Hi !

It’s my first try for Ludum Dare,

I will use :

– Programming: haXe and FlashDevelop

– Graphism : Gale and/or Flahs CS4

– Sounds : sfxr maybe musagi too

– [Edit] I will also use this lib for bitmap display and animation with AS3

Good luck everyone !

This was my first LD and my only post for the competition. It was too difficult for me to focus on the game and writing post in english… -_-

It was a very intense experience. Saturday was a lot of fun, Sunday was Hell, the last 15 minutes was above Hell. I could have killed anyone who would have stand between me and my keyboard…

I kept a log of my activity on Land Of Fodnal during the 48h :

3:00 –>  Discovery ( Containment is second :-/ ) –>THINK
4:00 –> go for minesweeper game with island progresive discovery –>THINK
5:00 –> ??? Inside the body cells discovery <vs> fantasy
7:00  –> go to bed
10:00 –> wake-up >>Brainstorming
11:00 –> have the CASTLE MANAGEMENT idea -> start to code + base GFX
14:00 –> lunch break
14:15 –> folks structure tracking
14:45 –> Danger zone + tower ( number in zone are killing my display :-/ )
16:30 –> structure selection + scroll
18:00 –> structure interface GFX + ergonomics
18:36 –> loosing huge ammount of times on interface ( have no field / buttons / whatever libs )
19:35 –> still crawling with buttons… -_-zZ
20:23 –> At least I can build things !! It seems fun to discover map buy building things to scroll.
21:00 –> lunch break
21:30 –> try too animate folks
22:00 –> Refactoring
23:20 –> GameOver sequence
00:00 –> Decide to cycle worldmap… Always late for this kind of decisions…
00:20 –> working on sight system
00:40 –> Debugging cycled coord
01:00 –> Trying Musagi
02:44 –> Sound session end –>  debug
04:00(?) –> Go to Bed
11:00 –> Wake Up
11:30 –> Work on Aborigines path
12:00 –> FX ans parts
13:00 –> new bads
13:10 –> try to make nice border for beach but fail -> goto difficulty generation
14:30 –> working on sight system visibility ( = headash )
15:15 –> Starting the science bonus system
19:15 –> Editing world map
19:30 –> adding some hints
20:15 –> correctings few bugs
20:40 –> starting minimap o_O
21:20 –> Intro artwork + intro coding
22:00 –> Title artwork
23:00 –> First serious test on the game…
23:15 –> implements new sciences
00:00 –> adding small elements
01:00 –> balancing ( ouch, a bit late for this )
01:20 –> adding difficulty level
02:30 –> adding hiscore local saving
02:45 –> Arrrrgh my first infinite loop NOW !!!
03:10 –> Version submited !

Now I will test the other games !

This is the workspace from my company where Deepnight, Valandre, WhiteTigle and I participated to DL19 !

my place

I just realized that the online version is a test verstion…

There’s way to much aborigines ( I was testing the game over sequence ). I was not intending to kill the player at the first error.

I dont know If I can modify my entry or not. If I could I would be happy, but It break the 48h rule…

Here’s the correct version : fodnal 1.1

Please let me know if I can replace my entry with this one ( juste one line was deleted from the original version )

I want to share some tought about my entry for LD19 : Land Of Fodnal

What went wrong

Scrolling constraints

I tried to implement a scrolling system where you have to select a unit to center the scroll zone. No other way to scroll map, so you have to build units to visit, and also you have to keep your units alive if you want to go back. Incidentally, if you loose one of your unit, your link to your main base is cut and you have to choose between explore back or go forth with what you have.

In theory it was ok, but in pratice the main system really look like a bug or some very bad control choice. Most of the player were trying to find key shorcuts or mouse control to scroll around, and I was not able to write a hint to describe a control you actually dont have… Ingame help is my biggest flaw, so maybe other gamedesigner could  have done much better with this.

Ingame Help

All is said, I knew I will mess up this part and I did.I hope  that many LD experiences will help me to correct my way of creating games.

Stress

The last 8 hours was a nightmare. The final 15 minutes ( didnt know about the 1 extra hour for submit ) I found a crash on the gameover sequence ! I added tons of aborigines on the map, to trigger gameover faster and have some tests. As soon as I fixed it, I uploaded my entry… with the test settings…

Really sad to see how 48h of work can be wasted for 5 minutes of overstressed debugging…

Interface

Creating game from scratch is fun. But spending hours for creating a button Class and aligning text really made me feel like I’m loosing my time. Maybe I will declare some interface libs in the next LD to stay more focus on the game creation part.

Writing post, read other people posts.

I intended to post step by step part of the game and I was totally unable to do it. Stress was eating me so much that I could not give enough attention to the LD blog, or even test the game of my friends that were working just next of my desk… Now I will catch up by testing the more game that I can ^_^

What went right

Minesweeper

Working on a minesweeper games is really entertaining .  I’m actually not a very good player at the classic game, but last year I played to the fantastic Onslaught of the Electrics Zombies and I had very good time with it. I was amazed on how the minesweeper gameplay could ignite some kind of exploration will. I also had good experience with Mamono Sweeper and Mine Tower. That’s why I tought that Minesweeper mechanic could be a good idea for the LD Discovery.

Sounds

Having to create sounds  was really exciting. In my everyday work I make webgame without sound because most of the users turn it off or even complain about it. Adding some sounds ( even just a bit ) in my LD game really feel like I’m creating a complete videogame. I was thinking it will cost me a lot of time, but it was easy and fast thanks to Sfxr. I also had a look to musagi but I was not able to make a good music ( need more pratice )

I will use :

– haXe

– GFX :  Adobe Flash CS5 and/or GraphicsGale

– SFX : Bfxr

– my sprite manager

– MUSIC : Milky Tracker ( I will try… :-/ )

Good luck to everyone !

Even if I like the theme, I lost too much time to build the platform engine and I don’t think I will be able to finish with only 12h left… Here’s what I did until now.

It’s my 3rd time !

Equipment

– Coding : haXe

– GFX :  Adobe Flash CS5 and/or GraphicsGale

– SFX : Bfxr

– my lib

Tags: haXe, LD #21

It’s the first time I try to post something during the 48 h

I’m currently working on some sort of puzzling where you must escape a rainbow prison by destroying the right tiles.

You have to reach the border without waking up the guardians ( red balls )

Play it here !

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 20th, 2011 at 5:52 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 entered this LD21 with my own additional theme : “No level Generator”.

I’m designing game for a long time now and I have always eluded the leveldesign problem by programming levelgenerator for any game. Breakout generators, sokoban generator, shmup generator, etc.
I was pretty proud of it. Knowing that my game have sort of infinite ammount of levels feels powerful and trying to make them fun althought they were not craft-handed was challenging.

Back when I was 14, My iconic game was Frontier Elite 2. I had no clue what a random seed was, but having a universe on my 3.5 floppy disk sounds magic !

When I started to read the LumdumDare blog, I was surprised by the time spent on leveldesign. Filling a .txt file with “O” and “X” was the kind of thing I totally wiped of my mind. It feels like and old age thing.

That’s a very twisted point of view, but I cant help thinking like this

Enough with the psychoanalysis, what about the game ?

In Rainbow Jail I tried to design the level instead of procedurally poping block and baddies by reversing puzzle solution.

and… Hell, it’s hard work !

For manually designing these kind of puzzle, you have to think hard ! First you have to make some easy level. Not only player must achieve them by doing almost anything, but they must feel like they made some wise move to do it. After that, more challenging levels. For achieving this, you have to test.

A lot.

And I’m awful a this too.

Spending all my time playing my own 48h game seems like a nonsense.

The hope : A Solver !!

So of course, I want to create a a LevelSolver that will check for me the ammount of solution for the current level so I can, just by blindly add or remove block, navigate between 0 & infinite number of solutions until I reach the “only 1 path” holy grail.
Well that would still be leveldesign, but it seriously take the generator twist. And moreover dealing with the fact that player can push some blocks ( sokoban factor ) is not making it easy.

Back to reality

I had to face the harsh reality. For every single level, I will have to check

•   is my level possible to finish ?
•   is my level fun ?
•   is my level erhh.. beautifull ?
•   is my 12 move ultra-smart solution is not overlaped by a 2 move solution I didn’t notice ?

I did my best and I think the result sucks

The problems :

• My urge for quantity over quality made me add those grey dots (random color block  ) so I can easily create enough room for my game. Most of these levels are untested and boring.
• Not enough testing : maybe 10% of the room are truly tested. It turned out that making a good level take me 30-45minutes. I should have spend 6-8h on 12 good level instead of this zelda-ish interconnected room map.

The good sides :

• Creating an ambiance for your game is easier with a manually drawn map, I could for example create some kind of jail look level.
• Thinking and testing each of your level really shorten the distance between you and the player.
• Testing specific features of the game is easier : Just draw the situation and test it !

I wish I could design fantastic puzzle like chocolate castle, or better,  mix procedural generation and leveldesign to produce gem like spelunky…

Well you can’t become a good leveldesigner in 48h, but a sure thing is the LD competition help me to progress in this way !

One year since my first attempt to LudumDare.

This is my 4th participation and I already feel like a veteran !!

>>Programming : haXe

>> Graphism :  Adobe Flash CS5 and/or GraphicsGale

>> Sounds : Bfxr

>> My personnal Library : lib  ( mostly for pixel sprite display and anim manager )

5

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2011 at 10:54 am and is filed under LD #22. 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.

…you’ll be a part of me… forever…

17

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 18th, 2011 at 10:03 am and is filed under LD #22. 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 can’t wait to know the final theme !!

I hope for ” Build it then use it ! ”

My tools :

– Coding : haXe

– GFX :  Adobe Flash CS5 and/or GraphicsGale

– SFX : Bfxr and LabChirp

– my lib

Good luck every one ! Let’s break the 1000 entries !

I’m a bit late but here’s the Post Mortem for   Super Strict Farmer 

It tooks me some time to figure out what to do with the Tiny world theme. I was just thinking to a little piece of ground floating in the air. So I decided to adapt a famous boardgame ( my favorite ) named Agricola to a short and more accessible version .

I think I succeded in making it shorter ( boargame version play are 2h-3h long ) but the result is still very difficult to handle and not very intuitive.

You can play Super Strict Farmer  here !

The Timelapse is here

What went right :

– Preparation / Efficiency

On the week before LD23, I focus my attention to go to bed early and slept at least 9h-10h per night  ( that’s a lot for me ). It made my 48h very pleasant, I slept only 6h in one shot and had almost no focus problems. It didn’t help to take good decisions, but I had my head clear when I had to implement them

– Animation and arts :

I’m used to graphics gale and can work fast with it. I spend a few percent of my time on graphics and could focus on the core of the game. I just wish I had more time for particles and special effects

– Artificial Intelligence :

Well. I was thinking I wont have time for this in 48h. So I first decided to make the computer player play random move and balance difficulty with initial advantages ( more food, peoples or ressources ). I finally decided to give 2 hours for AI and I dont regret it. I mean, the result is not perfect but working on it was the most fun part of the project. Trying to give score for each possible action, made me think like a player ( not a game designer ) and it works like actually testing your game and detecting his weaknesses. At the end, I made the AI compute opponet best actions so it can try to steal them from you. It made the game more interesting and in my case very introversive, because I really had the feeling to play versus myself.

– Title

I had fun imagine it and draw it in 90’s super street fighter style. I was thinking that maybe, it could be the best title and then… I saw Copulous 😀

What went wrong :

– Simplification of the orginial Gameplay :

One of the bad points of Agricola is that you have to wait the end of the game to have a clear view of your score. It make it very obscure to new player, and I was thinking I could avoid it by creating ingame-actions that let the player trade ressources for victory points. I could not balance them in time, and was forced to add a final grain/sheep/cattle count. It ruined my original idea.

– Balancing :

Even if the result is playable, the game balance is unstable and took me most of my time. It’s difficult to estimate it, but it should be around 9-10h . I could have better intro screen and better ingame help if I didnt spent all this time on balancing.

– Boardgame :

Trying to adapt a boardgame to a short casaul game for LD is not the best choice I could make. This kind of boardgames are not very popular and I know that only few people enjoy their mathematics. I think I ended with a game too simple for boardgame veteran and too complicated for unitiated.

– Loneliness in a crowd :

One more time I had a chance to share this Ludum Dare with a lot of friends who was participating in the same place ( deepnight, 01101101, thotor , valandre ). And once again I stayed focus on my work not trying to go around and see what they were doing. But this time I have the solution : LD24 will be a jam entry for me

I just finished my first mini-LD Game ! I could only spend 12h on it (4h+4h+4h) so I tried to keep it simple.

At first I wanted to build some kind of infinite boulderdash runner game ( from bottom to top ) with randomly generated content and water flooding form the bottom of the screen.

The result was not very fun to play, water was easy to block with boulder and always going up was boring ( and not very strategic )

So I finally removed the level generator and changed it to a more classical version with just infinite cycling level as new mechanic.

Few innovations here but I hope somebody will like it

Only 9 levels to beat.

Play Never Endin Rock Slide

wizard says , ” I’m in ! ”

boulder says , ” It’s dangerous to go alone, take this prize ! ”

wizard says , ” I can’t dude, money would ruin my magic powers”

boulder says, “… ”

My tools :

– Coding : haXe

– GFX :  Adobe Flash CS5 and/or GraphicsGale

– SFX : Bfxr and LabChirp

– Music : Sunvox ( my first try for music, I hope it will work )

– my lib

Good luck to everyone !!

You can play it here

The title screen is ready :

For the theme evolution I made a game with beetle teams fighting each other.

Please play it here !

The player control none of the team but he can bid for one of them. If he win the other team evolve and he have to switch his favorite team or persist on the first one for the next fight. Until he fails.

There’s 16 different skills but you will never select any of them.

The most difficult part of the gamedesign of beetlefield was to not let the player focus on one team as “His” team. That’s a bit frustrating, but I wanted him to concentrate on analyze rather than the classic level-up-your-character thing

I was really unsure about how it will work, so I added an incentive to the game.

Player can save the last team they bid for so they can sort of “possess” it to fight with other players team.

What went right :

– Experience : This is my 6th ludumdare and the first one when stress is not overwhelming me. That makes my week-end more enjoyable than the other LD. I even finished my todolist 3 hours before submission time, which is a very reassuring thing to do

– Music : That was my first time creating my own music for a game. I’m always spending few time before LD searching for a tracker I could use, but this time I think I found one I like. This is sunvox and I plan to train with it for next LD. I know the menu and ingame music I created are a bit basic and repetitive but well… I’m still proud of them

– Surroundings : We were gathered at the Motion-Twin company office. 11 developpers working altogether, it was a very good athmosphere. They all made an amazing work which really helped me to push my limits further.

What went wrong :

– Few Skills : Since the game engine was ready on saturday morning, I had tons of time for titlescreens, music and all. But I regret now I did not spend more of this time for extra skills. They are the game core and with more skills all the battles would have been unique.

– Fonts : I was never satisfied with fonts and spend to much time looking for them.

– Sfx : I reduced the tweaking time on Sound Fx because of the time I had spent on music. The result is my sfx are poor, especially the button tick and selections. I’m only happy with the beetle death sound.

– Not enough beds

Tags: LD #24, post-mortem