Totally failed to get my own engine up and running or to set up a good environment for coding, sleep wasted quite a few hours, and I still haven’t decided between a racing game or a golf game nor can I think of any way to avoid the decision by combining the two (at least not one that suits the Islands theme) but I still have 33 hours, and even just starting something for this LD would be a first for me. Possibly going to go the coin toss route with this.
square ship! circle walls that overlap horribly and that you can’t crash into yet! no sign of any islands or indeed gameplay yet! closes without any feedback when you pass the last checkpoint! closes sooner when you press ESC! probably crashes in loads of ways I haven’t thought of yet! get it at http://www.shockedfrog.com/misc/itr_test.zip ! JOY!
(sorry about all that. just excited to have actually got something kinda working, even if it’s taken me over a day to do 10 minutes of work.)
‘Complete’ in the sense it’s vaguely playable and I’ve uploaded it, and I implemented most of the main features – basic movement stuff, randomly generated track (though for now it’ll always load the same one – this is intentional for time trial play, and it’s not like there’s much replayability with different tracks anyway), islands with purchasable repairs and upgrades, and you can find out your time if you complete the three tracks(or losing message if you lose all your health) though you have to go into the log file to see it.
‘Failure’ in that there’s not much gameplay and what’s there just doesn’t have a good feel to it, and there’s next to no presentation/interface or music, and even for programmer art it’s a bit below average, and out of everyone who actually followed the theme I’ve probably set a record for smallest use of islands. Gameplay wise I’d mostly have liked to have added mines and/or opponents and a way to choose tracks.
Anyway, overall I’m pretty happy with it for my first time actually taking part in LD rather than just lurking around, and I’ve surprised myself a bit with what I’ve done here despite failing to prepare as much as I’d have liked. Looking forward to playing the other entries starting tomorrow, considering developing this a bit further though probably in more of a spacy direction, and looking forward to the next LD. 
http://www.shockedfrog.com/misc/itrld.zip
Need sleep, not a whole lot here but I’m sure it’s enough for someone’s epic. Apologies in advance.
http://www.shockedfrog.com/misc/flycow.png
Tags: blind date gfx
I’m not entirely sure how I got here, it’s playable (WASD movement, space to shoot, esc to quit) but that’s about all I can say. I’m going to bed.
demo 2 (windows only, but should work in wine?)
Haven’t added the levels/scoring yet and it needs balanced/shinified, but the basic idea:
You’re in charge of a sound-powered ship. Sadly all you’ve been able to fit on board are a few drums, which are only powerful enough to charge the engines. Fortunately, amongst your enemies are three rather noisy ones, whose presence on screen enables you to fire your 3 wave-shaped weapons. Flying close to them gives you greater firepower, but be careful not to destroy them, otherwise you’ll be left without weapons until they respawn. Arrow keys to move, mouse to aim, left click to fire.
I’m considering making two games in one here – the original plan was a side-scrolling shooter with pure keyboard controls, and if I’ve got time I’d like to add that as an option for those who find keyboard and mouse control a bit awkward.
Entry page – Download (windows only, but should hopefully work in wine)
I’m not sure I’m going to get much more done with this in compo time, but I’m delighted with how this has gone – the code’s a lot neater than my usual LD attempts are, the game feels quite complete (though not polished), it’s the first time I’ve used sound and music (if you call this music!) and while the finished product isn’t anything amazing I think it’s somewhat enjoyable and I hope someone else agrees.
While I wasn’t too keen on the theme – enemies as weapons struck me as something that’s been overdone already -and I’d have preferred to make something other than a shooter since that’s what my last mini-LD entry was, I’m delighted with the ideas that eventually came to me and I can see myself expanding this one in the future.
While 50th overall is definitely a step up from last LD, 16th for audio (for the first game I’ve ever used sound effects in) and equal 6th for innovation (4.04 average!) are amazing results and it’s definitely a victory by my standards. Thanks to everyone who voted!
This has been a great LD for more than the scores, of course. While I have to say there were a number of games that felt too similar, there were also a good number that stood out, and the standard of presentation as a whole was fantastic. The feedback and support from the community throughout has been incredibly encouraging and uplifting, and while the previous LD was a good learning experience this has blown it away.
Work on an improved AS3/Flixel version of Sonic Boom is well underway and hopefully others are developing their games further too – I look forward to seeing them.
This will be my 3rd main LD. As long as I finish the weekend with something I’ll be happy, though getting a top-5 finish in something other than Coolness would be awesome. I’m sticking with the usual C++ and HGE setup – good to see a few others using it too – and I’ll be using PSP7 if I need to draw boxes or stickmen, and Milkytracker for music and/or procrastinatory jamming.
MiniLD page here.
The gameplay is unfinished, there’s no audio, and the code is terrible, but I think I did a decent job with the presentation (as far as programmer art goes) and I think it’s a good base for a completed game, so I’m happy enough with it to submit as opposed to my total failure in LD19. LD18 is definitely still my best, but this might do better for graphics and humour.
I do have some good ideas for turning this into a proper game so I’d like to develop it further (maybe for the Jam, maybe later) but I always say that and nothing ever really happens, haha. :/
I’ve been using HGE for all my LD games so far, and it’s been used for a few other LD games such as Hockey Islands, but it’s previously been Windows only. Thanks to the need to port the excellent Hammerfight to Mac/Linux for the Humble Indie Bundle 3, there’s now a port of HGE available here. Development of HGE itself seems to have died off, but as it is I’ve found it ideal for LD and now with it having some cross-platform potential other LDers might want to consider it as an alternative to SDL/Allegro.
This will be my 5th main LD, so far I’d put my record at one success, one nice try, one learning process and one failure.
As usual I’ll probably be using C++ with HGE, PSP7 for programmer art, and Milkytracker for music if I find myself with the time and inspiration for it.
This LD was the first time I entered the Jam (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=1078) and I’m pretty happy with the results, especially the 3.21 for Fun (my best score in that category out of 4 LDs, and 19th out of the Jam entries). It’d be nice to be able to see the individual scores again – removing them does prevent some of the usual LD drama, but it’s nice to be able to look at each individual rating for a better idea of peoples reactions, because an average of 3 could mean a lot of 3s, or could mean a mix of 1s and 5s, and while comments are more useful, not everyone leaves one.
Anyway, taking the extra time instead of releasing something half finished seems to have paid off, though I still wish I’d been there at the start – I forgot about this LD and the LD Facebook group seems to have gone silent. My initial feeling about the game was that it wasn’t really anything special, but it was the most solid game I’d made, and I don’t normally feel much passion for making stuff like that yet I have a lot of respect for those who do, so if I can find myself being productive outside of LD time then I might turn this into something bigger and better.
Currently a little addicted to Drawception, but haven’t completely forgotten about Ludum Dare, nor has someone else – http://drawception.com/viewgame/H1PYLSpPSp/ludum-dare/
Looking forward to LD as usual – LD23 will mark 2 years for me and while it’s been a pretty dull 2 years in general, LD weekends are never dull. As usual I’ll probably forget about the warmup, start the LD proper unprepared, complain about the theme on IRC for half a day, then make something surprisingly ok anyway.
It appears that a lot of games have not received scores in any category at all – at first I thought it was due to having 0 coolness, but I then noticed the same for a number of other games with a reasonable coolness %. Are more people rating N/A than usual, or is there another reason for this? Either way, it’s pretty disappointing that what seems like hundreds of games have not received a score at all. I think the ability to see individual ratings needs to be brought back – not necessarily in the old list format, which would be huge now due to the popularity of LD, potentially make voting less anonymous, and bring back the old all-1s/all-5s complaints, but perhaps following hamster_mk_4’s suggestion in the comments on the results post, which is to display the number of times each score from 1-5 was given in each category. Even if a game doesn’t get enough non-N/A ratings to be counted in the main list, they should at least be able to get some score feedback.
This LD I made TickType (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=1078), a combination of a typing game and a
count-the-seconds game.
What went right:
I actually entered! – This was my first serious compo entry since LD18 3 years ago, it was nice to at least make something.
I learned to use AS3/Flixel! – I’m amazed how easy it was, I felt like I spent most of this LD actually making the game instead of trying to figure out how to make the game.
Innovation! – People who understood the game seemed to find the game quite innovative. Probably more than I did, really, given that it’s the second time I’ve made a typing game and there’s been a couple of TV gameshows lately using this kind of ‘count the seconds’ thing, but the combination seemed to work well.
In-game instructions! – actually, see What went wrong. 😀
What went wrong:
In-game instructions – So, I added an in-game tutorial. It wasn’t perfect – it was a bit rushed so there were a few points that weren’t explained properly – but it did its job and I was pretty happy with myself for managing to include it. However, having watched one video review where the reviewer didn’t have time to watch the tutorial or read the instructions (making the game impossible to play), I get the feeling that there were probably others who did the same. Partly this is my fault – for future games I think I’ll probably try to make a tutorial that automatically appears while playing – but still, it’s pretty sad that my game’s scores might have suffered a bit just because people can’t take a minute to read/watch how to play.
Not appealing enough as a game – with the above said, it’s also likely that my scores suffered because it’s not a great game. 😀 I’m really happy with the idea and confident that I could develop it into something better, but the end result – while I was happy with it when it was finished – is disappointing in hindsight.
People didn’t even play half of the game – TickType has ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ modes which play very differently – unfortunately, most players seemed to ignore the hard mode completely, and although easy mode was the default (to make it easier to learn how to play), I’m surprised that so few players tried the hard mode which was the way the game was originally intended.
Scores don’t quite represent comments – As I’m sure many others will have noticed too, you can get fairly positive comments but end up with a poor score. I think this is because people think it’s bad to post any negative comments, which is ridiculous – constructive criticism is essential. Unfortunately this, combined with not being able to see individual scores, makes the final results weird and disappointing.
Overall though, this was a pretty standard LD – the game making community experience is great, it’s great to get feedback via comments and especially via videos/streams, and we all got the chance to play some really awesome new games, but the scoring is almost entirely meaningless and depressing and should just be ignored and removed.
