From what I’ve gathered, I have to write a post about myself to prove I’m not a robot. The problem is, I am a robot. So this might be tricky. 
This will be my first Lundum Dare. I’m working with a team of 3 other friends. If we decide on a 2D game, we’ll probably use libGDX. If it’s 3D, we’ll use jMonkey. We’ll also be using:
Art: Gimp
3D Models: Blender
Sound: I have no idea
I can’t wait till Friday!
Overall, this was a very positive experience for my first dare. Me and my team worked well together, and the game turned out awesome. Together, we spent over 50 hours on it! Now for some lists:
What went well?
What went poorly?
Be sure to play and rate the game here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=50639
Screenshot From Quest for the Golden Spork
Evidently, begging for last minute votes is a thing here. So be sure to play and rate Quest for the Golden Spork. Also, I’m supposed to link to my favorite game. I particularly enjoyed Wounded by Words.
Now that that’s over with, I’m going to expand on my earlier post mortem. I’ll start by listing off what happened each day.
Night 0:
The competition started at 9:00 for us, so we didn’t have much time the first night. However, we were able to get a lot done. The original idea was that Trevor was buying a golden spork, but the mall was attacked by terrorists. The terrorists took the spork, and Trevor chased after them. Originally, the world was also going to be steampunk.
Steampunk Shopping Cart
Original Terrorist Sprite
There were going to be four worlds, each with five levels. We also planned out around 20 weapons. We get ambitious at midnight On the programming side, movement got done which help a ton.
Day 1:
We kept working, until someone started a conversation about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Our artist whipped up this:
The Definition of Beauty
When you end up with a sprite like that, you have to use it. We decided to make it the boss for the game. It didn’t make sense for terrorists to be fighting for him, so we changed them to cultists. All music was written this day, and all narration was recorded. We also made a line for the boss, which didn’t make it into the game.
Cultist Sprite
Programming wise, half the day was spent trying to make path finding work. We gave up on that, and just used some basic steering. The other half was spent on combat.
Day 2:
We finished animating sprites on day 2. Our level designer made a version of the forest level, but the tiled map format doesn’t like being sent for some reason. The level was also way to large, and at that point enemies were defined in hand-written json. Most of the art and sound was put into the game. The block weapon was implemented. We were nearly finished.
Day 3:
Monday left us with very little time. In that time, the rest of the levels were made by the programmer, as well as the boss battle. Level switching and narration was also added. The last thing to be changed was the font, as it had earlier been nearly unreadable. You can rate and play this version of the game here.
Last minute forest level. Thank goodness for random placement mode!
Post LD:
The first thing improved was enemy placement. It can now be done from the editor, instead of handwritten json. The most common complaint for our game was the lack of feedback in combat. Some hit sounds were added after submission. We also added a mechanism to grab the cart, and changed the reset button to reset the cart, not the level. The game was also made slightly easier. Download this version here.
Bonus: Warmup
To warmup the weekend before, I made this. Be sure to play until, well you’ll see. Use the mouse to aim and shoot, and WASD to move. Art for this game was not made by us, it was just a programming warmup.
Once again, be sure to play and rate Quest for the Golden Spork!
Quest for the Golden Spork only needs three more votes to reach 50! This being our first Ludum Dare, reaching 50 votes would be great. Here’s what people are saying about Quest for the Golden Spork.
“Meatballs are OP.”
“Nice game! I love the narration! The golden spork is an execellent use of the theme.”
“I like the graphic style and the voice acting ;D”
What are you waiting for? Check out Quest for the Golden Spork, and get us to 50 votes!
I’ve linked to the game three times. I need three votes. Half Life 3 Confirmed!
FYI, the spork is not a COD reference. I had no idea there was a Golden Spork in COD until a friend pointed it out to me.
The programmer art is strong! But I can talk to people. And corpses. Corpses are fun.
Don’t worry! Detective Pocket is on the job!
Or should that worry you more…
My game is up!
Play Dis-o-rder here.
This game is entered in the Jam because I worked with a team. I had to submit it today, because I don’t have any time tomorrow. A postmortem is coming soon!
I’m only 2 weeks late, that’s not that bad.
Our game for Ludum Dare 33, Dis-or-der, turned out pretty well.
What went well:
Most of the gameplay was finished on Friday night. The story came out interesting, but dark. Very dark. It’s amazing how fun it is to play catch with large USB drives at midnight.
What didn’t go well:
I’m not happy with the graphics this time, even though they’re about equivalent to last year’s. Maybe I’m harder to impress now. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback, but in terms of shear amount of ratings, we had more last year. I blame the fact that this is late, and my ratings shall now zoom to the hundreds!
Enjoy this animation of Detective Pocket.
Play and rate here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=50639
I’m remaking my LD32 entry Quest for the Golden Spork for October Challenge. On the surface, the only thing that’s been changed is the UI design and the addition of a save feature. The new version will have significantly more levels, so I thought saving would be necessary. The new UI is more clean and minimalist.
Most of the work so far has been on the code architecture. Coding at midnight will not leave you with a maintainable codebase. Besides the previously mentioned level additions, most art will be re-designed, and gameplay will be improved.
Studying for finals for the last five minutes before the jam, so I don’t have to do any after it starts.
We’ll see what happens.
Full Resolution: http://imgur.com/jyyA2xZ
Google search “Cat Font” and you will not be disappointed. The kittens shall not be ignored this time!
Me and my newly-expanded team are in again for this LD. This will be the teams third competition, and my fourth.
We’ve all got Monday off, so we’ll have plenty of time to make something great.
Tools:
Programming: Groovy + LibGDX
Art: Paint.net
Music & Sound: IDK. Ask Ben.
If all goes well, this should be a great weekend.
Edit: Fixed link again
Hello everyone! Over the past week or so, I’ve been working on some tools I used in past game jams. The first is MetaMap, a program for adding collision & other meta data to TMX maps. The original version exported this to a JSON file, but now it can save straight onto the map file. The extra data is stored on a new tile layer with the name “meta”. An early version of this tool was used for my LD 33 entry, Dis-o-rder. Download the tool here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8yQwqpIY-TfVU9rSjFEVmVHRVE
The second tool I’ve been working on is a libGDX base template. It uses Groovy, contains generic Ashley components, tween accessors, and a premade main menu. The code can be found here: https://github.com/specialcode/gdx-dynamic-template
Me and my team are very in for LD35. Good luck to all of you!
Day one is finally over! After many hours of work, we have a general idea and most gameplay code. In our game, you play as an American hero with the ability to morph into several animals.
Edit: Click image for animation
Click for animation
All transformations in the game are in! The bunny can jump higher, the eagle can glide, and the snake is smaller. Level loading & enemy placement are in, so all that’s left is to switch in the new artwork and make some actual levels.
After missing the last jam due to scheduling, we’re in again for #38. We’ll be using my Cobblestone game engine again, Dart, and whatever the rest of the team uses.
I’m also proud to announce a wallpaper:
Full Size (4k) https://i2.imgpile.com/i/e0sLP.png
Good luck everyone!
