This is my first time doing Ludum Dare. I’m a professional web developer who is starting to dabble in game development and really enjoying it!

Language: C# / XNA
Graphics: Pens, Pastels and Paint.Net
Music: MuLab
SFX: ???

How’s everyone getting on? I started working as soon as the theme was announced, which is 2AM here in the UK. I’ve had a couple of hours sleep but it’s starting to catch up with me, it might be time for a power nap! I’ve been posting progress as I go a long on my Tumblr site, if you fancy a look.

A first, very rough demo video of a couple of key aspects of the game play – phase shifting and replay. You can see the first character, controlled by me, come in and interact with the levels in different ways. The second time I’m controlling the character which comes in later from the right. The character which comes in from the left is replaying the controller inputs from the previous play through. It duplicates the movements (except the phase shifting) so can replay exactly or be forced into different places by the current player controlled phase shifting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLUr_c0Eloc&list=HL1335042096

This video was taken by balancing my phone on my laptop while I tried to play the game, hence the quality (and the playing) being awful.

The title says it all really. I was way too optimistic with the early attempts at the artwork and I seriously underestimated how long it would take to get the level design right. I’m really pleased with what I’ve achieved though. I have a mostly stable prototype which has the two main game play features in place and working.

Squib versus the shadow monster.

Squib on Mars. You can still see the shadow monster and the platforms of the main world faded out. The little grey dude is a copy of the player which repeats the actions the player previously took.

It’s been a lot of intense fun and I’m going to try and complete the game soon, while I still have the impetus behind me. Might take a bit of a rest first, though 😉

I’ve just moved and I haven’t quite unpacked but I’m in. This is my second attempt, I didn’t complete a game last time due to an over complicated level design and underestimating how long the artwork would take. This time I’m going to go waaaaay simpler!

I’ll be using:

• Web technologies: HTML, Javascript, CSS
• Sublime Text 2 for code
• Mulab for music
• Photoshop for graphics
• Sound effects, no idea

I’ll most likely blog about it on Tumblr. Good luck everyone!

Almost a quarter of the way through and I have no idea what I’m doing! My game vaguely involves a sort of tower defence type thing where different towers fire different blocks so you sort of have to make the blocks hit each other, then they merge into better blocks and hopefully destroy your enemy… Sort of.

The green blocks have merged to make yellow blocks. But I think I may have that the wrong way around.

First video demo of level one. This shows the player shooting, ‘hacking’ the tower settings and destroying a barrier. Different coloured objects react differently with each other. If the RGB values of the block are higher than (i.e. brighter) than the barrier, the block which just go through. The barrier is destroyed when its combined RGB values are below 30 (this gets a bit hard to see in the video as it’s very dark). Damage is applied to the barrier by subtracting the colour values, so a pure green block (rgb(0,255,0)) can’t damage a pure red block (rgb(255,0,0)).

You can see the video on YouTube:

Level one demo

I managed to get ColourTron finished! This is my second attempt at Ludum Dare and the first time I had to concede defeat, so I’m really pleased to have completed this with a few hours left over.

This is the menu and how to play information for ColourTron.

The game play revolves around the evolution of coloured blocks. The blocks merge and change colour, or destroy each other, depending on the RGB values of the colour. The player follows the same rules so can absorb some blocks but is hurt by others.

The final level in the game and the most complicated.

The player has to destroy barriers and cross to the other side of the screen to complete the level. The ‘health’ of each barrier is it’s RGB colour value. Blocks can pass through a barrier if their colour value is higher than the barrier, they can damage the barrier or bounce off harmlessly. Damage is applied separately by comparing the RGB values of the barrier and block. This works in a similar fashion with blocks bouncing off other blocks and the player.

The player can also shoot at barriers but this isn’t as effective as hitting it with a block.

There’s a hacking mode to the game, which allows you to modify the colour and rate of the blocks created.

I wanted to add a different mode to the game to make it more than just a 2D shooter. The hacking mode allows you to change the types of blocks created. Given more time I’d like to expand on this.

The soundtrack was provided by the 80’s!

You can play a demo of the game on my site.

OK, I’m in. I’ve been kicking a few ideas around with a mate (he draws, I programme) but we’ve never finished anything so this seems like a good excuse to push one of those ideas to completion. We’re going with our simplest idea: “Escape from Plan 9”. It’s an Ed Wood inspired endless runner which we’re going to build for the web, either as a free to play but we accept donations or via some sort of payment method on the Chrome Web Store.

Maybe if we get this finished it’ll give us the incentive we need to get one of the more complex ideas finished!

Is almost finished. Just some game play tweaks required, which may have to wait until the morning (it’s almost 2am here). In the mean time here are some screen grabs:

#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Well, it’s not perfect but it’s live. Which is a bit like the film it’s based on. You’ll need a modern browser to play, such as Chrome, Firefox or IE9. I haven’t tested Opera or Safari but it might work. Seamless looping of audio is nigh impossible in HTML so there might be some clipping of the sound track and the audio plain doesn’t work in Firefox for some reason.

http://escape-from-plan9.com/

Some sort of donation button will be on there soon.

I’m in for the third time. I completed LD24 and failed miserably at LD23. My girlfriend is busy studying for exams so that gives me next weekend free. This time I’ll probably go with Unity as I’ve been playing around with that a lot recently.

I’ll be posting regular updates through the contest on my tumblr: http://stoogoff.tumblr.com/

So yesterday I started with this:

The guy with the teeth on the left seemed to be the bad guy, while the ghost like figure on the right definitely felt like a good guy. So I put him in a scene  in a minimalist, painterly style (well, pen and charcoal, not paint):

But I didn’t really have any game play. I sat and wrote and thought for a bit. It looked like the guy with the teeth was definitely some sort of crazy thing that would run around and eat things and he was standing right next to a ghost which made me think of Pac-Man. That led me to the idea of playing Pac-Man as one of the ghosts. So I drew these little fellas:

And the toothy character became this:

Much more Pac-Man like and much nastier looking! I now have the basics of the player movement up and running in Unity and I’m going to spend today working on the game play and ghost and evil Pac-Man (I’ve named him Spud) AI. Hopefully I’ll have time later today to work on some animations for these guys too.

The Drowning Man is a very literal interpretation of the theme involving a man trapped between the ice of a frozen river. He must avoid the fish and debris and use holes in the ice to rest. You can play it here:

http://www.stoogoff.com/games/ld29/

This is what you’re up against!

While it is a very literal interpretation of the theme there’s a bit of an Easter egg in the music and some of the quotes at the end.

I’m in! This time last year I managed to complete the Drowning Man, which I think did reasonably well, in a fun if depressing kind of way. That was built in Phaser, which I’ll be using again this year. Music using Reaper, graphics with Photoshop or Gimp.

From Wikipedia:

Unconventional weapon may refer to:

• Improvised weapon
• Weapon of mass destruction
• Any weapon not considered to be a conventional weapon
• Weapons used in unconventional warfare

So something biological or nuclear?

After going through various ideas of 2D beat-em ups involving clowns battling with daffodils, lawyers sueing each other or fighting off zombies with household implements (a la Shaun of the Dead) I’m settling on something I’m calling ABC Worriers1.

Earth is being invaded by aliens and only you can stop them!

Your weapons are:

The Atom Bomb Destroy everything in the blast radius! Be warned, distant enemies may become… strange.

The Biological Virus Create viral bugs and set them set on the aliens. Be warned, some bugs may make the aliens stronger.

The Chemicals Use your chemistry skills to create strange weapons of your own and fight off the aliens your self!

I’m thinking the biological and chemical weapons are something you make yourself with various pick ups on the map and the A bomb is something to buy you some time.

This could make for a fun game but I may have also bitten off more than I can chew…

1 Pun based on the ABC Warriors is intentional.

All of the code and the design doc is publicly visible on my github page, which I’m going to keep updating as I go: https://github.com/stoogoff/ld32

Obligatory “I’m in” post. I’ll be using Javascript with the excellent Phaser framework. Graphics (my weak spot) will be scrawled on paper then somehow magically converted to something digital using Gimp. Music will be via Reaper, probably with a lot of orchestral stuff, as that’s been my recent vibe. Sound effects through Sfx. I think that’s it. Good luck everyone!

It’s just past the half way mark and I’ve got… something. The basics of the game play are in place, although there are few features I’d like to add, and a lot of the graphics are in place.

Tomorrow will be spent animating Troll and the Humans and working on some suitably sinister music.

Screen grab of the game so far:

Trollhammer Day 1 Screengrab

The big green square is Troll. The small white rectangles are humans.