Hey guys. I see lots of other first-timers here — looks like this is a good year for joining! Well, this will be my first time too, hopefully the first of many.

I heard of LD a few times but I never got round to checking it out. Well, I just randomly thought of it a couple of days ago and it turns out it’s just around the corner. What luck! So I’ve been playing a through some of the previous entries. Favourites so far are the tower defense with the owls, and the one with the robots. Oh, and the one where the aliens spill their purple guts everywhere. (All from the same theme… ‘Tower’ was a winner!)

Probably going to go with Flash for this. I’m usually a C++ or Python guy, but as someone beneath me said, flash is faaaaast.

Tags: hello world

So I ended up staying awake on IRC till 4am to see what the theme was. Advancing wall of doom, eh? Well, I was rooting for Bosses, but at least this beats Rain. Nobody wanted rain.

(and by nobody I mean me)

So, after tossing about some dumb ideas I’m going to go for a platformer. Details are still emerging in my mind, and while they emerge, I draw tank tracks. Hooray!

It’s 9:30 now, I haven’t been to sleep, I’m not tired and I don’t have anything importatnt I gotta do today. These are I think excellent conditions! We’ll see how long I last…

Breakfast soon, once I get these things spinning.

Tags: graphics

mmmmmmm oaty clumpsters

Realizing my breakfast is more delicious than it is interesting, I’ve gone ahead and given it the Andy Warhol treatment. Now it looks like fishtank scenery.

Tags: food

…no screenshots, because my game is a bit messed up at the moment. But it’s nearly winnable now! Or at least it will be when it’s no longer messed up. (It’s been losable for hours.)

Incidentally, doing this project has reminded me what a cool language ActionScript 3 is. Don’t want to declare your types? You don’t have to! But you still can if you need the speed, either way is cool. Of course there are things I could bitch about too, but I won’t. Feel the excitement wash over you as you look at this screenshot of my text editor.

Edit: I do actually have something to show now!

You have to use the little platforms to get over the wall and then shoot it in the butt.

Tags: coding

I am now at the point where I’m happy with how my game works. You can win, you can lose, it doesn’t glitch when you touch stuff, and there are even a few sound effects. I made a new wall, too:

He’s not much of a wall just yet, but give him time. Anyway, I still have a lot to do, because:

* There aren’t any enemies other than the wall

* There’s only one level

* Your gun isn’t much use

* No music

So, back to work again…

Whew.

There were some more things I wanted to do, but on the other hand, I’m tired. Today wasn’t as productive as yesterday but I did get some music made and added some more walls, and general polish. Enjoy!

Play in browser

Windows EXE

Source zip

Flash sometimes has framerate issues when you view it in the browser, so if that happens please use the EXE or right-click-and-save this SWF and open it locally:

SWF file

Tags: final

Yep, looks like I’ll be participating. This will be my second LD, the first being LD14 “Advancing Wall of Doom”. I went with Flash for that one, so this time I’m doing the complete opposite and going SDL + OpenGL. No basecode.

No desk shot this time, cause I’m not using a desk, just my laptop. Can’t wait to see the theme. (I’m supporting Flood :))

Tags: declaration of independence

So, we have a theme! Now, I don’t know about you guys, but I usually like to start off brainstorming in MS Paint. Haven’t thought of anything wonderful yet, but it’s a pretty good theme.

Good luck, everyone!

Aaaand it’s bedtime. (5AM!) I’m actually pretty pleased with this; when you’re starting totally from scratch, getting pictures on the screen is a big deal!

Desert islands AND floating sky islands! Why not?

So, halfway in and my game is working, but it’s very short — and boring! Since I’m doing this with no fancy frameworks or basecode, I had planned to spend day 1 on the engine and day 2 on the content. Well, the engine’s done, and so is some of the content, so tomorrow I should be able to flesh this thing out a bit.

(I know I’m not going to win any originality points for going with floating sky islands, but they’re just so cool!)

Done!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-17/?action=preview&uid=771

People told me they didn’t enjoy dying in one hit, so I scattered some armour around the place. You don’t start with any, though, you have to find it! Get to it!

I think it’s hard, but not too hard. Kinda reminds me of Contra actually, the way it turned out. Except way, way shorter.

Enjoy!

Also, I recorded a timelapse this time. It’ll be up soon.

Timelapse is up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHlXEjBDtNI

I’ve never uploaded anything to Youtube before — is it normal for it to decimate the quality like that? Oh well. You can sort of see what’s going on.

Also, I updated the source archive so it should build on Unix platforms now (That includes you, Mac users).  I’d compile it on my Mac for you but I can’t seem to get hold of SDL. Also it’s a PowerPC Mac so it probably wouldn’t even run for you.

Looking forward to playing the other 204 entries!

Edit: Ah, never mind. Just noticed: “Video quality my improve once processing is complete”. Here’s hoping!

Edit Edit: Also, if you’re interested, the source download includes the Ableton Live 8 project for the music and a couple of Photoshop PSDs.

Just wanted to share this little tool I made for Windows users. It takes your EXE and all its data files (even DLLs) and packages them into one EXE for users to run. Thought it was a perfect fit for Ludum Dare!

This sounds fun. My RTS will attempt to answer the question, “if you only have one unit, is it still an RTS?”

Going to be using HTML with my own networking library . Using it for a real game should be a great chance to improve it.

https://github.com/robin-allen/net.js

Let there be ugly HTML menus!

Pretty basic, but everything you see works! My game’s going to be a learning project for me, in which I learn to code multiplayer stuff. So, hosting, joining and chat are must-haves.

Still working out how the actual game will work.

Still haven’t decided what I’m making yet. One possible idea:

Basically it’s a traditional RTS but on destructible 2D terrain. Trouble is, a traditional RTS is a lot of work: selecting, orders, menus, auto-attack, resources, notifications, pathfinding…
So, as much as I’d want to play this game, I doubt I could make it in 7 days. Back to brainstorming…

Multiplayer is now working! You can host a game and connect to somebody over the internet, as confirmed just now on IRC. Hooray!

As for the game itself, it’s still really basic. You can wander about, and you have one item: an inexhaustible fireball scroll. In the actual game you’ll have to find and construct your own weapons (hence the whole strategy part) but for now, have fun shooting each other.

If you’ve got Firefox 23 you can play it at http://foon.co.uk/forest-feud

Unfortunately I didn’t get to spend the last two days on my game, so I haven’t added a single player campaign like I wanted. You can still play single player, but there’s no win condition.

You can play the game here. Enjoy!

Alright! So today I’ve made:

1. JS canvas drawing & input code
2. Basic entity system
3. Physics using Nape

Still to do:

1. Add the actual connected worlds!
2. Make it possible to win or lose
3. Proper enemies
4. Items
5. Sound
6. Bosses

I don’t know if I’ll get everything on the to-do list done tomorrow, but I’m feeling good about my chances of submitting something. Catch you later!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52635835/out.gif

There is no way I’m going to finish this in time.