Wow, my first Ludum Dare was a lot of fun.

Some things I think we did well:

• Practically as soon as the theme was announced, me and my artist came up with an idea. A simple one, and we decided to stick with it and not bother brainstorming other things.
• Letting the level designer…well, design levels. He spent practically as much time as me working, and I liked the end result.
•  Last minute decision by me, the programmer, to redo the artist’s stick figures into something a little nicer.

Some things that went wrong:

• Last day spent begging people to test, and fixing their tiny suggestions, while ignoring the big problem-the collision engine.
• Artist only worked for about 2 hours, so she never had time to make helicopter animations or anything.

What’s next:

Well, I liked how those human sprites turned out. I’m working on a game using them as a template now. I don’t think I’ll keep working on Escape from Shimishland. Depends on what my team thinks.

Near rhymes…yuck.

Anyways,  I brainstormed for a little while and decided to go with “the evolution of a town.” So I got to work, made the core engine, sprited some stuff, add some buildings, added people, and all that. Um…I don’t know exactly what to say, so I’ll show you an image.

You can build various buildings such as farms which produce money, houses which spawn villagers, and many many buildings which give money for every villager.

I’m fairly happy with how fast I’m going but I’m worried the gameplay is a bit lacking. We’ll see.

I guess that’s about it. Thank you for actually reading my blog post! 😉 See you later!

So, I have about 34 hours left in the jam. Some of you may have seen what my game looks like so far, this is it:

The game is a town building sim where you can buy buildings which produce more money for you, allowing for even more buildings.

The thing is, there’s no difficulty. You can just build forever. And in some ways that can be a good thing (look at Minecraft Creative), but on the other hand, a bit of challenge makes everything more fun (look at, well, Minecraft Survival.) Adding difficulty, though, will be hard. I could try to make some form of enemy raid but it might not be the best plan; perhaps I should just continue to polish.

So what do you think?

So, I’m finally finished with Magistrate, my town building sim. I was plagued with issues which limited my time.

First, I forgot all about the start of the jam and so was sleeping when it started. When I woke up, I remembered and checked the theme. That day, I developed for maybe 5 hours but my social life took over after that. The next day I spent most of the time at an amusement park with friends. On the final day, I managed to polish the game a bit and release. I got less than 10 hours total dev time. Pathetic, I know.

Anyway, you can play the game here, enjoy.
Play

I intend to make a persistent browser based game this time around – I’m probably not going to come close to success. Should be fun!

Engine: PHP, MySQL. I’ll be using my MVC framework I’m currently (!) building.
IDE: Notepad++
Art: For anything art, I’ll be using Game Maker’s sprite editor.

When I reach the 48H mark, I’ll decide whether or not to submit the game then or switch to the jam.

Hint: Vampiressss

Decided to use GameMaker as the game concept wouldn’t work as a BBG. I know, I know, I’m a sell out.

Went back to my PBBG idea. Sky Pirates! Create an account, login, navigate the website. That’s all there is to it. But you can play it live!

http://apps.arcoria.net/ld25

I’m off for now, though. See you in…10-ish hours?

Welcome to Skyhook City! I know it’s not much yet, but with some patience, it’ll grow!

Click Here to Try!

You can buy items, equip them, and unequip them! I just need more item ideas, and shops and stuff.

To do:
1. Combat
2. Levels/Experience

Me and Bactopiad have decided to team up and rule the world! Muhahahaha!

He’ll be doing artwork for the game, I’ll be doing coding. The project is always live at: http://apps.arcoria.net/ld25

Go try it out, now! 😛