I’ve been following the Ludum Dares for a while already, and now I have decided to take part in one. This will be my first Ludum Dare but my second game jam. My first one was the GitHub Game Off in November which was a whole month (and I still didn’t finish my game). I’m curious as to what I’ll be able to do in only 2 days.

Like in the Game Off, I will be using the Dart language to create my game and it’ll be a HTML5/Canvas game. I will also be using an Entity System Framework which I ported from Java to Dart and the simpleaudio library which is a wrapper around the HTML5 AudioContext.

Links:

dartemis (this is the Entity System Framework, the Java original is this one: Artemis )

simpleaudio

Tools: GIMP, Audacity

And this has been my first game, which I did for the GitHub Game Off: GitHub Space Off (works best in Chrome)

Except for world domination?

I’m sure you know…

That’s right. That’s what every Villain wants. And YOU are the Villain and will get it:

FRICKIN’ sharks with FRICKIN’ laser beams attached to their FRICKIN’ heads!!!

Play a first version here (works best in Chrome and IE 10, Firefox has some random framerates)

It’s my first LD and I’ve been programming for almost 10 hours. Took quite some time until I finally came up with this idea. I hope I’ll be able to finish it tomorrow.

TODOs:

• add stuff to blow up with those frickin’ lasers
• sound effects
• scores for blowing up stuff that doesn’t exist yet
• and hopefully some better graphics
• have it run smoothly in Firefox too

Tags: lasers, sharks

Hi everyone,

I’m in for the second time and this time I plan to actually finish.

Since the last LD I’ve been updating dartemis and ported CanvasQuery from JavaScript to Dart. I will be using both libraries for this LD.

• Platform: HTML5
• Language: Dart
• Libraries: dartemis, CanvasQuery
• Graphics: GIMP and Aseprite
• Sounds: sfxr

Have fun and good luck to everyone!

I’ve finally finished my first game for a LD.

And while the theme was hard at first it allowed me to do some things I haven’t done before. I had no idea what to do the first day so I just created features most of my previous games were missing: Sound effects, Achievements, Scoring, HighScore.

And today I had the idea to have lots of different minimalistic games. I was able to put five (more or less different) games in a single game. Have fun playing it

for the 3rd time. And I’m hoping the winning theme won’t be 10 seconds, otherwise I might feel forced to create a sequel to my last Ludum Dare game 20 seconds.

I will keep using my language of choice: Dart
I’ll be using these libraries for my game: dartemis, dartemis_toolbox and simple_audio.
Images will be created using GIMP and/or Aseprite and packed using TexturePacker.
Bfxr will be the source for my sound effects. And maybe Audacity as well.

Good luck to everyone and create more than a thousand great games once more

More than 1 day is over, and this is where I stand:

Not much to do there yet, but finally got polygon collision detection for the first time in one of my games. Took me quite some time. Started implementing it yesterday evening and couldn’t get it to work right, so I went to bed. In the morning I saw my bug and was able to get it running. Check it out yourself.

Also, this is my first game where I used checkered paper and a pencil. The theme was Minimalism, right? Hello?

Anyways, got to have breakfast now. This will be a long day if I want add all the stuff to the game I am thinking about.

It’s starting to turn into a game:

Every 10 seconds a feature is added to the game.

• 10 seconds: a first graphics update
• 20 seconds: sound (tested in Chrome, Firefox and IE)
• 30 seconds: much
• 40 seconds: more
• 50 seconds: to
• 60 seconds: come

The game will only be limited by my artistic and creative skills :).

For this Ludum Dare I was so hoping for another theme than 10 seconds. The reason: for the last LD I made a game called 20 seconds and I didn’t want to create the same kind of game again. I was pretty disappointed when it became the theme with such a huge lead. Even though I was hoping for some other theme I also thought about what to do for 10 seconds. And this is my game:

Alien Attack

About the game:
Because I already did it, I did not want to create a game that was made of many games that last 10 seconds. I decided to create a game, that would get more features over time. So every 10 seconds, this game gets a new feature. In this LD version these features include graphical updates, sounds, enemy types and a simple message system/achievements. There is a lot more I would have liked to add.

What I liked:

• For the first time I made several status updates and regularly deployed the current version. This allowed me to get a little bit of feedback and see whether the idea itself was good or not
• I really liked the way the pencil drawn and scanned graphics worked out. Wouldn’t have expected explosions to look so cool when drawn with a pencil.
• The way I do the loading of required resources. Only 10 seconds before a feature becomes active, I start to fetch the required resources. So at the start of the game neither sound nor other graphics are loaded. This keeps initial loading times low

Things I learned:

• I did not do any collision detection for polygons before. Read about it on Saturday and started to implement the algorithm while reading about it.
• How to do (single frame) explosion graphics. They were the last thing I added on Sunday before I submitted my game. I just was too tired to make them right, so they are kind of cut off.

Things that went wrong:

• The name. I forgot a name for the game. Didn’t want to call it some variation of ten seconds. Came up with Alien Attack when I filled out the submit-form, because the player ship looks kind of alien. By now, I’ve come up with a name I like much more: Featurama. If I am going to add more features to the game I’ll definitely rename it.
• Implementing collision detection for polygons in the evening is kinda bad. I added some bugs and never got it running in the evening. Only in the next morning I was able to see the bugs and fix them. Should have gone to bed earlier.
• Graphics. I don’t like creating graphics and I don’t like the graphics I create. But as with the explosions, at least I still seem to be able to learn a few things. So maybe I’ll get better. Hopefully.
• My submitted game contained a bug that made the game freeze up. It didn’t do so in my development environment but if I had tested with another browser I would have realized. So, another thing I learned: Test your game one last time, even if you are too tired to go on.

With that, another link to my game and I’m off to play and rate a few more games of you.

The LD one year ago was my first one and this will be my 3rd weekend in a row doing a game. First one was for the Mini LD, second one was for the warmup weekend and now LD28!

I’ll do a HTML5 game with Dart (as I’ve always been doing).
I’ll use: dartemis, dartemis_toolbox and simple_audio. Additionally I will use a little library I made to get me started on developing the actual game faster by reducing the boilerplate code I have to write (gamedev_helpers still adding a few things before the LD starts).
Images will be created using GIMP and packed using TexturePacker.
Audacity for sound.

Also: #NOKILL

Finally finished my first game in this Ludum Dare. I had a lot of fun and finishing a game feels great! I’ll do a Post Mortem later this week but for now, I just have to sleep. It’s almost 2 am and I have to work in a few hours.

Enjoy the game!

Tags: #NOKILL, LD28

for my 5th LD!

I’ll be using:

• Platform: HTML5
• Language: Dart
• Libraries: dartemis and whatever is available at pub and could be useful for the theme
• base code: for setting up my workspace and some utilities for less boilerplate code
• Graphics: Krita (recently discovered) and/or Inkscape, depending on my needs
• Sound: Audacity and sfxr

Just so that I know what I have to do (not necessarily in this order and subject to change). Feel free to copy.

[X] Have a checklist (4:20 hours into the compo)
[X] Come up with an idea (3:30 hours into the compo)
[X] Sketch the idea on a piece of paper (6:00 hours into the compo)
[X] Implement the game (starting 6 hours into the compo, finished 1:30 hours before the end)
[X] Create a winning/losing screen (43:30 hours into the compo)
[X] Create a menu (43:30 hours into the compo)
[X] Have a name – Castle Engineer (4:00 hours into the compo)
[X] Write a description
[X] Post the game
[X] Advertise the game
[X] Write a progress report before going to sleep
[X] Write a Post Mortem
[X] Play and rate at least 100 games

Less than 14 hours to go and I’ve finally reached a point where the main stuff works.

Now I just have to add more content, nicer graphics, blood, fire, sound and maybe even animations….. I’m doomed!!

Anyways. Did you ever wonder who pulls the strings when you visit a castle to free the princess or to loot the treasures? Beneath the surface, there are a lot of castle engineers who keep the traps and everything running.

Try it yourself
Controls: Move with A and D, activate Traps with W.

At the moment there are only spikes, but more stuff will be added in the next few hours.

Refer to this first sketch to see what kind of traps I’m planning to add:

Working on checking all the items on my TODO-List, this is the Post Mortem to my game Castle Engineer.

In this game, you (obviously) play a castle engineer. A castle engineer works beneath the castle and usually just stands in front of a button and presses it every time the connected trap deactivates. But on this very day, every other castle engineer is at the beach, so you have to take care of all the traps in the castle. And the heroes know.

What went right

• my TODO-List – did help (but could have been a bit more specific about the implement the game point
• Krita – used this software for the first time for the LD, and with a little setup was able to do my “pixel art”
• Pixel Art – for the first time, I have an image that could really be called pixel art, the treasure chest: It was the last image i created and it is my best looking image ever.
• The protagonist – I don’t know what he is, but that’s a good thing, I suppose
• Created my first platformer – so far, I’ve only done top-down games. Had to come up with some other way of doing collision detection because just checking with every tile in the game would have been a performance killer. And this went pretty well. It’s not perfect, but that’s something to do in a post compo version.
• My first sketch of the idea – did it before writing any code. It’s the first time I even did something like this. Worked out pretty well and the game looks pretty much as planned.
• The heroes AI – also known as artificial stupidity, but could have been worse.
• The sounds – I just love doing sounds myself, they are the most fun, or to quote one commenter “adorably hilarious”. Who needs 8bit sounds if you have a mouth and a mic?

What went wrong

• added a bug right in the beginning of coding the game. Discovered it when I had the first trap-thing that moved from left to right. The fix was easy, but I got stuck there for a while, thinking about how to fix it correctly.
• Got kinda discouraged on Saturday evening, stopped developing early in the evening and was too tired later on to start again. But was back to full strength on Sunday and coded, drew and recorded sounds for ~15 hours all day long until after midnight.
• FPS-Rate on Firefox is extremely flaky, made it impossible to work with the delta between frames. Now I’ve got a fixed delta and everything is predictable. This even fixed some weird bug I had with the heroes falling or going through walls, still not sure why.
• Used the dev version of the Dart Editor and updated on Saturday morning. The thing just didn’t stop updating taking my fans into full power mode. Also content assist broke. Switched to the stable version which worked flawlessly. Lesson: don’t update if it’s working and you need to use it at the moment.

Features I did drop because of the time limit

• Would have liked to add some individuality to the heroes. Some being brave, or faster and more heroes obviously. I would have also liked to make them more intelligent. Like jumping over a trap if they see one right before them.
• My initial idea had some resource management included. A specific amount of energy available for trap activation.
• Wanted to have some way to configure trap. Like the type of each trap, or the path of a trap and with different effects on the heroes. But that would have been to much complexity on top.

And now I’m off to work on the last item of my checklist, to play and rate at least a hundred games.

And for the sake of it, a hypnotizing gif of my game:

And now that you are hypnotized, one more link to my game Castle Engineer.

for my 6th LD!

I’ll be using:

• Platform: HTML5
• Language: Dart
• Libraries: dartemis and whatever is available at pub and could be useful for the theme
• base code: for setting up my workspace and some utilities for less boilerplate code
• Graphics: Krita and/or Inkscape, depending on my needs
• Sound: Audacity and maybe bfxr, but the last few times I just recorded stuff instead
• a TODO list, because that worked out quite nice the last time around

[X] Obligatory I’m in (2 weeks before the compo)
[X] Have a checklist (2 weeks before the compo)
[X] Come up with an idea (~9 hours after start)
[X] Sketch the idea on a piece of paper (several ideas until I had an inspiring one)
[X] Implement the game
[ ] Create a winning/losing screen (didn’t have any energy left)
[X] Create a menu (a few hours before the deadline)
[X] Have a name (a few hours before the deadline)
[X] Write a description
[X] Post the game
[ ] Advertise the game
[ ] Write a progress report (didn’t have the time)
[ ] Write a Post Mortem
[ ] Play and rate at least 100 games

for the last Ludum Dare of 2014.

My tools will be the same as every time.

Platform: Web
Language: Dart
Libs: dartemis and other stuff on pub if needed.
Base Code: for setting up my workspace and some utilities to reduce the amount of boilerplate code
Graphics: Krita
Sound: Audacity and maybe bfxr
Other Stuff: a ☃ TODO list (first one was awesome, but didn’t even check everything on my second one, hoping for the best for this third time with a few more things to check and a ☃ to help)

[☃] Obligatory I’m in (3 days before the compo, woah I’m late!!)
[☃] Have a checklist (3 days before the compo)
[☃] Come up with an idea (basic idea 1 hour after LD started)
[☃] Sketch the idea on a piece of paper (11 hours after start)
[☃] Implement the game (started 11 hours after theme announcement)
[☃] Add sound (simple bfxr sounds 8 hours before the end)
[ ] Make it juicy
[ ] Have a winning/losing condition
[ ] Create a winning/losing screen
[ ] Create a menu for starting the game
[☃] Have a name (Shrunken Traveler, 15 hours before the end)
[ ] Write a description
[ ] Post the game (It’s neither complete nor fun)
[ ] Advertise the game
[☃] Write a progress report
[ ] Write a Post Mortem
[ ] Play and rate at least 100 games

Tried to do something for the MiniLD, but didn’t invest enough time and looked at dancing kittens all my prePURRration time instead.

The second day is starting for me now. Did the basic stuff yesterday and besides a lot of drawing, the actual gameplay has to be implemented today.

The idea of my game is, that some space-time-bending scientist/traveler had an accident and ended up shrunken on an old LCD-screen. His only working item is his materializer which he has to use on things on screenshots to get the required items to repair his space-time-bending machine and to return to his normal size.

My initial scribble looks like this:

The current state of the game is this:

And now I have to draw some screenshots, items and monsters.

Creating my game ‘Replay’ was an awesome experience. I hope it’s a sidescroller you’ll also like.

I’ve learned quite a bit. For the first time I used WebGL in a game jam after I ported one of my games to WebGL only half a month ago to learn how to use it (the port isn’t finished yet, because I just had to do this jam, but if you want to take a look: unfinished WebGL version, finished WebGL-free version). This is the first game which isn’t as static as my older games. I’ve got fancy animations and cool parallax scrolling.

Things that went great:
* getting all those images into WebGL as textures worked without a hitch
* finally some animations and parallax scrolling!
* the game has a really cool ending
* came up with a name really early

Things that went bad:
* I wanted to use free sprites for my character and environment, but couldn’t find images for everything and had to do some art on my own (every good looking image is not made by me ;))
* Couldn’t use the whole week because there was some really annoying disturbance that prevented me from working on my game
* didn’t have time to add a start to the game, so you have to start at the ending

Please play and comment on my game

Great theme for this Mini LD! I think I’ll just reverse my development process and start by doing graphics and sound and do the programming and add some gameplay at the end. I hope time is on my side.

I’ll use my usual tools (Dart, etc.) but I’ll use WebGL for the first time in a Jam. I started learning WebGL about a month ago, so I hope it’ll work out. But I’ll still do something 2D.

You’ll probably be able to play my super awesome game here.

I’ll be in once again. I didn’t finish my game the last time because I was bored by it and I couldn’t participate the LD before, so I seriously need to create a game again.

So far I’ve used the Dart Editor for programming but as the editor has been discontinued and I still want to use Dart, I’ll use either Atom or WebStorm EAP this time. I’ll use the Warmup Weekend to see which one I’m more comfortable with.

Platform: Web
Editor/IDE: Atom or WebStorm EAP
Graphics: Krita (and maybe GIMP or Inkscape)
Sounds: My mouth (or sfxr.me) and Audacity
Code: dartemis as my ECS and a lib that contains some base classes and helps me to quickly create the boilerplate code and github pages. Also whatever comes in handy from pub.

I just hope the summer heat will be gone until the Jam, otherwise I may die while coding (no need to mourn).