This will be my first Ludum Dare 48, but I’ve been following them for several years. Totally behind on the schedule due to other commitments, but going to kick off something now. At least I’ve had time to think of an idea or two.
I will be using XNA and may use the following “ball of mud” of an engine.
http://blog.codheadz.com/page/Ludum-Dare-16.aspx
As well as starting late, I have very little time between now and the deadline….. basically doomed 
Exploration based hangman
I’m going to miss the deadline, but have had a great time.
My game is almost complete, but has several bugs that just make it a pain in the neck to play, so going to call it a day.
Some how managed to produce a version of hangman, but will save the details for a post later in the week.
Off to bed.
This was my first Ludum Dare, but have been following the competition for the last couple years if not longer. I did not manage to finish my entry in time, but did really enjoy the process. Having family time at the weekend is very important to me, so my coding time was limited to around 5-6 hours over 2 days.
Time lapse:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeIedoXsfIQ
Game play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALXlAzhhi30
Download Game: http://blog.codheadz.com/file.axd?file=2009%2f12%2fJungleExplorer.zip
Download Source: http://blog.codheadz.com/file.axd?file=2009%2f12%2fLDExplo.zip
To run this you will need either the XNA studio 3.1 or the XNA redist from the link below:
What did not go so well
What went well
Here’s looking forward to the next one.
Tags: post-mortem
I’m probably in, but depends on the theme.
If I get insperation cool, if not with the limited time available (family man) then may skip and focus on projects in flight.
Will be using XNA, using C# VS2008.
Alien Super Mega Blaster - WIP 1
Only managed a couple hours of coding so far this weekend. At present have all the game state up and working. I’m using XNA and have a tried and tested pattern for it. So even though I’m not using a library other than XNA, its quick initial step and I can get this up and running withing 30 mins. All the coding from now will be components, so for example if I run out of time and have not implemented a “display screen in game play component” then it will not break anything else.
You can see from the attached link that I’ve made some progression on the game play aspects.
Ludum Dare 18 – AlienSuperMegaBlaster 2010-08-22 01-20
Fair bit today and lots of family stuff for tomorrow. So touch and go for the compo, but should be able to submit for the Jam.
PS Watched Tron earlier today and if nothing else been mildly influenced by the colour scheme.
PS: Keep forgetting to add titles to posts. Sorry if this pops back to the top of the list.
YouTube: AlienSuperMegaBlaster 2010-08-22 13-54
Writing code in 10 min chucks whilst rocking baby and keeping other kids alive. Context switching hell keeps your velocity low
Staring to see the theme coming through “Enemies as Weapons”. As the aliens get killed they in turn become bullets/shrapnel that kills others.
The player will have limited amo, so goal is not to fire madly but hit the big guys that create more shrapnel.
That’s the theory…..
Still have 12 hours to go, so hopeful to have something to submit by then.
“Alien Super Mega Blaster” in play test and can be downloaded and installed on your XBOX for those of you with an XNA Creators Club account.
Same gameplay as LD18 submission, just changed a couple classes to allow the game to be controlled via a game pad and added a splash screen for selection of the active controller. The last remaining change was to tweak the rendering to allow the 800 by 480 resolution to be displayed centrally on a TV screen.
The windows compo version is still here and appreciate all the feedback: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=1516
…. depending on a good theme inspiring me.
Tools
Paint.net
Sfxr
Frameworks
Xna
Or
Silverlight
If I go silverlight I may borrow code from the following tutorial as have never played with it before.
http://www.brighthub.com/internet/web-development/articles/14494.aspx
All those months ago I created a litlle game called Alien Super Mega Blaster as part of LD18 – Enemies as Weapons.
Early today it passed the final peer review and is now available for purchase on the Xbox Live Indie Games channel here:
All the proceeds I receive from the game will be donated to Action Duchenne, a charity established to find a cure or more effective medicines to treat Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
In the months between the compo and yesterday I’ve added sound and music, new alien types and over 100 hand crafted levels of blasting fun.
If there anything the Ludum Dare community can do to increase awareness of the game and help find a cure it will be very much appreciated.
Some details on the game:
“Alien Super Mega Blaster is a classic space invaders game with a twist available for the Xbox 360.
Kill the aliens and avoid the fallout. Maximize your score with mega cascading death to the alien scrum.
Over 100 hand crafted levels of blasting fun… how far can you go?
All proceeds from this game will be donated to Action Duchenne.”
You can find out more about the game here: http://asmb.codheadz.com
You can purchase the game here: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Alien-Super-Mega-Blaster/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802585507aa
You can find out more about Action Duchenne here: http://www.actionduchenne.org
You can find out more about Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchenne_muscular_dystrophy
Thanks for any support you can give.
Jon
Hoping the theme will be inspiring and will kick me into creating a little game.
I fancy doing something in Silverlight has I’ve never used it. If I do, I may use some of the code from this tutorial. http://cgeers.com/category/programming/silverlight/
If not in silverlight, xna will be the framework of choice. Will use a subversion repository and perhaps TeamCity for CI and Build.
As usual, Visual Studio 2010, Paint.Net and perhaps a microphone for sound effects or music.
Finger cross I get the time and inspiration.
But as usual I’m a busy man so may not be able to get anything close to a game, even if I go for the Jam.
I may try something other than C# and XNA this time. Silverlight or HTMl5. Something browser based, but this will probably be my downfall.
More details on my rarely updated blog: http://blog.codheadz.com/index.php/2012/03/16/ludum-dare-23-in-or-out/
Fingers crossed that the theme inspires, the tech enables me and I can code through the night whilst covering everything else during the day.
For this weekends up and coming Ludum Dare I have decided to step away from XNA and try something different. Partially this is because XNA excludes a segment of the review population, but more importantly its always good to try something new.
As such I have been hacking around with Silverlight a little this evening, specifically working through a great set of post on Christophe Geers’ Blog.
Based on the approach detailed in the blog I should be able to focus on the game aspect of LD rather than then engine aspect.
Assuming that everything aligns I will post the “engine” level code on Friday night prior to the competition starting.
Tags: Silverlight
But my base code can be found here: http://blog.codheadz.com/index.php/ludum-dare-23-tiny-world/
Off to bed now to dream up some ideas.
Good luck all
Well the theme for Ludum Dare 23 was Tiny World and for some reason, early Saturday morning the best I could come up with whilst trying to limit the scope was something based on the the Disney boat ride “It’s a small world“. Now in retrospect this was probably not the best idea I’ve had for a game.
The concept
If you have been on the ride you will know its a musical ride with a very catchy and incredibly annoying theme song. The concept was that being driven mad by the song, you have to attack the characters from the ride floating in your mind to reduce the songs volume and return to sanity. See sounds great at 3:00 am
Have a listen to see what the song sounds like if you have not had chance to experience it.
I also planned to use a mix of images inspired by Mary Blare who actually helped design the rides look. The “player” would be based on the Lost Souls from Doom. No idea why I thought this would be good mix.
No idea of how to win really, I guess I just hoped that it would fun to an extent, but was pinning my hopes of the visuals being interesting enough to hold the attention of the player.
The delivery
Well I have very limited time to write code, so have to make use of the night shift when the kids are asleep. To prevent all hell the next day I force my self to sleep rather than stay up all night with a target of at least 4 hours. Its just not fair to inflict my grumpyness on the rest of the world for a bad game. So this gives a very limited amount of time to code in over the weekend.
This coupled with taking on the challenge of Silverlight as a delivery medium resulted in very slow progress with the majority of my time spent fighting my lack of experience with XAML and not creating. I do like Silverlight as a medium and may use it in future projects.
The audio, which I never actually got to record was to be myself singing/humming the theme tune. Thankfully for all, I never recorded anything.
The game
I’m not sure I can really call it a game, but due to my lack of momentum and poor concept I threw in the towel early Sunday evening, for both the Compo and the Jam. If you are still interested you can play/run what I have by clicking the image below:
So what I have I learnt?
If you want the code, you can find it here: http://blog.codheadz.com/index.php/ludum-dare-23-tiny-world/
Tags: .net, Disney, ld23, Silverlight
Maths Rush for Windows Phone 7 is now available to download from the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Based on the stats people are playing it over and over again. I know I am.
As with all the all the apps/games I currently make, all revenue generated will be donated to Action Duchenne. You can find out all about Action Duchenne here.
You can find Maths Rush here.
http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=249f945d-2643-4727-8ec7-faf2e81356d7
Global high scores are in test and will be submitted for review in the next couple days.
No time at all this weekend. It comes part from being a father of 3 and also a bunch of other commitments, but rather than give up without trying I might as well give it a go.
But kids do provide benefits such as unlimited play testing ( I assume that this is not against the rules for the comp). But even more with the jam. I can put my 8 and 5 year old to work on content creation (art/level design).
A lot as usual depends on the theme, so lets hope its something that sparks my imagination.
Rather than try a new tech this time round, I will stick with what I know.
Stuff we may use: Pencil/Paper/Crayons/Paint/Visual Studio 2012/Notepad/XNA/Monogame/Html5
Good luck all.
Princess and the Villain – Menu
Princess and the Villain – Game Play
With my limited time, father of 3 kids its a surprise that I’ve been able to make anything at all, but here it is.
I decided to give Game Make a go and focus on the game creation rather than writing c#. First time using Game Maker and found it rather fun and I may even consider purchasing a copy for future compos. Great for quickly getting something running and that is vital when you have less than 10 hours in the 48.
Submission coming shortly….
I may be in, but have a super busy weekend with my daughters birthday and family visiting. May not be able to get anything finished
Tools: Visual Studio 2012. Xamarin Studio, Game Maker, Paint.net, notepad
Good luck all
