My first and really looking forward to it.

• Language / Library – C# / Xna
• Sound – sfxr
• Graphics – paint.net

Got the basic game structure up and running, input, gamestates,  basic camera and skybox.

Made the last minute decision to go 3D….   Sounded like a better idea at the time than it probably will in 44.5 hours…

Kitch's Game

Tags: progress, screenshot, xna

Where is all this time going?

Collisions, shooting and what not are now working…

It can get quite hectic for it’s simplicity… just what I was going for.

Tags: screenshot, xna

26 ours in and I’m ahead of schedule.

Meant to spend sunday working on music, sound, menus and what not… but got a big chunk taken out of that today.

Have lots of balancing to do…  Right now, it’s kind of boring just shooting the crap out of a big green blob…

At least now it tries to kill you..

and kittens…

Tags: Kitch, screenshot, xna

I call it Hardcore mode… but I think it may be a little to difficult…

(The skull boxes kill you, by the way…)

Tags: balancing, LD22, screenshot, xna

Things were really coming together rond abouts midnight last night.  Today, I’m making progress, but I’m starting to get sloppy.

Got the difficulties balanced a bit, now I win amost instantly on easy…

and die almost instantly on hardcore… that’s balance…

Tags: Kitch, LD22, screenshot, xna

Well, time to get it all packaged.  Been a wild ride, but I feel I’m at a point where I can call it done and be happy.

Unless there’s time to add just one… more… thing….

Now to package everything up, compile my timelapese, post a gameplay video…. and

crash….

hard…

Tags: done, final, screenshot, urge to add features rising, xna

Sell it to the butcher at the store…

VOXTERIUM

Now to play some games!

Tags: done, LD22, screenshot, xna

That was a blast!  This was my first Ludum Dare, but will defiantly not be my last.  Thank you to everyone involved.

My Game

VOXTERIUM

My Plan

Before the competition started, I had designs in mind, wrote some stuff down, and was testing out a million 2D platform game mechanics.  I’ve been doing primarily 3d stuff over the last year, so I began to question why I was entering a realm I wasn’t comfortable with for a 48 hour competition.   At the last minute I decided to switch to a 3D approach.

The whole process was really organic, I let the game design itself.  I didn’t take time to write out a plan or design document.  Design documents are great, and serve their purpose… but they are no fun to play and I can use that time to add cat powered mega bullets.

What went right…

I got the full support of my wonderful and loving family.  Every minute I wanted to work on the game, I had, distraction free.  Can’t express the importance and appreciation of that small fact.

I completed the game.  By using a definition of ‘complete’ that really only applies to games made in 48 hours.  There is a hint of a story.  Win/Loss conditions, mechanics, sound…  The basics are there.

The game is fun.  I enjoy it at least.  Once I turned it in last night and the LD website went kaput, I spent  a while playing it… not play testing it, but playing it.  It was nice.

I believe I did a really good job with my coding time management.  I worked a short time on each mechanic then really took a step back and decided if it “just didn’t feel right”, or flat out just didn’t work.  Rather than beat a dead horse, I was able to drop them and move on to the stuff that did work.  What I was most concerned about, generation of the antagonist and controlling it’s growth actually just worked out with minimal issues.   In the beginning, it reproduced so fast it would kill the framerate after a minute or two playing… I ended up calling that “hardcore” mode, with a warning, but optimizations and balancing added later killed the fun in that

The hardcore mode “bloom attack”.  The visual and sound… It just works for me.

What could have gone a lot better

I resorted to lazy coding a bit too quick.  Played the “public” and “static” cards way too early.  Some last minute bug fixes were a challenge, (and there are still a few minor ones lurking that I believe are tied into the above).

I got in a good chunk of time in to work on balancing and difficulty levels but it wasn’t nearly enough.   A few more hours to work on balancing would have helped a lot.

The “art”, if you can call it that needed some more love.  Some may find the color shifting thing a bit obnoxious… but then again, others will want more.  All the modeling was done in code and consists solely of cubes.  Some more interesting powerup and bullet shapes would have been nice.

Some of the sounds just don’t work for me. Except for the “bloom”… did I mention the bloom?  I like the bloom.

Final Thoughts

The jealous side of me is trying to decide if next time I should go for a web game.  Probably going to lose a lot of plays and votes for being a Windows-only application.  Lose several more for XNA’s outside requirements.  It may not be right, but it is what it is.

In the end though.. I didn’t do it for votes…  I did it for the fun and the experience.   And by those measures, I already won Ludum Dare.

Tags: LD22, postmortem, voxterium, xna

Finally got my timelapse up for Voxterium

Found out I’m not good with video editing software.  Just another thing I’ve learned from this compo…

Tags: timelapse, voxterium, xna

Although it looked like I was going to be overly swamped…  Last one was such a blast I just had to make time for this one.

Going to be using XNA again, just to irk some people.

Just want to say that I REALLY like some of these themes coming out so far.

Tiny World.  Seriously people?

Anyhow.  Decided to go 2D this round.  Gots a basic tile engine up and running, plus a few sprites.  After the theme police raided my last entry, I thought my first goal should be to create a tiny world.

I know.. I know… It’s more of a small world… not really a tiny one. I’ll work on that… I promise.

and

It is not a platformer.  I repeat.  It is not a platformer.

Collision bug wasted a good 1 hour of my time this morning… but did get collision finally working, and added a few basic particle effects.  All the basics are there now.  Just gots to start working on variety.. and the “twist” : )

Is done.  It’s not really AI… but I actually record the movements of the players, save them, and play them back for a future game.  That’s right.  You’re essentially playing with yourself.

Gotta get to adding sounds so I can wrap this up.

Added music… added sound… added menus… added well, everything.

Got some testing to do on my other computer.. but I believe we have a game here.

The “opponent” system is working a lot better than I thought it would.  I lose about 33% of the time it seems like.

Sell it to the butcher in the store…

Mage Duel is donefied.  It’s just like any other artillery game, except with mages, and in real time, and you play against your previous play throughs.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=7470

Mage duel is a game about playing with yourself.

Play it here.

This was my second Ludum Dare.  My last Ludum Darewas a 48 hour stress-fest.  Although I had a blast and created a pretty cool little game out of it, and given the fact that I have a lot of other stuff going on right now, I really wanted this one to be more of a relaxing experience.  Before I started, I took some inventory of my last experience to see what I could do this round to make things a little easier on me.  First big thing that stuck out was scope.  Voxterium was a simple game, but had a lot of hidden elements that greatly complicated it.  Another big issue was experience.  That first time, I really had no idea what I was doing time-wise… no real idea how long anything would take.

With the knowledge that I could spit out a menu system and add music and sound in a fairly small amount of time, and I could cut down on rendering time (a big chunk of the first one) significantly by going 2d, I decided to go with a simple 2D game, with some simple basic mechanics, and use the remaining time to add in a few cool tiddlibits.

The Concept

I had messed with the concept of “recording” playthroughs and playing them back as opponents a few years back for a completely unrelated game.  I had that idea, plus a few others on my mind before the competition began.  I had a rough idea of how to apply that to most of the themes on the final list, but didn’t want to get too invested in planning on any one theme, as I made that mistake the last time.  When the theme was announced, I was instantly drawn to the idea of an artillery game on a small map, an artillery game is one of those where the “playback” mechanic would actually work out well.

The Build

Overall, it went really smoothly.  A few snags along the way, one involving a nasty gravity bug and another with particles, but all in all I had more than enough time.  The map generation worked out well and was simple.  The mage firing mechanics and collision were easy to implement.  Art was simple.  The playback mechanic turned out to be really easy to implement.

Then I changed my mind.   Originally, the game was turn based like Scorched Earth.  (Sorry to all the kids in the room for the “Scorched Earth” references, maybe put in “Worms” where you see that title.  I never played Worms, but it looks similar ).   So, blue mage would fire, bullets would fly, collisions would occur, gravity processed, Red mage’s turn.   It was true to the genre, and really easy for the playback mechanic.  But it was slow, and really didn’t hit the actiony feel that the game was telling me it needed.  I then decided to switch everything to real time.  Was a little worried at first, but turned out to not be so bad, and I really think it added a lot.

The Polish

Two mages were fighting… why?   Mages just seem like the types to disagree a lot and get into long and boring discussions, so I came up with the idea that these fights were over a way for these mages to settle these little disagreements.  I added a list of little petty things that they could disagree over.  Wish I could have come up with more and better, but you know… the whole time thing…

Menu system, sound and music is now pretty much second nature for me,  and so many nifty tools are available, that that part was  cinch.  Spent some time balancing, but not nearly enough.  It could have used a lot more, but I believe it checks the ‘acceptable’ box.

What went wrong

Early refactoring of my terrain generation code introduced a bug that made tiles fall through the bottom of the map.  Seemed simple enough, but was a real pain to find and kill.  Wasted a good hour on that one.  An hour that I could have been better used somewhere else.

I made the mistake of assuming rendering 2D in XNA would be a lot like an easier 3D render.  It’s not.  Should have done some additive blended particle practice before this all started.   A 48 hour deadline is not the best time to learn something new.  Eventually, using multiple render targets, I was able to get a result that was close to what I wanted… but in the end, it was not what I wanted and it took up waaaaay to much time.

I was hoping to work out a way to introduce the “play yourself” mechanic organically in the game.  I could have used the time wasted above to actually do that.  I considered leaving as it is was and not pasting warnings over the place.  However, since most people spend like what?  30 seconds with each game, I figured players not getting to the core concept was more damaging than players feeling that I gave them a “spoiler”.

Wish I could have spent a lot more time balancing the spells.

What went right

You never have enough time to do everything you want, so even with the hiccups above I believe my time management was great.  Although I didn’t get to everything I wanted.. I got to everything I needed.

The “play against yourself” mechanic turned out way better than I expected.   It blends in well I believe, and builds in a natural difficulty curve.   As you get better, it gets harder.

The art and sound are great (For me).  I’m particularly pleased with the spell icons.

I liked the way the terrain generator turned out.  Not all matches are great, but you always have the option of blasting it away.

Conclusion

Another great Ludum Dare.  Many thanks go to everyone involved.  I really can’t think of a better way to spend the weekend.  I’m very pleased with the way the game turned out, and left the weekend knowing a little more than when I started.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=7470

Tags: Mage Duel, postmortem, xna

Gonna be in for this one… after missing the last two (sad face).

Using this LD to say goodbye to XNA, probably try and port it over to monogame once completed.

Also throw some paint.net, sfxr and FL Studio in the mix.

Using my 2D starter project, with basic gamestates and such, P32D.

Going to follow my traditional Ludum Dare plan of attack

• First Hour : Panic because I have no ideas for the theme
• Next 2 Hours :  Start working on the game
• Next 43 Hours : Continue working on game
• Last 2 Hours : Finish working on the game

Gonna attempt to stream some of the dev time as well, if all goes smooth… don’t want to spend those precious minutes working out streaming problems…

Tags: im in, xna

Welp…. after a somewhat heated argument between me and a quadtree, i got off to a start at least.  think its about time to call it a night.

I’ll be streaming most the day tommorow.

Kitch’s screenshot

Tags: first screenshot, Kitch, screenshot, xna

Well.. after almost a full days work… I’m here

It looks exactly the same as it did last night… however, menus, and levels, and collisions, and powerups and a whole lot of little things are in place.

Just a couple minor things on those front to clear up tonight…

Hoping that clears the way for a full day of polish and audio tommorow.

Tags: Kitch, screenshot, xna