Finally it comes to an end, and similarly to a lot of my developer peers, I had to throw in the towel. I originally planned to opt-out sounds as I lack a good chiptune backtrack and there were no sound effects. In the end, I opting out the hole game with the concept.

My experience

The plan was simple and pretty straightforward, then life came and steal my precious time, then I let time flow out of my hands. Despite my efforts, I enjoyed this competition a lot. My motto is unchanged, I will stay with this: When I fail, I learn a lot. When I succeed, I inspire myself.

Earlier I and my teammates had some successful try, but this time I left alone, so I wanted to participate in Compo. This was the first time, and decided to use JavaScript. It was a solid start, then I started to innovate. New ways and game-style strange for me, fresh game concept to try myself out and come up with something original.

Why am I failed?

If I am not fond of my known ways, I will lose time by creating a new concept, implementation of new ideas will make me, to think more than work on it and if I don’t have enough experience to realize a plan, I will fail miserably.

To start something new, I should end something old and use the time to learn and practice. This way I will prepare myself to participate next time with or without a team. To take a chance with this concept, I will examine the possibility, to create this game and give an article for it somewhere on Ludum Dare.

The concept

Initially I though some basic concept then started to think about creatures, that are able to transform themselves both physically and mentally. When the creature in a mentally transformed state, it will leave its body (the shell) and create a spiritual form. They can have some body changes similar to modern cybernetic prosthetics that helps them to physical transformation. There is a building in a fictional, Asian desert, that was created by weather anomalies that created the desert and started to reveal an unknown building. Their language is ‘simbols’, that is an alien alphabet, and your task as an archaeologist to decipher and translate the notes and carvings to advance in their building and learn more about them and the origins of humanity. I planned to have a helper as another archaeologist or you are just using a computer interface to control a robot and find the puzzles. To make this job harder, the ‘simbols’ will rotate and change the meaning to make the job of ‘code breaker’ harder.

The realization

With a modern interface I created an alphabet with 40 element. There is a short intro and intermission texts, and only one level was developed. This level is not finished as the ‘simbols’ are not animated as I originally planned and there were no easy way to input the player guesses. I though about a hangman style input below each symbols, or have a great table with symbols and you should guess there. Eventually I started to implement a point and click method to choose one ‘simbol’ from the table and guess by typing on the keyboard.

Screenshots

LycanthCoding-Intermediate Text
LycanthCoding-Final Notes

Best regards,
Ernesty The Creator a.k.a. XenoDragon
Creative Sectors

Tags: #LD35 #gamedev #indiedev

The competition started, I woke up in the morning to see what is the new theme and got painfully locked into a destructive mental spiral. I am still trying to come up with something personal with the theme and running in circles, but in the end I still not find myself satisfied with my ideas.

I can join others, who probably brainstorming this theme as well and trying to abstract the idea and come up with some non-mainstream, out-of-the-box or other heretic and newly established routes or bend in and choose the comfort of any possible path as all new idea will become fundamental to a game, where execution will be more important than the implementation of the theme.

Here is my take on this theme's analysis: Your life is currency.

Your: It is the possessive form of you that can refer to you as the one single entity of humanity (or something) but can be the people (or group) in general as well. So I can take a double take on it.

Your life: If we look upon our life, we can see multiple direction to refer to something as life. I can bring in another divider as we are manifestations of three layers: body, mind and soul. Life can be the time of existence, or the body experiences from birth to the grave. What if we include non-human things in existence like animals and other living beings? This way we can refer to any being, that exists in a limited life span.

Currency: As a word it confuses me, as we usually refers to it in a limited way most of the time as money or cash, we can broaden it by referring to it as a medium of exchange. Why don't add a little more property of money to it? We can use it to measure value or unit of account and grab this line to run farther from restrictions of the theme first implementation.

I am still not satisfied by broadening the theme as I still need to come up with an idea simple enough to implement in two days, but comforting enough to love it.

Couple game ideas I come up during these early hours: - You have a series of puzzles to solve in a limited time and you see it clocking down from the first puzzle until the last. If the time runs out you are dead. - A Shadowrun-like game world where you can replace your body parts with cyberware or bioware augmentation. - You are a lover or prince where you have unlimited lives but your other half or princess has limited lifespan. - You are a revolting leader, who either successfully conquer the domain or thrown by your own men. - You are member of a society and you have to maintain its numbers by fulfilling their needs. - Like a mobile gyroscope, you have to maintain balance on a shipwreck, ice field, or a wreckage floating in the ocean, poisonous or deadly liquid and prevent your and others' death until help arrives. - As a nameless soldier in arenas you have to fight for your life and use your sanity or soul as the trading currency. When you sacrifice too much for gain the upper hand, you will lose control over your body (in the form of random actions). - You are one of an animal being, cannibalizing your kind's lesser entities and avoiding bigger ones. - You are working underground or in outer space where your oxygen and food is limited, but you can earn more if your work for them, by mining and trading. - You are some kind of blood, body or soul trading entity, offering your prey to preserve your life. You can be some kind of a golden fish/duck/hen laying golden egg/fox/cow, fishing/hunting/laying/hatching/milking and selling your ware for your life. - You are a hunter, gatherer or farming entity, who is trying to maintain a lifestyle by betraying or outselling your competitors for staying alive and they are trying to do the same. - You are some kind of animated or undead creature playing some friendly card game with your peers offering limb by limb. - You are a master genetic artificial intelligence, who have to create and maintain life with the available genetic resources. - You have a plant or animal and have to fulfill its needs and reach maturity and win the game or you wither away. - Your life is your time, therefore you have to win more time to play more. It can be a being or vehicle you have to maintain in order to reach your primary goal. - You are a summoner, a magical being or a god who can live until it have followers. So you have to find and convert more to strengthen your position. - Your life is your money, or what if your money is created or printed from you or your parts, or sell other's parts for you. - You are a sentient being consumed by a magical vortex and arrive into a world where you are part of something bigger and your goal is to maintain harmony, not falling apart while gather more parts to grow, while eating yourself to gain more energy for actions.

These ideas are still nothing more than mere ideas and since I have woke up, spent nearly two hours at the computer doing nothing, but thinking. It's not bad, it is catastrophic to see I have left 42 hours until the end and don't have anything else. On the other hand, my workflow is broken, I haven't decided what I want to use... at last, I didn't left any time to setup, configure and test my tools. How reckless I was! So what is this force that keeps me alive?

PS: I'm in! After a long time I am back. It will be a solo, compo project this time as my former team seems abandoned.

[ETC from Creative Sectors]

I give up, I pass up and abandon this time, again. I have to rethink how I will create a new strategy for developing a game. I won't say, I failed miserably, because I learned much and gathered new experiences.

Positive aspects of the Ludum Dare 44: - I learned the basics of Godot Engine from zero. - Created a minimal platformer game. - Created graphics for a grayscale palette.

Negative aspects of this time: - I am still a programmer, not an artist. - I procastrinate myself, and it breaks the flow of development, that takes precious time to rebuild the lost momentum. - I am into negative thinking and thoughts that kills my motivation. - I had no plan and haven't setup and tested my workflow. - Too many times I found something new for implementing "just this time", and I lost a lot for these new experiences.

Neutral aspects of this competition: - I don't feel, that I can act as a team, currently I am missing knowledge and experience to build every aspects of a game. - If depression kicks in, I have to give up the fight as it won't help the advancement and just take more time to handle myself.

Thank you for inspiring me and I still hope, that one day I can return here. Until then, I have to decide what to do with my life and if I keep interesting in computer game development, then I will start to create small mini-games to gain more experience and maybe come up with a learning strategy or maybe gather some partners as well. [ETC from Creative Sectors]