Hey guys,

Joszs, Ever121 (Gijs) and me decided we’d participate in the Jam. I’ll be doing the programming, Joszs will be our graphic artist and Gijs will add some marvelous tunes.

So far, we have come up with an idea and I’m working on the engine. It’ll be a topdown chopper/fighter action/puzzle/shooter of sorts. The main idea is that while escaping, your health and ammo will be limited; you’ll need to conserve ammo to make sure you won’t run out in the end.

Obligatory screenie:

These are all placeholder graphics, since Joszs will be working today.

After 40 hours of hard labor, and 28 hours still ahead, our little project is working out quite nicely.

We’ve got graphics, sound effects, mines, rockets, turrets, and highly amusing physics. What more could you ask of… well, of our game.

It’s more or less a topdown agility shooter puzzle flyer of sorts. And we haven’t got a clue what to call it.

Unfortunately, the sparkles and damn hawt action don’t show up on screenshots.

Hehe. The luxury of 24 extra hours. What to do with them but gloat that you actually managed to finish everything and to have time to spare.

At any rate, we (Joszs, Ever121 and myself) have just finished our Jam entry. The game, called Left – for what better name than a non descript name? – is an action/agility flyer based around a small craft in a large facility. Loads of explosions and gunfire, as one might imagine.

Go have a look!

I have some minor things to fix, but I’d be just as happy to leave it in its current state.

We’re all pretty surprised at how fluent everything went. The amount of technical hickups was remarkable (one might say miraculously) low, we all shared a similar vision and we were all deeply impressed by eachothers work.

Loved the experience.

Tags: postmortem

Seeing how fun last LD was, I’ll be certainly giving this one a shot.

Not sure how much time I’ve got, though; I’ll try finishing something for the Compo.

Good luck everyone!

Ugh; I have no idea what to do with this theme.

So I figured I’d just make a game and incorporate the theme into it halfway. I think the theme is broad enough to allow that.

At any rate, I’ve got some lighting done, as well as the HUD. Stylish lowres hearts and all that.

And all that in 4 hours time… well, onwards for great glory!, and such.

So when my little red-circle-enemies were done, I figured I could try and make some actual graphics.

And to my surprise, they actually look presentable. I might even go as far as say they look *decent*.

Ain’t that something?

At any rate, it’s 3 p.m. and I haven’t had any breakfast. Time to bring in the grilled cheese.

Yes, that’s what my little game is currently called.

You can download the game here: [download ForGlory_LD.exe (3MB)]

A screenie:

At the moment it’s just the menu, tutorial, a testlevel and stat upgrades. Next, I’ll start working on saving/loading and sounds.

Well, I should head to bed. My eyes are tired and my hands are crampy.

I managed to get some sound effects in and the save/load system is almost done (some odd bugs have to be removed).

download ForGlory_LD.zip (2MB)

Good night, y’all!

Yes, that’s what I made.

You can download the latest version here: download ForGlory_LD.zip (2MB)

And in case you’re wondering, this is a picture of the delicious goodness called wentelteefjes:

(Yes, the picture is blurry; I had to eat them before they went cold.)

Yay!

I’ve finished 13 levels, including the rather epic end boss battle.

Download it here: click me.

Also, I have included kittens! But I won’t tell you how to summon them; that is up to you to find out. =3

I’ll probably do some extra playtesting and all, but other than that, I am ready to submit!

Haha, game-related puns.

At any rate, LD22 was a blast for me. I was really excited and it turned out pretty well.

You can play the game here: click me!

What went well:

– Once I got my idea started, the gameplay rolled out pretty quickly. From there on, it was mostly making new levels and enemies. I wasn’t planning to make them all skeletons, but it sure made artwork a lot more easy; besides, skellies are epic.

– Lighting effects are always fun to do. This time even moreso because I didn’t need them to be high-res; I just made squared lighting and it turned out pretty neat-looking.

– The artwork went amazingly well, considering the fact that I didn’t think I could do graphics. Apparently, making 16×16 pixelart and then just scaling to 32×32 works great for me. And I could even write it off to being retro-ish graphics.

– I had an awesome weekend.

What went worse:

– I was thinking about recording and then mangling my voice to do the skeleton’s growls and boss’s voice, but my microphone was broken. Maybe I should have tested all my equipment beforehand.

– My keyboard was unstable and it annoyed me.

Other than that, nothing really. I am really pleased with my game and actually got everything finished in time.

I hope you enjoyed your LD as well. See you next time.

Good morning!

Just woke up because the cat was jumping on my face, eager to find out what the theme is.  (Me, that is. My cats are only eager to get me to the kitchen and feed them.)

First thought:… hmm… Well, I guess I’ll need some breakfast to get started and then the ideas will start flowing. I hope. After finishing some homework, though. And yes, feeding my cats. (To be honest, they’re the only thing keeping me sane.)

Good luck and have fun, everybody!

So, day 1 is over. And I’ve actually managed to make some progress!

Things I’ve done today:

• Develop idea.
• Make abstract graphics and UI.
• Names and death-messages.
• Player movement.
• Crude enemy movement.

Which leaves me with quite some thing to do tomorrow:

• Enemy AI.
• Game start and intro, including setting / story.
• Game over screen.
• A way to beat the game.
• Audio.
• Building the spaceship.

My game, Five Kosmonauts, is about five kosmonauts in a spaceship. The ship is under attack by aliens (obviously). It’s a turnbased game involving running out of oxygen and getting eaten. If you’d like, give it a try and let me know what you think.

(Click here to take a closer look at screenshot 1 and screenshot 2.)

Sleep tight, ludum darers, and good luck tomorrow!

So in order to get my enemy AI working, I’ll need to get my hands dirty on some graph theory. Yay! /sarcasm

Since GameMaker isn’t gonna be al that helpful, I’ll code my AI in C instead. (Which, I know, seems a bit redundant, but what can I say, I just like GM.)

Or!, I could just skip AI for a bit and focus on other parts of the game, such as a goal, a victory screen, a game over screen, etc.

By the way, the graph in the picture doesn’t actually represent my level. My entire game will be one level, and in the current planning, it’s gonna be huge. You could say, the size of a small planet. (= little world, get it? Haha, see, I’m not crazy.)

At any rate, let’s get back to work!

With 3 hours left, the game is working out pretty nicely.

I’ve expanded the size of the HMS Imahara, the space ship where the game takes place, by a threefold. Also, the game now features a title card, some settings, semi-adjustable controls, intro “cinematic” and victory-conditions. And a conscient computer called Simon.

There are two things I need to add before calling it quits.

As mentioned before, the alien AI does nothing more than wander around. Which is ok, as it turns out – I caught it lurking for food from inside the escape pods -, but it’s not in line with the “we’re being hunted”-feel I’m trying to create.

And I also want to give each little room in the game a different name (e.g. “forward engine room”, “D. Linn’s cabin”, etc). This serves no real purpose, but I believe it would look awesome and therefore it needs to be implemented

.

Phew! I’m done.

Well, sorta, anyway. I had no time whatsoever to do enemy AI. So I just skipped that. A pity, I guess.

But at least I got to name all 76 rooms! Which is just as awesome, if you’d ask me.

I also kept the random names, which I fully integrated into the game’s story.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with it. You know, as far as my tired head can process the advanced calculations required to determine how pleased I am with it. God, even my hands are tired. “No more typing!“, they scream.

At any rate, I’m gonna enjoy a solid 4 hours of sleep before enduring 8 hours of college. Yay me!