In this LD I’m planning to use:
I will also use a library I’m developing for CreateJS, called Creatine. It is a baby yet but there is some useful features such as scene, transitions, and layout manager. I’m sharing Creatine here:
Tags: createjs, html, javascript, ld29
Yesterday night I was thinking in what I will do for this ludum dare. Now I think I have a pretty good idea, probably I won’t finish until tomorrow, but anyways, I am ready to go!
I want to develop a platform with mechanical challenges, like super meat boy. It will involve depression (clinical depression), stress, pressure and fail.
Tags: depression, ld29, platform, super meat boy
I’m little late in my schedule, I’ve just finished the tile system to createjs but there is not physics at all yet.
I’ve just realize that is pretty hard to program a good platform game within 48 hours, specially when you have no idea how to do pixel art, more specially yet when you don’t follow the KISS rule.
So, it is time to plan B. I’m going to do the classical “contain the invasion”. It’s not an original idea but it is a game that I can handle in 24 hours. Check it out the first scratch:
As a consolation due the failure of plan A, a delicious master piece of the Brazilian culinary. Brigadeiro:
I think this is my last preview before the final version.
What is done:
To do (just minor adjusts and tweaks):
Dreaming Of:
Add boost packages to make the ship faster.
Lunch Time!
Tags: beneath the sea, Beneath the Surface, createjs, html5, ludum dare 29
Well, I’ve finished my game Beneath The Sea!
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
(Entry Link | Kongregate Link)
In my blog, I described how was the process to created it, and I copy some important notes summarized from my experience on this ludum dare:
Good job, everyone! I’m proud of you all.
Tags: beneath the sea, notes
This is my 3rd ludum dare and I am going to use the same tools as always:
Independent from the theme, I’m hoping to use behavior trees to control some NPC’s (I wrote a 3-part tutorial on behavior trees on my blog) and I am praying to all gods to elect “You Are Already Dead” as the final theme!
Tags: AI, behavior trees, createjs, creatine, ludum dare 30
I’ve just finished the planning for my game (still untitled)!
Well, even before the theme, I was planning to base the game on AI in order to use some behavior trees. Thus, I was hoping to include some autonomous agents to the game. So, when the theme was revealed, I had this idea:
Everybody wants a person to share a life, to found a family, to fall in love, to marry, etc; and when this happen, one person connects its own world to the other.
My game aims to connect worlds metaphorically: chibis walking in the park looking for their unknown loves while you protect them from obstacles (such as bad matching and meddler chibis).
It seems that this is an ambitious game and I hope I can finish it in this weekend.
Tags: chibi, connected worlds, Love
So, I’ve learned that is not a good idea to implement from scratch a behavior tree library to the LD. I also have learned that debugging a behavior tree without a visual interface is very, very, very, very, very hard. Anyway, I finished the behavior tree implementation and the behaviors are almost finished (I still have to test and change some parameters). Now I have agents that run alone in the park, find some company and act in a conversation.
Still a lot to do!
Tags: agents, behavior trees, chibis, connected worlds, Conversation, createjs
Finishing the game mechanics… No time to lose.
Finally done! And now with a name: Love Craft!
I wanted to do something not related to space, since most of the entries will do that. So I thought in connect worlds metaphorically. “Everybody wants a person to share a life, to found a family, to fall in love, to marry, etc; and when this happen, one person connects its own world to the other”.
I’ve lost so much time on Behavior Trees that I couldn’t add the sounds, what is a shame. However, I kept my initial plan (first time) and I enjoyed the resulting game. It is not that fun, but I liked anyway.
(View Entry | Play Game)
Tags: behavior trees, connected world, craft, createjs, creatine, Love, love craft, ludum dare 30
I made a post in my blog telling my experience within this ludum dare.
http://guineashots.com/2014/09/03/my-experience-within-ludum-dare-30/
GOOD:
BAD:
Tags: behavior tree, game jam, love craft, ludum dare 30, post-mortem
Finally I finished my entry for this Ludum Dare (LD31, the theme is The Entire Game on One Screen). This time, I am so exhausted that I couldn’t do any progress report during the weekend, but, on the other hand, I could finish the game, including the mechanics, graphics and sounds.
My idea was creating something with artificial intelligence (again) and for some reason, after the theme announcement, I remembered that I never touched at a flocking algorithm and this would be a good opportunity for it. The game idea is to take some sheeps from one point and bring them to another, without letting them to leave the map or to be killed. The player uses the mouse to herd the sheeps, which will behave accordingly to their neighbor mates and some tiles in the environment.
As tradition, I writing here a summary of the competition:
Tags: #31, AI, artificial intelligence, ld #31, ludum dare 31
Check it out my entry for this Ludum Dare. Found the easter egg? It seems not so popular in the rest of the world as it is in Brazil, which is a shame =((
http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=15241
Tags: baa ram ewe, easter-egg, ludum dare 31, sheeps
Didn’t sleep, can’t write anymore.
What is done:
– Base gameplay, IA, combat, graphics, effects, menus, credits…
What must be done:
– Levels / tutorials, balance gampley, music and effects
From:
To:
Tags: behavior trees, circular planet, democracy, ld32, Ludum Dare, planet, space, starship troopers
When I first read the theme "Small World" at the theme voting, I thought in making a circular world again (just like my last LD game). However, everybody is gonna do that! So, after a 2-hours brainstorming, the 2 first hours of the competition, I came back with the game idea.
I love the aesthetics of Besieged. All levels show a small village or a small campsite merged into a white-ish background, creating a very cool mix of white emptiness and green alive. With this mixture, you have the feeling that the whole world is just that small portion of green you are seeing. I love that, and I would like to try something alike.
After deciding the aesthetics, I had the feeling that a board game would fit well in this style, where the tiles kind of merge to the background. With a board game in mind, I decided the base rules, which are based on Zombicide: multiple missions, swarm of enemies, climax during the gameplay, varying missions, etc.
All set. A board game inspired by Zombicide and Besieged.
And as usual, even before the theme voting phase, I decided that this game would have something technical that I haven't developed before. LD#30 was behavior trees, LD#31 was flocking algorithm, LD#32 was circular world and complex behavior trees, and, finally, for this LD#38 I wanted to give more time to animations - not the animation like in sprite sheets, but the animation effects like moving a piece, spawning an enemy, changing scenes, etc...
Although the game is not very good, I could finish it, and that was the biggest achievement this time. Sure, other Ludum Dares I worked as hard as this one, but this time the schedule was very, very tight - 3 hours to end the competition I was considering giving up because it missed so many things - but I could complete the base project scope that I have decided at the beginning.
There were, impressively, very few bugs during the development, even the A star algorithm I could code in minutes without any problem. Most bugs I could fix in the last hour.
I could do some cool animations and developed a nice animation scheduling (see below for more details). The animations are not perfect, but they were fun to implement, in special the enemy spawn and enemy movement are very cool!
Very, very tight schedule so that I could barely finish the base of the game. Everything went as I expected, but who wants to barely finish something?
Unbalanced and not fun, again. This is the problem I find in most of my games. I dedicate so much time on the mechanics (usually a bit complex) and the visual that I don't the time to make it good. I should probably focus that on the next game.
The game provides a few visual feedbacks only, but the player don't have much idea of what is happening within the combat, or the player can't even track the pawn actions properly.
No music or sound, but that has always been my Achilles heel.
I implemented a great customization system in which I can add new pawns, enemies, tiles, maps, or event different goals very easily to the game, but I only had time to create one map. If a jam game have lots of customization and lack of content, the customization was just wast of time.
Developing a board game is really hard. I expected it to be complex and take a lot of time to code the game rules, but it is really hard to change and tweak how the rules work and interact during the development. If I will ever implement a board game for a Ludum Dare again, I will keep the rules very very very very simple.
Some details of implementation:
The board game logic is completely independent from the visual and the user interaction, which made things really easy later. When the user select an action, the game (visual) asks the board (logic) for more information and render things. When the user perform an action, the game sends it to the board, the board perform and compute everything internally and returns a list of events that occurred internally. For instance, if the user attacks an enemy, the board returns the events pawn attack, enemy defense, enemy damaged, enemy killed, etc...
This messaging system is really great for board games, in special because I wanted to animate all actions, one by one, sequentially. Each message have a different payload, which is used to update the visual object properly. You may see the messages while playing the game if the developer tools is open.
Animations are trick to do. The problem with animations is that you must wait it to finish in order to continuing the operation of the game, thus, making its operation asynchronous. However, as any asynchronous system, other things are happening while the animations are working, such as the user clicking and moving the mouse everywhere (which causes a bug on buttons, don't know how to solve that yet). To create this system, I added a job function attached to the scene, which can create multiple jobs and run that in parallel.
The job functions receives the duration of the job, the delay to start it, an update function which will perform the animation, and a complete function which is called when the job finished. Moreover, the programmer may stop every job at any time.
At last, I just want to recommend the Affinity Designer, it is a wonderful software for vector drawing, and it save a lot of time with the automatic exporting. I used it together with the Texture Packer and a small script to make the sprite sheet. It was really efficient: I save the document; the Affinity Designer export everything to a specific folder; then I just click export sprite sheet on Texture Packer (I only have to add new sprites if I create new ones); and run the script (I have a console ready to execute it), and done.
Just uploaded the game!
Hey you! I would like to ask you a minute of your Monday to test and judge my game, small board.
Moreover, if you are interested in this type of stuff, try reading the post-mortem.