I finally decided to enter this LD. This will be my first LD and as I don’t have alot of experience making games I doubt I will get my game any where near playable by the end of the 48 hours. I’m thinking of this purely as a learning experience.
I’ll be using XNA to make the game, paint.net for the art, 3DS Max if I need to do any 3D and sfxr if I get round to implementing sound.
Good luck all!
Just woke up and it’s time to get working. The first cup of coffee has already been drank and I have an idea on what to do.
I think I’ll flesh the idea out a bit first before talking about it incase I decide its a crap idea and moving on to something else. The concept needs to be simple so I can make it with my limited knowlege.
This is all I have so far. I’m doing the basic engine stuff currently. Rest assured this is all place holder art but don’t expect the actual art to be much better, my art skills are very crappy.
Things are progressing slowly as this is the first platformer game I have ever made but still fingers crossed for finishing on time.
I needed to nip into town with my sister and due to terrible amounts of snow and my sister having to buy a crap load of stuff it put me god knows how many hours even further behind scedule. Finishing on time is looking bleak at the moment so I doubt I will be sleeping tonight.
On the plus side I have fixed many, many bugs with my terrain collision detection and I’m ready to set up a sprite sheet system for players and possibly mobs if I get around to it.
Things are starting to come along alright and I’m catching up on my schedule. I have started to flesh the story out a bit more but will leave most of that for tonight while I’m trying to fall asleep but the basic jist of it is that you’re a caveman attempting to “discover” fire. this happens earlier on as the levels (hopefully) start to get more difficult. Thats when the goal shifts to telling over cavemen about your discovery.
Completed so far:
Sprite sheet/animation system.
Terrain collisions (Could use some tweeking).
Input.
Player movement.
Gravity.
Loading new levels on the fly.
I still have my work cut out for me if I want to finish on time.
As a side note, I’m finding this competition incredibly enjoyable and a great learning experience. I will deffinatly enter future LD’s too!
~Code monkey get up get coffee, code monkey go to job~
I woke up at around 7AM, grabbed a cup of coffee and immediately got to work on adding the limited sight.
Even though its quite ugly it only took around 10 mins to think up and implement, it also worked first try too which saved me some time.
Since then I’ve had breakfast, squashed some bugs and added a limited number of lives. Now it’s time to start the GUI and menu screens. Once I have that sorted it will be time to add more gameplay to my game.
Everyones games are looking really good! I can’t wait to try them out.
Just finished my first ever menu system (It’s quite rushed but I don’t have time to mess around).
Now its time to work on the level design and try to add a few more gameplay elements to make my game atleast somewhat fun to play.
Oh and yes, I am that bad at art. 
Everything I feel I’m capable of adding in within the time limit is in, time to finish up the level design and submit ! 😀
Don’t expect too much though, it’s quite a dull game. I fully intend to continue and improve it at my own pace after the competition is over.
Even though the gameplay is lacking I’m quite proud of the end result considering I’ve never made a game more complex then a space invaders type game and never completed a project in such a short period of time.
I’ve finally finished my game! Damn these past couple of days have been fun. I’m glad I was able to finish ontime.
I’ll post a proper break down of what happened, what went right what went wrong ect after I get some rest.
Good luck to everyone still working on thier games.
This will be my second Ludum dare and I’m looking forward to it. hopefully I’ll be able to finish my game this time too.
For tools I’ll be using C#/XNA for programming, Paint.NET for any 2D graphics and SFXR for any sound effects.
Good luck everyone! I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with.
Nothing to show yet but after waking up and seeing the theme I’ve come up with an idea and started work on it.
I doubt I’ll be able to finish this on time with my skills but I’m going to give it my best. I’ll give my details on what I’m doing when I actually have something to show.
Progress has been pretty slow and I’m starting to doubt I’ll be able to finish on time but things are picking up now that most the kinks with collision detection have been ironed out (still some left though). Currently basic physics (gravity), basic game play mechanics (jumping, wall jumping etc), collision detection and a bit of the art are in and finished. I still have a very long way to go.
The basic idea of the game is that you’re a Ninja and you’re trapped inside the deepest part of the enemy’s base. You have already acquired what you have came to do and now you must escape while avoiding detection. If you get seen you lose. How deep the game play gets all depends on how much I can add before running out of time, I’m hoping to add things such as smoke bombs to help avoid detection and shuriken to help dispose of lone guards.
It’s quite daunting how much progress everyone else has made in the same amount of time so I’ll have to try and pick up the pace.
Good morning everyone, I’m up and hard at work. All that’s changed since the last update is that the guards have now been added. They move around randomly and if they look towards you without a wall obstructing their vision they will see you.
I’m currently working on adding shurikens for guard killing and smoke bombs. Once they are in I’ll see how much time I have left before deciding what else to add. Collisions are still a bit buggy so if I have time left at the end I’ll try and sort that out too.
Decided to enter last minute.
This time I’ll be attempting to use Flash Punk to make my game. I’ll use paint.net for the artwork and SFXR for any sound effects if needed.
Edit: Oh and I’ll be using the Ogmo editor for any tile-based level editing if its needed.
Got a few ideas going, Now I’m going to go to bed and mull them over in my sleep.
Good luck everyone!
I woke up a few hours ago and got to work.
I’m creating a survival game where you’re stranded on an island, alone and confused you have to use your surroundings to survive and possibly even escape depending on how far I get.
So far I have the basics of the tile engine working along with collision detection, movement and some very shoddy placeholder art.
But now it’s time to eat breakfast while looking at everyone’s creations so far.
I’ve been busy working on the GUI since the last update. Got the players stats all up and running and almost finished implementing the inventory system along with a context sensitive menu when clicking objects.
I’m glad to have the brunt of that out of the way and once I finish up the inventory system and get a messaging system sorted I’l try and do something about the atrocious art but I doubt it will look much better in the end, just smoother tile transitions and what not.
Day one draws to a close for me. Since the last update I finished up the inventory system, added the messaging system, created the player sprite and animated it and started work on some of the tile transitions. Things are going well so far, I’ve got allot done but I still have a long way to go.
No more developing from me tonight, I’m going to relax for a bit then get some well needed sleep.
It’s a little late but here is the post mortem to my competition entry The Lonely Island, which you can find here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=3428 .
The plan.
My plan was to make a bit of a survival simulator where you are stranded alone on an island and you have to slowly gather the resources you needed to make your escape. I wanted to have day/night cycles, mountain areas and loads of different items to find and craft. All this turned out to be a little too ambitious though and I ran out of time before I could add any of these things. In the end I had to quickly implement making a raft and escaping before the development time was up.
Day one
The first day went extremely well. I got the tile maps loading and rendering very quickly and made great progress on the GUI along with some of the more important mechanics. I’m not too familiar with AS3 and Flash Punk but most the things I tried to do either worked first time or worked shortly after trying to implement it. Bug’s didn’t take more than 5 – 10 minutes to fix and it started to look like I would be able to add either everything or most things I had planned on, but I was wrong.
Day two
In comparison to day one, day two was a nightmare. Nothing worked first time and major bugs took what seemed like forever to fix. It didn’t take long for me to see I either wasn’t going to finish on time or I wasn’t going to be able to add many features. I started off the day by getting the map scrolling with the players movement, and this caused a load of problems and broke most of my GUI and I had to spend at least half the day fixing everything. I learned a valuable lesson from this though, get scrolling maps in ASAP in the future. After I finished climbing over that humongous hurdle I didn’t have long left to implement the crafting system. After thinking for a while and the most easy and time efficient way to get crafting in I decided to go with a simple combining method for creating tools and the raft. By the time this was done I only had about 20 minutes to implement some simple sound effects and get my game submitted.
What went well
I have never really tried to make a GUI before so I’m pretty proud of the results, even if it is a little crude. This is also my first game from the top-down perspective, which was a nice change of pace making.
What didn’t go well
Many things. The art, for instance wasn’t particularly good but then again my art never is, I just wish I had some more time to spend on it.
The scrolling maps, as I stated earlier, didn’t go well while implementing and ate up most my time but at least it got sorted out in the end.
My game also ended up being too easy and lacking in features as a result of various problems and the time constraint.
Most importantly, did I have fun?
Hell yeah I did. Making a game to a set theme in 48 hours is an amazing experience and I learn so much each time I enter. Ludum Dare also has an amazing community surrounding it which I am proud to be a part of.
I’ve been working on Uni assignments all week and I’m mentally exhausted, but there’s no way in hell I’d let that make me miss the 10th anniversary of Ludum Dare!
Tools
Good luck everyone. I look forward to seeing what you guys comes up with!