Hello everyone!

I just joined LD, and am going to be doing miniLD 24. I will mainly be using flash for this, and am going to allow myself until the end of Thursday to do this one. I know that’s not 48 hours, but I won’t have much time today/tomorrow, so I don’t want to make it be by Wednesday (like 48 hours would have been), and I already saw the theme so I can’t even kid myself that I’m not already subconsciously/consciously planning. So instead, I have 3 school days (can’t work on this most of THAT time) and this night to complete my game. I think thats fair.

I don’t know what I will call my game yet, and I haven’t even chosen themes, rules, and limitations, but I still have time. I will be posting about my progress, scanning in scrap-work and planning pages, trying to get a time lapse video going, and in general keep everything updated.

Till then

—
Mikhail Rudoy

OK, I have spent the subway ride to/from school, and some time during school figuring out my idea, and I have the main mechanic down. I’ll explain in a second, but first here are my rules/limitations/themes:

I will only be doing one of the rules, and that is making all my definitions palindromes. I will be limiting myself to a 5fps frame rate, and depending on how I decide to set up the controls, I might have a 1 or 2 button input. The theme isn’t so cut and dry; I will be making a tetris based game but it will still be a puzzle, so I will only count that as half a theme. The game will also implement a “playing backwards” theme, which I will count as half being the “inside out” theme.

I will be calling my game Ctrl-Z, and the mechanic is that the player gets to play tetris backwards. He/she will select 4 touching tiles from the “ground” as being the last played piece, and then the computer will “un-play” the resulting piece. In this way, the player goes backwards in time controlling not the motion of the pieces, but the destination. Obviously, I intend to include a couple of more engaging elements, such as limitations on your choice of pieces and appearing lines (as opposed to disappearing lines such as in tetris when you fill the line in question).

I mostly know what I’m doing, but I have a couple of things to still figure out (mainly control scheme, and algorithm for extracting pieces).

And now to work! I’ll update again when something gets done.

Till then

—
Mikhail Rudoy

I just finished uploading a time lapse of me working on Ctrl-Z, and here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XBv0cGrkEs

I didn’t get much done in the time, but at least I made a time lapse! More on my progress later (probably tomorrow).

Till then

—
Mikhail Rudoy

The palindromes everywhere in my code are seriously messing me up ):

I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish like this, so I think I might just write the game for real (with a real definition naming standard) later. Unfortunately that means I most likely won’t be submitting Ctrl-Z to the compo, but at least I got something out of this: the idea. The theme got me thinking, and I came up with a solid (I think) idea, which I hope to finish soon. Everything in my life has been impeding my progress, as miniLD #24 seems to have fallen on the busiest week and weekend in the last year, if not more, so I will back out of this one for the sake of my growing  sleep debt and my shrinking sanity. I will definitely be competing again during a somewhat less busy week.

It really sucks to quit on my first try, but there’s just too much going on. Anyway, I’m not giving up on the game, but only on the deadline, so I figure that its not too much of a bad start.

So until next LD

—
Mikhail Rudoy

PS, if something in this post doesn’t make sense, please note that its 1 in the morning.

OK, I have an idea for my worst game ever, but I won’t tell you yet because I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish in time.

There is a catch, though. I can’t in good conscience make a horrible game because for me the whole purpose of participating in LD is to get better at making stuff. So my idea sorta deviates from the theme.

I’m doing well with my game so far

Here’s a screenshot:

And no, I’m not making a mistake. Nor is your computer screwing up the download of the image.

I’m just putting the finishing touches on it. The game itself is finished and I only need to add various screens and stuff.

After one and a half full days of work, I’m finally finished.

The game is a shooter without video. You must rely entirely on the direction sounds come from to shoot. It isn’t actually a bad game, so I will justify the theme.

1) it is violent and will hurt your ears if you don’t turn your volume down.

2) it is a shooter so by definition I consider it a bad game.

3) it has no graphics (bad graphics… nah. How about NO graphics?)

here it is in all its glory:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/mrudoy/blind

PS: please comment. I would love to know what you think.

I made a couple of small corrections. One spelling error in the instructions page, and one small mistake in the code. I didn’t even have to code a word, as the mistake was simply in the order of a few lines of code.

Once again, here is a link:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/mrudoy/blind

It seems that Uhfgood has started something. In his post here, he stated that he would be catching up with everyone who has been here from the beginning of LD. He will spend 3 weeks, 2 hours a weekday making games for each of the LDs that he has not participated in.

I will be joining him.

I intend to work through all the themes just as he does, but I will do it slightly differently. First off, I won’t limit myself to any specific period of time per game. If it takes 2 months, then OK. If it takes one weekend I’m happy with that too. I will try not to turn the games into full blown projects; they should still be on the level of something completable in 48 hours + idea development time. But if they do get blown out of proportion, oh well. Similarly, if I fail at making some specific theme, then that’s too bad (but I’m moving on).

I will be using Flash, and if I turn out anything presentable, I will try to sell it or get it sponsored. Therefore, I will not publish my source code. In addition, since I’m hopeless at art and music, I will not strictly follow the whole “everything made by you during production” rule that we have for LD.

Now about themes; because I draw a complete blank on some themes, I might deviate a little in a direction that my brainstorming brings me to. For instance, I am not sure whether I will be able to find a game idea for LD0 so if I come up with something in the process of figuring this (the fact that I can’t come up with an idea) out, I will make that something despite being off theme. I will keep you updated on every game I am in process of making for this LD catchup, whether on theme or not.

I will be putting the games up on… well actually I’m not sure where I will put the games, but when it gets to that, I’ll let you know.

And another thing. I intend to start completely from scratch at the start of each LD, but this decision might change.

In fact, any of this might change. We’ll see how everything works out, and I’ll post my thoughts on LD0 Indirect Interaction soon.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD Catch-up

I’m finding it especially hard to come up with actual game play or game mechanics for Indirect Interactions. So to give you an inside view on what I am thinking (and this isn’t just from the last couple of hours; I have thought about this for a couple of days before my last post), here are some of the ideas or directions I might be coming from:

1) Rube Goldberg machines

I like this idea but I think it might be too much for a supposedly 48 hour contest. (And wasn’t LD0 a 24 hour thing anyway?). Also, I think it has been done enough. Thirdly, there is an implementation issue. Unless I think of some really good system, I would have to either make all the objects have defined input and output (making everything systematic but hindering player creativity) or hard code every possible interaction (either this is a huge amount of work or I don’t have many objects). Finally, I would have to make realistic artwork (uh oh).

2) Hit men

If this needs explaining, instead of killing someone, you interact with them indirectly by hiring someone to kill them. Disclaimer: this is my math teacher’s idea; I was bouncing ideas off of people and this is something he thought of. Now I don’t have much of an analysis for this, but I do have a problem: I’m not sure what kind of game this would be. After all, if you control the hit man, this becomes direct interaction. So what is the actual game play mechanic? Choosing who to hire for which job? Doesn’t sound very fun.

3) The butterfly effect

I just don’t know yet. But here is a big thought: butterfly effect implies time travel. Maybe (and I haven’t thought about this scenario much yet), you were sent back in time by a government to step on a specific butterfly to cause a natural disaster in a country you are at war with. You arrive about 100 years late, and now in order to complete the mission you would need to step on all of that butterfly’s descendants. But you can’t step on other butterflies because they might cause anything. Then again, this is just an old game mechanic with a new story put to it. Maybe this game isn’t what I want, but I’m not discarding the butterfly effect yet.

So there you go. I’ll keep thinking and what happens, happens.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD Catch-up, LD0 - Indirect Interaction

Well, I finally know what I’m going to be making. The problem, if you can call it that, is that it actually has potential to become a fully formed game. So we’ll see about how much time I take (probably more than 48 hours), and we’ll see about whether I make everything myself (probably no, and I’m referring particularly to music).

I have a lot of stuff going on, so it might be some time before I finish, but I hope it works out to be what I think it could be.

Edit: In fact, it might be quite a while  until I do any of it. Chances are that I won’t even start within the next two weeks.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD Catch-up, LD0 - Indirect Interaction

Anyone who has read some of my previous posts on here would know that I was going to make games for all the old LD themes. Well I’m still doing that! I have a vacation this next week-and-a-half-ish and I plan to get at least my LD0 catchup done. Now I agree that that’s not so much for 11 days but I’m not sure whether I’ll finish even that as there is practically a literal ton of work for me to do. Here are some of the things I plan to do this vacation (and I might be forgetting some):
– LD0 catchup
– study for my SATII English test (this will involve at least two practice tests and therefore at least 2 hours)
– study for the USAMO math exam (this will involve taking at least two old tests and therefore at least 18 hours)
– go to the Queens Hall of Science (at least 2 hours commuting + at least 1 hour there)
– write a small math paper
– do all my Homework
– visit some colleges
– clean my C drive and install all the stuff I want to have but don’t
– start learning to use Unity 3d, Python, and LaTeX (not necessarily in that order and with Mathematica as a much lower priority)
– there’s a very small chance that I will go back and make my miniLD24 game idea
– figure out a way to make music for the games
– read a large variety of books which I’ve had lined up for a while (i.e. Lord of the Rings, Elementary Geometry from an Advanced Standpoint, some physics book about non-Newtonian fluids, The World is Flat a Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, etc…)

As you see, I’ll be extra busy. And this extra-business will carry over well past the vacation. The two days after vacation is USAMO and the second is also college night at my school. This is not to mention that I have tests in a lot of my classes. And after working through USAMO, will I get some rest? Not until after LD 20! I have every intention of participating in that as well (but of course shit happens sometimes so I won’t be too disappointed if I don’t finish).

Anyway, that’s what’s going on in my world. So thanks for listening to (or rather reading) my rant, and if you have any suggestions for how to do some of the programming or sound stuff from the list above, please comment.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD #00 - Indirect Interaction - 2002, LD Catch-up, LD20

OK, here goes nothing. I’m starting to make my game (which I will call Minion or Champion or something like that) right NOW.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD #00 - Indirect Interaction - 2002, LD Catch-up

I have the game engine finished. Now I just have to make zooming and scrolling around the map, make all the title/instruction screens, name the damn thing, and design and implement all the puzzles (levels). And there’s no sound at all. Oh boy.

Anyway, here’s what the game sort of looks like right now:

As you can see, my drawing skills are not that good.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

P.S. I might make a level editor. Very tentative here, but I might.

Tags: LD #00 - Indirect Interaction - 2002, LD Catch-up

I am VERY happy with how the scrolling and zooming came out. Now various screens, fixing 1 bug (how do I get the thing to work without me having to click on it beforehand), and then the actual puzzle design. (And yes, that means I’m not going to make sounds). And since this isn’t the real thing, it can wait. I am almost certainly not finishing this by tomorrow, but you will probably see it before next Monday.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD #00 - Indirect Interaction - 2002, LD Catch-up

As I recently figured out, making good puzzles is hard. So now I will be trekking through a long period of puzzle level design, and when I’m done with that, I’ll finally wrap the whole game up with all the menus, tutorial screens, and other things that its missing right now. Unfortunately, that means you’re probably not seeing the game until some time after LD-proper. Fortunately, that also means the levels won’t completely suck.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Apparently this is obligatory (see tinyurl.com/LDobligatory) So here I am lining up for LD20. I will be using flash and as3 for the game. Flash IDE for the very crappy graphics that will inevitably wind up in my game, and Musagi and sfxr for sounds (which considering my complete lack of proficience with those tools means that there will probably be no sound – and if there is, you should probably mute your computer).

Also I pronounce Ludum Dare as luh dum dayre where dum is exactly like the sound of the word dumb. It’s probably wrong. So sue me (please don’t)

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Does anyone know whether making a(n almost exact) Zelda clone would be a copyright infringement? Also how about the rules of LD and using the same graphics as Zelda?

PS despite the fact that I am planning an almost exact copy, the difference should be worth it, so yes, I know that just copying Zelda defeats the purpose, but I do have a reason for wanting to make it as reminiscent of Zelda as possible.

—
Mikhail Rudoy

Tags: LD20

Making a Zelda clone. Quite a bit got done.

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Mikhail Rudoy