this is hard. I chose a game that wouldn’t be too hard to make, but I have to make SO MANY graphics. I’m making them in Flash, which might not be the best choice. But it is a lot of fun so hoping I’ll finish in time.

So, first time. Never finished making a game before, so working on an idea, where the coding should be easy (although choosing the tool took me two hours, I settled for FlashDevelop).  Collision detection still not working and TONS of graphics still to make, including intro and outro movie. And lets not forget sound (I’ll probably skip the music).  Using Flash movieclips for graphics is also lot of work and might not be the best choice.

It will probably be a terrible game IF I even get it finished on time, but it sure is fun!

I was very close to finishing, sort of, the game worked, kind of, but there were some intro and outro movies I wanted to include and the game itself isn’t that great. SO I’ll do the jam. At least now I can also include sounds and maybe even music.

I’ll include a screenshot for fun.

So after my first experience in a LD and looking at all the amazing entries, I realised I needed more practice.

I still had an idea left for when ‘Abandoned’ was still the nr 1 voted theme, so this weekend I made another game.
It’s called Abandoned (as you can see below).

you can try it here:
http://www.goerp.nl/flash/ld/abandoned.swf

the development proces was smoother, and the games looks better than my LD entry (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=14225), but the graphics still take too much time. Maybe the next game will be with pixels or hand drawn pictures (those I do fast).
And next time I will invest some time to work on more interesting gameplay.

This idea was meant for a device with an accelerometer, but for now you have to use the mouse (maybe I’ll port it to Android later).

And now back to trying those other games!

Well, I’m done with playing and voting. Off to bed because I gotta work tomorrow.

I want to thank all the people who tried my game. A special thanks for all the people that have left a comment (and for the encouragement after day 1).

This has really inspired me: I posted earlier that I made another game and I am attempting to make a game with some cell like evolution thing as well.

I have voted for about 160  games but that’s still just a fraction of all games. I hope people will post their favorites so I can try those (you can still try them after the competition I hope?).

I will compile a list as well.

I’m very impressed with the creativity in this competition. Unfortunately it means I think less of my game then when I finished, but I will improve!

I’m still hoping to make something a little more serious before the october challenge, but this at least is finished (well finished enough for me).

I like the first words of the game so I’ll post that as a screenshot.

I haven’t played any other entries yet, but some look pretty interesting!

Here’s mine:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-37/?action=preview&uid=14225

PS: the sound is done on a Commodore 64!

Not much experience with pixel art and I thought I had to make the sprites small to have them fit in the 256×224 screen.

Now the  sprites are really tiny! This is an actual spriteset:

Today wasn’t very good, but there has been some progress, so tomorrow there will be a game, hopefully it will be fun to play (that would make a change!).

Finished!

It still needs more levels (and some variation), but this time I have music. So gameplay still bad but certainly getting better.

Using Famitracker was fun! Making pixelart was hard!

With the funkytron I got those ugly scrollbars, so I have two links: to the .swf  and to the Funkytron version.

Maybe later I’ll do a postmortem or comic (maybe with J. McLeakyPants) .

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-38/?action=preview&uid=14225

I’ll be using Flashdevelop (probably FlashPunk) for code

graphics: TileStudio (if I go for pixelgraphics) or Flash (vectorgraphics, small size!).

For soundFX I’m going for voicegenerated noise.

Music  I’m not so sure about. Might just try a looper with guitar and stuff or  Famitracker. Maybe brush off an idea for a musicgenerator coming weekend (or do a warmup game ofcourse).

Oh, I might want to use my C64  organ, so I have to declare it:

http://coding.goerp.nl/4/AORGN13T.zip

Sourcecode included, for best results use VICE C64 emulator with SID settings: Engine: reSID-FP and SID model 8580, SID filters enabled.

Use F1 F3 and F5 for different sounds.

I thought I might do a RPG. I made a crappy one recently and might want to scavenge it for usable bits so here is the link to the code:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/18750716/RPS-RPG.zip

You can even play it online, but it is not very good (and if too much people start to play, my provider will hate me).

http://rps-rpg.goerp.nl/RPSRPG.swf

who is the villain?

who is the evil, white cat stroking maniac that rigged the voting system?

Just got the Ludum christmas present (on a LD weekend, cool) and it’s from Australia!

So it’s from the antipode of the Northpole: so ANTI SANTA!

anyone need a villain for their game?

(Will unwrap the present  after I made some progress with my game, I only just started)

what’s up with all the goats?

is there something I should have read?

if I had known it would be about goats, my main character would have been a goat in stead of a cow

My god I finished in the last minute.
At least I hope I finished, I think I checked if everything was working.
This time (my second big LD) I did it in 48 hours (HOORAY!).
But still not enough time for music (BOOH!).

No goats, because I didn’t know about that, but there is a cow.

Oh god, I see now that I have Flashpunk still in debug mode, I can repair that within the rules I hope?

anyway, I’m done, kaput. Must sleep now.

(Sorry for the terrible pun).

So, my second LD I finished within 48 hours, but wasn’t totally happy, because some ideas didn’t make it into the game.

Last weekend I made a post-compo edition and because it is almost Christmas (for some it already is), I made it into a special Christmas version.

If you haven’t played my game: I know there are better games, (it literally is crappy),
but I would like it if you would try my game here.

The page also links to the much more playable (and enjoyable I think) post-compo version.

If you did already play my game, you might try the new version (yeah, as if you don’t have tons of LD games to play!).

Happy holidays,

MOO!

Although there are a lot of good things, some games just catch your eye.
I would like these games to do well, so here is a bit of advertising.

Maybe they are not the best in any category, but all in all for me just GREAT:

First one: little villain.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=14772

Second one:

We meet again, mr. Mond!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=12053

All in all I wasn’t very pleased with my entry, but have seen a lot of good stuff. I think the quality this LD was very high.

There is just some time to do a postmortem for my game called: ‘You naughty beast’.

So what went right:

1.  I finished the game within 48 hours, which was one of my goals. It was very tight, and in the last minute I had to come up with a title (which I hate now).

2. It was more of a game then my previous effort (‘fun but not much of a game’).

3. Faster, tighter coding. I did some planning, made an actual class diagram, had a good system for difficulty tweaking, better imlemented intro animation technique.

4. Better preparation. This was my second LD, but I also made some games during the mini LD’s and had some experience with Flashpunk. Also, I brainstormed all the top-10 themes so my brain would come up with an idea moer readily.

And what didn’t go right:

1. My worst mistake: No practice in my method. I have had some experience with Flashpunk since the last LD, but decided not to go with pixelgraphics this time. I made sprites in Flash and wanted to convert them to spritemaps.  This gave all kinds of unforseen trouble and cost me WAY TO MUCH time.  To get the graphics at the right positioning and the collision the right way was a big pain. And Flashpunk did throw me some curve balls. It turned out, I didn’t understand it enough.

Because of this I ran out of time, I had no time to tweak the difficulty and some of the humour and gameplay had to be sacrificed (for instance no real end, just a score, no cutscene).

Conclusion: I should have used the warmup weekend.

2.  No objectivity. I  tried to finish my game in 48 hours, which didn’t leave any time to sit back and try to see how other people would play the game.  Ludum dare people play a lot of games in three weeks. They wont take the time to master a mediocre game. Most of the feedback was about the controls. I played my game so much during development, that I didn’t realise how troublesome they were.  Because of this my game was too difficult.

3. Finish within 48 hours. It was one of my goals this LD, but after investing a day for a post compo version, my game was A LOT better.

4. Take more time for my idea. I hated the theme and I grabbed the first idea that came up. It wasn’t bad, but could be better.

Next time I’ll aim for 48 hours, but 72 will be OK if that is what is needed. try to do it more  more relaxed and less ambitious, but have more fun.

I forgot I had to do my taxes today

AND I forgot today is light savings day,  so its already half past 12

AND I forgot I will visit relatives tonight

BUT I will post a game

So, I’m also planning to enter the next Ludum.

Tools/gear:

In the last mini Ludum I made some improvised music with my guitar/ZoomGx3, so I think I will do that again. Maybe use AmbiLoop.
For graphics probably Flash Cs6, and for coding FlashDevelop.

Not sure if I will do the 48 hr or 72 hr.

On another note:  I updated my miniLudum41 entry (‘oh, that’s SO last week!’).
I just had an intro in my head that I wanted to add. It turned out to be quite hard to do; I’m not that good at drawing and drawing someone standing in front of an mirror is pretty hard for me.

But I’m happy about the result so I wanted to share it.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-41/?action=preview&uid=14225 (it’s the post compo version).

There was something about secret subthemes only some gamemakers know about.

So do you have to visit the IRC channel to find that out?