain trying to work as tired as it is now. However, the hardest parts are done and most of what remains are brute-force trial and error tasks that just need time to be completed. I just realized I’m mulling this over publicly. I shouldn’t post this, it’s not like it’s live yet. This is just a stream of consciousness communication with myself, trying to rationalize staying awake for another ~12 hours. But you need to see it. Yes, you, fellow LD’s. You lured me into doing this, what with your excitement and hype. You’ve reduced me to passionately whining into a blog post about how passionate I am to work for a solid 36-ish hours to finish a game for the world to play. Yes I am staying up, you’ve convinced me. I’m too excited and scared after writing out that list. I hope you’re happy (yes you).

I am really going to need a weekend after this is done, though. Man, can you imagine if you had to go back to work right after finishing your first Ludum Dare? Hah! I feel sorry for anyone that does.

…Wait.

Tags: LD27

Hey y’all, this is my second LD and my first time working with a team. We’re very excited about the theme, but will not start work until tomorrow morning (it’s been a long week, we need our rest!). So far, we have brainstormed about the theme and come up with some strong options involving exploration aided by a tool “you only get one” of. We’ll probably have more details tomorrow after we’ve had a chance to sleep on it, looking forward to having some screenshots to share sooner than later.

Tags: LD28

Hey all, got you a new game to play right here:

We ended up blending several of the final themes together (some by accident) into this game. You only get one light to make it through a pitch-black puzzle filled with traps and false leads, with guidance from several friendly flames. If you’re afraid of the dark, this might not be the game for you; my wife played it for only a short while before having to walk away. If the dark merely makes you uncomfortable, you can still have a lot of fun!

I’m glad we did the Jam, as there were several IRL commitments this weekend that kept all of us from being able to put in our full time. Can’t argue with the results, though! Special thanks to OpenGameArt.org and their contributors for such awesome music and sound effects!

– @atomic_swerve (Piers)

Tags: LD28

What’s up! Two-time jammer here looking to make a third game this weekend. I’m sure everyone can agree when I say that this theme of Pepsi Consultant is going to be the best – wait, what do you mean that didn’t make it? I WAS PROMISED MOUNTAIN DEW!

…

Potential tools and technologies:

• Engine – Unity
• 2D Graphics – GIMP, Krita, Pickle
• 3D Graphics – Blender
• Sound – Audacity, sfxr, my own two lips
• Music – Melody Assistant, pxtone

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll be livestreaming, but if I do choose to I’ll be sure to post when I go online. Look forward to seeing all y’all’s games on Sunday! Good luck!

Tags: im in, ld48, unity, unity3d

Hey again!

First of all, thanks to jedeen who linked me to GifCam and enabled me to make the below GIF in about 5 minutes:

Ended up playing back a little faster than the game actually is, but if that’s the difference of an hour of work I’m not complaining.

As you can see, the ground is scrolling with a parallax effect. Aside from the camera rotation and the little swerves of the player ship, there is nothing actually moving on screen. I’m instead manipulating the texture’s tiling and offset values to merely create the illusion of motion. Why am I putting so much effort into illusory effects for this game? Who knows! But I’m having fun.

Tomorrow I’m planning on getting a quick skyline placeholder up, and then spending the majority of my daylight on creating the actual gameplay (imagine that, a game with gameplay). I really have to prioritize my art assets, though, since I’m not a very accomplished artist and even a small texture will take me quite a bit of time…That will probably be my evening and then some.

Oh, by the way, I’ve started collecting my animations in this handy little album. Enjoy!

Tags: ld29

Hey all!

I’m back with another development GIF (also in the development gallery):

What’s going on here is, well, the actual theme in action (Beneath the Surface)! Once I replace the placeholder textures, it’ll make a lot more sense. Hopefully.

What’s not seen on the screen is that I have a full level management system in place behind this, so I can rapidly add new environments simply by specifying a few values through a simple editor component. Honestly, I should probably have left this systems/polish step until after I had some, y’know, gameplay…But I’m hoping that, with the frameworks I’ve added and the refactoring I’ve done, the gameplay will be fairly quick to add.

By the way, I’d show my bugs and stuff too, except that 90% of them are seizure-inducing with the placeholder textures. There have been a lot of issues, so don’t get discouraged that I’m only showing my successful milestones!

(just realized there’s 24 hours left)

Hey all!

Quick update before the final stretch: Finally got some finalized textures into the game. Aren’t they pretty?

Still have to do the start/win/lose scenarios, then I’ll probably hammer out some audio before submitting.

Hey all!

While I am rushing to get some audio in the game, an alpha version is totally live and playable! Thought I’d share, seeing as how it’s running and everything. Back to making music!

Hey all!

First, I’m so glad to have been part of this massive game jam. This is my third Ludum Dare, and my second solo entry. The difference between Forerunner and Suddenly Ninjas (my first game) is…staggering. This competition has driven me to learn more about game development than I would have otherwise, and I hope everyone else feels the same way.

Without any further ado, here is my final submission: Forerunner!

I’ll be doing a post-mortem in the next few days, where I’ll go over some of the more interesting features and bugs that came up over development.

Hey all!

I have finally decided to start a weekly-ish blog, and I have started it off with a post about Forerunner. Please check it out, and let me know if you have any further feedback!

Hey all! In case you missed it what with the post-theme-announcement site crash, here’s my click-baity first post for this LD: 8 Reasons I’m Doing the Ludum Dare

So, yeah, MMO-ville. What’s that going to look like? Here’s a cell phone picture of my plan so far:

Dat handwriting.

For those who can’t read my scrawl: The game is called Stellation, and it’s an instanced MMO where players (as balls of light) work together to illuminate areas of darkness and form shapes. As puzzles are solved and the walls in the game break down, players are joined from their separate instances to form larger worlds.

Tonight, I’m going to finish planning in Trello and work on getting a basic one-room server running in AWS to see if this is at all possible (really should have done warm-up weekend). If everything goes as swimmingly as I plan for it to, I will actually get enough sleep tonight to make something lovely and testable tomorrow. Again, best of luck to all participants, happy LD!

Tags: LD30, ld48

Hey all!

No fancy images for this post, but I wanted to share before going off to bed: I have my full environment set up and have achieved client/remote server communication! I’ve also got half of my netcode set up, but I figured sleep will do me better than trying to power through for a few more hours. Night all!

Hey all!

GIF time:

What we’re seeing here is the player and a simulated network player following the mouse (network player at an offset) over a test backing wall. The little lightballs drift around their root position, and flicker slightly. I currently just have the network player smaller and darker to distinguish it, but I’m thinking of a more obvious recolouring before release.

I have the players hooked up to a mock network service for now while I finalize the netcode, but once that’s done I’m gonna start a live stress test! So look forward to that in the next few hours.

Hey all!

Please try and break my MMO’s capacity! Server should be live for at least another hour before the next build.

http://atomic_swerve.itch.io/stellation

Hey all!

GIF time:

That’s 4 players on the current build of Stellation. Hypnotic, isn’t it? Now to finish the background and add some SFX/Music.

You can playtest as well at http://atomic_swerve.itch.io/stellation if you’d like, but feel free to finish your own games first This is DEFINITELY a time sink.

Hey all!

They said it couldn’t be done-

Well, not really. No one said it couldn’t be done, but they did make exasperated faces and sigh knowingly as they wished me luck. My plan for a 48-hour MMO was pretty ambitious, considering my lack of experience with netcode and server administration in general. But, well, here it is! What a way to spend my 1-year anniversary of LD!

My only disappointment with Stellation is that I wasn’t able to get it working in the browser. There’s this whole thing about cross-domain exploits and…I just wan’t able to figure it out in time. So we have an executable instead, sorry.

Anyways, download the game and just leave it open! The more the merrier, until we reach the hard-coded limit of 5000 players of course. I dare you to reach that limit. Double-dare, even.