I considering the idea of jumping to different sections of a screen for whatever game I’m going with. Here the code I just made in stencyl to do that.

Good luck all.

Chuck

panel jumping for stencyl

Well, second game ever. http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/26066

Here are some thoughts on the compo

The good:
As the compo got closer, I start to spitball ideas for game mechanics. (panels in the same scene, energy generators for object creation, rpg with fight sequences). The rpg was quickly out when I read all of your advice/tips for LD. I focused mainly on the panel jumping idea because it seemed to be the easiest. When I saw the final round of voting on Friday, I started trying to apply game ideas to all of them. That way I would be able to start coding at 9pm.

I was able to come up with 16 game ideas for 16 of the themes, all focused on the panel hopping. I would suggest to anybody trying to do this for the first time to come up with some ideas and see if you can apply those ideas to many of the themes just by tweaking the graphics.

I made a complete game in 48 hours. That is pretty amazing when you think about it

The bad:
The points mechanics are somehow getting messed up. You should only be getting 10-100 points per level, but it is printing the number you got on the levels and the total number back to back (i.e. 10 on the level on 100 total prints out as $10100) – I didn’t have time to figure out why it was doing that, but I think it was creating a text string instead of just adding numbers.

I had a safety teleport so people wouldn’t get stuck on a level. It was causing a lot of bugs where you would fall into the earth on the next panel or appear and not be able to move. I had to just scrap it and make a quick reload button.

Animations – I would have liked to have animated the guy kicking over the stalagmites, but ran out of time.

Artwork – I spent very little time on the artwork because I wanted a complete playable game. Maybe this was good, maybe bad.

The level complete scene – The level complete was supposed to have jewels and objects appearing in it based on your money. But with the total money messed up (above), I just went with higher and higher bills were coming in. This was even messed up because the amount of bugged money you collect on level 1 is enough to pay for all of the bills throughout the game. So people don’t see a point in continuing since they’ve already collected tons of money.

Chuck

Tags: journal, postmortem

Here’s a little background on ceosol.

Last years my contract expired and I got laid off. I knew it was coming up so I had started looking for a new job even in 2012. The holidays rolled around, still no job. Mid-January, after about two years of looking for jobs in my field, I gave up and decided to go in a different direction. Fourteen of my science career have vanished and I’ve been developing games since then. I know 4 months does not make a career in game development, but we all have to start somewhere

Back in high school I had a couple of semesters of Basic and C++, so I do know a little about computer logic. It has been a little rough trying to learn things fresh. Stencyl has been a huge help with syntax.

I am just entering whatever competitions I can get my hands on. Every thing I try to make helps me learn even more. If anybody is interested in collaborating, I would love the opportunity to work with you and learn more. I created a work email ceosol.feedback@gmail.com

It was a fun compo. I wish everyone the bests.

Chuck

Tags: background, journal

I’m working on a new version of Beneath your House. I’ll use the same mechanics from my LD entry, but switching up the genre. The game will feature some minigames that happen when different events are triggered. I am journaling the progress on the Stencyl forum. You can check it out if you are interested:

http://community.stencyl.com/index.php/topic,31850.0.html

Chuck

Tags: game, journal, update

Here are some ideas I am playing around with. I have no clue where to go with this, but maybe these thoughts can help someone else out.

1. Most obvious is parallel dimensions or space travel between planets

2. In a modern sense, it is talking about something like the internet connecting the world

3. In business it also refers to people and organizations being connected – via something like the internet

4. I’m also thinking about connecting so called “different worlds” together, for example genders or nations

5. Something abstract like connecting the world of books with the world of acrobatics (just an example)

Tags: journal, progress, theme

After getting some sleep, I decided to go for it. I whipped up some songs in garageband this morning. Now I am trying to plan out some gameplay. I still have not decided exactly what I’m doing in terms of the theme, but it should come together into something in the end

Tags: journal

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/27933

There’s a demo of the space flight. The 1 through = sign are the keys to fire sixteenth note bullets. No enemies or real gameplay yet

Tags: journal, LD30

The first half of the comp ended a couple hours ago. I’ll probably work a little bit more before going to bed. I have music and some sound effects together. I have the space map pretty much fleshed out with a call for difficulty level. I have 24 routes with 5 difficulty levels. The combat system is coming together.

I still need to translate the difficulty setting into what appears on the screen. I would like to have more than 4 types of “enemies”. I need to figure out how to score things. I need to have some win and/or lose screen.

Hopefully I will get done in time.

Tags: journal

More poetry, this time I made my title screen into a sonnet. I am seriously getting loopy here

Tags: journal, LD30, progress

Poetry, check. Still need some finishing touches and play testing

You can now play my LD entry on Android. I felt it would be a nice change to the gameplay.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=34411

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ceosol.MTR

First off, this Ludum Dare has been a lot of fun. It is fortunate and unfortunate that so many people have participated. The good side is that you get such a vast array of talents all coming to the same place. The unfortunate side is that you can’t play all of the games. The ones I have seen so far have been awesome. Great job everyone!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=34411

So Musical Trade Routes… It was a little crazy putting this thing together. I am sure everyone feels the same way about their own games I am actually shocked at the positive feedback I have been receiving. All of the cool stuff that people seem to like were afterthought things that I threw together in the twilight hours of the competition. I wanted to make my game have an abstract approach to the theme – so far most have not noticed it. I wanted to connect the worlds of poetry and music together. As I knew this would be an abstract theme, I placed in a more obvious connecting trade routes between worlds.

Development:

With only a couple of hours to plan on day 1, I could not think of anything to do with this theme. I came up with some views on how to address the theme and posted them around, but that was the extent. I went to bed a little sad that I would not be participating. When I woke up the next morning, I decided to start looking into linking poetry and music and to make a little space game, just so I would have something to submit. The plan was to work on planning each for a few hours and then see which seemed like a better path. As I continued doing both, the idea of a piano ship evolved. I quickly made some piano music and did my best to make a flight simulation. I had never done either one before, so I am extremely happy with how they came out, even though it is not perfect.

I then began to create planets. I was going to leave half of them unnamed and just white circles. Before moving on I convinced myself to just finish naming and coloring so I could say something was done. I threw in some lines between the planets and made it so each planet (0-9) would display its own lines to connecting planets. I finished up the day by making a “difficulty” variable that I assigned to each planet.

Sunday morning I woke up and just started banging out some poetry. Haikus seemed like the easiest way to go. All I need was 120 syllables and all ten planets were done:

I started working on enemies, but just quickly made some meteors. I decided to get done the space combat system. Simplest solution was random spawns based on the difficulty variable. I felt this would make it more interesting because it might interrupt whatever song people were playing and create a new song entirely. I got a chance to play test it quite a few times, so difficulty was adjusted here and there. A few of the polish things that I was hoping to add were a hard mode, music playback and a sonnet. Those who have played it might not have realized that the title screen was a sonnet

The good:
Music playback – This has been a favorite for most of the people who have played the game. At the end of each level, you get to hear the music that you played while in flight.
The poetry – Not many have commented on the poetry, but I am actually happy with how it came out. Also at the win screen, you get to read the planet’s Haiku while your own music is playing in the background.

The bad:
Enemies – I wanted so bad to have a lot of enemies, space ships, curving asteroids, other music coming in. That would have been so much fun.
Free Piano – I added this in post-comp. I received feedback early on that a more realistic piano would have been better. In the post comp, I added in more key sets for playing and opened the option for multiple key strokes at the same time. I have not taken the time to make a music playback for free-piano mode, though.
Graphics – I am not an artist. I know the graphics were not fantastic.

Future of the game:
I totally want to continue this project. I think it would do well in the mobile market. I even tried putting it on the google play store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ceosol.MTR). Its free to download. If anything, at least you’ll have a little music creator on your phone or tablet
I want to add more to the piano, for sure. Maybe you could swipe left or right to go up and down octaves. You could purchase new ships that have different instruments.
A suggestion was also made with the free piano mode that spawn times could be decreased and you would have faster action happening.

Thank you again to everybody who has tried it out. I was so burnt out at the end that I was thinking the game was absolutely horrible. I am delighted by all of the feedback, good and bad. Keep it coming!

Tags: journal, post-mortem

So I’ve added octaves into the piano. You can cycle through 5 octaves of keys (60 notes in total). The dragging mouse left and right or pressing up and down arrows on the keyboard work. All of the sounds still playback at the end of the level.

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/28475

Next step for the flight demo is updating the enemies list/spawns. I also want to add extra routes that you can take so the game is not as linear. I will wait to put the new version on newgrounds and android until I have enemies updated. I’m also trying to figure out the apple development process to produce an iOS version.

Looks like I am solo for now. I’m in for either the compo or jam depending on how quickly I can work something up.

Engine: Stencyl
Art: Poser and/or Pencyl
Music: Garageband and Audacity

I have mixed feelings about the themes. I have 3 ideas for games that I might be able to do during the jam. It all depends on what gets voted in.

Tags: compo, im in, jam

I have an idea for a board game with four elements attacking each other. This might be a tad too ambitious. I have a game board at least

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

Tags: progress

Very early prototype. No enemies and very very basic AI for a couple of pieces. Basically, they know not to run into each other

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

Tags: progress

I have a pretty nice looking game board
I have some battle mechanics hammered out
I started on AI for the other three factions
I have some AI for the pieces on the board
I made some music, it is not in yet.

I need to make at least 16 sprites (hopefully with attack animations)
I need to balance the factions
I want to have you choose which faction you play as.
I’d also like to have lose/win resets of the game board without changing screens or reloading the scene.

Progress link: http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

Tags: progress

I still haven’t made the sprite graphics, but almost everything else is done.

Balancing will be a major issue. I have a chart made up with a possible solution, but will need to play it a bunch:

points damage resistance hp

Physical
Critters 5 2 1. 2
Peasant 10 5 .8 4
Knight 20 8 .5 10
Tank 40 20 .5 30

Magical
Snowman 15 4 1. 8
Golem 30 10 .8 12
Fire Elemental 30 15 .7 20
Wizard 100 30 .4 20

Force
Dust devil 8 1 .8 5
Banshee 15 3 .7 8
Energy Elemental30 5 .4 15
Jedi 60 30 .6 30

Spiritual
Ghost 12 3 .9 10
Psion 20 8 .9 15
Demon 50 11 .8 25
Angel 80 25 .4 30

Tags: progress

I created a few of the sprites. Still a lot more to do. Here’s the fire elemental for your viewing pleasure

Tags: progress

With only 4 hours left, I’m definitely not entering the commpo… well unless I want to throw in a functioning model with half-done graphics and no win/lose conditions 😀

Anyway, I am going to take a break so I can push hard into tomorrow. Here’s an AI controlled gameboard if you want to check it out. You can’t click on anything since I have player control turned off. Its just for visuals.

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/29022

Tags: progress