This is my first time posting anything here so let me introduce myself.

I work as a software engineer but my job has nothing to do with game development. I’ll work on various project related to Android platform. When I got home there’s not much time to do anything related to programming as my 1-year old son demands so much attention, so when he is finally sleeping I have no energy left to sit in the dark room and play with hobby programming.

But I love game development. I read tons of stuff. I try to think about various algorithms or design patterns that might be used to resolve some problem that bugs me. The problem is, I haven’t finish anything yet. All of my game development stops on the engine.

So one day, looking at the calendar I saw that my wife with son are going out and they won’t be at home for the whole weekend. And the great thing about it is that the same weekend belongs to LD30! So I thought to myself: why not try to sign in? And here I am.

So after 10h of design and development (inkscape, gimp, pyxel edit, vs c++ & sfml lib) I’ve achieved the following state:

• Simple rendering engine using stack states is done
• Resources management (textures, fonts) is finished
• Level loader that uses .png files as its input is finished
• Level mechanics
• Simple assets are finished: menu background, game background and

Still to be done:

• Collision detection, this is main mechanics
• Player movement based on gravity
• Audio effects & Music (there’s gonna be no music probably as I don’t know much about this topic)
• Sprite polishing
• Better input handling: Joystick support + rebindable keys
• Maybe (big maybe) PCG-ed levels

So nice to meet you guys!

Hello fellow gamedevs!

My first time (LD30) was a great experience and I really wanted to participate again. And I’ve got opportunity to join this time!

My goals for this LD are quite similar to the previous ones:

• Finish a playable game. That’s everyone’s main goal, so not much to say.
• This time I want to focus on introducing concept of the game to the player, so he or she won’t get lost. Last time it was a total failure. Players didn’t know what was the goal of the game, nor how to control the avatar, nor what are rules to the game.
• Keep visual simple, but of decent quality. If the topic is right I might even try to use a really simple shapes (circles and rectangles). The main focus is going to be on a good mix of colors, and little things like gradients and shadows. Last time I spent too much time creating unused animation.
• More fx sounds. Sound is a great tool for the feedback and to make the game feel alive. I hope I won’t mess the API this time and use the valid volume ranges (0-100 instead of 0-1). My tool of use: probably sfxer.
• Music. Any music. I’m not a musican at all, but since the beginning of this year I’ve been working in the audio/DSP related project. If it’s possible I’ll borrow MIDI keyboard from my company for the weekend to motivate me. The tool of use is going to be Milky Tracker, unless I find something easy to use.
• I have no idea what theme is going to win, but if possible I’m gonna try to make something fast-paced. Last time I tried to make clone of “Ugh!” game. This time again I’m gonna stick to already explored concepts. It’s still to early to me to create anything original, I’d rather focus my work in other fields.

I’ll stick to the tools I know well, so once again game is going to be done in C++11 and SFML with Box2D or Lua, depending on the theme.

I wish you all good luck at the LD33!

Tags: introduction, LD33

Hello Ludum Dare-ers! I hope you’re enjoying both compo and the theme. Day 1 is almost done so let me summarize my work today:

Finished:

• Testing custom engine for the first time; not working perfectly, but not as bad as the last time.
• Main character animations and some static assets
• Integration with Box2D. Tons of stupid issues to resolve. Good lesson.
• Loading level from .png files.

TODO for Day 2:

• Enemies: path finding, very simple AI
• More gfx/sfx assets
• Rendering optimizations and fixes
• Juicing the game up (screen shakes, explosions!)
• Design more levels and simple plot structure
• Come up with the title…

Not sure what’s going to be dropped. I guess it’s the music and more polished assets again.

Tags: LD33, wip