Hello, I am Billy D. Spelchan and I run a game site called BlazingGames.com. Right now it is more of a hobby than a business, though that may change one day. I don’t know yet if my weekend is going to be free or not. If it is, I’ll give this a go. I have never entered a Ludum Dare challenge before though did participate in the 7DFPS  challenge a while ago.  Depending on the subject, I will either do the game in Flash or HTML5. As the rules say that I have to disclose any personal libraries or base-code that I will be using before the challenge begins, I will state right now that if I decide to go with HTML5, I may use my existing Coffee Quest FPS raycasting code. This is available on my BlazingGames.com website.

The Adobe Creative Suite 6 (DreamWeaver for HTML5, Flash if I go with a flash game and for image strip graphics if I go with HTML5, photoshop for touching up any photos I take to use in the game) probably covers most of the tools I will use for creating my game. I may also use a map editor called Tiled and may play around with the sfxr tool to cover my rather large weakness when it comes to sound in my games. Just discovering the existence of that tool may make Ludum Dare worthwhile.

Good luck everyone, and I hope I will be able to enter this challenge.

This is my first Ludum Dare. Not sure what the procedure here is with submitting a game. Is this done right away (as the game is linked to a site) or only when it is done? To be on the safe side I am assuming the later.  Have come up with an idea for my game and have the primitive components done. I will spend a few more hours tonight working on the game (I am in Western Canada so it is still Friday). Goal before I go to bed is to have a basic functional game so tomorrow can be spent fleshing it out. I have opted to go with Flash as it is faster to develop in over HTML5. Using Flash Builder and Flash Pro as my main tools. Good luck everyone.

My eventual entry is a game called missing links. It is about searching for missing links.  For people who want to see the game before it is finished, the link is http://blazinggames.com/action/misc/ludumDare24.php . Right now the map is a small test map. This afternoon I will be grabbing my camera and getting some pics to use as textures while finishing up the real game map. Once I am happy with that, and if there is still time remaining in the competition, I will be adding monsters and combat to change the game from the existing exploration game (the test map kind of lacks the exploration aspect but it is a test map) to a proper arcade game with a evolution theme.

My Missing Links game is finished to the point where I have no problem submitting it. I suppose I could spend the last couple of hours adding/enhancing the animation and fine-tuning the game map but I figured it would be best to make sure it was submitted in case the servers go down or something right near the end. As everyone else seems to be sharing screenshots of their games, I figure I would try that.

Good luck everyone who hasn’t finished yet.

I finally got around to writing a mini-postmortem for my Ludum Dare #24 entry. For those of you who like reading these, the link to my blog post is http://blazinggames.blogspot.ca/2012/09/ludum-dare-24-postmortem.html .

Tags: postmortem

With the voting for LD#24 done I was kind of surprised that my game didn’t show any ratings. I either did something wrong with my entry or somehow ended up being flagged as lame as my rating of other games tended to hover towards middle ranks as I am piss poor at rating things. If anybody knows I would love to find out what I did wrong. Still, the miniLD that was announced doesn’t have any of this rating nonsense and is much more flexible with the rules so I will be attempting to enter that. I, however, may not fully understand the theme.

When I hear no-game game I immediately thing of toy games. Construction sets and interactive toys. I have created an egg generator for easter, but some other type of generator where the “player” makes selections to generate something is what I am thinking. Right now I am not sure what type of thing I will be generating, but as the theme has been announced well before the competition starts I am sure I will be thinking of something. Hopefully I am on the right track this time and hope that this weekend proves as fun as LD#24. Granted, something will probably come up this weekend so I may not have the full 48 hours (though I may take advantage of the rule that lets you ignore this rule if my weekend is interrupted).

Got an idea that meets both themes for this mini challenge, or at least my interpretation of the themes. It also focuses on my biggest weaknesses so even if my entry is a failure I will be accomplishing something at a personal level. The game will be written in Flash as ActionScript the later is still faster to develop in than JavaScript. For me, Flash professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.6 are the tools to use for Flash development with Flash pro also being adequate for my art needs. While I don’t absolutely need the starling framework, it will be used. Audacity will be used for sound editing. I am in the PST timezone so the challenge is already 7.5 hours in so I had better get started! Good luck everyone.

I am in the PST time zone so I still have another 10 hours to work on my game. Here is my current build. The game is functional but none of the graphics have been completed yet so it doesn’t look like much. It is a rhythm game except that the player creates the music and “dance” steps. This is done in real time, though there is an editor that the player can later access to fine-tune his/her level. Because the focus is on the creation of the music/dance and not on playing the game this fits the no-game theme.  The game is at http://blazinggames.com/action/misc/ludumDareMini37.php for those of you who wish to see the early build (if any).

Well, I finished with about half-an-hour to spare but there is a lot more I want to add to this game. I think the game has a lot of potential and hope to spend more time with it in the future, but then I have a lot of other projects that also interest me. I do plan on working on a postmortem of this game which I will post on my development blog in a few weeks. I enjoyed myself and think that working with music (my biggest weakness when it comes to game development) and dance (another weakness) was worthwhile.

I’m 50 minutes late but am about to start on my Charity Game Jam game. As there are no categories for the charity game jam, I am assuming this is also the MiniLD #38 challenge so will post my progress reports in this category until told otherwise. I am probably going to be biting off way more than I can chew this time, as I am aiming to create a NES-Style RPG. The scope of the game will be fairly small and it will be built using the gamejam library I am creating for use in future game jams. This library is in a rather pitiful state as the time that was suppose to go towards working on it ended up going towards Torchlight II and Defender Quest but the scrolling map code is there so I shouldn’t have to worry too much about the dungeon/world maps.

Tools are Flash Builder, Flash, Fireworks, cfxr, audacity, starling framework, and tiled. I am in the PST timezone so my roadmap is to get the game skeleton finished tonight, get combat system finished tomorrow morning, rough world and dungeon maps tomorrow evening, artwork and fine-tuning on sunday. Now I better start coding.

Tags: Charity Game Jam, starting

Creating a RPG mostly from scratch is a rather crazy thing to do, but I did mostly manage to succeed. There is a lot of things I would like to add to the game, so it is going on my rather large revisit in the future list. My recommendation is to gain a couple of levels before entering the caves and before going into the castle. Mind you, death restores your health while leaving you where you died so this problem isn’t overly disastrous.

On a side note, the template page doesn’t seem to hold my game properly (even though it is the correct size) but adds scroll bars roughly the size of the scroll bars. The game is located at http://blazinggames.com/gamejams/ldmini38/index.html . Enjoy.

While I will eventually be switching to HTML5, for the next few game jams I will be using ActionScript with my own library which is located at http://blazinggames.com/other/openLibrary/html5Libs.php . Right now the libraries are in a primitive state though are slowly becoming something useful. This library is built on top of the Starling library which is a public library.

Tools will be the Creative Suite 6 suite (predominantly Flash pro and Flash Builder) as well as Audacity, cfxr, and Tiled. As it is currently snowing here, I don’t foresee anything coming up but unexpected things do happen. I am planning on listening to Geek News Central’s 24 hour podcast while I work on my game. In fact, even though it goes against my better judgement, I may try to do a 24 hour work session. That judgement call will be made based on the state of my game tomorrow evening (the challenge starts friday night for me).

Plans are to find out what the theme is. Come up with a totally amazing idea. Realize that the idea is not practical in the timeline. Go with a more realistic but still too ambitious plan but fall in love with that plan so go for it anyway. Get the game functioning but run out of time to fine-tune the game.

Good luck everyone.

I really don’t like sharing early screen shots but figure I should so people can see how much the game has changed when it is done tomorrow. I haven’t put that much time in (as I am in the PST time zone so was sleeping then doing a bunch of saturday morning chores). The game is functional at this point and I have a primitive tile set for the map. Red cubes are reindeer while the magenta cube is the player.  I am not quite ready to post a link to the game, but will post a beta build of the game this evening.

Early Alpha Build

A build of my game for Ludum Dare #25 has been posted for anybody who is interested. Most of the code is done, but the graphics have not. That (and sound) will be what I will be focusing on tomorrow. Now I am going to have a  couple hours of rest so I can actually be productive. Ironically, had I been further along, I’d be staying up and listening to the remainder of the GNC 24 hour podcast. A few hours of sleep can dramatically boost productivity.

As an evil gnome, it is your duty to disrupt the annoyingly happy holiday known as Christmas. After failing to break into the toy shop (see Santa’s Snowball) you decide stealing Santa’s reindeer will prevent Santa from delivering presents so you enter into his corral. Unfortunately the reindeer are hard to deal with so you figure just chasing them out of the corral will do.

Link: http://blazinggames.com/gamejams/ld25/ludumDare25.php

My entry for this challenge has been submitted. The entry page is http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=15656. While it was a fairly simple game it still took me longer  than I thought it would so I didn’t have as much time for polishing as I would have liked. The goal is to chase as many reindeer out of Santa’s corral before the time runs out.

Evil Gnome’s Revenge

Finally got around to finishing and posting a postmortem for my Evil Gnome’s Revenge game. The link is http://blazinggames.blogspot.com/2012/12/ld25-postmortem.html . Here is a quick summary of the article:

What went right:

– going with a simple game

– Knowing my limits and getting enough rest to stay more productive

What went wrong:

– School shooting caused me to go different direction with game

– Too much time spent writing code that should be in the library I am developing.

Now back to rating games.

My entry for MiniLD 39 has been posted http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-39/?action=preview&uid=15656 The hindsight for this entry was what would I have done had a school shooting right before LD#25 had not happened and I went with my original idea for that theme instead of a non-violent game.

Zombie Forever level 1 game play

Tags: strategy, turn-based, zombies

My postmortem for my Mini-Ludum Dare #39 entry Zombie Forever has been posted. The link is http://blazinggames.blogspot.ca/2013/01/mini-ludum-dare-39-postmortem.html . Quick summary for those too lazy to read it:

What went right:

– Going with a Jam challenge instead of going solo

– Zombie feel

What went wrong

-over-ambitious tendencies strike back

-AI resulting in humans killing each other and turning into zombies.

Tags: postmortem

Not sure how many people are going to be entering this Jam, but I fear it will be even fewer than Mini-LD#39, so I am going to have to make sure I finish an entry for this. The subject matter is political in nature which is the kind of subject that I don’t like to touch so this may be very interesting. I am going with my first thought which is a tax auditor adventure game. While I would like to go with my GameJam libraries adventure game library, it is simply not far enough along so this will be created in Flash Professional the old-fashioned way. As no real rules have been given, I am going with the combo rules but with a looser deadline. As I have created a twitter account, I figure I might as well post updates to it ( https://twitter.com/BillySpelchan )

For those of you who are skipping this Jam to watch some type of big game, I will only point out that the Stanley Cup playoffs aren’t for a while yet!

My entry for the CRAJam has been released. the entry page is http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/cra-jam/?action=preview&uid=15656 . The game has you playing an auditor who has to decide the fate of the people you audit. There are three different endings to the game based on your performance. I still have sound to add to the game so might slip in an update on monday or tuesday.

Tags: adventure, audit, cra, taxes