*gulp*

My first Ludum Dare! My first time using Unity to create a finished game as opposed to interactive sketches! My first time using blender to create anything useful! My first time using …. well a lot of things really! I should really practice more but there’s nothing like the thrill of doing it live! (I’m going to regret that!)

I see a lot of other LD newbies out there so I’ll just try and hide in amongst them! 😉

Good luck all, vote Kittens.

Tags: newbies

Islands concept art

So here’s a quick concepty scribble with oil pastels.

I imagine a floating island piloted by a single warrior, attacking and scavenging stuff from other islands to make his island fly higher.

Let’sa go!

So my first bit of progress includes looking at character controller scripts, learning how to write a script that will allow me to use a flying island as a ‘vehicle’, initial tweakage of character attributes and thinking about what i’m going to do for NPCs that attack.

I’ve been using tutorial scripts from the Unity website as references. Not copying and pasting, instead completely re-writing them out and trying to understand each line of script and what it does. Also looked at the Unity forums for some starting points on the ‘using the island as a vehicle’ ala ‘Press e to enter’. I hope this isn’t against against any rules as I don’t yet know how to just sit there and have code flow out of my hands! But I’m trying!

I’m out of LD#17. Hate to do it, but I hit a massive wall with scripting in general. I’ve been reading up on unity script for the last couple of months and I thought I could wing it over the weekend … I was wrong! 😛

However, thanks to a lot of help from rptb1, I managed to solve a lot of initial problems in the script and then even go on to actually debug my own script which was very rewarding.

Good luck to everyone else and thanks again rptb1 for all the help!

So I’ll be taking part this year, looking to actually finish a game and not hit a scripting wall! Being carefull not to aim too high but not make something rubbish. That ‘ole chestnut eh?

After watch some of the unity3dstudent.com tutorials by the generous Mr Goldstone, I’m pumped and ready to go!

I’ll be using Unity 3d, Blender and just about any other free tools I can get my grubby mits on. Good luck all!

Oats and Tinned apples - Breakfast of champs v1.1

So yesterday I had to go into work, losing me a good 8 hours and I slept a good 11 hours waking myself up by passing gas loudly … but hey! It did the job!

I’ve got a FPS controller running around with a gun that launches gameobjects, a big placeholder boss and a sentry gun which tracks and shoots at the player.

Things to do today:

• Give the player a hoover that can suck up the turrets, turning them into ammunition.
• Give the player an ability to spawn turrets
• Make a big boss dude and give him a rather lovely health bar
• Make art and sound assets for everyone involved
• Menus

I’m going to try my bestest to finish an entry for this very special Ludum Dare! I’ve tried and slunk away in a furious rage before where I’ve failed miserably.

I’ve read up on the Game Jame survival guide and I’m feeling pretty pumped this time!

Planning to use Unity with the Playmaker and EX2D extensions. Photoshop CS4 with Audacity and the free SFX program that people love to use for Jams, SFXR I think.

If the extensions are frowned upon, I’ll just plop it in as a Jam game, not a problem. It’s just I don’t believe I’ll be able to publish the sources to Playmaker and EX2d as I didn’t create them! 😛

Good luck all

Dan.

Ok, I’ll admit I wasn’t a great fan of the theme but with a little garden inspiration, I’m off!

Not much to see really, but I have a cube flapping and gliding around.

The plan being that you control a butterfly being filmed by a troubled wildlife photographer. The interaction between the butterfly, the world and the photographer should make for an interesting experience!

https://sites.google.com/site/originalbiggames/work/tiny-world-build-0-1

(It’s really NOT worth a screenshot) Values need a shedload of tweaking to make it feel more like a butterfly!

Some more progress after getting slightly distracted by Skyward Sword.

The gravity and the mass of the butterfly has been upped, resulting in a faster flapping frenzy! Flapping uses up energy which can be replenished by drinking the nectar from the flowers (spheres).

https://sites.google.com/site/originalbiggames/work/tiny-world-build-0-2

Also, starting the artwork on the butterfly sprites:

… but on the plus side I have an almost fully animated butterfly character! This is the first time I’ve done 2d animation and it’s actually really good fun.

Just need to plop in the voiceover, a level, some level artwork and an end screen. Easy right? 😛

Try it! Up to flap and Space to glide (glide anim missing)

https://sites.google.com/site/originalbiggames/work/tiny-world-build-0-3

So here’s a link to my webplayer:

http://deeteebee.com/You%20only%20get%20one/Web%20Build%202.html

Aaaaand here’s a quick screenie:

The progress so far

The concept is that you are humanity’s last hope! On board the last spaceship, is the only nuke the fleet has left. However the ship is heavily damaged and only has one engine left. Shot into a quantum tunnel aimed at the target planet, dodge the (non-existent) asteroids, comets, enemy ships and ship fire to destroy the enemy homeworld.

You only get one button: Space to activate thruster.

(‘a’ spawns a sphere that comes towards you – debug test!)

Next things for me to do:

– Add obstacles to dodge

– Add HUD which helps to dodge obstacles

– Add objective distance readout

– Concept of speed and speed boosts

– Menu/Splash screen

– Intro

– Audio (traditionally comes last!)

Tags: LD28, space

I’ve been looking forward to this for a while!

I’m looking to get a finished game with hopefully music and audio in.

Tools:

Unreal 4, Maya LT, Photoshop, Imitone, Audacity and Music Creator 6.

If you’re like me and suck at music, check out Imitone. It converts microphone input into midi commands for use with virtual instruments. So hook up your mic and a virtual violin and you could be singing/whistling some sick Mozart tracks for your LD entry!  http://imitone.com/

Right then! After being stuck doing mindblowingly boring stuff this morning (Shopping, tidying and getting ready for a birthday party tonight), I am READY for Ludum Dare.

I want to do a:

• Top down maze game.
• The maze exists across 3 different time zones.
• Actions in an earlier timezone, permanently affect future zones.

So yeah, let’s crack on!

(PS. There may be a Fez involved, both in my game and at the party tonight.)

I have the house to myself and I’m feeling jammy! I love the theme but I’m trying to challenge myself by not doing anything to obviously weapon-based. Instead I’m thinking….

The Pied Pipe – An unconventional weapon

Inspired by the classic ‘Pied Piper’ fable, I’m going to explore using a musical pipe as an unconventional weapon to save children from vicious rats.

Using Unreal engine, Photoshop, Imitone, Audacity and Modo indie if I decide I’m going down the 3D asset route.

This is me walking around, ‘charming’ kids with my placeholder tune (Me whistling into a mic). The rats occasionally decide to eat nearby kids, the randomness is ENTIRELY INTENTIONAL (It totally isn’t!).

The objective will be to charm the kids to safety, avoiding the nasty rats.

Things left to do:

• A ‘Rat’ tune which will scare rats away, but also the kids!
• A life meter for the Piper
• End of level goals
• A journal to track saved/dead kids
• Option to cannibalize a kid to claw back a life
• Actual levels
• Art
• Non-annoying pipe tunes
• Decent Ui

Something I’m quite happy with since I never use Modo and had no idea what was involved with rigging and animating. WILL NOT SPEND TOO LONG ON IT TOMMOROW, HONEST!

the pied piper rocking out

I’m hoping to get something together this time around.

Concept:

You play as a magical tree that is constantly growing, from a tiny sapling to all-bearing great tree. As the Wish Tree, you can choose to grant or deny wishes from the local town. Each wish that is granted or denied affects generations for years to come. How does your story play out?

Tools:

Unreal Engine 4

Photoshop

Modo/Blender/Silo

Stagelight for music maybe

My god that was a fun weekend!

So I decided to use Construct 2. It’s been sitting on my PC unused for a while now after buying it on special offer/a whim. After a solid weekend’s Jam, I’m really impressed with it’s speed, stability, simplicity and power. The event system is pretty damned good once you understand a few concepts and workflows. I found that I settled into a zen-like state of being, adding new events to get what I wanted, working! (always nice!).

I never actually got around to actually replacing my awful placeholder art. I decided that it was much more fun to try and turn it from a simple shooter to a damned MOBA/RTS. I was very happy with how quick it was to crank out the placeholder artwork from within Construct’s editor. Some quick paint dabs, some fills and some collision editing and Bob’s your uncle!

SFXR was solid and dependable. Very quick to generate ALL of my sound effects. Thanks again Ludum Dare community! 😀

Itch.io must have been 3 minutes from registration to actually saving my game’s page with everything I needed uploaded. Bloody amazing!

Design-wise, I started out with the idea of an advanced combat drone that could transform into:

• A slow, heavy Tank
• A fast, weak Jeep
• A manoeuvrable Helicopter
• A super speedy Jet
• A sneaky submarine
• A McBoatyMcBoatface

That quickly boiled down into the Tank/Plane combo which you’ll find in the game. Some brutal scoping nice and early, saved me from giving up halfway through Saturday afternoon!

A couple of things that could naturally evolve as next steps:

• Better Ai for the Plane units
• An Ai drone Tank/Plane
• Splitscreen multiplayer
• Upgradable abilities and powers
• More unit types
• A dynamic and evolving city environment

Anyhow, a great Ludum Dare! Really enjoyed it!