I am nearly done and nearly dead.

Lunar Defense 3000

This was my very first Ludum Dare, but it was fun, so it may not be my last. I have a friend who does this faithfully, and I want to get the kids in my Video Game Development classes at Granger High to try it. I figured, the teacher should never ask the students to do something he hasn’t done himself.

I had been playing the original Moon Patrol with a couple students researching the past of Arcade Games for an assignment and it inspired me. When I decide to go ahead and give this a try, I started a little over two hours late. Who needs the whole time, right?!?

I first modeled the patrol craft in Modo. Next came the moon tiles in Sculptris. Then came the coding in C# to get some very basic game play working in Unity. Then came collapsing for three hours of sleep.

Saturday I continued work on the functionality and was pretty happy with it. I added in the projectile effects from a package I bought a while back on the Unity Asset Store. After all, it takes a special kind of madness to be a particle wizard in Unity. So everything is looking fine. I can jump, shoot, vary my speed, and blow up when I crash. I even did my own take on the wheels flying off like in the original. Time to make the enemies.

I quickly knocked out the rest of my 3D models. No problem. Now let’s make the enemies shoot, too. And that is when I found the big flaw. The code that runs the effects pack is designed for a single player running around shooting. You can have as many turrets as you want, but they need to be all on the same object to work right. I began trying to work around the design limitation, but after several hours, it was time to let it go for now. No enemy shots right now. And since it was after 5 a.m. and I had a meeting to go to with my daughter in the morning, I headed to bed.

Sunday morning was meetings and church, and then several hours of stomach troubles. It might have been something I ate, the student who threw up in my room two days earlier, or stress as I watched that clock tick. At any rate, it was after four before I got back into working properly. The rest of Sunday until 4 a.m. was spent making the cut scene images in DAZ Studio, and then I used the two hours before getting up for work to try and get some sleep. How can you be that tired and have trouble falling asleep.

Teaching school was a challenge, not only was I exhausted, but I could see those hours ticking by again. More tummy trouble just for fun. I raced home at 3 p.m. and started programming the intro sequence and game over sequences for winning. I never got back to the enemies shooting, and I just didn’t have time to add collisions to kill them either. So it is what it is, but I had fun.

Now I need to get the android and HTML5 versions up.

Yoroshiku!

Paul

This was my very first Ludum Dare, but it was fun, so it may not be my last. I have a friend who does this faithfully, and I want to get the kids in my Video Game Development classes at Granger High to try it. I figured, the teacher should never ask the students to do something he hasn’t done himself.

I had been playing the original Moon Patrol with a couple students researching the past of Arcade Games for an assignment and it inspired me. When I decide to go ahead and give this a try, I started a little over two hours late. Who needs the whole time, right?!?

I first modeled the patrol craft in Modo. Next came the moon tiles in Sculptris. Then came the coding in C# to get some very basic game play working in Unity. Then came collapsing for three hours of sleep.

Saturday I continued work on the functionality and was pretty happy with it. I added in the projectile effects from a package I bought a while back on the Unity Asset Store. After all, it takes a special kind of madness to be a particle wizard in Unity. So everything is looking fine. I can jump, shoot, vary my speed, and blow up when I crash. I even did my own take on the wheels flying off like in the original. Time to make the enemies.

I quickly knocked out the rest of my 3D models. No problem. Now let’s make the enemies shoot, too. And that is when I found the big flaw. The code that runs the effects pack is designed for a single player running around shooting. You can have as many turrets as you want, but they need to be all on the same object to work right. I began trying to work around the design limitation, but after several hours, it was time to let it go for now. No enemy shots right now. And since it was after 5 a.m. and I had a meeting to go to with my daughter in the morning, I headed to bed.

Sunday morning was meetings and church, and then several hours of stomach troubles. It might have been something I ate, the student who threw up in my room two days earlier, or stress as I watched that clock tick. At any rate, it was after four before I got back into working properly. The rest of Sunday until 4 a.m. was spent making the cut scene images in DAZ Studio, and then I used the two hours before getting up for work to try and get some sleep. How can you be that tired and have trouble falling asleep.

Teaching school was a challenge, not only was I exhausted, but I could see those hours ticking by again. More tummy trouble just for fun. I raced home at 3 p.m. and started programming the intro sequence and game over sequences for winning. I never got back to the enemies shooting, and I just didn’t have time to add collisions to kill them either. So it is what it is, but I had fun.

Now I need to get the android and HTML5 versions up.

Yoroshiku!

Paul

A long weekend making games with a bunch of my high school students... That must be why they call teaching a "Certified" position. I must be certifiably insane. Granger GameDev will be jamming out this weekend for the first time!

Join Here!

We are going to try this again! Last time we had twelve artists and three programmers. We had an awesome looking game with some egregious missing parts in the code that kept us from finishing. We are going to be more balanced this time, so wish us luck!

Granger High is in the House!

P.S. This is for Kelton, so he can join!

If you are in or near Salt Lake City, Utah the weekend after Thanksgiving, we would love to have you join us for Ludum Dare 43. ClassEgames hosts a free game jam team in Millcreek near 3300 S and 900 E. We furnish some snacks and drinks to keep people chugging along while we make a game in a weekend! Our team currently is about 6 people strong, but we have room for up to 30 people. We even have a dozen extra laptops for those who are mobile technology challenged. If you are interested, you can sign up here: http://classegames.com/GameJams.html

We will be opening our doors at 6 p.m. so you can have a chance for a little meet and greet before we get started. Once the theme is announced we will brainstorm ideas centered on the theme for about one hour and then break up into groups based on the ideas you and other like-minded game designers choose. If you would rather work alone, you can still enjoy the camaraderie of a crazy group of indie game makers who think sleep deprivation is fun! We’ll provide internet access, M&M’s, Mountain Dew, and bean bag chairs. You bring your creativity and your love of games! If you are interested in joing us for a fun weekend, please RSVP at: http://classegames.com/GameJams.html

We have exploding Minions! One day down and major progress!

We have exploding Minions! One day down and major progress!

After a busy weekend and many hands we, classEgames have completed our game "Something Evil is Brewing!"

Go have fun playing as a minion blowing up other minions to try and get the relics your overlord requires. But be aware of the humans they will defend the relics with their life.

Good Luck

We are having a review party tonight! We are getting the crew back together to review some of your games in the hopes that you will give ours a whirl! We had fun making it together, and now we are going to have fun playing some others together. If you are in Salt lake, drop by tonight for some fun playing LD43 games! classEgames: 3333 S. 900 E., Suite 220, Millcreek, Utah 84106

Link to our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/something-evil-is-brewing

We have pretty solid game play now, time for some menus, sound, and polish!

On Time! Completely Finished! Damn Fun!!!!

Give LEAPING LOUIE a try, please!

We got the HTML5 port fixed now so you can choose between Windows or Web play!

Please try it now!

Thanks for trying our game LEAPING LOUIE!

I fixed the bug that was causing you not to be able to maximize the WEBGL version it was simply an error in the index page calling the wrong instance identifier. Hopefully that will make the HTML5 version play better. I think the issues before were caused by crashing JavaScript when it tried to access the bogus instance name. Hopefully this will make it more fun to play on the web. The PC one has worked great all along, but I know lots of people prefer not to download something to play. Hope you enjoy LEAPING LOUIE!

Just wanted to say thanks to the people who have rated our game LEAPING LOUIE and see if anyone else was looking for a fun HTML5/WebGL game to play and rate. We are really proud of how LEAPING LOUIE turned out and would love to get a few more ratings and feedback. Thanks!