Ohoi everyone!
This will be my first LD and hopefully I’ll have fun doing this thing.
Tools I’ll be using are:
Anywho; See ya’ll in three days! 😀
This.. did not went for a good start. It has already been almost 12 hours, and all I came up with was some basic graphics, almost no game play ideas at all. This game might be a tad harder than expected to create.
Update 1:
12 hours will pass in just a matter of minutes, and I realize I have to start over… whatever I was working with began to lean more and more to an open world environment. Which is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of Tiny World. GAH! I’ve never felt this pressure before!
Update 2:
The game is going forward. Finally some flow in the work. I have a basic game going, a character to walk with, nailed the graphics and all. Feels effin good I must say.
Update 3:
Yes yes yes! The first level is finally done! I feel that everything is going the right way and hopefully I’ll be able to finish the game in time ^^”
The deadline is getting closer. Most of us should be finished soon, or maybe you already have finished your game. I am not one of them who have finished. I still need that one last piece before I’m done. Sounds. I have no idea what so ever where I can get free sounds, nor how to make any. So I’ll be waiting to submit my game until I know anything. Though, I’ll probably just hand in a silent game. :L
If anyone reads this and knows where one can get a hold of decent 8bit-ish sounds, please let me know, ok? ^^”
Love y’all!
I did it. For the first time I finished a coding project! 😀 My first full games with an engine, graphics, sounds, dialogues, story, EVERYTHING! And I finished it!
Here is my submission. Applet, Jar and source are all in the “Web” link.
Now I am going to have a good night sleep thank you very much.
So, 24 hours and 28 minutes left until next Ludum Dare event. (is excited x3)
Hopefully everything will go just as smooth as last time.
Just as during the event three months ago, I’ll be using Game Maker for drawing and Java/Eclipse for coding. Still unsure how I will do the sounds. Maybe MIDI like last time?
Anywho! See you all tomorrow. I’ll try to get as much sleep as possible before it all starts ^^”
I am all ready and set! I have been working on a lil’ engine for the past days, an engine I am going to use for this event. And as a demand á Ludum Dare’s side, I have to share it with everyone. So, here it is: Download.
That’s it for me now. See you all at the start line in a few hours!
Edit: Forgot to mention. The engine is for Java and does not require any extra libraries. It is written in Java using Eclipse and nothing else.
Got the very basic done. A simple map loaded using a sprite. Each pixel in the sprite represent a tile in the playable level. So far, air blocks, metal blocks and player entity. That’s enough for my first two hours (took me an hour to figure out what I am actually going to make).
So, to quickly share my goal.
* Create a 2d platformer.
* Turn it into a zombie survival game.
* Add a low number of weapons, each one of them being highly unique. I do not have any ideas for weapons yet.
* Give the player some powers. Same, no idea for those yet.
* Add shitload of various upgrades for weapons, powers and the characters.
* So, the focus should not be “BUY THE BIGGEST LOADA GUN AND KILL ‘EM ALL!”. No! The focus should be on the upgrading part, hence the Evolution theme.
Woke up, felt great and continued working. On just two hours I’ve got the bullets working, a properly scrolling background, a zombie (just a immobile dummy for now) and particles. Gotta love ’em particles!
Even more progress has been made! And now my game is filled with horrible zombies, WITH AI! That is like.. *shudders* Zombies who can think! ;-;
On top of everything, I have added GUI’s, menues and various flashy icons to alert the player for various stuff. The evolition has not been added yet, but I promise it will be added soon, pretty soon.
Very well! I shall join this Ludum Dare event, FOR THE THIRD TIME!
Even though it is more than a week left until it starts I can already feel the hype build up! ALL THE HYPE! After looking through the themes in the Slaughter poll, I really hope for either the Dream theme or the Tower theme. I already have some vague ideas for what to do in those themes. Better to have a tiny idea prepared than nothing at all.As for language and tools. I’m not fully decided yet on all things. I am 99,9999~% sure that I will create a pixel art game, but I do feel tempted to try to make hand drawn graphics for the game. The thing that stops me is the lack of experience with hand drawn animations and the fact that we only have 48 hours.
Language and IDE
Java in Eclipse or C#/XNA in Visual Studio
Graphics
Pixel Art in Game Maker
Audio
Sin/Saw waves (still looking for a tool to make waves in the first place)
Source for ideas
Staring out the window. Tis a great way to get ideas! (I am not responsible if you would fall into procastination while doing this.)
Other tools
Livestream, friends, chat, TONS of soda and loads of music.
Edit: I just want to add the link to my livestream for anyone who would like to pop in completly randomly and startle the buck out of me. [Link]
Very well. I have had my first night of sleep after 3 hours of work. What did that result in? I just enough got my basic engine working which is nothing but handling the frame rate and drawing pixels. What else? Hmm… I overslept. I missed out 2 hours. And one last thing: I still have no idea what to do!
I…
I…
I must finish nonetheless! Think brain, THINK!
With that said I have finally got the first concept done and it looks like this:
The idea for the game is to collect nightmares to unleash them upon our world. The weird clouds you see are the nightmares. I still haven’t thought of the challenging part yet. Hopefully I’ll have the idea soon enough.
Everything turned out fine last night. I got all the mechanics for the game done and all the graphics more or less finished. I can now safely spend my last 14 hours on the level, sounds and testing.
Have another screenshot:
We’ll see how them hours will turn out. I do feel kinda crap after my lack of sleep and food. Note to self: Eat more!
Huzza and everything! It has been a tough journey, lots of sleep missed out, sitting still for almost two days, killed myself twice, but I made it. My entry can be downloaded from this link. I… Don’t know what to.. I’m sleepy..
I hope I don’t end up in a…
It is time again! Yet another Ludum Dare to participate in, this time for the fourth time! WOOHOO!
I am all hyped, as usual. Tis just past Monday afternoon right now and am just about to start the warmup mini projects. Meaning; This will be a full week filled with nothing but coding.
Runthrough of whatever tools I will use this weekend:
Compo 48 hours
Code: Java, Eclipse.
Graphics: Game Maker. (Seriously, that sprite editor! <3)
Audio: FL Studio, Audacity.
Well then, see y’all at the start line!
Oh right! Almost forgot. Like the other times I have been in Ludum Dare, I am going to livestream as much of it as possible. My Livestream channel can be fround [here].
Once again, I finished my entry in time. For the fourth time to be precise.
As usual, I kept the graphical appearance to a basic level. Only this time I was encouraged to do so *sqeee*. The thing about basic graphics is that I can put more time in the game rather than making it look good.
My finished entry is Trapped In Minimalism.
You are a man who is trapped in a mysterious world in which everything appears different to ours. Everything looks basic, simple, minimalised. You have to escape in one way or another. Your plan to escape puts your life on line…
Click the image to get to the game.
What went well?
* The most important thing that went well is that I managed to finish the game.
* As opposite to the other times I participated in Ludum Dare, I had a scribble file to write down all ideas and plans I had to sum up how I wanted the game to be.
* To add to the previous point; TODO list vs optional TODO list. Knowing what is highly needed in the game and what would just be a secondary feature. With these two lists I could easily finish the core of the game without having unnecessary code in my way.
* Knowing when something headed the wrong way. I quickly noticed, halfway through the first day, that my sprites did not look anything like I wanted them to. Because of the early notice I managed to redo most sprites without feeling stressed out for the deadline.
* Oversleeping. During the other LDs I have participated in I did not sleep a lot, maybe 4-5 hours á night. The outcome was always feeling really bad the next couple of days, not to mention catching a lack-of-sleep-cold. Because of me oversleeping both days this time, I managed to keep my hours of sleep, have a clear mind and feeling relatively good afterwards.
* Testing. Oh dear Goddess, test the game as much as you can throughout the creation to spot errors in time. Streaming helped a ton since the watchers would spot an error or two which I missed. Thanks guys! <3
What went bad?
* Some things on the list changed throughout the event. I did end up with some working but horrible looking code in the end.
* Do NOT do something if you do not think you can do it easily. I got stuck with two things during the event because I was experimenting. Mainly, I tried to add a type of projectile, Missile, which would home against targets. I struggled a lot with the code for the homing effect and wasted time on something that was not even added.
* Something something, I know this point is important but I have unfortunately forgot it.
What happens now?
Time to play and rate games! 😀
When I hit 100 games rated I’ll post a top-5 or top-10 list.
So until then. Toodles~
Terrible terrible terrible!
I hoped to be able to rate a hundred games this time. Unfortunately, I have fallen into a horrible sickness since a week back and I do not start to feel any better, nor do I think I will in the next couple of days.
So in the meanwhile, here are my favourite games (in no particular order) from LD26, out of the 65 I have rated.
#5: Minimalist Dungeon Crawler by Cranky
#4: SINE by ElScootro
#3: The Last Soul by Gaeel
#2: Escape the Minimalism by klianc09
#1: Super 1-Bit Space Arena by Orni
I will hopefully recover in time and rate the hell out of the remaining 2282 games.
Soon, it is time again, time for another weekend filled with lack of sleep, lots of pop, one or two beers and a wall of code that doesn’t make any sense at all. Sadly, it might be the last time for me to do this in a long while because reasons.
Tools
The tools I will be using is the same as during my previous Ludum Dare entries.
Code
Java, Eclipse
Graphics
Game Maker Sprite Editor
Audio
FL Studio, Audacity
Advice I learned from last time
Todo list. Goddess in heaven, a Todo list is so good! During my previous LD entries I only used a huge scribble file with heavenly many random notes. It was a mess. Most features and functions in my games were mostly impulsively added. But last time I had a Todo list and it saved me many hours. I used two categories in it: CORE and FEATURES. The CORE list was stuff I absolutely needed for the game to even work and FEATURES was things that I should have, things that would make the game but can be left out.
Streaming
Like every other Ludum Dare event I have participated in, I am going to stream as much as possible on this livestream page.
Anywho. See you guys at the start line in two weeks!
The unfortunate happened to me. About 20 hours in, I started to notice that something struck a heavy load in my game and made the frame rate drop ridiculously. Poking about in my code I found out that this flaw is somewhere in the rendering of my “engine”. I figured that I accidentally caused this when I tried to… urk, upgrade it. Beats me. “Don’t fix what isn’t broken.” fits so very well in this situation.
Half of the time has already passed, I am nowhere close to even have a solid idea for my game, I cannot even spawn 10 simple particles without causing the framerate to drop to 20 and I have already spent about 4 hours trying to find the bugger in the code. So for the first time since LD23, I am backing out.
I wish the best of luck to the rest of you!
I am starting to get somewhere with this thing. Not exactly sure where I am heading with this. We’ll see.
The bats are flying around like cray cray tho.