This will be my first Ludum Dare and barely my second game. I’m used to building web apps in a hurry, it’ll be interesting to note the differences.
I’ll be using Javascript, probably from scratch, though I may try out coco2d-html5. Graphics and sound will be whatever I can muster, certainly nothing fancy.

Most importantly, my battle-station is ready. Sublime Text 2 on Kubuntu, Chrome for debugging, and my lovely Filco Majestouch 2 and Siberia V2’s. Oh, and Game of Thrones to read when I’m kicking my heels back on Sunday evening (ha!).

I’ll be streaming on twitch once I get it set up. And if anyone’s in Brighton, UK, gimme a shout (@maumagau), be good to get some hacking going on in a coffee shop.

Just woke up to find out the theme. On the one hand it’s easy – no need to artwork, it’s just gonna be a white background with black shapes right? But… that’s just the visuals. How do you create a minimalist game, a game stripped down to it’s bare essentials, when you’re already planning to build a game in 48 hours that could only have the bare essentials anyway?!

Wait, I’ve got it! I’ll be coding in javascript, so all I need to do is minify my script right at the end. Well that was easy =D

Hmm, maybe I could try writing a game with the least code possible. Doesn’t sound much fun though.

The trouble is, if you strip away functionality beyond what would already be a very simple game anyway, can it still be enjoyable to play? It could be novel, but unless I have a killer idea it could end up simple as in boring, rather than minimalist.

I’m going to take a walk and hope some inspiration strikes. Until then, expect to see a white background with black shapes shooting at each other!

I brainstormed some ideas on to paper, then went for a walk to let them settle.

I like the idea of using minimal resources to build something, aka a bridge builder type game. But, that tends to be the point of builder games anyway – use the least resources to complete the task. Also I’d need to use physics and woah no, not today =)

So, as it’s something I’m familiar with, I’ll be going for the classic top-down 2d shooter. Graphics will be stereotypically minimalist, but, the minimalist theme will hopefully shine through in the gameplay as well:

Less is more. The less you shoot, the more health you regain. The less you move, the more ammo you regain.

I have coffee, I have biscuits, I have an idea. It’s time to power up the Developinator and get coding.

Progress is terribly slow.  Partly due to starting from scratch with no framework, partly due to my unfamiliarity with Javascripts odd internal workings.

At the moment, every projectile I shoot seems to hold a reference to every other projectile’s direction. As soon as I shoot a new projectile, all other projectiles adopt the new one’s direction. After an hour of googling and head-scratching I’m considering calling it a feature.

I’m going to have a long, hard think after this weekend about whether I want to push on with JS or move to something that reflects my understanding of OO better. If fucking everything nowadays didn’t use JS my decision would be a lot easier!

That’s it for today. I was considering pulling an all-nighter, but I’m not in the zone at all.

Hopefully it’ll all come together tomorrow. There’s a lot to do.

Here’s the very minimalist current working version (should work on most modern browsers)

http://dtownsend.co.uk/dev/ld26/

I made it!
After very slow progress yesterday (next time I’m using a pre-built framework), I made leaps and bounds this morning. The hard work was all done by midday and I could spend the afternoon working on the gameplay.

There’s still a lot I’d like to do, but I’m wrecked.

The balancing of the mobs is a little screwey. Squares are just annoying fodder, triangles aren’t that threatening, pentagons are utterly useless, and circles are killer-death-machines-from-polygon-hell.

Aside from that, I’d like to add friction and acceleration, give it some proper start/level/victory/death screens, add some nice sound effects, and improve the graphics with some smooth blending. Oh, and it’d really benefit from having mid-level spawning. At the moment it’s ‘kill the circles, mop up the rest, collect the powerups; repeat’.

But. I made a game, and it’s not full of bugs and I kind of enjoy playing it .

Best of all, this has given me a thirst to create more.

Thank you Ludum Dare, and I look forward to playing as many of your games as I can.

The battlestation has taken a beating, but she did well

This’ll be my second LD. Last time I went with a home-brewed js framework, but this time round I’ll be using Unity & Blender.

I’m hoping to make a game that utilises the Leap Motion. That’ll limit it’s playability in the ranking stage, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to play around with for a while.