Fellow LD’ers, please try the app in our Dropbox Folder — you need to unzip and run the EXE file — windows only right now — thanks.

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public/LD24

First Screenie:

Making some good progress — basic movement and most of the characters are created (thanks to the kids) — here is an updated screenie of the current level we are building.

Latest build is available here:

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Public/LD24

Things progressing nicely

• game engine working
• level engine working
• score engine working

Now time to start finishing the levels

Latest drop is available here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16969200/LD24/ld24-5.0.zip

This is what we would have had if we were doing the main contest. I guess we are lucky that we are doing the Jam to give us an extra day. We got one level done — which we think is pretty cool. We are continuing to complete a few more levels today and submit the finished product tomorrow. Please leave feedback for our work so far.

Thanks

Team Hocker

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16969200/LD24/ld24-6.0.zip

Two levels complete and starting on the third — we might just finish our 5 level goal. I am very proud of how we all worked together this weekend. It was a lot of fun.

Latest drop is here:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16969200/LD24/ld24-6.2.zip

PS — Yes we totally ripped our tile-sheets from SM3!!!

I cant believe it — we actually did it. A four level plat-former closely following the Theme of Evolution. The kids and my wife did some excellent work on the sprites, and we did need some help for the tile sheets and music and sounds. It was a very fun experience and I can’t wait to do this again.

Here is the link to our entry:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=7135

Yes, once again, my sons and I will be entering the Ludum Dare. We have a bit more of a chaotic schedule this time around (baseball, cub scouts, etc) but we will try our best.

Team Hocker — Go!

Tools

We might make a last minute call depending on the theme

Graphics:

ArtRage, Wacom Intuos 3, Spine, Paint.NET, some others.

Sound:

We will probably find free sounds again on the internet.

Engine:

Unity or GameMaker Studio

If we use Unity we will also be using the wonderul 2DToolkit from Unikron software,  for sprites.

So I guess whatever we decode on doing it will be in 2D.

Good Luck to Everyone!

! Team Hocker !

This entry was posted on Monday, April 22nd, 2013 at 8:22 pm and is filed under LD #26. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

You can watch us live on Twitch.tv

http://www.twitch.tv/paulhocker/

Interesting theme. The boys and I spent a good hour coming up with gameplay and theme elements, then they went off to bed. I have summarized below what the game will be (hopefully). I imagine we might be adding some more details as the weekend goes on. Also attached a quick sketch as to what the game might look like when completed.

Theme

Minimalism

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. Minimalism is any design or style in which the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect.
Setting

The world of Superlative, full of color and magic.

Story

Characters

Antagonist (Enemy)

Mr Minimal has come to your world to remove the magic by removing its
color and locking it away forever.

Protagonist (Player)

Colorific Collin is the last boy standing between Mr Minimal and the
future of his world.
Supporting Characters

Gameplay

This will be a fill in pattern game where the player will avoid the enemy
and other obstacles while trying to fill in a portion of the game area
to complete the level.

The enemy will be trying to prevent the player from completing the level
by removing color from areas already filled by the player.

The player will have a limited amount of time to complete each level.

Each level will become progressively harder, and will add more enemies and
obstacles to attempt stopping the player from completing the level.

Mechanics

Player is controlled using the keyboard or mouse. Arrow keys can be
used to move the player left, right, up or down. You can also use the
mouse by clicking on an empty space next to the player.

When the player passes over an area of the playing field that has had
its color removed, it will add the color back.

Artwork

Hand drawn — Cartoony — bold bright colors

Sound

8-bit

Music

8-bit

Sad music for when too much are is missing color.

Happy when color is being returned.

Tools

Unity 4
TK2D
TK2D UI
Notepad
Artrage 4
Audacity
BFXR

Development environment setup, and game scene created. Here is first screen capture.

Most of the player mechanics are complete. Now beginning to work in the game play mechanics, and enemy logic.

Here is a not-so playable version so far:

http://dev1.sdngames.com/ld26

Really glad we are doing the Jam again this time. We had a busy weekend, and I found it pretty hard to be motivated to code the game. Regardless, we have pushed thru and now have a working game, although it is still not finished. Will be spending time tomorrow getting it polished and published. Here is how it looks so far.

Movement WASD.

http://dev1.sdngames.com/ld26

This will be our third LD. Looking forward to it. I feel we have gotten better with each Jam, and more confident.

{“settings”:

{ “platform”: “many”, “engine”: “Unity”, “compo”: “JAM”, “team members”: 4, “graphics”: [ “Paint.net”, “ArtRage”] }

}

I also want to add a “shameful” plug for a Win8 game we developed for the GameMaker Win Big competition. There is a trial, but you will feel better if you buy it. <LOL>

Hope you like it and please leave feedback. We are re-working some things for a new release in September for multiple platforms.

http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/kozmic-blue/4a347e3b-a3f7-4c26-a543-3271ca13f8a3

Paul

SDN Headmaster

Enjoy the ride everyone. I am looking forward to a nice weekend of creating and playing. I can’t wait to see what creative ideas the kids have this time.

Have Fun!

Streaming here:

http://www.twitch.tv/paulhocker

Playtesting here:

http://dev1.sdngames.com/ld27

The game will be a dungeon crawler/shooter. Pixel artwork from the kids, coding from me.

Dungeon will be completely random, with random enemies, powerups and rewards. Boss levels will be included and hopefully a nice selection of enemies to mow thru. The levels will get progressively harder, as will the enemies.

Want to use Scoreoid to track usage and hi score table.

Here is what we have so far (pokemon character is filler for now)

The following is a summary and post mortem for our new LD27 game 10 Second Dungeon Hero. We hope you enjoy playing it.

Entry Information

So I have never written one of these before so here it goes.

This was our third, and when I say our, it is me and my three boys (6, 9, 11) and my wife. I usually do all of the coding, and the rest of the family helps with the artwork.

This was the MOST challenging and the MOST satisfying LD yet. Why? Because I wanted to QUIT half way thru the contest. At one point on Sunday I had major bugs in the code and it seemed hopeless. But, something made me want to see this finished. So I took a break for a couple of hours, and came back with a clearer mind. It really helped and we have the results to show for it.

This was by far the most ambitious game we have done. I had NO idea how much work it is to create a random dungeon crawler. Well, now I know.

The Good

1. The Story — we had fun coming up with the story of Granny and her kids getting sent to another dimension. And having her BLAST their way back home.
2. Game — I am really proud of the game, not just for the reasons mentioned above, but also because it is a really large complex game that is “mostly” complete.
3. Hi Scoring — my goal for this LD was to use Scoreoid for tracking the hiscores and playing of the game. Mission accomplished.
4. Theme — we really liked the theme and we had lots of ideas before coming up with the dungeon crawler. In hind sight, my wifes idea for a balloon popping game would have been MUCH EASIER. (note: play the game and you will see we still worked the balloons in)
5. Random Room Name Generator — eash room you enter has a unique name. By far one of my most favorite features of the game. I got the inspiration from this article  that had a python random room generator, but I could not locate the code, so I rolled my own. I think it turned out nice.

The Bad

1. Map — the random map TOOK FOREVER to program. I think the end results look good but the code has SO MANY magic numbers it makes my head spin. Lesson learned.
2. Graphics — don’t get me wrong. The kids did a great job. But to take our games to the next level we need to step it up a bit.

The Ugly

1. Testing — once again last minute testing caused some delay near the deadline. Of course, I blame my children who were responsible for all Q&A. Its really hard to find good help these days.
2. Bugs — Grrr. Had some very nasty bugs in the shooting and level building that cost me many hours of programming.

Thats about it. Hope you enjoy it, and don’t forgot to play lots of games and rate them all.

Team Hocker

Looking forward to another fun weekend of Game Making!

Unity

Inkscape

LMMS

SFXR

Spine

Tiled (if needed)

We are officially in for our fifth Ludum Dare, although the last one ended in failure. We really liked the themes we saw, it is going to be a great weekend of Game Design. We might use this opportunity to learn the new Unity 2D features, but we know 2D Toolkit so well we don’t want to waste too much time learning a new tool.

Twitch Stream

• http://www.twitch.tv/paulhocker

Playtesting

• http://dev1.sdngames.com/ld29

Tools Of The Trade

• Unity (2D Toolkit)
• LMMS
• InkScape
• Paint .Net
• Gimp
• SFXR
• Spine
• Tiled

Finished brainstorming ideas with the wife and kids. We have a really great idea for a very simple game involving colors and shapes.  Have a Trello setup and streaming live. Currently working on the color palette and shape abilities.

Streaming on Twitch

http://www.twitch.tv/paulhocker

Trello Board

https://trello.com/b/W1dvghEx/ld29

So we planned on building a Jam entry from the very beginning. We started with a very simple concept, Shapes penetrating the surface of other shapes and changing into the new shape. After two days of hard work, we have a very fun game that we want to expand on in the future. I am very proud of how well we worked together on this one. The kids played a great role play-testing and generating ideas. My wife talked me into keeping it simple, and boy did it pay off.

Here are some screenshots, the entry will be coming tomorrow. We are looking forward to using the next day to polish the entry.

You can always play the most recent Web version here

Team Hocker