So, whats the difference between this screenshot and the last? 2 things, actually. 1, there’s that big blank spot towards the top. 2, if you look at pixel 550,550 on the grid you’ll see the green dot surrounded by a green square. The green dot represents the player and the green square just makes him easier to find. The biggest difference isn’t visible, its in the underlying code. This takes more than 10 times as long to draw because its actually being saved into an array ready for the actual game. Don’t even ask how long this took me, I’ll just say it was harder than writing the actual generator (at first I was trying to save the JFrame contents to a BufferedImage and then analyze that).

TL;DR: I’m THIS close to rendering a proper sprite sheet here and not just white dots

Also, I have no idea why that blank spot is showing up

Wow, it seems like forever since I wrote one of these but I’ve been super busy working with monsters. As you’ll see in the gif (hosted here), I’ve added monsters, collisions, and a basic GUI. The GUI needs work (the defense stat overlapping the health stat is the biggest problem). The monsters attack you when you run into them (I used a random generator for those values too) but I have yet to write the attack-back code. So there we go, I still have a ton to do but I really want to finish within the constraints of a normal LD. Happy coding and good luck!

I’m really happy with my final submission, though it still isn’t quite up to my standards. I encourage you to check it out (search the submissions for Within The Pipes). Good luck to everyone else still coding and feel free to check out my sloppy code on GitHub.

Those looking for teams for any kind of game can subscribe to reddit.com/r/gameteam and make a post there. It’s a small community but is growing, and I hope I can make it a great place to collaborate on games. Good luck to everyone!

I’m in for my second Ludum Dare.

Tools:

Programming: Java or Unity (C#) depending on if I want 2d or 3d

Art: Paint.NET (2d) and/or Blender (3d)

Sound: Audacity/Anvil Studio (if anything)

AND ONE MORE REMINDER:

I encourage anyone who has not yet found a Jam partner to check /r/gameteam on reddit. There are still some people there who have not yet found a team.

Hey, there. I’m going to keep this one short because I have a ton of work to do, but this is where things stand right now: An in-game screenshot, The characters/enemies soon to be added

Welp, after putting a good amount of work into my game, I scrapped it because it just wasn’t very fun. Also, the amount of content I had planned for it was a little overwhelming. So, at about 5:00pm today I restarted with a new idea, a monster on a rampage – how original. This game will function a little differently than many others I’ve seen on here. The monster charges forward at rows and rows of civilians, cars, soldiers, and tanks, knocking them aside, performing combos, and finally building up to a RAMPAGE!!!! Anyway, so far I’ve got this, though the different enemies are generating (just not rendering). Good luck to everyone, now if you’ll excuse me, I have a monster to make.

So… what exactly are you looking at in the .gif below? A monster, running towards a man and a car – otherwise known as the extent of my entry so far, and only 8 hours to go!! I’ve added cars & health, energy, and rampage bars since last time, but only energy works. I still need military men, tanks, shooting, and a few more monsters.

Wow. To everyone who’s ever restarted their game – I have so much respect for you right now. It was hard only having like, 24 hours to work on my final submission but I’m done! Remember to play & rate RAMPAGE and subscribe to /r/gameteam if your ever looking for jam partners.

With the next Ludum Dare only a few weeks off I figured I would put this out there for Jam participants once again. Last time around, I created a little subreddit called /r/gameteam and we had a lot of success. Since we still have a few weeks I recommend anyone who doesn’t have a team or is looking for an addition to check out the re-designed sub. I can almost guarantee participates from the last Dare will be coming back. You can find it here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gameteam

I just built a new computer on Saturday, so sadly I don’t have anything installed beyond Rocket League but I’m still willing to participate. I’ll have to reinstall all my tools, so that sucks, but I should be ready to go by Friday!

So the idea is to collect amulets and defeat enemies to make your hero bigger or smaller. Once you are the right size you can fit through doors to get to the exit! I think I’ve made some incredible progress for day one, much better than in my previous LDs so I’m excited for this game’s potential!

Obligatory recording: http://recordit.co/HAFaTW7J6a

So… I’ve made a ton of progress over the past day and I think I’m pretty much ready to design a bunch of levels and be finished! Here’s a fancy gif of the tutorial section which is done!!

Well with the gameplay mechanics all wrapped up and 6 hours to go I figured I’d take a break from level design to create my first ever background music. I’ve never done this in a Ludum Dare before (though I tried to make some sound effects for Temple of Light) and I’m not too sure of the result. The track was made with Bosca Ceoil which is awesome for audio noobs such as me! Without further ado: the official Burgeon soundtrack!!

So as I’ve said before, everything has been going incredibly well and I actually have some time to spare – meaning as many levels as I can muster (its harder than you would guess to make clever ones). Apart from level design, music, and writing this stupid posts I’ve found time to add a new gameplay mechanic! Buttons that open the exit door. I would love to have locked doors that open via a different button but that would be much harder. Anyway: BUTTONS!

Enjoy

https://www.dropbox.com/s/368synlvccrg36y/SICK%20TRAILER.mp4?dl=0

Another Ludum Dare has come and gone and I have to say that my experience this time around was much different from that of previous compos. Miraculously, nothing seemed to break and I was able to get art and gameplay completely finished by the beginning of the second day. This was pretty amazing to me. Before I was coding right up to Submission Hour and the whole thing was very stressful for me. This time around, I found myself not only wasting time by browsing reddit but actually venturing out and trying to do music – something I have never tried before. Now, I’m not trying to say that I am better than anyone else here because of all my free time – looking at the submissions already I can see that you guys are way more talented than I could ever be. However, I’d like to take this opportunity to say that keeping your game simple can be one of the best things you can do in this compo. It gives you much more time to experiment with game development and saves you a few sleepless nights. I found it very helpful (in my case) to map out exactly what the game was, which was four main things. Winning, losing, combat, and puzzle solving. Once you have a set of base rules the coding goes a lot easier than making it up as you go along. Setting up an easy way to create levels can also be very helpful. The first thing I did was basic color recognition, so I could feed my game simple drawings and have it spit back fully rendered levels with sprite sheets and etc.

TL;DR: Have a plan, keep it simple, and automate what you can.

My submission is “Burgeon”, if anyone is curious. Good luck to everyone going for the Jam!

I’m in for another Ludum Dare, this time with my newly written game engine (github.com/neon2d/neon2d) if everything goes well with it. Otherwise, I’ll be falling back to Java once more. My tools are as follows:

• neon2d (its in beta, but everything should be good) & Visual Studio
• Java & Eclipse (as a fallback)
• Paint.net
• Beepbox.co (if I have time for sound)

I’m really looking forward to doing this again, good luck to everyone else participating!

The first day has gone super well for me, better than I was anticipating. Today (and last night) I accomplished:

• Map generation
• A ton of art
• Enemy spawning
• Enemy projectile patterns
• Character movement
• Friendly projectiles (shooting the enemies)
• Projectile collisions

Whats left to do tomorrow?

• Title screen
• Post-game screen (with statistics)
• Interface art
• Character collisions (hitting rocks, etc.)
• Maybe multiplayer?!?!?!
• Sound, if there’s time

I would really love to add some multiplayer features to my game but since I know almost nothing about using WebSockets in C#, I don’t know how that will turn out. After a few hiccups in the beginning my engine (github.com/neon2d/neon2d) seems to be working really well and it’s made the development process super quick/easy. And last but not least, a gif, because everyone loves gifs: http://g.recordit.co/hnAWSAb2v9.gif

I’m in once again. This time I’ll be using:

C# + MonoGame

Visual Studio

Paint.NET

I’ll be submitting under the name “tildewave” on the new site