Hopefully, I am not jumping the gun by saying “I’m In”.  A lot happening on a personal/family level, and I hope to have a bit of fun doing some gamedev.

My tools of choice:

• Unity
• Paint.net
• Audacity
• bfxr
• Otomata

I decided to write a game where the player is in a cave. This is the “one room”. This idea would of also worked for other themes not chosen (underground, etc).

The first 2 hours were spent on design and moving some Unity objects around to get the coding working. I do suck at art, but attached is a rock-like room that you can consider a cave with stalactites. If I have some time later in the compo, I will revisit the art, but for now, this is the best I can do under the time constraints I set for myself. The stalactites are randomly placed when the game starts.

Next up is to create the player, mine shaft, and some power-ups. The idea of the game is to destroy the drips from the stalactites. If the drip hits the ground, it starts creating a stalagmite and makes it difficult for the player to move around.  Power-ups come down the mine shaft and help the player destroy the stalagmites, or gives the player a special ability to cope with what’s going on.  I think I will add some bats for added frustration!

Eighteen hours in (minus some sleep), and here is my cave shooter,  tentatively titled “Bat Cave”.

Shoot the drips to prevent stalagmites from forming. Avoid the bats.

Things I still have to do:

• My abysmal graphics show the game play. I hope to have time to tweak these later.
• I still have to add power-ups that drop down the mine shaft.
• Scoring, sounds, music, and other cool effects.

I decided to go with a gun turret as the player. I tried to create an animated person running around, but it didn’t work out. I stink at creating graphics, and was spending a lot of time on it.

Just after midnight Saturday here, and I am tired. I have a playable cave shooter game. Next up is to add some background graphics, tweak the sounds, graphics (I hope), and game play, and add a few more power ups. I hope to get all of this done in time.

It’s a simple, one room shooter, but for some reason this one gave me a lot of problems. Collisions were giving me a headache. Some features were removed since they kind of sucked once I started working on it. Other features were removed due to time.

All in all, it’s a bit primitive (due to my lack of any art skills), but enjoyable.

There’s only a few hours left, so I am going to stop adding features and start tweaking and bug fixing on my game, Bat Cave.

Shoot and avoid the bats.  Shoot the drips coming from the stalactites so they do not build up stalagmites on the ground. You can jump over smaller stalagmites, and shoot the bomb power-up to remove them. Shoot the bullet power-up for 10 seconds of extra fire power.

Another successful Ludum Dare… my 3rd. I hope you check out my game named “Bat Cave” and will consider rating once voting starts… I will do the same for you.

Next up: A Post Mortem blog entry and a Timelapse video!

Great at times, frustrating at times, but I had a blast!

I put up a timelapse video of my development of Bat Cave.

Bat Cave is a simple shooter I created for Ludum Dare 37, and this article attempts to document what went right, what went wrong, and some general thoughts on the entire weekend.

Looking through the list of potential themes Friday evening, I put together some ideas. Bat Cave was hashed out and was my choice for a few themes, including “One Room”, which was ultimately picked.

Once the theme was decided, it was time to get to work. I spent a lot of time the first day working on designing the room and testing collision detection. Not sure why this took so long, but around 3:30am Saturday I had working collisions, and decided that was it for the evening. Saturday morning rolls around, and it’s time to work on some art, and get to coding. Sunday was spent finishing up the game, tweaking options, and adding sound and title screen.

I used Unity for this compo, and the actual coding went rather well. I like to use my simple object pooler script to handle the management of game objects, and I created some controller scripts to handle the audio, game management, and enemy management.

• I released a playable game!
• “Keep it simple” is definitely the way to go.  Since you have only 48 hours, don’t bite off more than you can chew… if time permits, you can add some features. For me, I had a couple hours left and added the scrolling background, looping bats, and audio manager. I also wanted to add a “boss” character, but time ran out.
• I now know the difference between stalactites and stalagmites!

• My art skills are “meh” at best. I did manage to animate a bat though. I wanted to draw and animate a person instead of the gun turret I used, but I was spending too much time on it and it was not anywhere near what I would consider good enough. While I think the art is good for this game (other may disagree!), I need to keep this limitation of my skills in mind for future compos.
• I did’t think the entire game through, and I realized some issues while developing:
  • I wanted the power-ups to be lowered down a mine shaft and have the player pick it up to use. I don’t think I would of finished that, so they just randomly drop at some interval.  If you look at my time lapse video, you might see a mine shaft in the game for quite a bit of time before I decided to remove it.
  • Once a stalagmite forms, it was impossible to shoot any drips coming down since you had to be under the stalagmite, and that would cause instant death.  I decided to add a bomb to remove stalagmites, and I also allow the player to jump/shoot over smaller ones.

Another successful Ludum Dare for me… I had a great time developing and releasing Bat Cave, and even though there were moments of doubt, I continued on. I hope that this game rates higher than my previous two entries… time will tell.

Tags: postmortem

I released a Windows and Mac version of Bat Cave to address some bugs that some people found.

• Shooting and jumping keys changed to something more standard.
• Fixed bullet hell power-up.
• More accurate collision detection.

This version, as well as the original submission, is available.

This will be my 4th LD.  Looking forward to it.

Most likely will be doing the Compo, and I will be using:

• Unity
• Photoshop, Paint.Net
• Audacity
• bfxr, Otomata

There is a slim chance that I may use Corona instead of Unity, but it depends on the theme and whether I decide to do a 2D game.  Not really sure… I have to be in the right mood.

Good luck everyone!

Well, if I didn't say it before... I'm In!

I'm pretty amazed that a decent idea came to me so quickly. Going to give it a try and hope for the best. For my previous LDs, I created 2D games... this is my first attempt at 3D, and I hope I didn't bite off more than I can chew.

I have a very early prototype of my game...

https://youtu.be/7GT9TOLHqos

This game takes place in a petri dish. You must protect the good cells from the bad cells.

Right now, I have the basic movements of the player and the cells... now to roll this into a game.

Well, I have something that is playable, which is good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLDwjIMyqqs&feature=youtu.be

The second half will be adding sound, music, tweaking graphics, adding a power-up, and tweaking game play.

I have a wee bit more tweaking to do with the game play, but I think I am almost ready to submit my entry... Contamination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2W8GJ-vz0I

In the lab is a petri dish with an experiment. Protect the green cells from the red germs by shooting them. The scientist who is watching is coughing and sneezing on the petri dish, and this is causing more germs to invade the experiment. Look out for the Super Cell... you can pick that up and use it to wipe out all germs in the dish.

Wanna watch an old guy (well, probably older than you anyway) do some gamedev? Check out my Timelapse video of my Ludum Dare 38 entry, Contaminated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tDHsQJ1tKY

The WebGL version of Contaminated is now available! Here are all the links you need :smile:

* My Entry: * https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$18772

* Windows, Mac, Linux: * https://gamesbycandlelight.itch.io/ludum-dare-38-contamination

* WebGL: * https://gamesbycandlelight.itch.io/ludum-dare-38-contamination-webgl

How about some screenshots and a timelapse video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tDHsQJ1tKY&t=11s

Another great Ludum Dare in the books (my 4th), and as always, it was a blast. While we wait for judging to begin, I figured it is a good time to work on this Post Mortem for the game I created, Contamination (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$18772).

The theme was “A Small World”, and the idea for my game came much easier than I expected this time. After about 20 minutes putting together the idea, it was off to work. All my previous LDs were 2D, so I decided to give 3D a shot, and I think it works quite nice with this game. Man, Blender is a monster… I can get simple shapes done, but anything else will take me a very long time… time I don’t have in the Compo. Luckily, the models for this game are simple, and something I thought I can do in Blender so I went for it.

After some sleep, it was back to it on Saturday, and the day was spent putting together the game: enemy germ AI, green cell movement and splitting, player movement and fire. All game movement was done with a tweening library, not physics. I second-guessed that a few hours later when I could not really manage collisions since these were kinematic objects, but it did not become a problem since I decided I wanted all the game objects to be able to pass through each other (and used triggers instead), otherwise movement would become too cumbersome in such as small space.

Sunday was spent putting in the remaining game play: adding the Super Germ, tweaking the germ and cell spawning, etc. The afternoon was spent creating sounds and music, adding the HUD, and adding a title screen and instructions.

So, What Went Well?

• The idea came to me rather quickly, so I didn’t have to sweat it out. I also felt like this was a game I really wanted to develop. That kept me motivated throughout the Compo.

• The tweening library worked like a charm. What a time-saver.

• Even though the game has “simple” objects and effects, they did come out better than I expected. I was successful in creating 3D objects and particle effects.

What Could've Gone Better?

• I have to either get better at Blender, or find another tool. I don’t do art well, but working in Blender seems like I am fighting the tool, and not my lack of modelling skills. Yes, I get it, lots of keyboard shortcuts, but it is hard to work that way if you only get in there from time to time.

Please check out my game and let me know what you think.

Ludum Dare Entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$18772

I am using Feedback Friends to find new games to play, and I am not sure if it handles coolness, so I will just state that I will play your game if you play mine and leave feedback.

My Entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/contamination

I see that some are adding word clouds, so here is mine for my game, Contamination

Of course, if you rate my game, I will return the favor.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/contamination