Hi! I am Job(AKA joppiesaus), and I am going to join the LD competition!

I am new to the Ludum Dare competition, and I think I will join the LD 28.
I will do something in C#, probably in XNA. Now here’s the bad news:
The competition starts at saturday, 3 AM for my timezone. I have to plan awsome, otherwise I’ll end up nowhere.
Backwars too, the competiton ends at monday, 3 AM.
But! When the competition starts, the theme is not revealed, that’s in two hours, right? I just set my alarm clock at 5 AM, and I am happy!

Also, I am not a very experienced programmer… I am not old, and I learned everything from the internet, and never had study. I only made some derp games, not very special stuff. Next year, I am going to ‘programming’ class. But I think I can do it! It is afterall a game jam.

But! I’ll enjoy the whole competition(I should be more carefull with my words…)!
Conclusion: I’m in!

So, I stood up…
“You only get one”. I have to think! No ideas yet!
Well, it’s going to be 2D, that’s for sure.

Well, I have an idea!
I did many (technical) code this morning, and I have one screenshot! (I am terrible at art)

It’s something! 😀

Well now about my plan…
It’s going to be a defense game, where you have to defend against aliens/people/dumb bears.
They come from one side, and you have to kill them. It are way to many, so you get only ONE WALL.
For each thing you kill, you get money, from that money, you can build your base, etc.

I don’t know if it is a good idea thought, but I am going to try it!

it has bullets and a wall!

Yeah! It’s not much, but it’s at least bug-free(I hope so)!
Next up is the enemies, after that, a base.
I am more concentrated than first. I have faith in my game!
So, for all ludum-dare’ers, here’s a “relax” gif!

Would you like to test it? 😀
Controls are simple. You’ll find ’em out. The wall cannot break yet, but it’ ll all come soon!
I know about the graphics. I am not the best artist!
Report any bugs, please!

Get it here!

That’s it. My progress for today! It may be not much, but I did some technical (which was useless afterwards) code. I am also terrible at art.

What I did:

• made a game!
• made enemys!
• did tecnical collision code and stuff!
• adding stuff is now  “easy”!

What I am planning:

• store(currently developing)!
• better “wave” system!
• More enemys!
• difficulty(right now you can’t die. You are even better than Jesus at the moment)!
• buildings!
• base!

Man, I got some stuff to do! I am not sure if I get that completed… I hope so!
I can always strike all those things, and “finish” the game. It’s depending on tomorrow. I don’t think I am going to code now… even if it’s not even 9 PM. “When sleep comes, you quit. Or you go to your clouset and get an huge adventure.  — Pajama Sam, somewhere when I was 5”
Today was besides fun. As Ludum Dare is mended to be. If I don’t finish this in time, I at least had fun and I made a game(or something).

So, I went to bed at 10 PM last night, and I set the alarm clock at 6 AM.

Now it’s 10 AM.

I don’t know how it’s even possible, but I had a really bad night tonight. But! I am not giving up! I code until it’s done! I resetted my priorities last night for the game last night, so I hope it’s going to work.

Remember what I said yesterday?
I made a store(upgrade menu!)! Added stuff for store! I made a base! And a money system!
Also, I am feeling that I am going to finish this as I wanted it to be finished(well, not 100%, but that’s always).
It’s actually fun to play now. Only one performance bug: At “high” waves, your game will begin to lag when you shoot. This is annoying, I have an idea how to fix this.
I need to balance out everything. You start with 10000 money, that will be zero when the game is finished.

Click here to get the BETA2 built!
Please report bugs! Comments! Stuff you like! Stuff you don’t like! Rage cause you don’t have the XNA Framework!
Note: You cannot upgrade your man yet! I am working on it!
Also, the guys are very special; they have special bullets and special textures(RANDOM!)

Have fun with it! 😀

I fixed them mostly! I must find an efficienter system thought, but in the Ludum Dare competition you don’t have the time for that!
Turns out that the XNA Framework is being a bitch for using only one core of you processor. I coded some “return”s for things that never could happen.
Music helps thought.

Yes! Cars! Kamikazah cars! They have low “health”, and they’ll drive into your base and do a huge amount of damage to you.

Really, my first Ludum Dare was:

• Fun
• Frustrating
• Tiresome
• but especially fun!

I really enjoyed it. I didn’t expect it to be this in any way possible.
The programming expierence: I made some useless tecnical code, and for my feeling it goes all much, much slower than “when I code normal”. I think that’s natural. For my feeling, when I normally code, I don’t watch the clock… it all goes fast. It’s like I make games in one day super awesome. But it’s not that way, in fact they take a week or something! It just feels like it goes fast… fast coding goes in this competition, which feels slow. That’s what I learned the past two days.

What I need to do better next time:

• More thinking, instead of fast coding that causes bugs and spaghetti code
• More drinking
• Set priorities more often(?)
• Aim lower
• And don’t forget the music at the timelapse

My game isn’t what I wanted to be. It was mended to be bigger, but that’s not going to happen in just 2 days. Of course, it was the first time, and what I said about the coding expierence… It all makes sense.
But! I am proud at my game! Even it’s not that good, and the art sucks(and every game made by me will be), and it has some glitches… I’ll do it next time different.

Here’s the final entry!

My game, One Wall, people say it’s fun, but it’s not polished, balanced, hard, laggy(not very good promotion of my game!)… But fun afterall!
Those are the reasons to do a post-compo, but I don’t know if I have the effort to do that, I have a “busy” weekend schedule,
and it’s quite late for a post-compo than. Better late than never thought.

Why to fix things:

• Right now the “formula” for the wave is: Number of enemys = wave * 10 + wave * wave
  That means:
  Wave 1: 1 * 10 + 1 * 1 = 11
  Wave 2: 2 * 10 + 2 * 2 = 24
  Wave 3: 3 * 10 + 3 * 3 = 39
  And so on…
• Your processor core(XNA uses only one core ) will be 100% loaded if you are at high waves: due to collision detection and probably my update system(it copys arrays, is that smart?)
• It’s maybe a little to hard: Cars drive to fast, you get low money from people.

It wont be easy to do that, and I don’t know if I am going to do that, but when I do I’ll fix & add:

• (hopefully) fix lag at high waves
• better wave system
• balance EVERYTHING!
• polish
• add sounds(?)
• maybe a bonus?

I will let you know if it’s going to happen.

Do you have any opinion? Is my game as bad as I said here? Is it good? Has it ketchup?! Let me know stuff!

This is the idea: You are a DVD/CD-ROM Driver laser. Your task is to read all the data from the disk as long as possible. You can miss 3 times. If you miss more than that, the computer will crash(not yours of course!).
But there’s a bug in the driver of the driver: It’ll speed up. How long can you prevent the computer from crashing?

This is the progress so far.

Oh, how I came up with this idea? Check this out:

This image shows a DVD and a CD under a microscope. A long hole is a 1 and a short hole a 0.

Does anyone have a good name for this game? I thought of “A life of a CD/DVD Writer-laser”, but I think it’s a little too long

Yes!

What I will use:

• C# + XNA(and then make a monogame port after the initial 48 hours(probably))
• Visual Studio 2010
• MS Paint + RealWorld Paint (yes, I am serious. I need to learn how to make graphics I guess.)
  I probably use inkscape if I learn it in time. Or Paint.NET. Whatever.
• pixitracker. Or blipseq. Or sunvox. I’ll see.
• SFXR / JFXR
• My computer and all it’s peripherals
• Internet
• Food & drinks
• Sleep
• My brains

After the weekend it’s time for school again. Nice end of vacation! 😀

I just got up.
Broken.
I was woken up by a mosquito at 5 AM. I however decided that I would look at the theme, and I’ve got some ideas.
I don’t know if they’re good. But I’ll try!

One idea is:
Another game comes out. You want to play it, but it’s splitscreen. You decide to do it anyways.
You control two people in two different worlds, yet you are connecting them.

What was I thinking?

I quit. I cannot brain today. I’ve had a bad idea, and executed it. It’s fun… ish.

Later I realized that this wasn’t fun, I couldn’t make it really fun afterall, and it wasn’t based on the theme.
This was the best idea of all I had thought. I hope it’ll go better next time.
If I look at it, it’s a boring little game that’s split-screen(but mend for one person), created from scratch in roughly 4 hours.

*sigh*. I feel empty.

Interested anyways?
Here’s a download, and here’s the source code(C# XNA).

Good luck,  my fellow Ludum-Darers! It all looks awesome!

I have no idea what I am doing.
My game seems a little off-theme.

Right now it’s basically a 2D space-invaders-ripoff, but then with splitscreen. With ugly space-planes. Yeah.

Here’s a picture anyway:

I am doing the October Challenge this year! I like it so far.

Arround the middle of september, I came up with an idea for a top-down multiplayer boxing game. I started to work on it a little (with the idea in my head “Maybe October Challenge?”), but then the first day of october I realized it was boring and I wasn’t motivated enough.

Then I came up with a idea for a real-time defense game(when I later realized it’s a little like One Wall), and I started working on it but I couldn’t spend as much time I wanted because of school. I had much motivation thought. I wanted to push out a public beta-crap edition wednesday the 15th, but school and real life came in my way again. I got vacation which you would expect to work more on the game, but I had to go to many places. After the vacation, I had to “refresh” my mind again and it felt really weird to abandon my game for a few days. I felt like I should finish it. I also got the feeling like “how am I going to release this?”

Yeah. I am 15 and I feel like I am not a game-designer-programmer-professional-super-nerd-that-has-awesome-games. My goal was(and still) to release a game and make some money out of it, since I clearly have no job but I still have the urge to buy things.

I am wondering if anyone would buy my game. I don’t know if people like the game because it’s fun, I better hope so even thought I made the graphics in MS Paint and the game isn’t that original. To be honest, I rarely buy games(I rarely buy anything because of the money). I only pay for awesome games.

Now the trouble is to actually release it. I hope halloween will be my date, I only need to make it playable and then choose the humble bundle or itch.io, then it should be done(I am not saying I won’t work on it after it’s release! :D).

A screenshot taken while programming the spawn system for the weird enemys. Yes those are evil hamburgers. (taken October 20th)

Today is the day I realize that 2 days isn’t enough to finish my game and sell it. I just had too little time to work on it. It’s mainly because of school, it’s pretty hard sometimes(effort) and it requires much time.

If I am going to sell a game, it must be good. I am not selling a half-finished buggy game that is not fun. I always imagine like my game is going to be reviewed by the AVGN.
The next question is what is good. What I call good is a fun game, that’s designed & progrmmed with care. Like most of the games here.

I am not abandoning my game. No. I want to release it. That’s why I am doing this October Challenge. “Make and release a game!” That’s why I came up with a plan with three phases:

1. The publish phase (2 october – 31 october)
   This is the phase where the game gets made. This one is free, playable, fun. But not the end product, it’s not good enough to set it for sell.
   This is rougly the current test version with the stupid things removed.
   Halloween will be the release date!
2. The release phase (1 november – 15 november(?))
   In this phase I’ll add more gameplay to the game, fix bugs, add more stuff, etc. I’ll set it for sale then. Then it’s somewhat finished.
   More “buildings” are added, headquarter is finished, things are finetuned, more enemies…
3. The finetuning phase (15 november – ???)
   In this phase I’ll just work on the game, while it’s actually released. For example: Planetary Annihilation is finished, but there are still people working on it and adding some features ‘n stuff.
   After this phase, the game is done. It’s finished now.
   So this will be just improving things and add moar stuff! 😀

Of course this is just a plan, my old plan didn’t work either! 😛
So yeah, I’ve lost the October Challenge. But I just don’t want to sell some crappy game just because a challenge is forcing me to it.

Okay. So expect to see me delevering some work the next few weeks! For the one dollar!

(Excuse me for my bad english over here. I am dyslectic and it’s late for my feeling)

Well, at least the first stadium of the game! 😀

At the beginning of the month, I expected that I’d have my game finished, and that everyone started buying it and I would make Minecraft-money(Okay not that last thing)… But it turned out to be different. I had too little time to work on it.
But instead, my game finished it’s first development stadium! And you can play it, thought it isn’t done. I’d love to get some feedback! Have fun playing it!

(Click the image for more info!)

EDIT: And oh, for the those who are interested… Here’s the timelapse!