Long long ago ( in a galaxy far far away? ) I started a game for Mini LD 11, called Little Quirks.

Sadly, I didn’t get it finished and it highlighted all manner of issues with my engine at the time, and made me realise it was on it’s way out ( though considering this was 2009 it took me another year or so to actually act on it! )
It also crucially gave me the kicking I needed to start using source control for Ludum Dare projects, as a lot of Little Quirks’ code has been lost to the God of Hard Drive Crashing.

I always meant to go back to it, as it was a nice simple game and was fun enough even just to watch the little guys clamber over things. Granted it perhaps borrowed rather heavily from Lemmings, but my original design did differ in that you could never directly manipulate the Quirks – you could only manipulate their surroundings. This meant modifying the insides of the cavern itself, creating helper objects like springboards, and traps to deal with the nasties lurking about that’d do harm to your Little Quirks. It also opened up a few other interesting ideas that I’d have loved to pursue within the same context.

Well, now I have no excuse! 😀
My October Challenge will be to resurrect the Quirks, and get it in a sell-able state, and explore these other ideas that I had!

Now to figure out a platform…

This could be interesting…

Shunning away my usual environments of C++, I’ll be using HTML5 / JS this time round with the ImpactJS Engine ( so jamming it! )
The rest of the week will entail me cramming everything I can about how it all works to ensure I don’t bomb too much 😉

Should things go well, I shall be using GIMP for graphics as per usual,  LMMS for music and SFXR for sound effects, or maybe even warbling into a microphone.

Think it’ll be fun to push myself and learn something completely new ( and will be amusing if I manage something better than what I usually do! )

The theme hasn’t been kind to me, this time.
I’ve had a lot of blank ideas and dead ends, and while I did finally settle on one.. it didn’t quite go to plan, so I’m in a bit of a puggled state just now.

While a chunk of yesterday was taken up with sleep and shopping, I did try quickly putting together a game.
It was going to be called Infiltrate, and be a bird’s eye view styled thing, where you run around a complex, taking enemies out, and blowing stuff up. Sortof like Commandos, except you’re all alone and have no backup, or much tools apart from what you find.
However, after committing the cardinal sin of “NOT SETTING UP TOOLS BEFORE THE COMPETITION” the majority of the day was wasted getting them ready… and seeing as I’d need a reasonable amount of art and scripted logic to get that going, it’s been shelved for the moment. I’m not exactly speedy with any kind of art, and I’m not fully competent in the land of JavaScript and HTML5 as yet to attempt something as crazy big without the full amount of time available.
The design is done however, so I may adapt it later for something else.

So, with it now being into the second day and nothing to my name, what am I going to do now?
I’m going to have a cup of tea to help wake up a bit more, sketch out some ideas over the next hour, then get a-cracking!

Yea, I give in.

I’ve attempted a few different ideas, but all I can get is a tenuous link with the theme at best. It just hasn’t gripped me as well as previous ones have.
Additionally, I have been running about a bit doing other things, so my head just hasn’t quite been in it.

That said, I did come up with a few more interesting designs to have a look at later on, and I’ve added some more code to my base framework so it’s definitely not been a waste! Just I don’t have anything near playable to actually submit, and don’t feel strongly enough with the theme, or with anything I have, to grind the rest of the day to get something done.

There’s always next time for Kittens or Evolution to finally win 😉

My wife (Octopi) and I will be partaking in some jolly good Ludum Daring this weekend. Pip! Pip! Jolly Good! Ahem.

After a year of chaos, and having to leave my job due to ill health in August, I think a little Ludum Dare therapy could be useful, so we shall be Jamming this weekend to see what mess we can make. I haven’t done any coding since August, so this’ll be a good chance to see if I can concentrate enough to do anything.

We shall be running about as Arcade Badgers, and using HTML5 and ImpactJS.
Art via MS Paint and GIMP.
Sound via sfxr and Audacity.
Music (hah) via LMMS or MilkyTracker.

Should be fun!

Tags: arcade badgers, jam, octopi, stuckie

Today has been quite productive, even with most of it being spent travelling to see relatives!

Octopi has nearly all the art done, and I’ve started pulling bits of logic together.
The design has been done as well, so without further ado, I give you Grim’s Christmas List.

More information and a (hopefully) playable demo will be available tomorrow, once I’ve bound some more logic up to confirm what we’re up to is actually playable 😉

As neither of us can be bothered to do tile sets, we’re primarily using the GfxLib-Fuzed pack from SpicyPixel.net ( http://www.spicypixel.net/2008/01/10/gfxlib-fuzed-a-free-developer-graphic-library/ ) as we’ve still a lot of content still to do, so our time is better spent elsewhere for now.

Oh, and Octopi has been updating the Arcade Badgers twitter: http://twitter.com/ArcadeBadgers should you wish to follow us on our merry game development way this weekend!

Tags: arcade badgers, Grim's Christmas List, octopi, stuckie

Well, here’s something unusual.. finishing early, for a change!

Grim’s Christmas List is now up and available to play: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=267

It’s an HTML5 game so should be playable on most PCs ( I haven’t done anything to make it work on mobile devices as yet, so your mileage may vary with that. )
Both Octopi and I have really enjoyed making this, and I’ll likely be posting up a post mortem later in the week.

Congrats to the rest of the Competition and Jam entries – we look forward to playing them too!

Tags: arcade badgers, Grim's Christmas List, octopi, stuckie

It’s been about a week now, and the dust has settled a bit to reflect over Grim’s Christmas List.

This was the first game we’ve done together, the first time I’ve done any serious JavaScript, the first time Octopi has done any game art like this, and the first time I’ve done any coding whatsoever since having to leave my job in August due to ill health. And, I think we did pretty well!

A lot of things went right.
We both clicked with the theme right away, and Octopi started sketching out characters and an idea. I gave some input into it as well, and we ended up with a hybrid mix of Bomb Jack, Rainbow Islands and Bubble Bobble. Sadly, the Bomb Jack elements got dropped due to time constraints, but we love the concept enough that we’ll likely continue with Grim and make it to the original idea.
The workload was split pretty evenly – with Octopi on sprite work and general design, and myself on coding, audio, and piecing together the sprite sheets. And being a Jam game, we got an extra day to work on it, so I wasn’t too stressed out my noggin.
Impact was a joy to use.. although I very likely made some bugger ups here and there as a few people have pointed out the slightly weird collision detection at times, but overall I had no problems with it – short of not really learning much about it beforehand.
Our game actually worked out pretty well, and is probably the best entry I’ve done so far.

A few things went a bit pear-shaped, however.
Most of Saturday was taken up with us travelling down to see my family to do the great Christmas gift exchange of the year… but we worked out some of the game on notepads during the journey.
We didn’t get the third aspect of the game in – collecting presents/reaping enemies in order for bonuses – from Bomb Jack, so you just get one measly point per present.
The level changes are a bit abrupt – we need to add some transitions, or at least a READY? GO! style thing.
No music ( bar the couple of seconds on the title screen ) as I couldn’t think of anything to do, and sound was workable at best ( though the boss/mini boss explosion sound works really well, with the presents flying everywhere! )
The end is a bit anticlimactic… probably could’ve done something a bit better than a black screen with text on it!

All in all, we think it went well, and we enjoyed ourselves
We’ll definitely be thinking of expanding upon it later on.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can find it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=267

Now for us to start rating some games!

Tags: arcade badgers, Grim's Christmas List, octopi, post-mortem, stuckie

Happy Holidays!

Have an awesome holiday season everyone! Octopi just threw this together while the kids are driving her absolutely bananas so its not the best she can do but we are happy with it

Though, Grim’s list is one you don’t want to be on! Have a play (If you want! We won’t be offended if you don’t!) to get you into the holiday spirit 😀

Play Grim’s Christmas List!

Tags: arcade badgers, Grim's Christmas List, ld25, octopi, stuckie

Arcade Badgers will be taking part in this weekend’s Ludum Dare.. somehow… we’ll have two kids running around, but there’s always the twilight coding hours!

This weekend’s combatants shall be: Octopi and Stuckie!

Octopi shall be using Windows 7, with MS Paint, Notepad, Firefox and ImpactJS’s Level Editor thingy-mah-bob.

Stuckie shall be using KXStudio, with GIMP, Chrome, KATE, Audacity, LMMS, a LAMP stack and ImpactJS.

(And yes, we do have two ImpactJS licenses!)

Good Luck to All!

Tags: arcade badgers, octopi, stuckie, We're In

Germies!

Waaay back in December 2010, I cobbled together a horrific ten hour entry for LD19 – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/12/20/germies/
It was garish, had horrific sound, and played a bit like a mule. However, there was an idea in there… a nice little variant on the usual Gems formula popularised by Bejeweled and co.

So, in January 2013, I revisited it for One Game A Month – http://www.arcadebadgers.co.uk/projects/1gam/january
I rewrote it in JavaScript, utilized ImpactJS, and cleaned it up a bit. It still wasn’t quite there, but was showing more promise.

Several months later, and with Arcade Badgers now being incorporated and officially trading, I’ve released Germies! as a more commercial offering; albeit an ad-supported Mobile/Desktop Web version – http://germies.clay.io/
This time, we’ve got a leaderboard and some achievements added to the mix, as well as general clean-ups throughout.
I’m also working on a native JavaScript binder to get it released on more platforms – so the work’s not over yet!

We’ve only just released it as of yesterday, but it has been a chaotic journey to get here, and proof that if anything, Ludum Dare – and by extension One Game A Month – are incredibly useful for iterating over ideas!

Oh and yes, we will be taking part in the next Ludum Dare! Here’s hoping that anything interesting that we produce doesn’t take almost three years to come out again 😉

Infection!

Tags: post-compo, SuccessStory

We didn’t finish the last Ludum Dare – well, technically I didn’t finish it, Octopi had done all the art for it! It was all technical gubbins that needed done, and I ran out of time as other things came up…

So, let’s try this again.

Arcade Badgers shall be jammin’ and using ImpactJS once more.
Along with this, LMMS and Audacity for music and sound, GIMP and Paint for graphics, and I’ll be poking at Sublime Text for my code editor this time round.

Will be fun to have another mad prototype to play with!

Tags: arcade badgers, octopi, stuckie, we are in

Well, we’ve not done so well in trying to do Ludum Dare this year! Let’s change that and take part in the October Challenge.

Raiding my archive of past entries, we’ve decided upon taking Yargh! from prototype to completion, and hammer it on to as many devices as we can.
Those that may remember Yargh! will probably remember the art being somewhat wacky, and that’s something we’re going to be keeping!

So, without further ado, I present Pegleg Pete.

Dance, monkey boy dance!

Pegleg Pete is the backbone of your pirate armada, serving as your ground troops in capturing as many forts, docks and gold mines as quickly as you can.
Capture more than the other players before the time runs out to win, also acquire more gold than everyone else, and perhaps blow everyone’s ships out the water for good measure.

Octopi has been cleaning up my original art, and Pegleg above is an indication of where we are heading. We thought the two frame “dance” animation was mad enough that we just can’t not put it in!

Anyway, we shall keep you updated with our progress, and hopefully we’ll be on our way to shaking our booty at the end of the month!

Tags: arcade badgers, octopi, stuckie, yargh!