I am not as ready as I would have liked to be, but I’m going to do it anyway.

Language: I’ll be working in JS+HTML

Tools:

• Eclipse (easy github integration so I can push updates quickly)
• Notepad++ (for when Eclipse starts sucking)
• Graphics: GIMP, Paint alternative (Paint.net?), or just drawing on canvas
• SFXR maybe for sound if I get to that.

I started making a breakout clone to prepare for this, but fell a bit short with time and ended up with just a moving paddle and bunch of balls bouncing around: http://haveric.github.io/projects/ld28prep/

I’ll probably use some of that as basecode and with any luck, I’ll actually get something finished this weekend.

Good luck and have fun!

-Haveric

Since this was my first ludum dare, I wasn’t really sure how it would go, but I am pretty happy with what I ended up with.

The graphics could certainly be better, but I’m a programmer, not an artist so I did what I could. Here’s an example of a small easy level and a larger hard level:

You start in the center of a hedge maze filled with gnomes and you are trying to get to the exit on one of the sides. The ‘mazes’ are randomly generated and require use of a few one use tools and careful avoidance of gnomes to get out. Larger levels become a lot harder as you can’t see where the exit is, but you also can end up getting stuck and not every level is winnable.  It still is fun trying to find the exit on Insanity difficulty with an 80×80 map.

The UI turned out really well between some hand drawn icons for the tools and use of html for the menus:

Overall, this was a very fun experience and I hope you guys enjoy my game.

Direct Link

Entry Page

This will be my second Ludum Dare and I feel like I am much more prepared than I was last time in LD28.

I stripped my code from LD28 down to a base engine and added a few extra things (audio, crude animation support) so that I am ready to get started.  You can find my basecode here: http://haveric.github.io/projects/ld30prep/

Language: I’ll be working in JavaScript + HTML + CSS

Tools:

• Editor: Eclipse (easy Github integration so I can push updates quickly)
• Graphics: GIMP or just drawing on canvas
• Sound: JFXR (http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com)
• Testing: Firefox and Chrome

My goal is to get at least some animation and sound into the game, whereas my last game, Gnome Hedge had neither.

Good luck and have fun!

-Haveric

This was my third Ludum Dare entry and I am very happy with what I was able to complete in such a short time. You can see the result in a couple screenshots below or you can check out my game here.

At it’s core, Out of Bullets is a shoot ’em up, but you are limited to firing the ‘trash’ out of the back of your ship, which requires careful avoidance of enemies and bullets in order to line up shots.

What went right:

• Art: I spent more time on graphics for this game than I ever did on my other games and I think it shows in the final game. I probably spent too much time on certain parts of it, such as the stars/planets generation, but I had a lot of fun doing it. I used Google images to reference a few sci-fi ships, but then drew a variation on paper until I got something that looked easy enough to create and started creating everything in Gimp.
• Animation: I had a lot of fun last time creating animation, but I really took the time to make the animation I had this time work well with the game. Ship engines, explosions, and the menu doors. The past experience using Gimp really helped out here and I only had to tweak a couple animations once they were in the game to make them look more natural.
• Sound: This was actually a last minute thought put into the game, but thanks to using jfxr before, I was able to quickly turn out the few needed sounds to add to the game.
• Gameplay / Difficulty: I actually threw together the difficulty pretty quick and never modified it.  It always just felt good while I was playing it.  It starts out fairly easy and ramps up the difficulty pretty quickly. The multiplier shown next to the score was a last minute addition to show the difficulty in some form, which I feel helps show the users that there is something getting more difficult and gives them a more intermediate goal than just a high score to achieve.

What went wrong:

• Items: The original idea I had was to create a few unique ‘weapons’ that each did different things when shot, which would then make you think about what you were shooting and plan attacks more.  I didn’t plan them out as much as I wanted to and due to lack of time, just made them slightly different in how many bullets a couple could take before being destroyed. This made the reloading hatches in the top right of the ui not as useful as I had originally designed them to be.

Things that could be improved/added:

• Music: I still haven’t found a good method for creating music as a non-music person.  I played with a few interesting tools before the competition, but none of them had an easy way to export the created music.
• Leaderboards:  If I had more time, I would have added a global leaderboard to track scores.  I’ve seen this used to great effect in other games, but have not attempted it myself. I might try doing this in a post Ludum Dare version.
• Story/Goal: I had some thoughts for how to add snippets of a story or an end goal to the game, but I don’t think either would have helped the end result much at the time.  It would be interesting to see how much different the game feels with these added in and might play around with it for a future version.
• Social Media/ More Posts: I still haven’t convinced myself to start using social media during these events or to post status updates, but I know that it would result in more people seeing the game early on and could get me more feedback.  This is one of the areas I will likely be focusing the most on in future events.

As always, this was a lot of fun creating a game and challenging myself to get something completed and somewhat polished. I look forward to continuing this game and doing more Ludum Dare events in the future to keep improving.

Feel free to check out my game: Out of Bullets and give me any feedback you have.

I’ve missed the last couple ludum dares, but I’m back in for this one. Just finished getting prepped just in time.

Tools/Programs:

Intellij (Switching from the usual Eclipse)
Gimp for graphics
Jfxr for sounds
SunVox (Found this a couple days ago. Going to attempt to make music this time around.
Github for version control and hosting.

Base code I’m using a slightly altered version of my previous Javascript engines: https://github.com/haveric/haveric.github.com/tree/master/projects/ld35prep

Let’s do this!

Last Ludum Dare I participated in was LD35 so I'm excited to see how far the new site is and jump back into making a game.

I'll be using my custom and very basic JavaScript engine that I've built up over the previous Ludum Dares which can be found here

Software will include: - Intellij for code - Gimp for graphics - JFXR for sounds - Github for easy source control and hosting

Good luck and have fun everyone!