Hello, this is going to be my first LudumDare, and I decided I wanted to create a timelapse movie. Well, I created ETL or Easy Time Lapse. Choose a file format (BMP or JPG), a minute interval (cannot be decimals), and click the button to begin. Tada! Screenshots will be created in a /screens directory.

Random info

1. If you create a timelapse ever 1 minute, you will have 2880 images.
2. The size of those bitmaps will be approximately 8.5gb
3. The size of those jpegs will be approximately 500mb

Based on 3mb for BMP, 170kb for JPEG. The quality of the jpegs isn’t bad either, in fact, it’s great. I encourage you to try it out before hand, and sorry for releasing this so soon to the competition start but I hope at least one person will use it ;).

Link (Windows ONLY; any version should work): http://willhostforfood.com/users/Dazappa/ETL.exe [~500kb]

This program also doesn’t do anything fancy like adding in the time to the image. I wanted to release it ASAP.

Well here’s some oldish images from photobucket. They’re quite large.

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb182/dazappa007/GEDC0386.jpg

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb182/dazappa007/GEDC0387.jpg

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb182/dazappa007/GEDC0118.jpg

Hehe, last photo is great. I’ve had this desk since I was like 5 so it has all of my stickers and crayon markings all over it.

Tags: workspace

Well I created a menu screen for this game, and decided to name it Balkor.

Tags: compo, journal

Well I’ve just finished composing 2 songs, they are both very short but you guys can understand why. I also generated some sfx with sfxr. I’ve also converted all of the sound files to Java’s .snd (or .au) format, and got the sounds loading and playing happily.

Tags: journal

Well I’ve created a simple cutscene system to go along with my game. It autoprogresses every 5 seconds. I think it’s good enough for ludum 😉

Tags: journal

I’m almost finished with my game engine (rather, I believe I am); I’ve done numerous improvements to the game since my last journal (one would hope so) so right now I’ve just got to finish off the game. I also composed another short song for the game. No real great new screenshots though.

Tags: journal

Well I’ve made a few more maps and another song for the game. My MOB class got an overhaul; it’s designed for pretty much everything so far. Animated, non animated, moving, non moving, setting a certain amount of pixels to wonder, moving in a direction and never stopping (missile type). SOo yeah. I think I’m only going to have time to put one mini boss in this game unfortunately. Oh well, I’ve been working really hard (not a super great artist, but decent enough to make games like this IMO). I also made the player able to shoot eggs; but so far they don’t actually kill any of the enemies. I hate collision detection in java so I’ve been slacking off on that section ;).

Tags: journal

After quite a bit of coding I got collisions working for the “bullets” (eggs). So, now all of the enemies die when they’re hit woot. I’ve also made around 5 new maps (Total now: 10) and I’m thinking there’s going to be 15 or less maps in the finished product. Oh, and no the player can’t go to any maps after 7 currently… it’s because I’ve only drawn the maps, not added them into the game. Anyway; I’m trying to code a miniboss right now; and it’s not working in my favor. Very very annoying. I’m trying to make him randomly use one of his two attacks; but the animation gets all screwed up. *Sigh*… it’s sure to be some stupidly obvious bug that I’ll kick myself over when I find it. Until next time!

Tags: journal

Well I finished this (rather, uploaded what I had). I wanted to expand the game slightly more and FIX THESE DARN COLLISION bugs. Sorry :P. So yeah there’s collision bugs with: Tornados, miniboss’s attacks, and shooting the final boss. So anyway… I hope you enjoy this funny glitchy game! 😀 Also, the miniboss shoots missiles where I least expected them. He was supposed to shoot 7 on either side of him; that’s another one of the numerous glitches I couldn’t fix. Also there’s a glitch with the platform in the room where the final boss is. Too bad. You can still beat the game though 😀
LINK: http://willhostforfood.com/users/Dazappa/Balkor.zip

Screens from earlier:

Tools used:

1. JCreator LE – A Java IDE. Web: http://jcreator.com
2. Anvil Studio – Midi music creation. Web: http://anvilstudio.com/
3. Sfxr – A simple sound creation tool. Web: http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/project_sfxr.html
4. http://media-convert.com/ – A free online converter. Used to convert files to .snd Java sound format.
5. The Gimp – Image creation. Web: http://gimp.org/
6. MS Paint – Mostly used for determining good image sizes.
7. ETL – Used to screenshot at a certain interval. Created by me, matt-shaffer.com.

Java source included; run javac Balkor.java and it’ll compile.

*** THIS GAME IS PLATFORM INDEPENDENT. Made in Java.

Features:
1. An attempt and mostly pathetic storyline (limited with the time)
2. Pretty good graphics
3. Pretty nice music (6 compositions made total, 5 used in game.)
4. Sounds; only 2 used unfortunately (time limit)
5. Platform independent
6. Shooting
7. Dual movement system; walking + flying
8. Cutscenes (Skip with “s”)
9. A miniboss and a boss
10. Created with java – Platform independent. Runs on mac/linux
11. The source code! (Don’t bother, it’s 2700 lines in ONE FILE)
12. 8 rooms
13. Coded from SCRATCH; a 100% blank page.

Glitches (Mostly collisions):
1. You can land inside the first platform
2. Miniboss – doesn’t shoot as often as I’d like; spikes don’t hurt you, 7 missiles were supposed to come out of each side of him.. yeah that didn’t work.
3. Final boss missile glitches; doesn’t hit you when you’re inside the missile
4. Platform in the final boss room – twitches your position when you land on it.
5. If using firefox, the music will still be playing if you close the tab the game was in.

@ Responses to judge remarks:
First off, sorry. I forgot to put the known glitches and features in this post. I’ve listed them now. Many of the things you guys mentioned I did not have enough time to fix before releasing this game.

@ Edge: Yes, I wanted to expand the game more too (I had 1 extra song composed, 3 extra maps, and numerous sound effects that I did not have time to add to the game). Time did not allow for it. I submitted the game 12 minutes before the deadline as it was.

To all judges: Thanks for taking the time to even play this little game ;).

Tags: final

As probably a good portion of LDers were contemplating, what to do about the theme? I decided to go with a mixup of being the domestic abuser and saving others.. but the whole “saving others” and future AI cop system, is well non-existant.

Here’s a screeny of the game so far:

Ah yes, plain graphics. Even though using premade graphics is allowed in this miniLD, I don’t have any premade so it’ll have to do.

It’s got walking, jumping, bouncy pads, enemies, and destructible objects.

Tags: journal, mini, MiniLD

Mirror 1: http://www.badongo.com/file/15744729
Mirror 2: Link: http://matt-shaffer.com/Plain%20Savior.zip
[ Windows only ]

Plain Savior is an interesting little platform game with the usual set of deadly tiles. You are in your company’s building, and suddenly decide to destroy anything and everything you can. (I will definitely expand this game in the future)

Game created by Matthew Shaffer 2009 for MiniLD #10
—————————

HOW IT WAS MADE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Created with Game Maker
Sound FX created with SFXR
Graphics created with MSPaint
Everything was created in 48hrs

Featuring:
7 sound effects
6 levels
3 enemies (One of which is progressively created and stalks you)
4 destructible objects

NOTES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Arrow keys to move and jump
* ESC to quit
* R to restart the level (Or just die)
* Jump on stuff to destroy it
* There’s a certain number of people & objects that have to be destroyed
each level, but it’s not revealed. It’ll make a sound effect and activate
the portal when you meet the requirements.
* All statistics are generated after each completed level.

System requirements:
Windows 2000+
DirectX 8+
8-16mb video ram
500 mhz CPU
128mb ram

(These are estimates. May run on less)
If you want to run this from a VM, install DX first or it’ll whine it can’t find a DLL.

Feeling suicidal? Press escape or beat the game, then make your way to the portal on the right side for a rediculously challenging level.

Tags: 10, final, mini

Well now, I have an unexpected trip this weekend so I’ll be gone. I was going to just cry myself to sleep, missing ludumdare… but I’ve come across a better solution. I’m going to be making a 1-3 hour game instead of 48 hrs. It’s probably going to suck, have no gameplay or sound, but hey, I’d like to get something done.

Since this is a very quickie I’ll be using

GameMaker, Gimp, Maybe SFXER, Maybe some mic input, no music.

Good luck to you lucky enough to have the weekend.

Well, it all comes down to the theme. There were only 5 or so themes I immediately thought of an idea for, and based upon the theme I will choose a development tool. Generally, for a more complex idea I have, I’ll be going with GM or Unity, and if I can think of a simpler idea I’ll be using Pascal.

Tools of choice:

GM, Unity, Lazarus w/ FPC 2.4.0, Andorra 2D, SDL+SDL_Mixer, GIMP, sfxr, musagi or syntrax or anvil studio

We’ll see. Haven’t done a LD in quite a while, so I’m hoping I can create something interesting this time, no matter how simplistic it may appear.

I’m too lazy to make motivational posters, take pictures of my food and workspace, so you’ll have to live with other people’s.

As for a timelapse, this is a possibility. Ideally I would like to find a timelapse software with 30s-1m increments that saves in PNG, which I have yet to find. Most seem to be BMP/JPG… BMP is horrible for space and JPG for loss of quality.

For creating a movie from the images, someone recommended FFMPEG/Mencoder, but I’m not sure if they can handle PNG files (assuming I can find a program to capture as PNG).

Oh well. I’ve got a day to figure out that setup. I’ve got all of the other tools pretty much set up already.

Desktop photo

OK you guys. I don’t know how you did it. I said I wouldn’t, but here it is in it’s beautifully messy glory. Sporting my desktop + eee. I think I’m just going to leave the eee on IRC to not distract myself so much. *Cough*

Tags: deskphoto

Might’ve gone a bit overambitious…
http://imgur.com/2I1Yv.png
http://imgur.com/Lbogq.png
http://imgur.com/sGZM3.png

My little procedural engine can generate 1 island of any size. Only problem is, it likes to hang up when you start making the island size larger ;P I’ve got an idea for a workaround floating in my head, and I’ll try to implement after I have some lunch.

Weapons of choice:
FPC 2.4.0 w/ Lazarus .9.28.3 beta
Andorra 2D
SDL_Mixer
GIMP
sfxr
Anvil Studio (run through GXSCC to make boring midi into 8 bit deliciousness)
Free Audio Editor (because Audacity BSOD’s my computer)
media-convert.com to convert wav to ogg

I’ve got a working title screen, 1 song (24s, loops), and a couple of sound effects (which seem to have issues playing slightly delayed…)

Alternative builds for other operating systems will be created post-compo. I’ll be able to create a linux x86_32 build (and windows x86_32) build, and while there is a Mac in my house, it’s a PPC, so I don’t know how it would build things :/

Lakes, mines, trees, palm trees, dirt, and sand hooray! The final island size will be approximately 5-10x larger, but I’ve not done so yet because I haven’t made a way to scroll the map.  

Wish me luck! There’s still no gameplay yet. I hope to begin working on at least some gameplay tonight, finishing it up tomorrow.

(But I love the concept I have going here so much, that I’ll probably spend the week after LD finishing it up to my liking. Networked multiplayer is something I’m thinking about.)

Goodie. Capture rate: 1frame/minute, night time cut and run at 5fps. Video quality is crap, but eh. Nothing I can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjeU7ilMMmY

Tags: timelapse

I spent 2 hours making this beautiful 1 minute piece of music. Hopefully you’ll join my ears in bleeding when you get around to playing my entry.

(Right click, view image to see full size) This is the first screenshot I took of the game, last night some time. I’ve since added a lot more atmosphere to the game. I don’t yet really have a working title for the game yet, but it’s going to be an “escape the facility” type of thing. Also, no food photos because the LD site was down, and being smart I forgot to take a pic of it anyway to post later. Oh well!

What good is a game without key-based gates? Also I need to do some serious optimization soon, this thing struggles for 60 FPS on my fairly new laptop, so I don’t know how it’ll fare against all of the LDers out there.. (hint: requires a good graphics card more than processor)