Ola!,

First time trying my hand at a Ludum Dare and I’m excited. This would be the second “game jam” I participate in, however the first one (the 7DFPS) did not go so well for me. Here’s for second chances and new plans!

I’ll be using:

• Unity3D (free version) with a few popular tools for it (iTween, Advanced C# Messenger, DebugX, NGUI, 2DToolkit) as the need arises
• Adobe Photoshop
• Bfxr, Audacity, cgMusic / Abundant-Music
• Visual Studio (C#)
• Various other Generation Tools / Free Assets if they are needed (the ones in the Ludum Dare resources list)

I have no idea what’s going to happen but I believe it’s going to be great!

After over an hour of thinking at various ways to use “10 seconds” I was getting nowhere. Plenty of  “good” ideas, yet not one seemed fun, or smart, or new, or fresh, or simple enough.  I decided to write down 5 of them on a few pieces of paper, schuffle them, and let the great beyond decide my future…

… It turns out I’m going to do a “cross the street” kind of game.

I will involve chickens.

And wisdom.

…

Much wisdom.

Allons-y!

I’ve decided to use the 2D Toolkit plugin for Unity since I’m going for a 2D game. One problem is that I haven’t used the said toolkit for ages, so this is going slower than I would have wanted it to go. *yay pro decisions*

Here’s a WIP screenshot. The car sprite and background textures are from OpenGameArt.org.

While I have huge doubts in regards to how fun this can possibly be, I am somewhat confident that the core is simple enough that I can actually finish it in time.

Wow, this has been tiring! I have my gameplay / level sections done (crudely) now. All that’s left is to tie them together with a menu and work on the “narrative” presentation. Hopefully I can get them done today, leaving tweaking, polish, and aesthethics work for tomorrow.

I’m using pixel art / textures from OpenGameArt.org.

It’s silly and I think I like it. (you’re the chicken, not the frog : – ) )

One day down, a couple of hours left to go!

So far I’ve managed to finish everything gameplay related. The game is playable from start to finish, altough crude in some places (menus especially).

My current list of priorities is:

• Tweak and polish the gameplay a little, check for bugs
• Add sounds
• Severely improve the presentation (menus, intro, a help menu)
• Severely improve the aesthetics

My biggest fear is that I will not be able to change much in terms of art, however I hope to make it work with the placeholders I’ve been using.

The deadline is approaching, however I’m somewhat content with my current progress. I only have 2 major things to do:

• Add Audio
• Gameplay Tweaking

Aside from these two, there are countless of other minor things I can tackle as time permits. I’ve decided to still with the placeholder art I’ve been using for now, even though the chances are that I will not be able to change them by the deadline. The good new is that the placeholder art looks fine enough.

On another note, I cannot stress how much I dislike Unity’s default UI system. It’s great for prototyping and crude functionality, it’s a real pain if you want to make it look pretty, at least from the perspective of an “art-deficient” person. I had to resort to some default buttons and gimmicks in the 2D Toolkit Unity plugin for my menus.

Can’t believe I’ve made it!

It’s been an interesting ride from more than one perspective, and I’ve learned a lot.

The game turned out rather simplistic and extremely short (2 – 3 minutes), however I managed to accomplish what I was thinking of, despite the endless screams of “this is soooo bad”. I’m happy that I finished it and that I’ve managed to wrap it around a “presentation” of sorts.

I can’t wait until the next Ludum Dare. I’m confident enough to try some different approaches now and definitely more gutsy gameplay ideas.