Hope the voted theme is a good one. Will be coding this weekend regardless, first time in forever that I haven’t had Uni work to be done.

Will be using Javascript and HTML5, possibly WebGL if I can get up to speed with it.

Unlikely to be any sound effects or fancy graphics, tend to do very minimal, procedural, programmer art when coding 😛

Not much experience with making full fledged games, usually end up making cool toys or simulations.

Hi there!

Had this account for a while but the coming Ludum Dare contest is at the ideal time for me in terms of Schedule. Right in the middle of the University Easter Break means that I won’t be too busy with work to participate and there will be few distractions

My coding experience has been all over the place; C, Dark Basic, HTML, Java, Javascript, Lua, Mathematica, PHP, Python, even a little bit of Prolog!

I’ve produced my best projects, which could be charitably seen as games, in Javascript with a HTML5 canvas display, mostly in 2D but I have messed around with using WebGL for 3D renders. Javascript is a great choice for a project to share with others, which is the goal of this contest Recent academic programming has been in Java so I’ll have some nice object orientated principles to use in Javascript.

For editor I think I’ll give Netbeans a shot, it works well for Java and supports other languages. Otherwise I’ll be using Notepad++ for text and Paint.Net for images.

Excited to see what Themes will be voted on, always end up with lots of inspiration through that 😀

Looking through the heaps of projects on my computer and the few that I have uploaded online at http://tangentialtopics.blogspot.co.uk/ a few themes emerge.

I enjoy coming up with neat algorithms to generate game worlds, be they world maps, dungeons or galaxies. Procedural content generation is very rewarding to explore as the designer!

Most of my favourite games are real time strategy or city builders, where you control whole groups of characters or give high level commands. Most of my projects fit into this ‘management’ genre where you don’t have a single character and the controls involve clicking and dragging.

Along with procedural content generation algorithms I also have a weakness for Cellular Automata or other simulation-like game rules. By only having a few actions each agent can take you end up with simple code that results in fascinating emergent phenomena. This ties into having quite active agents in the world with some rudimentary AI.

Having randomly generated game worlds with agents moving around without a distinct player character means the game projects I produce are more like ‘toys’ that you can just sit and watch. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or not 😛 Certainly I enjoy the process of creating and then setting in motion a little simulation. At the very least you can expect me to produce something that is nice to watch, assuming my minimalist programmer art isn’t too bad.

First round already has some interesting ideas in it, most appealing to me would be:

• Four Elements
• Genetics
• Hidden World
• In The Clouds
• Into The Wild
• Stranded
• The Island

They sound like excellent starting off points for a cute little simulation :3

Even if these ideas don’t do too well I’ll remember them to combine with other ideas and the winning theme.

I guess I saw the first round a little bit late 😛 Some more neat concepts to make an interesting system around:

• Adapt to survive
• Among the stars
• Asymmetry
• Limited Resources
• Side Effect
• Trade

I am going to have a healthy backlog of ideas for programming projects before this contest even starts

Another set of ideas has appeared

• Discovery
• Food Chain
• Indirect Control
• Metamorphosis
• Shrinking World
• Simplicity
• Symmetry
• Where no man has gone before

All the possible themes have now been revealed, this last round has quite a few ideas I’d enjoy doing. The older rounds are closing one by one, if I had to guess I’d say ‘Companion’ has a chance of winning, going by how popular it was in round one. Better think what can be done with that 😛

• 1000 years (this was is really appealing to me, just think of all the different interpretations!)
• Abandoned
• Foreign worlds
• Grow
• Harvest
• Hive Mind
• Playing Both Sides
• Rapid Expansion
• Transformation
• You are the power source

I think I’ll do this Ludum Dare in Java, I’ve been having too much fun with the language recently to attempt to refresh my memory on Javascript. Its much easier to do 3D renders in Java which is ace 😀

Just woke up (7am in Britain) and I see that the theme is ‘An Unconventional Weapon’, that does mean that the game could be peaceful right? Any kind of non-violent response is a very unconventional weapon after all 😛

I’ll see what ideas I can come up with as I start coding, Github repository is already up :

https://github.com/AlexMulkerrin/LudumDare32

Good luck to everyone taking part!

Been putting in the basic framework for whatever I end up making; program object with display window and simulation. The simulation has a very bare bones map generator in it and can create agents on the map

Not much to look at so far!

I think I know what I want to do for this theme, a God Game where you can affect the fortunes of primitive, warring tribes letting them gain victory through unconventional means. Heavily inspired by Populous, Civilization and From Dust. Hope I manage to get something looking a little better than what is there so far! 😀

Gotten the simulation to actually update as well as adding important information about the world:

So in this God game you start at the dawn of history where hunter gatherer tribes of people roam the world. Life is unpredictable for them and many die out. Your role will be to guide the peoples to fertile lands where they may settle down and live a more stable existence.

Of course before that can happen I need to implement user interaction!

I could make the generated map much nicer than just random noise.

Been busy coding and haven’t remembered to put anything up here.

There are now player controls, you can raise and lower the land as you will!

Added more useful information to the screen, event log and current tile the mouse is over.

Next on the todo list are:

• Allow interaction with tribes, inspire them to settle down into a village
• Make the terrain environment more unpredictable with cold and hot seasons affecting how much food there is.
• That colour palette is pretty dire, I just picked the default Java library colors
• Add a game over screen and score (based on how many people survived)

After that it will probably be too late for me to work any more today. Come tomorrow there will be some conflict to intercede with godly powers, perhaps even some actual art instead of just boxes 😛

The game is looking a lot nicer with a sensible palette added

The brown splotches are the fields of the settlement that can now be founded. Because a settlement can harvest food from all the tiles within a 5×5 area they can easily become large enough to constantly be churning out new tribes. This is what I wanted to happen! These new tribes will cause problems by fighting against other tribes, having strong loyalties to their parent settlement they are more unfriendly. Well, once I add combat that is 😛

Settlements are very stable at the moment, I will look into changing that. Actually next task is to make the world a little bit more inhospitable >:D

Glad I managed to sleep well. Today will be when this program gets what it needs to become a game. Not done much on recording game state before, playing with simulations has always been too much fun 😛

Been distracted by messing around with the game too much to remember to post a progress report 😛 It is now sort of playable; the game lasts 500 turns and when it finishes you get rated on how many people are alive. Things don’t always go that well, especially if the climate gets rough:

The world of Omuk did not fare well when an ice age occurred. In some ways it is better to settle in the desert rather than the poles, nothing grows under snow.

I’ve improved the colour palette and added little icons for hills and mountains. Took far too long to work out how to load images in Java, glad I got it sorted. Now I can make the settlements and tribes have icons too!

Making pixel art sprites is too much fun:

I’ve added a wealth of new icons to the map: plants, trees, crops, houses. Really need to focus on adding something to the end screen now. How about a population/score graph?

Not too long now, at least I will be able to keep working till right up to the submission deadline.

Game part of the program is mostly in place now, you have a multitude of useful functions in the bottom right corner. After 500 turns you are presented with the following screen, showing how well you have done:

As should be blatantly obvious to those who played it I am doing exactly what the original Civilization game did at the end of a game. Even the colour choice is quite similar! What can I say, it was the first game I ever played and I always come back to it when designing my own games

What’s left to add? More actions for the nomadic tribes, playing around in it I’ve found that their random wanderings are very aggravating, this calls for the ability to send a tribe on a pilgrimage (to wherever you choose!) If I manage it I’ll try to add fighting between tribal groups.

I hope what I end up creating is sufficient for this Ludum Dare. I haven’t really done much with the theme of Unconventional Weapons, I guess the environment is hostile and attacks with sudden change of climate? You can always sink cities if you like 😀

And with that I have finished off my first Ludum Dare Entry. Its been a blast and I’m pretty proud of what I have achieved. Its been great to watch this program take shape over the course of only two days. Its really stretched my coding skills to get so much done in such a short amount of time.

(what a poor final population, its like I was asleep at the wheel 😮 )

You can take a look at it here:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=35280 

I did implement fighting (between tribes) but only at the eleventh hour 😛 It is probably bugged!

Hope everyone who took part in the compo enjoyed themselves, I can’t be the only one who is in need of some serious rest now. I look forward to playing everyone’s games tomorrow. Not to mention my own, too much time has already been eaten up by play testing it 😀

Added a proper explanation for my entry on the submission page, I’ve put in details of Terrain, Powers, Controls and Game Rules. I even made a legend for the map to help explain things better:

Entry is here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=35280

Now that I’ve had some time to rest I can look back on how this competition went. All in all I think it went brilliantly 😀

What went right:

• Having the entire weekend to dedicate to coding, previously I only watched Ludum Dare from the sidelines. This time I made an active decision to participate and was up and coding each day
• Having spent the past few weeks fooling around in Java I had learnt a lot of techniques to do user interfaces. It was easy to implement those methods as they were still fresh in my mind.
• Going and doing my own thing, namely simulations seemed to go really well. I have a huge amount of knowledge I’ve picked up over years about how to make a simple map generation algorithm.
• Having a proper IDE, using Netbeans was a real improvement from only having Notepad++. Its error highlighting was a huge benefit when sleepily coding at 11pm.
• Getting the map up and running pronto, I find it helps hugely to get feedback on what your code is doing so first thing I did was setup a barebones simulation and displayed it. Once I had it running happily away I could spend time thinking as I watched the simulation unfold.

What didn’t go as well:

• Using a language I was less familiar with, ideally I would have used Javascript but I was having too much fun with the modular nature of Java objects. This meant that I was writing code without knowing what a lot of the libraries did. It took me two hours to implement sprites! And even then it didn’t quite work right to begin with.
• Aspirations a little too lofty, making a full god game is a huge task, not to mention all the things I wanted to implement; trade, alliances, cultural identities! For a while I wondered if I’d get any proper functionality done at all and be left with a screen saver. Things worked out but I was coding the goto command and combat mere hours before the deadline.
• Simulation first, game second. It would have been good to spend more time on planning the user interaction with the program, most of the buttons and the intro text were done haphazardly at the last minute. I guess thats to be expected in a 48hr compo, still it was a shame to produce something so clearly incomplete.
• The theme of ‘Unconventional weapon’, I’ll confess to being a little disappointed with that as I wasn’t too keen on making a combat game. Its good that I was able to find motivation to do my own thing but magical powers are hardly unconventional in games… Perhaps if I had kept my options open on the run up to the theme announcement rather than focusing on what I wanted to make.

Still at the end of this Ludum Dare I’ve created something that is almost an actual, legitimate game. I even sat down to try playing it properly (hence the screenshot, 4.2K woo!) and found it pretty compelling. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a game project before so thanks Ludum Dare 😀

Ludum Dare 32 was a great experience so I’ll be taking part this time again 😀

Going to be using JavaScript this time around as I think I’ve learnt how to embed it right on the submission page! Won’t that be much simpler than having to download a file which may or may not run?

I will be working solo for the main competition but I’m hoping to be able to release something for the jam with a little help from my friends. They’ll be adding things like images and sound 😛

Good luck to everyone taking part