After being late to my first Ludum Dare, having trouble deciding on a design based on the theme, and not even opening Visual Studio until 12 hours into the competition, I have finally made some progress!

Basically you just play as a guy who is in underground caves and is searching for a long lost treasure, and a way out. It will be on one large level (or at least that’s my plan) and you need to explore and collect items to unlock different and hidden areas. (Those yellow rectangles are animated coins that spin, btw)

I’m using C++ and an SDL engine that I have been working on. For my crappy programmer art I’m just using MS Paint. My platform is Windows.

GOLD!!!

Well this weekend was great. I had a great time working on my first Ludum Dare and can’t wait to compete again! Although the weekend had its ups and downs, it was a great experience. However I was not able to actually deploy my game on time as an official entry, due to some stupid timing and unpreparedness on my part. My game is practically complete though, and I will post it up later in the week, as well as a description of how my first LD went, what went wrong, what went right, and what I will do to make the next LD a success.

Good luck to everyone who has submitted an entry!

This was my second LD attempted and I came out pretty strong this time (hell, I actually submitted my entry this time…with 3 minutes to spare). I was pressed for time and didn’t think I would even do it but I did. Some big things that sucked:

I didn’t like the theme, so I couldn’t come up with anything for a while, and didn’t start until 1 or 2 pm on Saturday.

I didn’t post any progress, screen shots, desktop shots, anything. I definitely won’t do that next time.

I waited until the last minute to go through DLL hell. I didn’t even know how to distribute last LD, and didn’t learn from last time and do some tests during the week. That was good ol’ procrastination making me suffer again. I could have spent some more time cleaning it up but that took a backseat until 20 minutes before the deadline.

Anyways…here it is…a puzzle game called Hungry Hungry Castaways.

If you tried playing my game, Hungry Hungry Castaways, and it would not run, it was probably because you did not have the Visual Studio Redistributable. I have fixed this now so you shouldn’t need it to run the game. If it still won’t work try downloading the Visual Studio Redistributable.

Hungry Hungry Castaways Postmortem

Summary of the Weekend:

On Friday night I had no idea of something to make based on islands so I decided to sleep it over. I didn’t have much when I woke up either, so around 1 pm on Saturday (15 hours in) I decided to make a simple match-3 puzzle game about collecting food to survive while deserted on an island. I decided on a selection mechanic of dragging the mouse to select the group of pieces to be cleared and collected. On and off I spent the rest of the day working on getting the game up and running, i.e. setting up the game board, creating random pieces, having pieces drop down after being cleared, etc. Then I started coding hardcore from around 6-12 pm. On Sunday I worked on scoring and the “delivery” of pieces, where after collecting a certain amount, new pieces would be dropped on the board. I hit a wall when I spent hours trying to get the game to run on other computer (which was the main cause of my failure to submit last December for LD16). I finally got through DLL hell to spend 30 minutes on some polish and visual aspects, submitting the game 3 minutes before the deadline. Over the course of the weekend I probably spent only around 12 hours of coding (plus 2-3 hours for figuring out how to distribute).

What Went Wrong:

– I did not to any pre-competition planning. I just jumped in there on Saturday without a thought. Getting the game to work on other computers was a pain, and I should’ve learned from last time not to wait until last minute to do that.

– Also related to a lack of planning, I wanted to add audio to the game, but I have never used the audio library for SDL nor have I recorded any sounds for games before. I once again should’ve handled this during the week prior to the competition.

– The scoring system was very arbitrary, and I didn’t put much thought into it. I made the minimum score for round completion too high and should’ve done some play-testing with my siblings or my friends. Also,I should have put more time and thought into a reason why when people die on the island or get weaker, you don’t need less points to continue.

– A few other things like ability to pause the game and a display of the score that is needed to finish the round would have been good additions that I never put in.

What Went Right:

– I really liked the core gameplay mechanic (drag to select) for selecting pieces, and thanks to the feedback I’ve gotten so far from fellow developers who judged my game here at Ludum Dare, and a few friends who have played the game, I have found out that other people do as well.

– I finished! This was my first time submitting to Ludum Dare (second time competing), and I’m glad I was able to get it done and enter it in the competition.

Overall I think the game came out really well. I may do a post-compo version to add a few things and fix the scoring system, and will definitely explore the drag-to-select mechanic more (hopefully sometime soon). I’d also like to thank everyone who judged my game so far (and anyone who does so over the next week and a half).

(If you haven’t played the game, here is the entry page)

SOME OF MY CREW STARVED TO DEATH

I’ll miss you forever, Frank!

I love that guy. He was a last minute addition but did add a bit of humor to an otherwise morbid game.

triplefox says …

Match-3 never felt so “life-or-death” before. I played longer than I thought I would, mostly to see if I could actually get a good result. Finally got one after cracking open the code and seeing that it requires 2500 points on day 1.

Something that bugs me though is that it should become easier to survive as more people starve :/

Not displaying the points needed to complete a round was a bad choice. By the time I realized that, however, it was too late. And yes, I thought about that too. Unfortunately I was well into the weekend and too far along the game when I thought about that, and decided that although hit didn’t make sense, I couldn’t think of a way to fix that problem without changing the gameplay. If I did it again I would’ve made people get weaker, not die, and therefore they need more food to keep alive (although it would eventually come to a point where everyone else died, so it was a dead end story that only dragged down the game).

When the instructions came up I had a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT idea of what the game would be, and was a bit disappointed when I saw that it was some kind of Match-3, but it ended up beeing really fun, and I kept playing for a while.

Good Point: The drag and select mechanic was very creative!
Bad Point: No sound besides the cries of help from my crew inside of my head.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear in the instructions what kind of game it was, but I’m glad you though it was fun! And thank you, I ‘ve never seen that in a match-3 game before and I thought I’d try it out. I’m working on exploring this mechanic further and I’m currently working on a new game that I’m going to put a lot more thought and polish into, including some music and sound effects my friend is helping me out with.

The game was a lot of fun, not sure about the theme use, but I played it and enjoyed.

Thanks but I don’t see how it doesn’t fit the theme.

I liked the drag-to-select feature.
Also, any game with beards is OK in my book!

Me too! And yes, beards are awesome.

I’m on the same page as Kavu. It feels like the instructions are for a different game.

It was very addictive, but I realized I just wasn’t getting any better at it, so I stopped.

Yeah sorry about that :/ And In my new game based on the same mechanic, I will be adding a lot more to the gameplay to keep it interesting and fun to play even as you progress.

Great interpretation of the theme.

Thank you! You seem to be one of few who think that way.

Neat It uses the same mechanic I have in a never finished game of mine. Dangerously addictive.
Polish’er up and add music/sound!

Working on it 😀

I like that you tried to put a twist on this type of matching game but unfortunately I think the changes to the formula detract from the gameplay. Why make the user drag over each tile instead of just selecting all adjacent foodstuffs? And not sure what you gain making R and D manual operations.

The theme worked surprisingly well here. It really added humor and narrative to the game. Esp. like the bugs. Ewww. Overall fun but gameplay a little odd.

I liked the drag-to-select mechanic because it added a sense of challenge where you didn’t just need to find a match, but chose how to clear it. In a match with 6 pieces together, you could clear all 6 or clear 3 then three (which would actually give you more points the way I had the point system set up). Plus I think that I adds more thought to clearing because you can’t just click around randomly to get clears. But I’d like to hear more about what you have to say in regards to your view on the flaws of the mechanic.

As for the R/D buttons, an earlier version of the game really relied on the strategy of using deliveries and randomizing manually, but that changed as the weekend progressed, i just forgot to change that as well.

Addicting, but quite far from the theme, I think.

Again, I don’t see how its far from the theme.

Interesting core mechanic; Some extra status info would be good, but overall I liked it. Addicting enough that I played for quite a while.

Thanks! And yeah I realized that it was lacking some status display.

not a bad little game, i agree with a lot of the comments that it could of done with some sound, apart from that it was really good.

Thanks Like I’ve said previously, I’m working on a game with sound that will have the same core mechanic but will hopefully improve on most of the flaws of the LD entry.

Last April I entered a game into Ludum Dare for the first time. After some redesigning I started from scratch and fixed a lot of problems with it (although I still have a lot more work to do).  Although it no longer has anything to do with the LD#17 theme of  “Islands” anymore, I’m happy to say that it’s still fun (and even more so than before). I don’t have a version to release yet but I’ll be documenting my progress on my new blog, twentyonepixel, so head over and check it out!

A while back I made a game, Hungry Hungry Castaways, for LD17. More recently, I’ve been updating it and putting a lot of polish into it. Today I announce that it is finally done and rebranded as: Blow Da Bricks! It is a fun and addicting puzzle game. I have put on MochiAds and the game is also on Kongregate. I’ll stay posted with my ad revenue, hopefully I’ll reach $1.00 by Halloween. Check it out on Kongregate. If you like it, please rate it 5 stars 😉

My game, Blow Da Bricks, has been public on Kongregate and in other places, embedded with MochAds. After less than 3 days, I have earned over $1.00 in ad revenue! I have earned $0.88 on Kongregate and $0.17 through MochiAds! I have also received a Kreds tip on Kongregate, so that totals the money I’ve made for the game at $10.61. In addition to that, I have just been approved for MochiGames publication and distribution, so hopefully I’ll see another spike in game plays and add revenue over the weekend. As for the game itself, it is currently been hovering around a steady rating and is at 2.8 on Kongregate now. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t reach 3 stars, but for my first released game, I think a 2.8 is pretty good. Head over to Kongregate and play it now, and rate it if you like it.

It’s been a while since I last competed in a Ludum Dare compo (LD 17 8 months ago), but I finally have time to compete again and I can’t wait!

I’ll be programming in C++ using SDL for graphics, sound, and input. I’m using Gimp for art, and probably sfxr for sounds.

Good luck to everyone who’s competing or jamming this weekend!

I’m going to have to drop out early. It seems like a repeat of last year in LD16 (even the theme). I didn’t come up with a good game idea for this theme until now so I just started about an hour ago. Unfortunately this theme and my idea are both lacking motivation for me (not to mention the fact that I have a Calculus 2 final on Monday I still need to study for). I thought I had the time but I simply don’t. Good luck to everyone else though!

This is will be my fourth attempted Ludum Dare (excluding miniLDs), and hopefully my second successful one.

Code: ActionScript 3, Flixel, FlashDevelop

Graphics: The Gimp

Sound Effects: sfxr

Time Lapse?: Chronolapse?

Tags: Flixel

I’ve got every thing ready for tomorrow night! Got my index cards, sharpies, notepads, and even got my wacom out (probably won’t use cause I always do pixel art).

this is a desk.

I’ve also set up my music playlist for the weekend. 20 hours of LD soundtrack

this is a music.

All that is left is I have to stock up on more food after I get home from work tomorrow.

Tags: deskphoto

yummmmm

Lunch Break! Turkey burger and falafel chips

Tags: foodphoto

I’m wrapping it up now because I have some stuff to do tonight and I figure I’ll just submit what I have so far, since I won’t be able to get much more done anyway. Overall it was a great weekend (even though my end product didn’t have anything to do with escaping!) 😀 Good Luck to the rest of you finishing up!

Arachnid Escape: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=1022

This will be my 4th Ludum Dare and it is looking to be my best yet. Besides having a final exam midday Saturday, I’m completely free the whole weekend until Monday night. No excuses for not competing this time!

Also, the Game Development Club at my school recently acquired our own dedicated room on campus, so hopefully we’ll all be jamming together there.

I’ll be using:

Language: ActionScript3

Library: Flixel (and possibly Flixel Power Tools)

IDE: FlashDevelop

Sounds: sfxr

Graphics: Gimp

The Game Development Club at my college recently acquired a dedicated room. So, naturally, we’re all going to jam together! We’ve got 4 participants so far and hopefully more to come!

Ryan and my laptop.

Other side of the room

So, after a good night’s sleep after the theme was announced, I scrapped my original crappy idea, and came up with a new one! Unfortunately, a final exam during the day, and a trip to NYC that took 4 hours slowed my progress and I’ve only just done any significant work tonight.

The premise is just to have a bunch of small rooms with variations of things that happen in life. The theme, alone, fits in with most of the rooms, such as repelling others, being completely alone, and even building (and breaking) relationships.

SOLITUDE: The starting room for every round.

All the rooms are randomly generated, and I’m currently spending the rest of the weekend just adding more and more types of rooms, to make each play-through unique.

For now I don’t what I’ll call the game, but I’m leaning towards Solitude (the name of the starting room), or Alone In A Crowd (another of the rooms).

With just 18 hours left, and the fact that it is almost 3:00 am here, I’m going to get some sleep, and tackle the rest of it tomorrow.

Tags: screenshot

I’ve added a kitten easter egg. If you encounter the kitten, you can make it follow you around for the rest of the game.

With just 6 hours to go, I’m going to spend the rest of the day adding menus, an endgame, and possibly some simple sounds.

Kitty!

Well, this weekend has been quite successful. My 3rd finished LD! Woot!

I have a few hours to go, but I’ve decided to submit now, since I don’t know how much time I’ll have to get any more done for the rest of the night.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=1022

Because most of the content that drives the game is the variations and types of rooms, people, and things to encounter, I couldn’t fully realize the game in 48 hours. I did have a decent amount though, and definitely plan to do a post compo version. I’ve already got a lot of new room ideas, so expect more in the future! But for now, I’m done!