So I’m in for my first LD, which will also be my first game ever.
I will mostly use Unity3D with a bunch of great plugins as GameDraw and iTween as well as Sublime Text 2. I may use Paint.net too, but you can expect graphics full of primitives forms and plain colors.
Good luck and have fun !
Florent
Tags: first game, sublimetext2, unity3d
Hi everyone
That LD24 was my first LD, and also my first attempt at making a game. It didn’t go that bad since I successfully shipped an entry, a platformer named Breeding Cubes (spoiler : it involve cube reproduction !).
You can play it on my website (need the Unity3D WebPlayer plugin, but you already have it don’t you ?), download the source and rate it.
Theme
I headed for a straightforward interpretation of the theme. Your character has some abilities. You can evolve your playable character (new abilities or better ones) by finding another non playable character and breed with him (her). The new character resulting of this union possess the best abilities of its parents and can now overcome obstacles and progress through the level.
TimeLine
How did it goes
Since I had no prior experience, I didn’t even really knew where to begin. And even if I did play around Unity before, it took me ages to implement basic stuffs. But in the ends, I successfully implemented almost everything I had planned without coming across major issues.
In total I worked only 20,5 hours on the game. That tells two things :
Unity is really a great tool to work with in very short period of time. I can’t wait to have experience to work faster and see what I can come up with in similar timeframe.
I had to take frequent and sometime extensive breaks. The second day, I was actually bored and tired of working, so I had to take a huge break from 11am to 3.30pm. But I did nod while watching an interview of Edmond McMillen, so it wasn’t a “lost” time on a gamedev perspective.
Also this LD confirmed me that I don’t like neither deadline nor crunch times. Am I fit for this insdustry ? Hopefully I am not working in it yet, I still have time to figure it out and adapt. Also I enjoyed the design, level design and level building phase much more that the coding phase.
Good job everyone who submitted something playable, I will try to play and rate fair as much entries as possible. I am also looking forward to hear from you about my game in the comments.
(If you want to play a great jam entry, let me suggest you “Porté par le vent” it’s really awesome !)
Tags: cube, first game, platformer, postmortem, unity3d
Hey !
Remember me ? Probably not, it’s only my second Ludum Dare and third game. The first one was Breeding Cubes for LD24, and the second one was HeartZ made with 3 others during the GlobalGameJam 2013.
This time I choose to reproduce Harvest: Massive Encounter, an already minimalist tower defense game that I enjoyed a lot. I wanted to built a resource management game for a while already, so this LD’s theme was the perfect occasion. Its certainly minimalistic on the inspiration side, but I really wanted to built this one and that was all the motivation I needed.
I tried to reproduce most of the mechanics : rock harvesting, energy production, energy propagation along the nodes (the feature that makes the game very cool and interesting to me) and building construction and functioning using energy.
It’s clearly unfinished and unbalanced, but it’s playable.
Move with arrows, place buildings with the mouse – click on them on the left then on the map (discard with right mouse).
Note that you can not reload the game, you need to exit it and launch it again to reset the level, sorry about that.
Still, I am pretty happy with it. I only worked like 25h on it and lost about 5h trying to fix bugs directly due to my inexperience with the the software and game dev in general.
The good thing is that I feel like I have leveled-up !
It is made entirely with CraftStudio that you can still try for free for a couple of days.
Depending on your OS, you may need XNA or Mono or -I am not sure what- to play.
You can try the web built, but it does not work for me (stays stuck during initializing scripts).
Thanks and GG everyone !
Tags: craftstudio, encounter, Harvest, minimalism, ressources
I missed two Ludum Dare since the last time but thankfully I was able to took time to participate last week-end !
I understood the theme quite literally with a mining game. Snake Driller is a Sake-kindoflikebutnotsomuch mining game. You have to drill the deepest before the time’s up, sometimes going sideways to mine interesting blocks or dodge those you can’t drill. You can also buy upgrades for your drill in a store to drill more types of blocks or drill faster.
Download and rate it on its entry page.
WHAT WENT RIGHT
Idea.
Even if my idea isn’t original or creative at all, I got it pretty quickly, I liked it and in one hour after I started working on the game, I had a solid design document. It turns out it was simple enough for me to implement almost everything I had planned but also interesting enough to play.
Development.
The game is made with :
So I didn’t had to invent anything or code complex stuff. The majority of the time spent on the game was actually implementing the game, either menu or gameplay.
The first day, I implemented the map generation and basic drilling gameplay. The second day I did all the menus, and the store.
What strikes me, thought was the crappyness of the code. It was sometimes odd to just copy and paste code rather than find a clever way to having it written in one place. Also I never refactored anything so the structure of the code and data may not be quite efficient (or even just right). I think that’s kind of expected for a jam game, but I hadn’t had this feeling before and that’s something that really surprised me.
Completeness.
The game is more than just one level with gameplay (those are fine, too !). It has intro screens, a main menu, other screens/menus for “tutorial” and leaderboard as well as an in-game menu and end screen.
It may be “wrong” for a jam game since all the time I spend on all that (most of the second day !) could have been used for much needed gameplay tweaks. But having a complete game is as much important and rewarding to me as having “only” slick gameplay, even for a game jam.
WHAT WENT WRONG
Time.
No one spent 48 hours on their games. I certainly didn’t since I only logged 16 hours of work (6h30 on saturday, 8h on sunday, 1h10 on monday night).
That’s very few hours, and almost 10 hours less than I worked the last time !
It really shows how much I am not good (and I don’t like) at “crunching” long hours in a row. The game would definitely have benefited of a few hours of polishing and gameplay tweaking.
On the other hand, creating a game of that completion in only 16 hours is quite a success. It really shows how much I improved at gamedev and how much the tools I used makes things easy and fast !
Balancing.
Due to the lack of time, the game is not balanced. It’s too easy since once you have the refinery (to gain time by mining oil) and the iron drill (to drill stone blocks), all you have to do is dodge the few obsidian blocks to spent money on more time or more speed (which only makes you encounter more oil (time) or gold).
Every time you buy an engine upgrade (to drill faster), the odds of the obsidian should increase while the odds of the gold and oil should decrease, in order to ensure that the player either run out of time, either can’t evade obsidian any more. It’s really too bad that’s I didn’t had the time to implement this since it’s really easy to do.
Message.
The first feedbacks shows that the drill may be difficult to control because you have to understand that you don’t directly control where the drill will go but which block will be drilled after the one currently being drilled. And this one isn’t where is the drill but next to it. This is shown in-game with the reddish and greenish squares next to the drill’s extremity but it’s not very clear, especially for people who quickly (or don’t) read the game’s description. I planed to have a drilling animation and a clear arrow to point where the drill will be but again, I didn’t spent enough time on gameplay to do this.
Also I forgot to write the controls on the in-game “How to play” screen, which didn’t helped people top find the store. You just have to press the Escape key to bring up the in-game menu with the store but it appears it’s not natural to everyone.
CONCLUSION
Overall, the game felt to me like a definite success ! I think it’s definitely better than the last one and I am confident the next one will be even better ! Improving at gamedev is what game jam are for after all.
If you are interested about the sources you can check them out over at GitHub. Or if you have CraftStudio installed, you can just join the project by clicking this link.
Tags: #LD48 #LD29, craftstudio, ld29, ld48
So that’s the beginning of the second day for me, here is what I did yesterday :
I took the not-very-original route again and set out to create a puzzle game where you have to connect all the coloured dots together.
Complication comes when you can’t create connections as easily as you would want.
So far, you can play to the first two tutorials in your browser (use Chrome, CraftStudio’s webplayer loads slowly in Firefox) here : https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/51314747/CraftStudio/Ludum%20Dare%2030/index.html
I said on the game’s page that I planned to work on a level editor today but I will work on every thing else instead !
See you tomorow morning ! Bon courage everyone !
Tags: craftstudio, puzzle game
So that’s the end of day 2 already, here is what I did :
Total time: 7h (9h yesterday)
So, today the visuals have been vastly improved and the gameplay has been refined a little, but I still don’t have more content.
That will be for tomorrow, I hope I will be able to have a random level generation.
I planned a level editor but I ditched the idea even before starting the day, maybe for another time…
Play the game in Chrome and tell me what you think !
http://florentpoujol.fr/content/craftstudio/ld30
Bon courage to those who rush to submit in the coming hours, and all others !
Tags: craftstudio, puzzle game
Hey everyone ! Here is the post mortem of my game Linked Colours.
As always, you can click here to play and rate it.
WHAT WENT RIGHT
Idea and development
As last time, I had the idea pretty quickly and stick to it. Thankfully I didn’t encountered big design issues and if I doubted that I would be able to create many levels, random generation came to my rescue, so I didn’t even needed to create levels manually other than the two tutorials.
In addition to Daneel, the framework for CraftStudio I created and which is the base of all of my projects, I was able to borrow quite some code from other projects of mine, so that I could focus on gameplay instead of reinventing the wheel once again. Having so much code already ready is what made me enter the Jam and not the Compo as the previous times in the first place.
But having an extra day prove very useful as even with a simple idea and lots of ready-code I hadn’t much at the end of the second day in term of gameplay (but visuals where almost final).
Visuals
Let’s say it with some pomposity: linked colours is the best-looking game I have ever created in my entire life, so far ! Look at this beauty ! I am not even an artist, or am I now !?
Well, not quite, but it’s what I am most happy about, the game looks really great, especially compared to my previous games (improvements, yeah !).
Random generation
At the end of the first day, I wanted to add a level editor so that anyone could have created levels. I have one almost working for another game but I ditched the idea even before beginning the second day, where I worked mostly on visuals. Instead I spend some time working on random generation, and it did go surprisingly well.
The generation is pretty simple : on a 5 by 5 grid, it picks a square, then picks a color, then finds another square nearby and sets a color the previous one can connect to. It repeats that until there is no more colorless squares on the grid. Then it picks the squares that are not connected to any one and change their color so that they can connect to a nearby square. Then it finds squares with 3 or more connections (3 is rare, 4 in really unlikely to happen, 5 or more never happens) and sets them as squares with a required number of connections.
And that’s it, and it produce pretty nice levels, with actual mixed difficulty. I just wished I had time to tweak it a little and have some variations in the grid.
Web Player
Web players are very convenient, so I really wanted to produce a game that is playable that way. Unfortunately, CraftStudio‘s web player is sometimes a WIP and some things that works great in a desktop build just doesn’t in the web player, forcing me to find workaround when they exists. This was mostly what prevented me to release a web player build of Snale Driller, my entry for the last Ludum Dare.
But this time, I hadn’t had to add a single line of code to make it work in the web player ! It literally just worked… So, hooray !
Also, thanks to the web player, the game works great on Android (tested on a Motorola Moto G LTE running Android 4.4.4 and Chrome 36), even if the controls are tedious because the squares and links are tiny compared to my fingers.
WHAT WENT WRONG
Time
Once again I didn’t worked that much since I only spent 22 hours (9+7+6) on the game.
And even if the game definitely looked nice at the end of day 2 I really didn’t had any gameplay but the two tutorials. It took me the “whole third day” (6 hours…) have proper gameplay and fixes.
Also time-related I hated the shortcuts I had to take with the scenes and code in order to finish what I wanted in time. But I guess that’s expected in jams to have not-optimal code (and general organisation).
For the same reasons, the game lacks feedbacks. I wanted to add more “juice” but I just added some sounds almost at the last minute. The inputs could have been improved too, like allowing to link by clicking and dragging the mouse instead of clicking every times.
CONCLUSION
Definitely more rights that wrongs this time, plus a successfully shipped game, nice looking and full of gameplay !
That’s a very nice addition to my portfolio, I am happy I was able to spend the time on this Ludum Dare !
See you next time !
Tags: craftstudio, jam, puzzle game
Hey everyone !
I am back this time with my favourite tools CraftStudio, Daneel –a framework of my own-, Paint.net, SFRX and probably some others.
After a little over 10 hours, I have an embryo of a top-down shooter. Our most cubic miner Steve can shoot creepers in the face with a double barrelled shotgun !
And that’s pretty much it for now.
Still, you can play it over at florentpoujol.fr/content/craftstudio/ld31/index.html .
WASD / Left Mouse / Escape to spawn a creeper (they don’t explode properly due to a webplayer-specific bug but I am too tired to fix it now).
Tomorrow will mostly be dedicated to art and sound.
And I still haven’t decided how (and if) am I gonna respect the theme on this once.
Good luck to all and so see you tomorrow !
Florent
Tags: craftstudio, ld31, web
As planned yesterday, today has been mostly dedicated to art and (very quickly) sounds. And code, as always !
We now have a proper -yet simple- and almost fun top-down shooter.
And as you can see, I haven’t been idle (see yesterday’s screenshot) and had quite a lot of fun !
You can play the game here : http://florentpoujol.fr/content/craftstudio/ld31/index.html
But beware ! The red blobs explode if they come too close ! Controls : WASD / Hold Left Mouse Button.
For those interested, the sources are on GitHub : https://github.com/florentpoujol/HotMine-LD31
I am off to bed now, see you tomorrow for the submission and the post-mortem !
Good luck and have fun !
Florent
Tags: craftstudio, ld31, web
Annnnd release time !
That’s the end of this Ludum Dare for me, it’s 10:40 pm here and “real life” calls me back !
But I had a blast these past 72 hours while crafting a game I am pretty proud of :
It’s a simple top-down shooter (in one screen, obviously). Your goal is to “collect” crosses by killing the enemies and managing for them not to destroy the existing crosses with their explosions.
Play it right in the submission page :
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=14207
Proper post-mortem tomorrow, probably.
Bon courage for those still working, and good luck for the other !
I am looking forward to play all your games !
Florent
Tags: craftstudio, ld31, web
Hey everyone ! Here is the post mortem of my Jam game GSOD: Grave Screen Of Death.
Click here to play and rate ! Thanks !
Theme
Many hated the theme, rating about it being only a technical limitation. But that’s kind of the point of a theme. And I think this one is not more or less limiting than “10 seconds” or “minimalism” for instance. It’s just that it really said (maybe more than the other theme) “Do whatever the heck you want, but maybe on one screen (please ?)”.
Anyway, this flexible theme gave me the perfect occasion to make a top-down shooter, which I never had the chance to do before. Plus, I had the idea pretty quickly and was able to stick to it, so that’s at least nice for that.
Graphics
This is the first game for which I use model animations and fake shadows. It was actually fun to tweak the animations and the general look even if it’s still very much programmer’s art.
Overall, I think the game looks pretty nice to me. But yes I more and more really want to team up with an actual artist !
Webplayer
As explained last time, web games are really convenient for people to play. It’s even more convenient now since you can embed web games directly in your entry page on the LD’s website.
Except for a bug that was quickly fixed by CraftStudio’s creator, everything ran without a inch ! The webplayer was even improved these past weeks and run equally good in Chrome or in Firefox.
Innovation
I could have done absolutely anything but did a boring, classical top-down shooter… Thankfully some had better ideas !
I really need to improve at this, too !
Theme
Almost everyone (including me) did the exact same thing : a single level game ! The variety in the interpretation of the theme is incredibly low this time…
So overall this was a bad theme but only because we were completely unable to do something interesting with it !
Gameplay
It’s after submitting it and people started to play it, that I realised that indeed, the game was essentially void of gameplay. Even for a classical top-down shooter.
The current gameplay is ultra repetitive and since the game is too easy, you got bored before reaching the game over screen.
Obviously my TODO list basically said “MORE OF EVERYTHING !!!”, but as always, time and motivation drained out fast !
Procedural Random generation
It’s often nice too have environments that change every times, but retrospectively it was not the best idea this time. I would have been better off hand crafting one nice environment.
First, the generation is just random so it produce results that greatly vary in quality (that most often stay low…).
Second, the environment doesn’t influence the gameplay in any way, so that was basically useless.
And third, due to the theme and camera setup, the level is actually quite small. So I could very well have hand crafted one pretty easily and in the same amount of time it took me to implement and teak the random generation.
Webplayer
CraftStudio’s physics engine still doesn’t (and never will) work in the webplayer. That left me with no collision, nor pathfinding system easy enough to setup to prevent the character to traverse some areas.
It wasn’t that big of a deal but that’s actually why the trees are floating: so that it doesn’t look “weird” that you and the mob could go through their trunk.
(Floating and oddly cubic trees aren’t weird, right ?)
I worked a little more than the previous time, 26 hours over the 3 days of the jam. That’s still not much, and not much to create alone even a simple top-down shooter.
So I am still really happy how the jam and the game turned out ! The lack of gameplay is what I regret the most.
Overall it was a very interesting experience as always and can’t wait for the Global Game Jam 2015 were I will rally with the same fine folks as last year.
They were pretty busy this Ludum Dare too and managed to produce a very much working 2D action game “Hunt The Yeti” with a very much WIP game maker. Be sure to check it out !
Tags: craftstudio, jam, shooter, web