This will be my first Ludum Dare, I hope it’ll be fun and I’ll get a fun game out of it 😀

I’ll join the Jam.

Coding will be done in C++, Allegro 5 and boost if needed.

I thought I would have more after 13 hours but w/e it’s starting to get somewhere. I’m pretty sure my idea is over ambitious but I’ll see it through to the end.

Whoever wants to decompose a kitten like creature can do so with the day 1 build of “The Lost Laboratory” availabe  here.

Moving is done with the arrow keys. to interact with the creature get close to it, click it to kill it then click it to pick it up, then walk through the door . Get close to the Genalyser(tm) and click it to open it, then click it again to drop the creature into it, then click it again to let it decompose the creature. You can repeat this process until you are satisfied.

I’ll try to make this fun tomorrow.

Whew 72 hours are really short 😀

The game is finished and I am actually proud of it.  I hope at least one of you will enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed making it ^^

That’s it for today, I’ll try to write a post mortem someday, timelapses will be included also 😉

So ludum dare 24 is over and The Lost Laboratory finished. It’s time for a retrospective.

A quick overview of what went right and what not:

What went right:

• Planning the game
• Coding
• Graphics
• Audio
• Testing

What went wrong:

• Content
• Interface

It was really motivating to only have 72 hours to make a game. I worked 33 hours in total on the game.

It was really fun to explore the theme.  At first I didn’t like the theme because I could only think of generic approaches to it. But after an hour of  idea generation I finally found something which made me think “This might actually be really fun”. After having a closer look at it I noticed that it might be a little too ambitious. This brings me to my first what went right point.

Planning the game 

To get something playable in the 72 hours I had to cut features. The goals that I set for myself have been: 1 animal, 1 ability, 1 other room and the core mechanic which included the Genalyser, the Dnapter and a visualization  of the progress. I had all this done by the end of day 2 which was really good, as I could spend the little time I would have(I could only work at night on the last day) on polishing the game.

 Coding 

Another thing that went right was the coding. I knew allegro, boost and C++ very well and having a basic framework also helped a lot. I didn’t run into any problems. Bugs got fixed pretty fast and no crash issues. I haven’t done a game like this before but I could use my experience to solve all coding demands. I didn’t have to make any workarounds either as I made the engine myself so I didn’t feel like I was pushed in a direction I don’t want to go. I like to use the new C++11 features especially auto. I also found out that I could combine an stl map with an enum class and have an array with a readable index which can’t go out of bounds this way without using defines or casting to int. I love it when I discover a new way of using something 😀

For everyone who’s interested here are the tools and libraries I used for coding:

• Code::Blocks (svn 8248)
• Mingw 4.6.1
• allegro 5.0.7
• boost 1.48

Graphics 

I’m really happy with the graphics, although I could’ve done a better job with the tiles. I don’t do graphics that much but it worked out pretty well. The style I choose for the graphics is pretty simplistic which made making the assets a little easier. Still it took me around an hour per asset, with some exceptions. It was really relaxing to do art from time to time. Animating also went really well. I like Paint.Net more and more now. But I still wish there would be some features from the normal Paint and from Photoshop, but it’s ok. I just need to learn the hotkeys. It’s annoying that I can’t select multiple layers and work on them.

My tools:

• Paint.Net (for pixel art and animation)
• Paint (for quick pixel art)
• Photoshop CS4 (for larger art)

Audio

This is one of the things that went reeeeeeally well :D. I guess this is the case because I had a dedicated sound artist. All sounds were done in the last two hours or so. He did a really good job. He even dished an amazing background track out in no more then 10 minutes. I wonder how the audio would’ve been if he had been there for the whole 72 hours. Here’s a little post mortem from him:

Hey guys, i’m SeniorHeuser.

I’ll just add my two cents about the audio editing and sound design (well, 2 hours aren’t really sound design but whatever ). I was sent a textfile by Kayelgee listing the sounds he needed with information about frame delays and frame counts, a working build of the game and most importantly the opportunity to replace the files „live“ while working on the sound effects and music. That helped a lot and that’s one of the many reasons i like to work with Kayelgee. The sound effects were put together in Adobe Audition 3.0 using free sounds from the internet. The background music was scrammed together in a sugar-induced 10 minutes creativity flash using Mixcraft 4 and my good old Yamaha Clavinova CVP-35 which apparently went quite to his satisfaction So THAT went well.

What went wrong:

I was not happy about how the effect for the bunker door sounded but time was not on my side, so… I never did sound effects in such a limited amount of time. That said i was shocked how fast one can run out of ideas and sources for sounds. Note to self: Gonna need a good outdoor mic! Definitely a field i will spend more time on ’cause it was a lot of fun being time restricted in a creative manner. Really looking forward to polishing the game post compo!

Testing 

Having a few friends who tested the game helped a lot. The feedback I got fixed a few issues. Different pc configurations, different knowledge and different gaming behavior helped me to fix bugs, typos and awkward design decisions. Yet some design decisions weren’t questioned and ended up being left in the compo edition even though they were bad, BUT ludum dare people are also testing the game and pointed out some interesting sutff. I’m really grateful for every comment you leave.

It’s time to get to the bad guys. The things which went wrong.

Content

As the project was so ambitious and I only really had 2 out of 3 days to work on it the content ended up being a little thin. I would’ve loved to have multiple abilities, multiple rooms, multiple animals and more . But time was short so I decided to have a minimalistic content, but enough to show how the core mechanic works.  So it’s one of the few things that I would’ve liked to work a little more on.

 Interface 

Yes the Interface went wrong. I was so focused on everything else that I made a few design decision which made the interface a little awkward. You have to click multiple times on the Genalyser when you’re holding a cat even though you can’t do anything else then decompose the cat once it’s inside. The Dnapter is missing a List where you can choose which ability you want to upgrade including a indication of how far your research is. The player has an interaction range, yet it’s not shown. Even though the player has to get close to something there is no keyboard button to interact. That’s everything which should’ve been fixed or didn’t exist in the first place. I should have thought more about these things. But at least these issues can and will be fixed in the post compo release at some point.

 Conclusion

So much good stuff a little bad stuff. Overall I’m really happy about how the game turned out. I like it’s idea. It has so much potential I really want to take it further. As this ended up being so content -poor I’m not expecting too high scores except for audio. I’ll be happy with everything that gets at least 2 stars 😀

If you haven’t played The Lost Laboratory yet head over to the game and play it, rate it and leave a comment. I’m happy about every feedback. If you like the idea then stay tuned and watch out for further releases. If you want to be one of the first to get new informations then follow me on twitter @cp_kayelgee .

Tags: post-mortem

I’ll be joining the Jam, as I might need that extra day 😀

I’ll use this as an opportunity to try Unity 4.

3D modeling will be done in Blender.

Merry Ludum Dare everyone

Tags: ld25, unity

I’m in(Unity Webplayer)

I will be using Unity obviously 😀

Sound :sfxr

Graphics: Photoshop CS6, Paint, Paint.Net, Blender(maybe)

I will most likley join the jam as I might get help with music.

Tags: #NOKILL

Time for a little break.

Let’s start off with a link to the current version

The first day was fun so far. Idea finding phase was super fun and ended in the idea of “When Arthur found love”. A story about a little factory robot discovering what else there is beside his little workplace. Will he find love eventually or will he stay a heartless machine? Follow him in his quest and help him find the best usage for his limited abilities. But remember you can use his abilities only ONCE…per level. Set up your orders and watch him drive, turn, fly, magnetize and grab his way through mindblowing levels.

I hope I get everyting done I have planned. I’ll try to focus more on polishing the game this time and I hope I’ll have enough time to make it look fun to watch Arthur complete your orders.

So far I’ve struggled a little bit with Blender and had forgotten more about Unity then I thought. So a little more warmup would’ve been nice, but I think I’ll manage to finish anyways.

This concludes my little recap of day 1. I’m pretty excited about the game idea. How about you guys? Are you excited for my game too? Are you excited for your own games? If so let me know  😀

I wonder is there a list of games who participated and succeded in the #nokill challenge?

I’ve seen so many “you only get one shot” games that I’m really interested what people came up with for the #nokill challenge with this theme.

Even though I forgot to mention it anywhere I actually did a #nokill game 😀 Check it out if you want:

Post me your #nokill games in the comments if there is no list yet

Tags: #NOKILL

Codeprolls will participate this jam.

Tools will be Unity, sfxr, blender, Audacity, Paint, Photoshop and what else we might think will help us in making the greatest game EVER.

Sadly I have to write it but we give up. Our idea was too ambitious, our teamwork not as good as we thought, our time managment not on point and our real life didn’t let us work the whole time aswell.

Much is done but nothing is really playable so we won’t submit it.

BUT it was a good experience and we still want to finish what we started and we will in time.

So after I read the Theme I was like meh I have no good ideas, but after brainstorming with some friends I have something I want to make so I guess I’m in.

The entry will be named Warlords of Connected Space.

You’ll play as a Warlord selling weapons to warring Planets which are connected through state of the art Warpgate technology(such innovation I know).

Tools:

Unity3D, Blender, Paint.net, Photoshop, Audacity, sfxr and what not

This’ll be a jam entry cause it’s more fun to work in a team yay.

Stay tuned.

So I decided to tackle the October Challange.

First of all I liked my LD30 game. I didn’t write a post-mortem yet but overall I was very happy with it(even though the scores were pretty low).

I want to fix the problems the game has. The UI is not the best. Players got confused by it more then once.Also I want it to beusable on mobile which it currently wouldn’t be. I want to up the visuals. Add some eye candy and maybe try to use something else besides color to differentiate stuff. The audio needs work too as some sounds are pretty annoying after a little time. Music is fine but I have some ideas to improve that aswell. Finally I’ll build in some little gameplay tweaks and will try to implement a proper Tutorial because most players where overwhelmed by the complexity.

That I think I’m quite able to do. But I am concerned about what comes after this. I am like many others someone who hasn’t properly released a game yet. My only public games are on the Ludum Dare page and one hidden in some forum waaay in the past 😀

So my plan is to release the “final” game on itch.io and the Google Play Store. I’m not sure about pricing to be honest. I was thinking about placing it at 1$ or below on the Play Store and make it free(pay what you want) on itch.io. I’m not sure if this is a good idea. Once that is done I want to make the game visible to as many people as possible. But honestly I don’t know how to do it. I guess I could send my game to some Indie reviewers but it feels strange to be honest. I’ll have to look that up and get some feedback on that topic. Because I really want people to enjoy my game.

Lastly I’m not sure about taxes here in Germany. I haven’t found any infos what you need to do if you start selling games and what costs/paper work are associated with that. If anyone can give me some directions I would be really grateful.

Tags: im in, october challange

The first week is coming to a close. Let’s see what I’ve got done already.

Since the beginning of October Challange I’ve been only working on the UI. I made a mockup how the UI could look on mobile. Which looks like this:

Setup

After that I wrote a short TODO list to get a general idea what needs to be done. To make things easier I setup git + bitbucket. After that I grabbed the Unity 4.6 beta because I wanted to try the new GUI for the October Challange. Also I installed the Android emulator Andy so I don’t have to use a physical device to do a quick test.

Progress

I got a little done in through the week. Mostly I’ve been replacing the old GUI with the new GUI which worked mostly like a charm. I got stuck here and there because I wanted to try out some stuff and because I didn’t know that Layouts weren’t under UI in the Component menu… I’m quite happy what I got done with the time I spent.

I’ve got the main menu done with no special art, which I want to change later. Most of the ingame GUI is done with a first draft of the final art(it might actually stay that way). What’s missing is the UI element when you click a planet and the upgrade costs at the Station.

Plans for week 2

I’ll finish my first iteration of the new GUI this week. This should be done before the weekend as most of it is already done. I might replace the main menu art so it all has the same feel.

I’ll have to think about how I want to make the planet UI as I didn’t like the original one. It was unnecessary that you had to type in how many weapons you wanted to sell. In most case you would want to sell as many as possible anyways. Also the information wasn’t where the player was looking. I’ll try to redesign this.

With this the GUI should be done and will need some testing to improve it further. After that I want to add some better feedback for the player to show what is happening. I’m thinking about throwing out some particles whenever something happens, e.g. when a ship sells weapons, when a ship arrives at the station, when a planet gets conquered, when a planet rebels. I’ll try to add effects to everything and if it is too much I’ll tone it down. Also I’ll try to look at the audio. Reiterate over the current sound effects and add new ones to the new effects.

This should be enough for week 2. I’m not even sure I can do all this but I’ll try.

Random Future Thoughts

I have some ideas how a trailer for WoCS will look like. I would love to make a little over the top trailer like BattleBlock Theater did. Short, hectic but the gameplay has to be clear. That’s what I have in mind. I’m not sure if this will happen before the end of october.

I’ll reserve the last week of october for all the organizational stuff like registering for Google Play Store and legal matters.

I’m still not sure how to spread the word about my game. I’ll try to keep up a weekly report on here to get a little visiblity. And maybe make a devlog on tigsource.

The 2nd week is over and I am proud to announce I managed to work on WoCS everyday since the end of september. That’s a little achievment for me 😀

Now onto the actual wrap up of the week.

UI, UI and more UI

Yes I wanted to be done with the UI by the end of week 2, but as it happens I’m not. Most of the functionality is done though. I still need to change the visuals for all the menus but this shouldn’t be too big of a problem. After that I would say the UI is done, until I have played with it a little and have a feel for the new UI.

I already have a small concern that I will need a new station UI because as it is now it might not work well on mobile devices. And as stated by a comment in the orignial LD entry this screen is taking you away from the action.

There are still some little tweaks here and there that need to be implemented. I need to disable the time controls whenever the player shouldn’t be able to use them i.e. when he’s in a menu. Also the time controls are just dummies yet.

Not only UI happened

Because working on the UI got a little boring I decided to throw in some fun work. I played a little with visual feedback. When the player earns money the counter will actually count up or down as seen below.

I also tried to add a trail renderer to the ships, but the result didn’t make me happy so I scrapped that again. I might reiterate over this but I’m not sure about that.

A small gameplay change made it in already aswell. I didn’t like the fact that planets closer to the player station were “better” because your ships would arrive earlier. It felt like I had no choice in the early game but that I had to hope that I don’t fuck up the universe by selling to the closest planet. Now the ships will travel the same time to each planet. This should enable players to control the universe a little better… I hope.

Another little change is that the player can play a 50 days game. Which usually is the point where the player gets full control anyways. The player can still play for 100 days, but to be honest unless you’re trying to get the highest possible score by min maxing and uber timing everything you aren’t getting anything out of it yet. I try to think of a way to change this. Maybe pirates start to show up after 50 day. Maybe the size limit on military ships will increase. I’m not sure yet. If any of you guys has any ideas let me know 😀

Random Thoughts

Again I’ll throw out some of my random thoughts and plans for the future.

Planets should grow over time and not just get huge with a big weapon shipment. This is pretty easy to implement actually but it’s still on my TODO list.

Ships that are waiting at your station can be shown flying in a circle around the station. I like the idea of showing my numbers in different ways. I’ll still keep the number in the header so you don’t have to count manually. I would like to show money and weapons aswell somehow. Like a pile of gold. But in space this seems a little dumb. Do you guys have any ideas for a nice visualization?

I like the time controls. They will definetly stay. But what I don’t like is that the game doesn’t auto pause when I am inside the planet menu or any menu except the station upgrade screen. It’s obvious that the player doesn’t want the game to run in the background while he is thinking about how many weapons he should sell to the planet. Also the UI buttons for the time controls should be hidden when I’m not supposed to use them.

Pong it is. I’ll make the simplest pong I can in Unity 5. No extras. I might change my mind about the extras…

Tags: #miniLD58

It’s done a pong with nothing extra. I decided to cut all the features before I even started.

So I ended up makeing a simple Pong clone. At least I finished what I wanted to do.

So if you want to play a simple pong that might be harder then it seems at first go ahead and try my Simple Speedy Pong.

Tags: #miniLD58