More details on my entry here.

Yay – competition time.
I have a tendency to be over ambitious in 48 hour competitions so I may use flashpunk for a change. If not I will be using my c++ base code available here. It is mainly a wrapper for some OpenGL and SDL functionality, but also includes math and 3d model loading and animation classes collected from my various projects.
I probably wouldn’t post this as it is incomplete but the rules require any pre-made libraries to be available beforehand.

Draknek gave me a makefile that takes a screenshot every minute. Why it was a makefile I have no idea.
I wrote a proper shell script to do this (fully configurable) which does stuff better.

Download it here if anyone is interested.

Game submitted.

play it!

Wow, It seems my game is popular enough to use up all of my website bandwidth.
I will be moving stuff over to another host as soon as it becomes available.
My website has had ten times more the visits in the last two days than in the last year.

My game has been moved to a different server with plenty of bandwidth.
Now hosted here

LD19 is over. Time to sleep…
I submitted my game, although there isn’t really any gameplay to it.
Play Here
I will sort out the timelapse video tomorrow.

Here is my timelapse video. Unfortunately run out of time to figure out how to edit it and append the gameplay video.
Maybe I will work it out for next time.
Video here

Tags: timelapse

Another competition over.
Completely ran out of time again. My idea requires a lot more art to come close to my vision. I was planning to throw together some simple music and add sound effects but then the deadline sprang up and attacked from behind line an angry velociraptor.

The current level and goal is a bit last minute. Actually the level is my testing level, I ran out of time to do a proper one. Even the stone tile was meant to be a place holder.

Here are some screenshots:
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 50%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

I do like where the game is headed, and I may continue writing it, but may not as the code is a big mess and could do with a lot of optimisation. As it is, it seems to struggle with more than fifty creatures.

Anyway – time to sleep. I will edit and upload my timelapse video tomorrow.

Uploading my timelapse video.

For some reason the webcam breaks after a few hours.

Trying out video editing software, for LD19 I downloaded Cinelerra, but that was confusing and didn’t even load my videos properly. I just discovered Kdenlive which has a really nice intuitive interface and actually works.

Tags: timelapse

Here is a shiny graph of votes and coolness

It generates itself from the current data so it will be up to date.
It will actually work for some previous competitions too.

Tags: graph, voting

Watch the Timelapse video of my LD #21 entry Stromcrow:

I did manage to submit my entry before the competition ended, but as the website was going so absurdly slow at the time, I didn’t write anything about it. Perhaps next time I will attempt post more updates during the competition.

My entry was made in Actionscript3 with the Flashpunk library.
Software used: vim, gimp, lmms, audacity, sfxr.
Timelapse video created with my timelapse script and Kdenlive.

Tags: timelapse

Here is my timelapse video. I forgot to record the webcam stream this time.

Play the game.

I was not inspired by the theme and did nothing other than a few sketches of some of the ideas I had. None were particularly motivating. I ended up just playing other games instead. I started work on this game when I got up on Sunday, about 12 hours before the competition deadline.
I decided on a simple Castlevania style platformer.
Happy with the art, though I would like to redo the character animations. Gimp is not great for animating.

I ran out of time. The gameplay was added within the final hour, and the terrible sound effects in the last five minutes.

Tags: postmortem, timelapse

Its probably about time to write this.

Design
I had a good selection of ideas at the start of this competition, something I have had trouble with in the past, The only problem was which one to choose. Unfortunately I did not spend any time fleshing out the ideas and properly designing the games which i believe is where everything went horribly wrong.

First Idea
This was supposed to be a game where you played as a cell in a petri dish. There are other cells around that either try to kill you, block your path or various other behaviors. I spend about seven hours implementing this concept but stopped when i couldnt think of how to make it a fun game. Te prototype was not headed in the direction of my initial vision of the game. I also wanted to try out the other idea.
You can play what I ended up with here.

Second Idea
I had spend a bit more time thinking about this one. I didn’t start with it as I thought it did not fit the theme as well as the other idea, but the extra time would definitely have helped.
More design time would have been mush better, as I did get stuck a few times in the implementation due to not having a clear grasp on the game’s structure. I ended up re-writing the code to display the blended dimensions a few times and I got stuck with the collision blending.

I eventually ended up scrapping everything but the level loader and started again from scratch about five hours before the deadline, taking a completely different approach that works much better. Unfortunately five hours was not really enough, and I ended up hacking in some elements right at the deadline, like the ability to drop orbs, which is why the controls really suck.

Tiled
I tried out Tiled during the last Ludum Dare. It saves so much time not having to write your own level editor. It was definitely very useful for this competition as I had no time to make a playable world at the end of the competition.

Conclusion
Generally I should have stuck with a single idea, or at least not spend much time on prototypes if I am unsure. Also I should really take the time to fully design the structure of a game before I start ANY implementation. I never do this which is why nearly everything I program gets re-written at least twice. Maybe I’ll finally learn…

Post Competition Version
I have had a lot of positive feedback about the idea which is encouraging. I have already started writing a new version of this game. It is currently about the state of my entry with a few extra features. I want to add monsters and other puzzles that make use of the dimension blending in creative ways. I will upload a version of it soon.

Play my final entry.

Tags: postmortem

Timelapse video of my entry Dimensional.

Tags: timelapse

Created my timelapse video. There is a short segment of gameplay at the end.

My game was written in about 14 hours, and isn’t particularly complete. I probably should have started earlier. Interestingly my desktop crashed near the start and I didn’t notice for about an hour as it didn’t affect the programs. That is why the clock stops for a bit.

The level was hastily scribbled up at the last minute. I should have left more time for that. I intended to give the last two hours but I got stuck into the music and sound effects. Also there are no ending conditions. Oh well. The legs evolution is fun to play with but the flying one needs more work. Those were the only two that work. The game supports changing the player size, mass, speed and stuff but I didn’t get the chance to do anything with that.

Tags: timelapse

Well, I managed to survive another Ludum Dare.
I did intend to try to upload some WIP posts but again that didn’t happen.
My game could definitely do with a more work.
A better level, better AI flee behaviour, different stats for the different unit types… I could go on.
Victory and lose conditions would probably help too, forgot about them.
And I somehow completely managed to forget about the need for an ‘End Turn’ button. Oh well.

Its playable anyhow so go play!.
I will upload my timelapse video tomorrow.

Thought I world post this again, updated for Ludum Dare 25.
It shows the distribution of votes and coolness for all entrants.

The graph is automatically generated so it is always up to date.

Put your username at the end of the url to mark where your entry is on the graph.

Here be my timelapse video, with gameplay video at the end.

Play it here.

Wow, Almost forgot to upload my timelapse video.

Only one person has got past level six so far, come on guys…
I didn’t think it was that hard.

My entry.

Tags: timelapse