First LD.

I’ll update google+ as I go along. Maybe even host a Hangout or something.

 

Gonna use

Engine: libgdx, Box2d maybe gson, guava and some other goodies.

Art: pixen, and acorn.

Music: garage band.

On The Origin Of Block.

Play Me

I took the name from one of Darwin’s essays on evolution. I really like the name which funny enough I didn’t have until 645 Sunday when I went to submit. Note: There was a minor panic about coming up with a name in 15 minutes while I was submitting.

I’m glad I didn’t spend too much time initially coming up with a name, but in retrospect maybe I should have spent a few minutes on Saturday thinking of one 😀

>> Tech

I used Libgdx for the competition. I hadn’t ever used libgdx before and I have to say that is one really nice engine (api/whatever you want to call it)

I use java for my day job so that probably helped out a bit. I think the fact that you can write on the Desktop and use the Hot Spot compiler to reload your code is a HUGE reason I got this done.

If you check out my source I coded up my game level to reload when you press T or Y. This reloaded all the assets, including any that may have changed, which again was another HUGE time saver. It meant I could save a change in my TiledMap and then press T in the running debug process and immediately see the results; without having to stop the debug process and restart.

This solidified a talk I watched recently on this matter

Somebody also took that idea and did this, which I think is pretty cool.

>> Game Play

One of my initial designs was to have the mouse create a box when you clicked and dragged, for mating the Mobi. (characters) However it wasn’t working at all, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.

So I probably spent more time than I should have on this, actually I wish I’d given up on the idea sooner because in the end I think I liked the hold a button and collide with a Mobi to mate idea better.

>> Art

I was searching the internet for ideas on an art style when I came across a shiloetted mario. I thought it was really sweet, and the fact that I didn’t have to create much art assets really saved a bunch of time. In the end I think it was one of the better decisions of the jam and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

>> Warmup Game

This is sooo important, if you didn’t do one and are wondering why you didn’t finish try one next time; It will help tons.

 

>> Levels

I really wish I had more time. I don’t think there are enough levels, and that will probably hurt the game’s rating.

 

>> Conclusion

I had fun and if it does well I would seriously consider fleshing out this game more and releasing it in some other medium. I think it’s a cool concept.

A few things I’ve been up to since…

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=15315

Pretty new real time Shadows!

 

People seemed to think that the game was a good idea and that they wanted to see where it would go. Well let me tell you; I’m planning on taking the game to completion, hopefully releasing it on Steam or something.

 

I’ve been up to a bunch of stuff, new graphics (more to come), better collision, more levels, analytics (playtomic right now but probably going to change that) I’m currently working on adding a scripting language into the game engine I’m writing. I want to be able to script from within the Level Editor (Tiled) that I’m using.

My first thought was to use Lua. There’s a nice java lua project out there (here) however I wasn’t really super sold on the idea since I’ve used Groovy at work and I know it pretty solidly I leaned more towards using it.  Using Groovy meant though that porting to Android will most likely not be an option anymore. I’m guess I’m  not super concerned with that though, maybe if Ouya is any good I’ll regret that decision, but as for an Android version I don’t think that the game would work at all with crappy touch screen controls. Anyways, I ended up going with groovy; so we’ll see how that turns out.

Ultimately I’d like to release a level editor that would let people create their own levels for the game, so I think having a custom scripting language inside the game would really help.

As for the controls…

People seemed to be confused by the controls in the game; which I would have to agree weren’t the best. My original idea was to use the mouse to drag a square over the Blocks you wanted to mate. However due to the fact that it wasn’t working and the deadline was approaching I bailed on that solution. Now that I have more time I can get that to work, although I have to say I’ve grown attached to the way it is. I’m hoping there’s a way to have the best of both worlds; any suggestions are welcome 😀

People also noted that switching between the blocks was confusing so I’ve changed that around a bit, instead of pressing “e” or “q” to switch between the blocks I’ve made it so each block will have a number that is displayed above it, which will correspond to the 1-0 keys on the keyboard. If you press that number you switch to that block. It also means that the total number of blocks you can have on the screen is 10 at any point in time, but I think that this is a little easier to understand/ know where you’re going to switch to.

Anyhoo so concludes this update 😀

I’ve been wanting to do this for a bit, but haven’t had a chance.

Here’s the soundtrack for my Ludum Dare 24 entry, hope you like/ liked it!

The end of October is coming up which means it’s getting close to release time, if I’m going to make a dollar by the end of the month.

I’ve been working on an android game which I’ve come to call Qubid. (Don’t ask me how I came up with that name)

I’m about 98% done at this point. There’s just a few things I need to tweak, and such. But things are looking good for having it done in the next week. Which is cool.

follow me on twitter for updates @codeherdstudios

About the game:

You control a little square on the screen with the device’s accelerometer and you’re trying to get the highest time you can. At random intervals the music will speed up, the background will change and the accelerometer will get far more sensitive; making it all the harder to avoid smashing into the edge of screen and ending your game… and also to make your life harder there are blue blocks that appear at random. If any are on the screen your timer counts down instead of up. So it’s best to smash into them as fast as you can. You have to be careful though that the music doesn’t speed up as you’re moving to get it and you fly into the wall super fast.

Here’s some corny android ads I cooked up yesterday…

#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Released Qubid Today to the Android Play Store!

I recorded a gameplay video here Qubid Demo !

I’ve got 2 sales on my game in the android market place!

I’m pretty happy.

Thanks out to Ludum Dare organizers for challenging me to get something out there finally 😀

I also wanted to mention that I’ve released a FREE version of Qubid on Android Play.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.codeherd.qubid.free

Oh and also I just started porting Qubid to iOS last night! 😀

Hey look an “I’m in” post!

I’m in for the jam!

I also thought I might do something interesting this time around.

I’ve been learning html5 stuff lately so I think I’m going to use that for the jam

I’m using Cocos2d-HTML5 with a NodeJS server and hosted on Heroku.

I plan on pushing the code whenever I can to heroku, which means you can follow my progress and actually play the game as I’m making it!

http://ludum-dare-26-savethejets.herokuapp.com/

 

 

 

PLAY NOW

 

Okay, I’ll admit it Nova Jump is pretty difficult, as I set out to pass Nova Jump without dying… and fail miserably…

 

Play Now

 

Hey,

So normally I’m not that into making post compo versions of my games but I really liked my entry this time around so I made a few tweaks to the game to hopefully make it a better experience. I’d love it if you checked it out, just don’t rate based on that version plz 😀

LINKY

– Tweaked the camera. It should follow you on the x coord ( I want to do a post about the code behind this later )

– Some difficulty tweaks.

– I may add a few more levels in the weeks to come.

Post Mortem time…

ENTRY LINKY

I’ve gathered from some of the playtesting and some of the comments that the difficulty for my game was too high.

I wanted to highlight some design things that went right/wrong with the levels and what I think might have contributed to the difficulty.

Level 2

This was the second level. I have the player spawning over on the left and then has to jump down and over 3 spine kill thingies to the exit.

At this point I’ve shown the player that they need to get to the green glowy platform to continue. Logically the player should figure out that they need to jump over the spiney things to the exit as if they touch them they die and quickly respawn at the right.

The issue with this is that I hadn’t taught the player yet that holding down the left/right buttons before hitting the ground will increase the momentum of that jump and allow them to jump over the spine creatures.

I think that the concept of the spiney and the momentum should have been separated into two different levels, with the introduction of the spine creatures coming after the momentum lesson. The levels should probably also not included a decenty/stair thing before the jump as I think this tripped up the momentum of players that weren’t as skilled at placing their first jump to have good momentum for the second jump.

Level 3

 

At this point I’ve taught the player that getting to the green launchpad is how to exit the level. But this level starts and the launchpad is red, with a mysterious object above the player. The object of this level is to teach the main mechanic of the game; collecting the idol/button thing and escaping to the green launchpad.

What went wrong was 1.) this is the first time a player encounters a vertical jump that requires finesse to get up. I found that in play testing some people would accidentally continue to far left and get caught under the lip which prevented them from jumping up to the top ledge. I think that making that left wall flush with the whole thing might have made the level more linear and more apparent as to where the player needed to go.

2.) In the non post compo version  the ceiling falls a tad too fast. If a player misses jumping down through the 1.) part then they can be easily killed. Actually as I type this I think maybe this might not have been such a bad thing as it introduced the fact that the ceiling will kill you. Although players might gather that from the shaking camera so I guess I’m a bit conflicted. Maybe having a scripted sequence where the player sees something else killed by the falling ceiling? I dunno.

I also wanted to mention that #3.) I think that having the teleport pad and the button right above each other and both in camera focus when you grab the idol and the teleport pad gets activated was (I think) a good design choice. I think that it communicated that you needed to get back to the teleport because it was now active and the shaking was probably a bad thing.

Level 4

 

This was the one… the one that everyone got stuck on.

I think that this level was a huge fail. I wish I’d cut it actually, the more I delve into the design post compo the more I think that this level did so many things wrong. Lets start with #1

#1 the exit is not obvious. The player starts in the bottom left, they might go right towards the gap, but unless they went very near to the edge the way the camera worked meant that they probably wouldn’t see the exit.

So most likely they just went up as that was the best looking choice. So the path that they were supposed to take was up to 3. and then a long jump (I hadn’t introduced the concept of long jumping over gaps sort of over the spiney guys but not over gaps) over to the platform above 4. and up. This tripped up a ton of people. Aside from not having introduced the long jump concept I think the confusion of where to go to 3 or 4 frustrated players, and may have led to people quitting.

If they did manage to get past that they got to 5. Now I had timed the level ceiling fall to be very close, but I think I should have timed it with a missed or extra hop in there because I think this ceiling fell far to fast and frustratingly killed a lot of people. Enough that most people gave up on this level.

Level 4 Post Compo

Here’s the post compo version of this level with a few things I fixed.

1. You clearly start and can see where you need to go; but the wall there prevents you from getting over.

2. I made the button closer so that the jumps aren’t as difficult to get over but still tense such that the ceiling is threatening.

3. I made this jump much shorter so you don’t have to have learned momentum jumping to accomplish it.

I think the post compo version works a bit better and hopefully less players get stuck and frustrated with it.

 

Anyways this post is getting long so … some take aways from this compo

1.) Make sure to edit your level such that they introduce at most one concept at a time. Make sure that when you flesh out the concept after teaching it, that you don’t accidentally introduce another concept when you’re trying to make a more difficult version of the mechanic your previous lesson introduced.

2. ) Playtest! Playtest! Playtest! This is hard when you’re rushed for time but the more people that play your game the more chances you’ll have to catch these sorts of things. Also take a backseat and just watch the people playing, don’t give them any clues, otherwise you might taint the results of the play-testing.

3.) Diffculty can be fun!  

 

I’m in! This will be my 4th Ludum Dare.

Also I organized a meetup in Calgary so I’ll have to get everyone to post about it on here too. So far 10 people are planning on showing up 😀

Pretty Excited!

Well another Ludum Dare in the bag! Hope everyone had a good one!

My ludum dare started off pretty hectically, as I organized a local meet up for other developers in Calgary and had to sort that out before things got started.

I spent most of Friday chatting with some awesome folks, (sorry for distracting 😀 )

 

We had a pretty solid turn out; and from the looks of it everyone successfully made a game!

I’m pretty happy for everyone that took part! (It also sounds like most people are interested in joining again in December, which is great news!)

My entry:

If I had to sum it up it is like pikmin meets VVVVVV.

Anyways enough yappin’ here’s the link.

CLICK ME!

 

 

 

CLICK ME TO PLAY!

It was Saturday. I had just spent a whole bunch of hours getting basic things set up and working on some art.

I had come up with a basic concept for the main mechanic in my game the day earlier and at this point had some basic code for playing around in a level with it.

The main mechanic I had at that point was a platformer where you had 10 seconds to live but there were door/portal things that would switch the direction of gravity 90 degrees. It was fun to play around with in my test level. But a thought crossed my mind: How am I going to increase the level of challenge through the 10 or so levels I had planned? I mean I could throw in spikes or something, but what else? After a level or two of that might get old. How would I come up with more puzzles and keep the player hooked by having something  fresh every few levels?

The main mechanic needed some tweaking.

I’ve read/heard that if you can’t come up with at least 5 good puzzles that use a mechanic then you should ditch that mechanic.

I had run into this situation; I couldn’t think of any good puzzles beyond one or two. I knew that I needed to change.

Luckily I had been messing around with the concept of the game being on an alien world, and I had come up with a few plant looking sprites. Here’s the concept art that the game was spawn from:

See those purple door like things? They were the door/portal thingy mechanic.

Anyways Luckily I had drawn the green thing next to the purple thing, because I had a brain wave. Why not have the character sprout from the green things and the green things could give the player different elemental properties!!

Immediately I came up with a bunch of different things I could do with that idea. You could have fire or water breathing or … the list went on.

I knew this was a better mechanic.

In the end I’m glad I ditched the other mechanic because the game turned out pretty good. I’m really happy with it at least.

If you haven’t given it a try here’s the link

 

So, I’ve been working on a game for over a year now. Not sure if that really counts for October Challenge but I’m finally done!

Here’s the website!

http://www.codeherdstudios.com/AsteroidSmash.html

This will be my 5th Ludum Dare!

Getting together with a bunch of local people too. Should be exciting!

I’m in!

This will be my ?th Ludum Dare… so many I can’t remember… 6th I think.

Not sure what I’ll be using

Either

– Cocos2d-html5

or

– Unity

– Pixen

– Tiled

– Acorn

– Heroku

We’ve also organized a local meetup so I’ll be sure to post some pictures from that

 

Also Hi Mike!