My first Ludum Dare! I worked with my kids (Micah, 6 and Eli, 9) on the concept, and they set most of the priorities. So the game is definitely silly 😉

Here’s the entry and here’s the source and here’s the game. And here’s my whole family playing together (… actually, posing for a screenshot):

And a few other screenshots:

The kids (and I) are very very excited to try everyone else’s games!

That was a lot of fun. I’ll be back

My first Ludum Dare!

Before the jam started, I had decided that I was going to use it as an opportunity to experiment with online, multiplayer game programming. Setting out to use the jam as a learning experience was good for me, but not so good for the game: if I’d been less intent on the multiplayer/online aspects, I probably could have refined the core game to be more fun to play. Can’t win ’em all, I guess.

The result: donut panic!

What went well:

• Completion: in spite of a busy life, ambitious goals, and total inexperience, I managed to ship the game. That was exciting!
• Collaboration: I worked with my son Micah, who is 6. Without him insisting on making the game playable, I probably would have spent the entire time yak-shaving.
• Multiplayer: Actually works! With in-game chat!
• Coding: I haven’t written python or javascript in about a year. I had no problem at all getting back into a groove with them, or switching back & forth (checks his python for stray semicolons…)
• Shiny toys: I was completely new to canvas, websockets, and tornado. These were all nice tools to work with, and good to learn, and didn’t make me crazy with frustration.
• Algorithms: In spite of 25 years coding, I’d never written a maze generator or implemented path-finding. Now I have, yay me!

What went better than expected:

• Graphics: I managed to pull out non-horrible graphics! I used aseprite (and didn’t aim too high.) I wish I’d settled on larger sprites, though.
• Sound: I used my microphone and some processing in Audacity, and managed to make sound that’s not embarrassingly bad.

What went poorly:

• Playability: The tricks for making a fast-paced multiplayer game work over a slow network are pretty well-known and documented (interpolation, client-side prediction, etc)… but I didn’t get to them. As a result, the game feels very sluggish when played over the open network, which is how almost everyone has tried it.
• Fun: If I squint really hard, I see a sketch of a game that’s fun to play… it’s just not there yet. I have tremendous respect for the folks who managed to make games that are actually a lot of fun to play.
• CSS: The splash screen uses HTML controls and CSS styling, and I spent an embarrassingly long time bending CSS to my will.
• Real World Gathering: I organized a real world gathering at a local hackerspace; unfortunately, everyone else bailed at the last minute, and Micah and I were the only ones there working on a game. Oh, well.
• Theme: I was not (at all) inspired by the 10 second theme. It’s used in various mechanics in donut panic, but certainly not the theme of the game.

Conclusion:

I learned a ton, and I’m proud of donut panic both as a technical accomplishment and as a game. I’m super pleased that I managed to ship it on time. And I’ll be back for more!

Tags: postmortem

I made another very silly game with my kids’ help!

It’s a straightforward web platformer: collect the boops, kill the beeps, and defeat the boss to win! I’ve enjoyed playtesting almost as much as I enjoyed creating it — hopefully you’ll like it, too

Play it here (or standalone here), and you can find the source code here, if you’re interested.

Another LD, another very silly collaboration between me and my kids. Presenting: pizza slap!

My 8-year-old did almost all of the design (concept, mechanics, graphics, levels, sound) this time, so I was just making the computer behave itself 😉

We all kinda lost interest in polishing the game today, so we just submitted it in its current form, still a bit rough around the edges. Still, it’s a playable and hopefully fun way to spend a few minutes. And it was a very nice way to spend the weekend!

Until next time…