In the last – frantic – 3 hours, I started Ludum Dare, wrestled with my screenshot program, wrote a level editor, went for a walk and took photos with my new camera, and did absolutely no programming on the actual gameplay.

However, I’m very pleased with my progress. I now have my game loading pieces of “level” from the level editor, which includes some basic physics that lets the pieces float around in the screen. I chopped some of the photos up and now have rudimentary graphics, which look something like this:

It’s very tempting to keep adding graphics and making things look prettier, however I really need to get some gameplay in there. The next step is to add a character who’s trying to escape the end of the world by running across the pieces.

And of course I need to give the game a proper name. I welcome any suggestions.

11 hours and counting! Time for dinner.

Five hours into my LudumDare entry, with less than 8 hours until the end, I finally have something playable.  There’s still no beginning, not much middle, and no end. But the red square you see in the image below is a fully interactive character.

Oh, and there’s a background image. Yay.

My next step is to start spawning platforms as you run along, and add some obstacles to be avoided. Also some code re-factoring so that I can change the parallax of the background and get things looking a bit less flat.

Also I’m going out to a concert for 3 hours, so I’m going to be happy if  manage to have more than 10 seconds of gameplay!

I’m tired, hungry, and satisfied that my game is now actually a game. There’s still no beginning, and no end, but you can jump between platforms and avoid flying pieces of debris. My To:Do list gets ever longer, and time gets ever shorter. I’ve now got less than 5 hours remaining.

Although the player is now blue, it’s not a huge improvement over red. I want to get a player graphic into the game as quickly as possible. I also need to fix the camera following the player, add some effects to give the player some impetus to get moving, and probably a lot of other details too.

A start. And an end. And a name. And sound effects and music.

Got to run. Got to escape!

Sitting in a quiet room, with the rain pattering outside and a clock ticking loudly in the corner, it’s hard to feel the type of catastrophe that my game is trying to convey. Likewise, when my character – pieced together from the photos I took earlier in the day – looks sanguine, it’s not ideal.

However, it’s a character, and it’s animated, and it will suffice.

Next, I’m adding some effects – hopefully no longer than half an hour. Then I’ll try and get a start and an end. And tweak the camera, and think of a name, and submit before the server crashes.

After 10 hours, 53 minutes and 20 seconds of frantic coding due to a very late start, the Sky Fell.

Download the 1.8Mb zip file for Windows.

The servers also fell, and while I got my entry  in successfully last night, I left this final post for today. My entry this time around is the most playable and complete game I’ve developed for LudumDare. I’m very pleased with how it turned out – especially seeing I started very late and didn’t put much time into it. The game looks lovely in motion, and unfortunately the grey screenshots don’t do it justice. Saying that, here’s a grey screenshot :

I’m not entirely satisfied with the game. I had to manually program all of the particle effects, something that my previous games never needed because I had tool-set already developed for that. The graphics turned out OK due to an amazing fluke. I bought a new camera, and played with it all the way to work and back on Saturday. When I started my LudumDare entry, I had a huge stash of photos taken during the competition period – just sitting waiting to be used. With a bit of colour correction they turned out ok, but trying to modify anything made me miss my old Wacom Tablet. Hopefully next LD I’ll be back up and running as an artist.

The game takes some practice, but it is possible to win!  Good luck in your Escape  …

Tags: final

My screenshot capture program decided to scramble 90% of the images it took, so my timelapse is rather jumpy and fairly short. Just like my game.

I started mid-afternoon, and stopped only briefly for dinner. Even though I was badly stretched for time, you can see how much I wasted by playing other peoples entries and reading blog posts when the site wasn’t down.

Watch in your browser (firefox/opera). Or download the file.

Don’t forget that The Sky Is Falling and you should escape by downloading my game. It’s more fun than watching this timelapse, I promise.

Tags: timelapse

I’m still tossing around ideas as to how the 10 second combat will work in my mini RPG. Behind the scenes things have been very slow going, but on the up side I now have animated and textured models importing correctly into the game. I don’t really have much else, but it’s a start. The next step I think is to get basic movement working for the main character and some enemies.

Speaking of enemies, I don’t think this is going to be one. But it might be.

Time for some more planning perhaps.

My game idea is becoming more solid, but unfortunately time is slipping away faster than I’m going to be able to finish. I’m still clinging onto hope though and pushing onwards! At the moment I’m hoping to get the swordfighting mini-game running, and hopefully that’ll suffice for LD. Here’s a sneak preview of the first attack/dodge animation. I probably should have chosen tools I was more familiar with.

Three hours is realistically how long I have to put the rest of this game together.

I have a menu:

And I have a main character:

Unfortunately I don’t have much gameplay yet. The next hour is probably make-or-break so I’m going to hack something together regardless of how awful the code may be!

The Duel now has working gameplay, to some degree. The beginning works, and the middle works. There’s no end per se, but you can play the same 10 seconds over and over if you want.

The problem is that it’s 2am and it will probably take another 6 hours to finish the game to a reasonable standard. I could submit to LD as-is, but it’s barely playable. I’ve only spent 10 – 12 hours working on the game due to other commitments and being in an awkward time zone. So I’m going to polish it up tomorrow and submit it to the catch-all that seems to be the jam. I think I’ll feel happier releasing a more finished product. Although it’s a shame to delay it, because it’ll be compared to games by larger teams and games with much more work put into them. Maybe one year I’ll manage to do LD without interruption.

Anyway, progress pictures:

It’s done! I’m finished. And I’m very proud to present to you all my LD27 entry …

Play it online now.    |    View the entry.

The Duel is a game of quick actions and even quicker reflexes. I suggest you read the training manual before you begin – without it I guarantee you won’t last 10 seconds.

The game is short, but difficult to master. I’d very much appreciate your feedback!

Good Luck.

Controls : Left/Right/Up Arrow Keys
Uses WebGL, I recommend Google Chrome.

I’m sitting in front of my screen at 10.00pm on a Saturday night, with almost no time to code on Sunday. Which logically means I have 2-3 hours to make my LD game!

So I’m running with the first idea that came to mind:

Daily Times : Giant monster destroys city!

Here’s the first 20 minutes of modelling in blender (and 10 minutes of posting):

Wish me luck!

They don’t do much, but I’ve started on the random city generation. It’s going to be pretty simple because I don’t have a lot of time.

In fact at this rate it probably won’t even be a game, but I’m okay with that. Playing with procedural generation is fun :).