Hi!

Here is the entry we talking about: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=5167

The concept came from the fact I once wanted to do a platform game for LD 21 but then I chose NDS as the platform which I wasn’t familiar at all at the time so it didn’t made it in time. But a plain platformer seemd too plain so I wanted a mechanic that can enhance the idea and goes well with the theme. That turned out to be a Tetris + Bejeweled freak and it was quite fitting to the theme and the platformer part.

I’ve made a little video of the game for you but I encourage you to play it as it runs on most platforms and even in a browser.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5J6SPu2tgs

You can tell from the video that the game isn’t quite finished. Let’s see in short what led me to this faliure.

What went wrong

Normally the structure came naturally to me while programming and everithing fits just fine and builds on each other. This time I had to rewrite parts of the mechanics several times to support other functionalities better. That taken away a lot of time and momentum. I don’t know what happend to me…

I recently changed my daily routine – or should I say I’ve tried to create one – and it’s not the real problem but it did take away more time from programming as opposed to the 48h is 48h tactic I used to do.

A little depression came from my real life and from the fact that I’m not doing as well as I used to. This ultimately lead to give up on the finishing of the collision checking as it would required to rewrite the whole falling block mechanic.

Advise

Get yourself together and push through no matter what!

Thank you for reading! Please give my game a try and leave a comment! I’ll rate back of course.

Tags: post-mortem, video

Some years ago I loved doing these compos. Learned a lot about different tools and systems. Sadly life happened and had to work very hard on real games.

But now, I try my luck again and write my own crossplatform engine. I expect a lot of improvement during this and several other jams in the next few weeks.

The goal is to have an engine that: - can compile in Visual Studio on Windows, with make on Linux and with Android Studio anywhere - runs on desktop at least imitating Android devices and on Android - uses OpenGL 4 / OpenGL ES 3 - handles basic mouse, keyboard and touch input - can render basic 2D/3D gfx objects and lighting - handles a basic camera - animates/moves stuff - plays mono music/sfx as Android devices are mostly mono - only basic asset file loaders

What will not be the goal on this jam: - no physics - no particles - anything advanced from the above stuff - absolutely no fancy debug displays or logging system - no advanced error handling - no editors - no save feature - no scripting - no multiplayer features nor social media integrations

That is for a first design statement. What I already have is the basic OpenGL hello world triangle example running on Windows and Android without input handling using glfw and glew.

Don't expect me to blog too much..

Wish me luck! Enjoy the jam!

So after the theme announcement I went to sleep 10 hours - as usual. And I woke up with an idea.

I want you to fight a dragon on a cliff. On the way there, you will get powers but in order to got to the next stage you need to sacrifice something.

I got all the design as a draft - will not write an FDD during the compo though maybe in the porting/jam period.

I know what I want exactly, so I have compiled a little TODO list on the programming tasks. - refactor the OpenGL Hello Wrold Triangle to have: - separate rendering/logic/fake physics update (but keep it simple) - have separate texture and shader loading and handling and a renderable list - game states with corresponding screens - separate GUI layer - need to display: - whole screen drawing - possibly with scrolling - for playfield - sprites - hopefully with animations - some text - create game mechanics: - movement: - run - with speeds while holding a button - jump - the usual parabolic stuff without control in mid air - moving along a line path while holding a button - collision: - sprite to sprite - sprite to world: - with a line to walk on - with places on map with a 1-bit map - getting input: - keyboard keys for moving - mouse for aiming a shot

This is for the getting stuff ready for the game programming and is preferably done by tonight.

Happy jamming!

Last I have defined my objectives for the day and went for a walk with my dog. He is blind since two years now so it's always adventurous to go anywhere. He is 12 and a half by the way.

Anyway, I have under estimated how easy to forget C++ - and I didn't use it for about 4 years now. Luckily I was for more then 15 years before so it was easy to get on the road again. :) I managed to get a decent framework out of the tutorial triangle. It can handle Init, Run, Pause, Resume, Shutdown for app states. Has a scene loading, rendering and switching mechanic. That means I have proper asset loading underneath and has a separate scheduled load/unload cycles.

(Of course there are lot's of TODOs in there and the code is not that optimal I imagine but I'm still happy with getting my engine that far in the little time I have worked.)

Now I can play with basic shaders, textures and models. Today I have to work some hours but after I get onto the other described mechanics like moving stuff and collision.

I think this still can be finished for the jam. Enjoy the weekend!

Just got back home, and will start to work after a good hot black tea. But first a little recap for getting on track again.

I had to work a lot more than I thought - sad but true. So I had little time yesterday to get more stuff into the engine. I managed to do a little refactor on the rendering so all alien stuff got out from it and now it only handles shaders, textures and renderables - that's meshes and the like btw - in a general and more optimized fashion. I got a simple Sprite class which has ways to manipulate it's model matrix - aka position. And lastly I started to handle inputs so the sprite can move on the screen.

I don't really aiming for completing the game for the jam, only want to get all previously stated tasks done. That would make a decent start for a 2D game engine. (Actually it has everything to be 3D and also it can be built as an apk and run on Android devices too.)

I remember when some years ago I did these Jams using Processing, all these features were ready from the start. Popping up the editor and have a decent scene switch mechanic with common GUI features and input handling was like 2 hours at max. :) A fraction of them below for put ground under the words.

Don't get me wrong, I do this project because I am enjoying the hell out of it! You should too!

Long time no participating. Last time I've started on my cross-platform engine and got somewhere with it. I did a little polishing since, but it's time to finish.

(I did a lot of games before with publicly available engines and don't want to use these again ever if possible. That will probably conclude to not having a game at the end. Sorry.)

Hello! Long time no see.

Saw that there is a GBAJam happening and also next Ludum Dare is this weekend. It's just natural to give it a go as I have never done GBA programming before and I used to do LDs to learn new platforms.

So the platform is GBA, language is C and I'll use libtonc if I manage to get the toolchain together. I'm not sure about gfx and sound at the momo. But probably use Gimp and OpenMPT if I get to that - usually not happen.

I will try to stream my struggles on Twitch. Come drop by and ask stupid questions or help me - especially if you have experience programming the GBA. Give a follow so you can write in chat and set notifications so you know when I start streaming - as there will be pauses. (First time streamer so please be kind. :grin:) After the LD, I'll continue streaming the development for GBAJam from time to time, and maybe more.

Thanks for dropping by my stream and help!

In an hour I had an acceptable game design - with some vague areas. It will be an action game and probably sports some rogue-like techniques.

As for the GBA dev part, I have created the World's Most Epic Worm and got it shown on the screen. This was the first thing I was afraid of. Now it's crossed out, fortunately. (Along with other toolchain question marks.)

In some hours I'll go live again. Next up is some basic background handling, and some sprite moving action. Maybe we got a boss on the screen as well. Follow me on Twitch to get notified!

Just kidding! It was an amazing stream. I had so much help.

Figured out some compiling issues, fixed some bugs, tried out debugging with GDB, and overall get more knowledge on the hardware. Good stuff!

In this one we have figured out some of the input handling and got deep into the soul of the tiled backgrounds. I have everything to get enemies and levels done. May work on the wiggle controls a little. :grin:

Next stream sill be around noon, where we hopefully get to actually gamify the experience and get into sfx a little. Come see the struggle and help me if you can!

Hi! Sorry, I couldn't stream. I had to hunt down bugs like a switched up source and destination object, having set the hidden flag on the sprite but not on the higher logical unit on copy, ... That kinda tiredness mistakes.

I have now multiple sprites handled as enemies in a buffer where I can spawn them. Have a background that sadly doesn't do too much at the momo. And another that has the item what you need to collect, but somehow has the timings wrong. (Could solve it easily in other ways but then where is the fun?) I also have the input handling working well with the sprite display. Now the worm facing in the right direction and has a slapping animation.

I am satisfied with what I have achieved. Sadly the time isn't enough to finish the grand plan. That's ok! I will try to cut it down, and still finish for the compo. If not, then there is the jam still. (I don't like the thought that I could have just used anyone's game engine code and could get someone to do the assets though..)

Anyways, there will be a stream after the submission deadline. Summing up how it ended, considering the jam, and further development struggles as I still don't have an idea on how to play sound. :grin:

See you at the stream!

Still not finished, Actually I didn't wanted to compromise the design. I't would be like "oh, its not deeper and deeper but just going deep" or not even that. Bah! Nope.

On deadline, I dropped the keys and hit the stream button to show where it got. Here is a clip from the stream.

Anyways, I'm still good for the jam. I think I'll go for it. Need to learn sound though. Will stream tonight. Follow on Twitch to get notified if you are interested. :smile: Come cheer for me!

Hi!

Doing LD jam for years now. I'm always looking into something new, Android, Processing, NintendoDS, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, Atari 2600. Some years ago, I began working on my own game engine in C++ but life took me away from that language so I stopped working on it. Recently I had to get into GoLang and it changed my life, I stuck with it, it's awesome! So, LD 51, I started another game engine in Go. And here we are. Have not worked on it since but I want to get into it. I had a game idea for my limited engine which needs little additional engine development. So my engine can advance and a game might happen out of it. It is always a good idea to develop a project by implementing real life needed features. (Then do heavy refactoring. :stuckouttongueclosedeyes:) The idea is bendable to incorporate "summoning" - don't frown on me when it feels forced.

Features I have: - a window with OpenGL context - upload meshes, textures, and arbitrary data to video card - use vertex and pixel shaders - online multiplayer ready game loop

Features I need: - minimal GUI, ex. a pushable button - sprite animation - sprite movement - sprite user interaction - sprite collision - multiple scenes handling - a basic sound mixer - sound player

Decent start to turn my engine basics into actual game engine basics. A little ambitious but I hope it will get me back into the groove of programming.

I will stream on Twitch/rawbits (Why does my trustworthiness needs to be evaluated after all these years, site devs? :disappointed:)

Wish me luck!