This will be my first attempt at a Ludum Dare, depending on the theme I may try the jam instead with NeonLare using GameMaker, but I’m hoping to Frankenstein something together with the engine I’ve been working and do 3D instead. (likely a combination of Ogre, Bullet, OpenAL, and OIS in C++)  I tend to start a lot of projects I never finish, so maybe this will be some incentive to accomplish something quickly, however small. I mostly just hope to get a feel for how these things go and participate in more in the future!

Good luck to everybody else as well!

Crammin to get some kind of a framework ready for whatever is going to be thrown my way in the next 2 hours here. Armed with a pair of Amps and a substantial supply of techno.

Let’s do this.

Well, I figure I’ve at least got a good idea going. So far it involves kittens, pig men, and a monster truck. Now if I can get my physics happening fairly soon I may be on the road to having a decent entry! This was actually the theme I was hoping for in particular so maybe luck is on my side!

Hope everyone else out there’s got a good start!

Hmm? Got one other model mostly finished, just needs textured and rigged. Underlying code is starting to take shape, and I should be building my world before too long. Unfortunately going to be interrupted by 2 trips downtown today, but I think I’m doing pretty good so far Finding some new ways to do things that I’ll probably apply back to my engine that I’m cannabalizing as a “library”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 30th, 2011 at 8:10 am and is filed under LD #20 - It's Dangerous to go Alone! Take This!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I think it’s safe to say I won’t be finishing in time for the Compo, but I might have a shot at the Jam if I can find the time tomorrow. Either way this has been quite a learning experience and I should have this together a lot faster for the next one. Maybe I can get in on a MiniLD in the meantime

This will be my second attempt at a Ludum Dare now. Last time I wasn’t able to finish, but I learned a lot. Interestingly enough… most of the code I’d written as a framework for the last Ludum Dare, I incorporated back into my main engine. Actually it was more like… put my main engine into that framework. In any case, as a result, this time around I will be using:

• Coggoid! My engine itself that I’ve been working on for years.
• Blender, as it imports directly into Coggoid
• Sfxr and Musagi most likely for sound and music if I’m able to get that far
• Audacity for sound editing, again assuming I get this far
• A very old version of Paint Shop Pro, and probably a little Paint .Net for textures

Tags: blender, coggoid, musagi, sfxr

Like many others I’ve cleaned off my work area. I don’t know if it’ll result in clean code, but it’s a lot less distraction, and for someone as ADD as I am, it makes a big difference. That… and it’s just a good reason to actually clean the house up a bit.

Where the magic happens

Since last time I’ve got a new motherboard and processor, which ironically was not the issue when my computer blew up. Actually turned out to be my video card. Kinda had been looking to upgrade anyways and I had some RAM that fit it lying around… and I wasn’t going to drive it all the way back out to where I got it from. So I’ve got an older video card in here, but it’s suiting me just fine.

Where the wife's magic happens

And… just to my left… is a ridiculously colorful array of feather earrings. I make the little dreamcatcher parts for some of them, my wife does…. everything else. Lots of productivity in this house 😉

I plan on staying up tonight knocking out a few more features I want to have ready for tomorrow night. I need some more specific functions for scanning for objects and I’m trying to re-implement my 3d tile-based map stuff. Very exciting to actually take my engine for a test drive with this!

Tags: earrings, setup

Ack! I probably should mention what my engine uses, since people may very well be using these for their own C++ projects:

• Ogre 3D – Graphics
• Bullet – Physics
• OIS – Input
• OpenAL – Sound
• OGG/Vorbis – Ogg support
• DUMB – MOD/XM support
• FreeType – Font rendering
• zLib – archiving
• Polyvox – Voxels (probably not for LD)
• wxWidgets – IDE (won’t be present in the exe being distributed)

Well, I think it’s about time to call this a night, even though it’s not a night, it’s well into the morning. Things haven’t gone quite as I’d planned so far, but I suppose either way, I’m getting a lot done. Spent a good bit of time assisting with a different project while I ate my first meal of LD21:

Spicy like you have no idea.

Once again my lovely little wife came through with not only a tasty, but a visually appealing dinner for me to blog about. It was washed down with the obligatory energy drink, which has gotten me thus far. Unfortunately a bug with importing models took a good bit of my time, and then a separate issue with my character controller code. I actually started implementing saving and loading of scenes for this past hour-ish so I can create levels in my scene editor and then load them individually, rather than hard-coding the levels in my script. Did some preliminary modelling stuff:

Believe it or not, the pink thing is the protagonist

The modelling goes surprisingly fast for me. I have yet to really texture all that stuff. I dig Blender’s AO baking capabilities, but I’ve got to do some work incorporating some more texture to everything. Just hope I can make this all work by the deadline. For now though, I need to sleep.

Ludum Dare #3 here for me. Never finished the past two, but it was fun nonetheless. Perhaps 3rd time will be a charm. Each time I do one of these, even if I don’t finish, I get a lot of good features added to Coggoid. So… LD22, here I come. This time around I may be working together with NeonLare in the Jam. I guess we’ll see what we feel like doing when the theme is announced. The image above is a shot from a game him and I have been working on for some time now called “Zon”. (I swear, Coggoid CAN make games 😉 )

As for tools/libraries/whatnot, it’s the usual round-up for me:

• CoggoIDE
• Blender for modelling, perhaps some procedural texturing
• Paint Shop Pro 7 for any other texturing sort of stuff
• Probably SFXR and Audacity for sounds (assuming I get this far)
• LMMS/Musagi for music (doubtful, but if I’m doing the jam with NeonLare, he’s the musician anyways)

Kinda didn’t expect to finish, but got a good bit done, fixed a few annoying bugs with the engine and added a feature or two. Feel kinda bad because I went into this as a Jam with NeonLare and he was really hoping to get something done. I think we both have a habit of thinking a bit too large. Also didn’t help that I had other things to do this weekend and pretty much all my work was done from a hard wooden chair with my computer set up on a dinner table… next to a TV with annoying Christmas specials playing all day. Anyways… enough with the bad 😉

Still had a lot of fun with this. Finally got a chance to actually use my character controller which seems to be working pretty well. Forgot about a few handy function I’d added to the engine until later, and unfortunately wasted my time with some other ways of trying to accomplish the same things. I still seem to have some bugs with my boolean logic (specifically with short-circuiting… I think that’s the term anywys), and ended up laying my code out differently to avoid using the operators. Most of the code functioned pretty well though.

Some sort of tribute to Zelda

The world-building could have gone a lot faster if I’d actually had my cogblock system and scene editor working how I wanted. I unfortunately wasted a good bit of time arguing about textures. The first batch we were going to use had a filter applied to them, which didn’t really fit the retro style. Ended up using them without the filters applied, and it looked pretty good. NeonLare sent me a number of different textures to use, though, and the way I was putting the level geometry together wasn’t allowing me to apply the individual textures easily. Again, if I’d had cogblocks working correctly, I probably could have just handed the whole level building portion over to him.

The heroine of our game here, Zoe, was based off a sketch by a friend of NeonLare. She’s a bit miscolored here because of how the face texture was applied. It’s basically multiplying her base skin color over the whole mesh. Ran into some issues with animation, mostly on account of the way the new version of Blender stores actions. Didn’t realize it was tossing out our animations if we hadn’t marked a fake user. NeonLare was… just a little pissed about that after losing probably over a dozen full animations.

He's ready to totally ruin your day

Though we had a lot more planned… skeletons were pretty much the last thing that got added in here. Ironically… they’re able to attack and kill the player.. but the player wasn’t able to attack back yet. She COULD swing her sword at least. I’d be working on this today seeing if I could wrap things up, but it’s Monday and that means back to work.

All in all had fun with this, and essentially have an engine going now that I can hand over to NeonLare and let him go crazy with. Good job to all those that you know… actually finished stuff (inlcuding NeonLare’s side entry!) and see you again next time!

I’ll be in for LD23. This time around I figured maybe I should simplify things a bit and actually make more of an attempt to actually finish something for the deadline. That said, this time around I plan on using the following:

• GameMaker Lite – I’ve helped out on a number of projects using this, and it’ll definitely do what I need it to do.
• Paint Shop Pro 7 – I may not even use this, the built-in editor of GameMaker does pretty well for me
• BFXR – If there isn’t a reason for me to record sounds myself, this will probably be my weapon of choice for sound effects
• Audacity – Then again, if I DO need to record some sounds …
• Musagi – Kinda doubt I’ll get to this, but I’ve had the most success with actually creating music using this… (Thank you DrPetter!)

I guess that basically covers it. I was pleased to see my theme (Build it, Then use it) in the themes list. I kinda doubt it’ll get too many votes since it sort of implies a level of complexity I’d guess that people don’t want to bother with in an LD. Anyways, good luck to everyone this time around, and just MAYBE I’ll see some of you at the finish line!

So far so good with doing this the “recommended way”. I started off with a bunch of boxes and just made them behave the way I wanted. I started drawing some sprites now and am happy with the way this is turning out. I was a bit disappointed with the theme, but I’m making it work. Plenty of work still ahead of me, but I think I got a pretty good amount knocked out already. I’m doing a chronolapse from my laptop, and for the first time also have a webcam, which should be interesting to watch afterwards ;). I’m looking forward to actually playing and judging other entries this year because for once I may actually be submitting something!

If you’re reading this post…. GO YOU!!!

1 Day down, 1 to go. Just about an hour ago I had an epiphany for how to up the cute factor of this. Now instead of carrying your produce in the typical magic invisible “inventory”, you’ve got everything all stacked up, with the currently selected item at the bottom, just waiting to be used ;). This should make the next game mechanic I have planned make a little more sense visually. Just got items showing up in the shop, can’t actually buy them yet, but you now automatically sell all the produce you bring in. Made some cheesy little night and day sort of system by moving a gradient up and down. Looks pretty sweet though. Anyways, got errands to run. Seeing a lot of stuff a lot more awesome than mine on here, great job everyone!

You aren't fooling anyone, they can smell your turnips.

Finally got some sort of adversary in here now other than time rotting your vegetables. This will be my 2nd Ludum Dare where pigs are some sort of an enemy…. and I like pigs. Hmm.

Ditto for my April (?) entry… though from my new house with significantly less distractions this time around. Also armed with a plethora of energy drinks should the need arise. Nothing special, just making this “official”.

You had it coming you over-indulgent pixel bastard.

Had a fun time with the warm up. Probably spent a lot more time on it than I should have, considering that, true to form, I didn’t really “finish” it. In any case, got some experience using Game Maker Studio, which is good, considering I plan to use it this weekend. Among other things:

• Game Maker Studio – All that funky stuff it does
• ASEPRITE – Sprite editing
• SFXR/Audacity – Sound generation / manipulation (assuming I get this far)
• LMMS – Music (likewise)

Depending on the theme and probably just how I’m feeling at the time, I may be teaming up with NeonLare and doing this Jam style. He has a better track record for actually getting things finished, and he pretty much rocks at everything I suck at, so that works well. I don’t know what all this potato business is about, but believe it or not, of the food items from my warm up game is a baked potato.

Good luck everybody, lot of good themes out there…. don’t disappoint!

Muh tail is broked!

4:30 AM, I’m calling it a night, even though it’s technically a morning. More than a little disappointed at the theme. I’ll leave it at that. Spent probably an hour and a half trying to come up with something that I felt was worth pursuing and still somewhat fit the theme. One of the creatures from my endless supply of game plans happened to be extremely “minimal” in design. So… I decided to create a game based around taking care of them in a sort of virtual-pet way. Realized very quickly that I’d be doing a LOT of sprite work if I was going to do all the animations for different things. (Something I’m awful at) Instead, I started breaking these guys up into pieces and animating them programmatically. Still a lot I’d like to do with the animation, but I think I’m at a good spot to take a break now and get some sleep. For anyone who cares, this is a “Hubu”, and the rather chopped up thing sticking out of it’s shoulder is a tail, which they use to manipulate things, although not very effectively. They are essentially inspired by baby rabbits and probably Totoros.

Been an unbelievably busy past couple weeks at work… and still a lot to do… so I’ll probably be working as fast as I can on work… to be sure that I can… work as far as I can on not work… over the weekend.

Anyways, my plans are my usual gambit:

• GameMaker Studio
• SFXR/Audacity
• ASEprite
• Musagi (Rarely ever get this far anyways)
• If for some reason I come up with something I feel I can actually manage and is worth the jump… I may take a swing at using Unity for something 3D

Everyone seems to be doing one of these nowadays… here’s a shot from my attempt at it a few days ago…

Yes, those ARE shamelessly ripped Minecraft textures.

This will be my first post mortem… post… so anyways, here goes!

edit: This is for Hamlet btw…

The Good

• Sprites! Always a fun part of game dev for me. Got a few basic techniques down that I tend to stick to. This tends to make the pixel art portion of these go pretty quick for me. I’m also pretty much in love with ASEprite. I seem to get a lot of great comments about my pixel art. I hardly consider myself an “artist”… I’m just usually pretty good at emulating other work. If I can recommend anything to a fledgling pixel artist… LESS shades of color. I try to use around 3 in most cases. Dithering those colors generally makes for a nicer “pixel” look.
• 

  Seriously. Piece of cake.

   

• Juicing. I am first and foremost a programmer. Did I draw my sprites to look the way they do because I just love Fisher Price? No. I did it because abs(sin()) makes it REALLY easy to animate their movement. Cover with lerp() and heat to 350… and voila! A deliciously animated  scene, with about 3 real frames of “animation” (the two states of the mouth being open, and the blinking eyes)
• Storyline. Ok, it was a pretty shameless rip-off, but the “storyline” ultimately was more about you playing the role OF Hamlet in a play. Regardless… it definitely cut out a lot of the “what do I do next?” Despite it all, I had way too much fun with the other stuff and only really made it to the end of a VERY summarized Act 1.
• Scripting. If this was intended as a pun, it’s probably more of a reality than a play on words. Here you can see the script that executes to begin Act1Scene1 (which was actually just a timeline in GameMaker). I had objects created for each of the characters… all parented to a “proto_actor” object. Basically, for each one of them, all I did was override the index of their sprite, and maybe adjust their speed and mouth/arm height slightly. I wrapped a lot of my common commands into their own scripts. The result was something that looked less like a “GameMaker script” and more like a script for a play:

[stextbox id=”alert”]

enter_left(Barnardo);
with(Barnardo) {
goto_stage(64,12);
holdprop(instance_create(x,y,Pike));
}

enter_left(Francisco);
with(Francisco) {
goto_stage(108,12);
holdprop(instance_create(x,y,Pike));
}

ninja_a = enter_left(StageNinja);
instance_create(ninja_a.x + 60,room_height-40,Elsinore);
with(ninja_a) {
grab_setpiece(Elsinore);
goto_stage(16,4);
}

ninja_b = enter_right(StageNinja);
with(ninja_b) {
holdprop(instance_create(x,y,MoonPole));
goto_stage(300,8);
}
ninja_c = enter_right(StageNinja);
with(ninja_c) {
holdprop(instance_create(x,y,StarPole));
goto_stage(280,8);
}

enter_right(HamletGhost);
showtitle(“Act 1 Scene 1”);

[/stextbox]

The Bad

• Dangly Stars and Moon. If any of you have actually completed it to the end, you may see one of the “Stage Ninjas” complaining about the moon-on-a-stick not actually dangling off the stick. I tried to use the physics system to handle this, but it ended up not really being worth the trouble.
• Sounds. I did actually make a quick little sound in BFXR for the sound of the actors hopping across the stage. I don’t know if it was my math for judging when to play the sound or what, but it ended up with an awful grinding noise. This was quickly abandoned. Probably better in the end considering I’d have a lot more sounds to make and get added in that I really didn’t have time for anyways. Music? Forget about it.
• Balancing difficulty. This is something I rarely end up spending the time to tune like I want to. I guess it’s probably pretty common for an LD48 format, but pretty much all my entries are easily beaten once you “figure out the trick”. As I was play testing this I had a really hard time balancing punishment for not doing what you’re supposed to with still allowing you to get away with enough antics to still make it fun. The end result still really isn’t there, but then again, I had a lot more planned as far as just HOW bad things were going to get on stage.
• That damn spotlight. One of the features I wanted to add the most, just to emphasize the silly little laments… and I can’t seem to do modulative blending right in GameMaker. Sigh. To add injury to insult, it breaks the gameplay pretty bad on some systems that show it as fully opaque.

The Ugly

• 9:40 PM EST – Totally amped up and ready to go for LD28… from outside, a crash. Our horse has accidentally put her hoof through the wall of our barn while rolling in her stall. Just my luck. I guess it WAS Friday 13th. Wasn’t till around 10:30 that I actually sat down and got started with even thinking about what to do. Horse is better now at least, and ultimately, it wasn’t that much time wasted in the grand scheme of things.
• Work. These past few weeks have been absolute hell with the amount of stuff I’ve had on my plate at work. At least I enjoy what I do and work with really nice people. I really needed this compo. You wouldn’t think that 48 hours of stressful work would be such a relief from… other stressful work, but it definitely was

Honestly… the comments I’ve gotten so far inspired me to actually do a post mortem for once. A big thank you to everyone who played it, whether or not you got anywhere with it.  I’m considering the possibility of actually finishing it, probably with the help of NeonLare if I do. He’s a fantastic composer and artist.

Anyways, I think that’s a wrap… got a lot more games to try out, I probably should get to that. Good luck to everyone else out there! Seeing a lot of cool stuff as usual, see you all again in April!

Ham-let… get it? sigh… good night folks…