It’s my first LD, I’m creating a Web game with phaser, and everything is coming along nicely; graphics are rude, and sound is non-existing, but the game actually already starts to make fun

It would really been helpful, if I had set up my development environment and checked the tools and libraries beforehand; life had something against it, so it’s learning on the go…

Tags: action, html5, phaser, Singleplayer, web

I actually managed to finish and submit my game Birds of Borg 2 minutes BEFORE the deadline!

I think I went a bit over the top by creating a networked multiplayer game, even with (simple) match making. Game mechanics could have been more sophisticated, and originally I wanted to support the growing theme as well (growing a flock of birds), but that would have needed quite a few more hours. I hope you like the StarTrek related theme 😉

There will be a timelapse video, but first I have to clean it up a little – my Xserver crashed 3 times during development.

I’m really happy with the result nevertheless, given that it has been my first Ludum Dare, and that I personally never did anything with phaser before.

And NOW I’m exited to play all those games YOU guys have created =-D

And a little sleep would be reasonable as well…

Tags: action, html5, multiplayer online, nodejs, phaser, Singleplayer, web

Finally, find my (silent) development timelapse of my Compo entry Birds of Borg – it took a while, because I had to clean up the mess that happened from 3 Xserver crashes during the development :-X

“Birds of Borg” is a single- and multiplayer action game done as a HTML5 Web game with phaser and node.js/express/socket.io.
The breaks in the video have been shortened to 3 seconds video time, regardless of their real length. In case you wonder how long I actually slept, there’s a clock in the lower right corner…

A Post Mortem analysis of the development process will be published later. Probably tomorrow.

Have fun, and try to watch in slomo if the rapid screen changes make you sick 😉

And don’t forget to play & vote!!!

Tags: action, html5, multiplayer online, nodejs, phaser, Singleplayer, timelapse, web

I just updated the server part of Birds of Borg – it now shows more prominently, whether there is a chance of having a multiplayer game with a real opponent. I hope more players will have the chance of trying the internet multiplayer variant, because it’s way more fascinating to play against human enemies!
The game itself didn’t change at all, so I consider this to be within the compo rules.

Thanks for voting!

Tags: action, html5, multiplayer online, nodejs, phaser, Singleplayer, web

I'm a Professor (for Computer Graphics, Web Development, Game Design and other stuff) at the TH Nürnberg in Germany, also called Georg-Simon-Ohm Hochschule.

Last time I joined Ludum Dare (LD34) I did a game on my own - Birds of Borg; this time three students of mine and me will work as a team - Team OHM! We'll be doing this at the PixelManiacs headquarters - thanks again to Ben for the invitation!

It'll be a whole lot more fun doing something together :stuckouttonguewinkingeye:!

It's done!!!

We finally managed to upload our Jam entry for LD40 :smile:

It's a really simple single page shooter. Really simple! Believe me! Unless you don't...

Have fun, and don't forget to tell us when you beat the highscore :sunglasses:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/keep-it-simple-stupid-bang-bang

Finally, I managed to finish my third LD game. Source will be available soon (but it's a web game, so... source is already there, except for the server).

I had the idea to make a Massively Singleplayer Online game. Yeah, mixing about the most extreme opposite genres :grin:

The final result is Hanoi - City of Scooters! Let's see how far you can make it...

Running out of space :rolling_eyes: ... not exactly my most beloved theme. However, I think it is one that thoroughly guides you towards a certain type of play, so I think it is actually a very good theme! :thumbsup:

Also, not having a theme directly related to Douglas Adams beloved increasing inaccurate trilogy is actually a good thing, because one can combine a gameplay related theme (Running out of space) with any type of environment theme (I'll try to count how many will use a Hitchhiker theme in the end :rofl: )

I will continue where I left with Hanoi - city of scooters in LD41, and will create another Massively Singleplayer Game (if time permits), this time (of course) placed in space and based upon one of the more major hilarious concepts of the Hitchhiker’s Guide: Intergalactic Bar Billiards! Of course, this name is now already taken, and we have 2018, with the tendency to oversimplify things I will call it - drumroll :drum: -

Space Billiards

The plan so far is:

You will have to help your planet :camping: (and it’s 10 billion inhabitants) to survive a game of Space Billiards. Planets are billiard balls :8ball:, Suns are billiard pockets :hole:, lasers behave like billiard cues :closed_umbrella: and of course there is the obvious space-time-distorting black hole :bomb: every now and then. Luckily, you have a large finite improbability drive :rocket: (not an infinite one, though!), thus you can move your planet around quite a bit... But it has side effects :grin:... like filling up space with alternative fact\H\H\H\Hrealities...

Well, I always travel with my towel :reminderribbon: - what could possibly go wrong... :dizzyface:

As I already mentioned in my first post, I wanted to create a Space Billiard game related to the Hitchhiker's Guide. That means n-body calculations, collision, path anticipation, etc. that's not included in typical game engines, let alone in HTML ones. Progress has been slower as anticipated, I don't really have a game here, but some technology prototype that already starts to make fun (well, mostly because of the typical weirdness of non-polished sandboxes...)...

The browser has to do some heavly lifting, calculating 10 or more n-body gravitational effects for a 1000 timesteps, 60 times a second... :blush: I'm astonished, that this actually works...

... though it will be a Jam entry, not a compo, as originally thought.

I'm doing a Space Billiard game, and mechanics start to make sense now. Now I have to consider how to make this actually playable, what type of enemies, pacing, and of course a bit of sound and background images. And the user interface. Phew :drooling_face:

However, I'll ditch that idea to create another massively singleplayer game - I wouldn't know what to save from previous runs... something for the next LD, I guess :laughing:

Finally I'm done!

Didn't make it into a compo entry by a few hours, but I created everything myself. The game itself is a bit too random for my taste, but because of that it it has its funny moments :grin:

Welcome to this year's Intergalactic Bar Billiards, one of the more major hilarious concepts of the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Of course, this name is now already taken, and we have 2018, with the tendency to oversimplify things it's just called - drum roll :drum: - Space Billiards.

Now vote! Please. Pretty please.

I always learned most from various Post Mortems I read; therefore, I try to create those as well, if possible. I don't always manage, but I try. I hope you will find some helpful thoughts.

Space Billiards in a nutshell:

It was a bit more tedious this time, because I stressed out phaser (the game engine) more than anticipated. I stumpled over various bugs (scaling, momentum transfer in arcade physics), but could eventually work around these issues. The game itself is fun, but a bit too random for my personal taste. And it could have been polished a lot more. On the other hand, I'm quite proud of the assets I created myself, though being not too much of an artist.

What went well?

• All in all, phaser is still my favourite game engine for HTML5.
• Creating game assets with gimp is doable, given google and some short-time workshops.
• I still love sfxr.
• I changed my development environment again, like in LD34, but this time it worked. atom is pretty decent as an editor.
• I could reuse my server code for my former LD entries for saving highscores.

What was improvable?

• Creating a game with very unusual game mechanics is always a risk - I ended up creating almost a new physics engine for phaser, and those parts I still use don't behave as anticipated...
• JavaScript doesn't bail out enough when accessing misstyped properties - this happens oh so often. Try typescript next time.
• Searching for free(!) reasonable art can be time consuming. It's often faster and better to create these assets oneself. And it's more rewarding!
• I wanted to create another massively singleplayer game, by saving the moves of other players. However, the game objective and controls changed a lot during development, and it didn't work out at all at the end.
• Debugging was sometime tedious, because some variables suddenly contained NaN. It turned out, I (again) misstyped a property... :fist:

What were the most difficult parts?

• I needed phaser's arcade physics, because I anticipated a lot(!) of objects.
• This physics type has circular bounding boxes (perfect for planets), but they are pretty new, and contain bugs (scaling vs. offsets, momentum transfer doesn't really work with different masses, ...).
• n-body calculations are not that difficult, but I wanted to look ahead in the future, which means massive calculations are necessary, which have to be repeated for every frame.
• It didn't feel like a game, for the whole first one and a half days; that can be quite frustrating. Afterwards it came along quite nicely.

Hope you enjoyed the read; there is also a timelapse video for those who like to read less and get flashed more :grin:

https://youtu.be/20Xh3Us0dWY

Thanks for all your games, and – ah – in case you didn’t do that yet – please * play & vote