Hello everyone, hamburger here. This is my first Ludum Dare, and I’ll be working in Flash.

I’m officially going to start thinking about the compo now, so my deadline is 8:21 PM EST on Sunday.

Finally getting started. See below a shot of my paper mockups from last night. Today I start my programming in AS3.

I decided to make a game about conceptualizing cryptids (unknown animals), so I’m trying to build a sort of semi-random animal generator as my game. I have a wants list and a needs list, and I’ll be lucky to make it all the way through the wants list.

I have a very simple scaleable paint by pixel tool up and running, which is meant to form the core of my gameplay. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s pretty on the inside, programatically speaking.

My work in progress is up at http://davidrlorentz.com/files/cryptidia_v01.html.

Tomorrow I aim to make the game internet-enabled, and add what little bit of polish I can. The bizarre output is there to stay, though. This has got to be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever worked on.

And so my first LD entry comes to a close!

Play it at http://davidrlorentz.com/files/cryptidia.html. Also posted at Kongregate. 

I would describe this game as a cross between mad libs and the Spore creature creator. Emphasis on the mad libs. Everything is randomized, including the number of arms and legs and the position and rotation of everything. I didn’t get a chance to network it (I was going to hook up a database to pull in random parts from other players online), because the outside world intervened. So you’re just gonna to have to keep drawing all those arms and legs yourself.

If by some miracle you manage to create something attractive or at least entertaining with this ridiculous tool, please post screenshots! I doubt it will happen.

This game was coded from scratch in ActionScript 3, with art created in Flash and music performed with Anvil Studio. Full source code is available here. A windows executable is available here.

Enjoy!

Tags: actionscript, cryptidia, draw, final, flash, mini ld 7, paint, pixel art

Well, after a couple of hours playing old LD games (which tend to be amazingly good, btw), here’s my screwball idea.

Only Forwards + Mondrian = Ondrian Fordrian

In this mashup, I intend to mash extra hard, almost beyond recognition. In other words, I will be interpreting my inspirations loosely.

In Only Forwards, the avatar is always moving forward and the player’s inputs cause the avatar to turn left and right. In Ondrian Fordrian, the avatar is either moving forward or not moving at all; input consists of exactly one key, the MOVE FORWARD key. The player’s goal is to move forward as much as possible.

In Mondrian, the visuals are inspired by the De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian. In Ondrian Fordrian, the visuals are inspired by the Bauhaus artist Wassily Kandinsky. Or who knows, once I actually have a game maybe I’ll go with someone else, someone whose work is more gamey, like Mondrian’s friend Theo van Doesburg, founder of the De Stijl art movement. I totally just looked all that stuff up on Wikipedia.

In Ondrian Fordrian, the avatar is a Kandinsky doodad attempting to traverse the frightening, bewildering Kandinsky miasma. His goal is to move forward along his curvy, Kandinskic path. Everything moves. Some of it pushes him backward, some of it can hurt him.

Never Look Back. This is the second (way more boring) title for this game.  Never look back, Kandinsky doodad. The past is past, and the only way is forward.

I will be working in Flash with AS3. I intend to finish the game this weekend, but it’s going to be meager, for a couple of reasons. Chiefly, I have a lot of other stuff on my mind, plus the weather’s so damn nice.

Tags: actionscript, as3, flash, kandinsky, mash-up, mashup, mini ld, mondrian, never look back, ondrian fordrian, only forward, only forwards, weather

There is now a doodad, and the doodad moves forward. You can see it moving forward in the screenshot below. As you can see, the game is already looking completely beautiful!

Tags: doodad, never look back, ondrian fordrian

Well I spent a couple more hours and got the basic functionality in. It’s actually pretty fun. And the artwork is beautiful of course, because it’s Kandinsky!

I’m doing all the animation in the Flash IDE rather than programatically, which I’ve almost never attempted before – so it’s fun, but I’m an amateur.

Two playable levels are up at http://davidrlorentz.com/files/OndrianFordrian_v01.html.

Tags: animation, demo, flash ide, kandinsky, never look back, ondrian fordrian, playable levels

Here it is!

It’s lovely!

Play it here.

This game is sort of like Frogger, except you can’t move backwards. Enjoy!

I had a lot of fun with this. I wanted to do a couple more sets of levels with other Kandinsky paintings, but I didn’t have time.

Coded in ActionScript 3 + TweenLite, with art stolen from Wassily Kandinsky, and animations created in the Flash CS3 API.

Only Forwards + Mondrian = Ondrian Fordrian

Tags: actionscript, as3, final, kandinsky, mondrian, ondrian fordrian, only forwards, tweenlite

OK, with 33 hours remaining, hamburger’s finally going to start thinking about getting started.

“Advancing wall of doom” is a pretty morbid theme, guys. I feel compelled to make a game about the original wall of doom, that one that is advancing upon us all – death, of course!

I picture myself on my deathbed, waves in my head slowly shrinking to whispers, then nothing. I have a little bit of energy left in me, but not enough to run the whole machine of my body. Should I focus it in my eyes, to see my loved ones around me? Or in my ears, to hear what they’re saying? Or in my hands, to feel when they hold them? Or should I focus all my energy inside my head, to keep those waves alive?

Is this a game? I hope so. I’m going to try to run with it. If you have any suggestions, please make them.

Tags: advancing wall of doom, concept, death, deathbed, dying

Well, I sort of have a design planned out for my game, so I decided to take out a pen and start drawing. Here’s what I sketched up in the past 5 minutes.

Notice the beautiful asset list: brainwave, eyes, hand, mouth, and nose. A more delightful art asset list I have not seen!

Tags: art, closing my eyes, deathbed, LD #14 - Advancing Wall of Doom - 2009

Gosh, I’m moving really slow. I’m going to have to start working harder.

My game is sort of playable. The game is about being on your deathbed, and in this build you can experience yourself slowly dying. You can focus your energy on different parts of your body by clicking, which has no effect right now except clicking on the brain, which slows down your death.

I guess you guys are going to want me to make this more GAMEY now. Fine. I’ll add points and crap. That’s coming up next.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE WORK IN PROGRESS IN YOUR BROWSER.

Tags: browser, closing my eyes, death, deathbed, demo, flash

Good morning friends!

For anyone who feels like playing a very unfinished game, here’s the state of mine as of last night. The beginnings of the gameplay are there: notice now as you switch between your senses, sometimes you experience portions of the outside world. That’s what the deathbed experience is all about.

I have like 10 things on my list for the next 12 hours, so I better get to work.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE WORK IN PROGRESS IN YOUR BROWSER.

Tags: browser, closing my eyes, deathbed, demo, dying, flash, prototype

Here it is! Enjoy yourself!

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the progress of this, I won’t spoil it by telling you what it’s all about.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE FINAL GAME IN YOUR BROWSER.

Click here to download a Windows Executable + Source

Coded in ActionScript 3.0 with Tweenlite, with art drawn in Flash CS3, and sound created in sfxr.

Tags: actionscript, advancing wall of doom, browser, closing my eyes, final, flash

Hello game developers!

My new friend Doches and I are teaming up to bring you some Greek drama. A double feature of it, in fact!

Doches has been most kind in sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of the classic dramatic form with me, and we’ve also talked a bit of game design. An epic email thread, currently 20 communications in length, sits even now in my gmail repository, where it shall remain for eternity (or until Google gets shut down by the DOJ, whichever comes first).

Our plan is to bring you two games that play in parallel, one by Doches and one by me. Two very different games, developed in separate vacuum chambers, which toward the end of the weekend shall be suddenly smacked together into an amalgamation of some kind. Our primary goal (or mine, at least) is to end up with something jarring and weird.

We have a really exciting plan for connecting the two games, and have spelled out in detail the exact set of 6 functions that each game must expose. I believe this is what real programmers call an INTERFACE! This is some serious OOP we’re doing here, my friends. Bjarne would be proud. As I put it, somewhere deep within our epic thread:

It’ll be like painting a beautiful work of art, then duct taping a light socket to one end and screwing it into somebody else’s painting. It’ll be like overlaying a corporate management structure onto an artistic endeavor. It’ll be like making the most of a bento box.

We look forward to it.

Yours sincerely,

Doches + Hamburger == Dochburger

Hello! Is anybody here? We’ve got something real good for you here!

It’s called Slapstick!

Play it in your browser here, or download a Windows executable here. Make sure you click in the game window after it loads up, otherwise it won’t receive any of your keystrokes.

Doches and I had a great time making this. This game is our take on Greek theater. You will be playing two games at the same time. The hero’s on top, the chorus is on the bottom. I made the hero, and Doches made the chorus. These are two separate games, guys. Two Ludum Dares in one pot.

WSAD = control the top game. Arrows = control the bottom game. Both games have a progression, and you win the whole conglomeration if you win either game. You cannot lose, but you will find yourself in trouble if you neglect either of the games.

This was a crazy experience for us. Lots of fun. Okay, it’s buggy and it’s rough! But that was part of the plan! These two games didn’t meet each other until a couple of short hours ago, and they are still getting to know each other!

I hope this variety of blindfolded parallel game development can be expanded into some larger events in the future, because it’s been a pleasure. We hope you will have as much fun trying to wrap your head around it as we did wrapping our arms around it.

Doches + Hamburger == Dochburger

Tags: comedy, dochburger, final, greek theater, parallel games, slapstick, tragedy

What not to do in LD:

1. Don’t put off thinking about your LD game till the weekend is 25% over.
2. Don’t decide to learn Flixel over LD weekend.
3. Don’t decide to also learn Musagi over LD weekend.

Doing what not to do is often a worthwhile experience, as you never know quite what will happen.

I do not know quite what will happen this weekend.

Hamburger 20:10

This was a really strange LD for me. I had no Internet all weekend – it was like the eighties, except with Flixel. Without IRC and blogs, making a game by oneself is very lonely; I don’t recommend it.

I learned Flixel over the weekend, and I now know that my brain is the Flixel-compatible type. The whole thing makes very good sense to me and feels familiar. It’s interesting that everyone seems to fall distinctly into one of two camps, people who get Flixel and people who get FlashPunk. It would be interesting to investigate how these two classes of people are different, in ways other than programming. For instance, do we all like the same movies?

My game is called Intercontinental Drift, and it’s posted here. Please play it and come back here to leave comments. The game and I have been in isolation all weekend, and we both thirst for a little human contact.

I think the game is kind of interesting, though it is unpolished and pretty incomplete. I never got a chance to make music or expand the levels very much. As usual, I didn’t start actually churning out chunks of gameplay (levels) until the last few hours. I need to work on this for future LDs, because it’s the most important part.

Cheers!

Hamburger

Tags: drpetter, eighties, final, flashdevelop, flashpunk, Flixel, intercontinental drift, internet, isolation, lonely, musagi, psychology, sfxr

Tags: animated gif, cow, flying cow adventure, head

Sprites! Get ’em while they’re hot!

Apologies in advance for any amateurishness you encounter… this is the first time I’ve done pixel art, really. It’s been pretty fun.

Included in zip file: A variety of props and animated sprite sheets; see readmes therein for explanation. I also included animated gifs and the original .ase files from “Allegro Sprite Creator,” a nifty paint app.

This is a real mixed bag, including everything from pretty flowers to an exploding cloud. Bonus points if you manage to fit all of this into your game.

Download Zip File Here

Tags: blind date gfx