Hey all!  I’m a first time LD entrant and am feeling pretty excited about the whole thing.  I’ve been a lurker/watcher for a while, but never had the timing/motivation to join up.  So, I’m changing it this time with the goal in mind to FINISH A GAME. O_O  It’s been a major road block for me, and I’m hoping LD can help me jump that hurdle.

I’ll be using:

•  C#/XNA 4.0 w/ Visual Studio 2010
• sxfr
• Paint.NET
• Ogmo Editor if level design calls for it.
• And my personal 2D game library, TwoDee (no source available yet, but will be included in any finished product).  It just has ready to go input bindings, state machine, component based entities, etc.

Just to make sure I’m adhering to the rules I went ahead and made available what my personal XNA 2D library consists of so that you can make use of it if you see fit.  It’s a constant work-in-progress, so don’t expect too much!  It’ll continue to evolve and grow, no doubt.

Bitbucket (Mercurial repository):  https://bitbucket.org/deadpixelsociety/twodee

– Matt

I’m going to give this another shot.  My attempt during LD22 did not go as planned and feature creep/large scope caused me to bow out.  Not this time.

Tools

Language:  C#

IDE:  Visual Studio 2010 Pro

Framework:  XNA

Personal library:  https://bitbucket.org/deadpixelsociety/twodee

Visuals:  Paint.NET

Sound:  sxfr

I’m about 5-6 personal hours in so far and my progress thus far is shown here:

Radioactive Feral Kitten Attack

You’re a dude alone in this compound with a bunch of radioactive feral kittens attacking it.  You run around the base via the teleporters setting up traps in a tower defense fashion to defend them.

TO DO (PRIORITY FOR WORKING GAME):

• More traps, and make them work.
• Get the kittens spawning, moving, and dying.

• Make some more interesting tiles.
• Particles
• SFX
• Prettify it as much as possible.

Forgot to do my I’m In!, but I’m In!

Doing the jam 2-man style with @thedogofdoom.

Cya in 72.

We’ve been hard at work on our Jam game and I think hitting a game with a small enough scope is going to finally allow me to finish an LD entry! (knock on wood) (several times)

We decided to take the theme a bit literally and have you actually linking your planet up to another one. Which you can then twirl about like a mace (and tomorrow, slingshot) into other planets in the solar system to wreck disastrous,  apocalyptic havoc.

Lots todo tomorrow, but I think we’ll make it.

Was doing some playtesting and noticed this generated planet:

I was quite happy to have finished a game last LD, and on top of that even placed very close to the top 100. I’d like to go again and this time I’m going to get top 100!

With that said I’m looking for another art buddy to jam with me this time around. If you’re interested in tackling this with me then hit me up here or on Twitter @deadpxlsociety!

If I don’t get any bites I’ll still try it on my own, but I don’t have much hope for that.

Maybe the enemies should be snowmen…?

Basic combat is in and working alongside a minimal enemy AI. The next steps include implementing enemy rounds, scaling difficulty, points (favour), particles, start/game over screen, and… that’s a game! Should be doable!

We finished! With like, 20 minutes to spare even! We wound up with a pretty tight 2D arena fighter called Colosseum Brawl. Game play isn’t incredibly deep, but it’s quick and fun. The roll in particular feels really good, I think.

Things That Went Better

• After successfully completing LD30 I was much more comfortable with knowing what it takes to put together a complete-enough feeling game.
• Ajmal was awesome at putting together assets and animations quickly, and was super helpful with feedback, ideas, and working with me throughout the whole thing.
• Gave ourselves more time to devote to polish and nice-to-haves like menu screens, sounds, etc.
• I tried streaming a bit more and enjoyed it. If I can continue to motivate myself to do it I think I’ll get better at the whole process.

Things That Went Worse

• I pushed myself really hard this time and made myself a bit sick/icky feeling.
• The theme was meh. I don’t think the theme overall contributed a lot to our game’s theme, but rather acted as a constraint on how the game was played.

Anyway, go play it!

WHEW! That was… intense. I’ve completed 2 separate Ludum Dare entries before this, but they were in the jam format working with someone else. This was my first real attempt at the solo compo, and my first time FINISHING solo. I’m so ecstatic right now, and I hope you all are just as excited for your own accomplishments! FREE TICKETS ON THE HYPE TRAIN BOYS LET’S GO!

That being said I’m not terribly happy with the music. I did what I could in beepbox, but I’m very meh about that part of the whole thing. Something is better than nothing, at least. So I believe.

Anyway, you can check out my entry, Roto, right here! I hope you like it.

I was half-way through writing a monster post here, but decided to retry with a nice tidy summation of my thoughts while creating Roto this compo:

• First time finishing a compo entry. So, so, so much harder than a jam (for me), but oh my so much more rewarding.
• Being a solo dev who can touch on art, music, sound, level design, and game mechanics while tying it all together with a cohesive theme in 48 hours makes you a god in my eyes. You’re amazing.
• Music is really, really hard. I thought I could ‘wing’ it, and I really could not. BeepBox helped, but I have neither the talent nor the training to do anything useful in that arena.
• Practice a little bit of everything if you want to solo these.
• Scope remains one of the most important things. I found what helped me was to set in stone two separate lists: must-haves and nice-to-haves. If you don’t finish must-haves you don’t have a game to submit. Once that list is done then start pulling out your favorites from the nice-to-haves.
• Polish belongs on the must-haves list.
• You don’t have to be an amazing visual artist to make your game have some visual appeal. Simple tricks like drop shadows and squash and stretch animation do wonders. I like how the aesthetic of my game turned out, and I load zero external graphical assets (other than a font file. So I guess that’s actually 1).
• Progression in your level design is important. Ramp the player up, introduce new concepts in an appetizing way and THEN hit them over the head with it.
• It helps immensely to watch someone play who hasn’t spent the past two days playing the same levels over and over.

A huge congrats to everyone that finished, and a hearty round of applause for everyone who even tried. This is hard, but so worth it! See you again in April.

I've skipped out on way too many Ludum Dares and want to get back into the swing of things. I'll be repping the Kotlin/libGDX world once again! Looking forward to pushing my comfort zone.

Coming along well I think.