Hello everyone,

We’d like the chance to introduce you to our first released game, ‘Blob Cannon’.
Blob Cannon Trailer

To summarize this project, it’s designed to be a fun, challenging arcade feeling title that has you battling through stages to not only try to post your highscore, but to try and even complete it (in a fun way, not a frustrating way ^^).

Here is a screenshot, followed by some core components of our game.

STATS – You can choose which to gain after leveling up your character.
MONUMENTS – Find these to gain a bonus for their represented stat for the current stage.
POWERUPS – 3 different types of powerups can be found by destroying obstacles.
One type of powerup is a bonus powerup where you can gain additional lives or cannons to use.
The second type, is a Trait. These you can equip to give your character additional abilities.
The third type, is a Power. These enchant your cannon with their powers after activation.
Further details can be found at : Blob Cannon Ludum Dare October challenge 2012
And instructions can be found here (they are also in-game) Blob Cannon Instructions

If this holds your interest at all, please try out the game and share with us your experience.

You can play this game online at our site : Midnight Tinkering – Blob cannon
And if you enjoy your experience with the game and would like to support our future projects, please consider purchasing the game (for any amount you would like ^^) here : (Now just available for free- Purchase Blob Cannon )

I had to concentrate on testing the functionality, mechanics and overall gameplay of the game for the period of development, as well as testing bugs and issues that popped up, because of this most of the scaling of exp/points were rough estimations, and the pacing may be off.
I would love for those who try out this game to please share your experiences here, and give feedback on how the game felt.
I’d also like you to report any bugs you find, and I’ll monitor any bugs found and update the games page with them as I fix them.
(The project will be updated online continuously however the download at Sellbox will only be updated after a large amount of changes, or important changes occur, at which point I’ll update the Sellbox link on the web games page – though I’m more than happy to update the link earlier if asked ^^).

I really hope you take the time to try our game and share your feelings on how you felt playing it, I look forward to your responses, thank you very much for taking your time to read this.
Now I’m off to take a breather, count how many gray hairs I’ve gained, and how much hair I haven’t pulled out, and then I can start playing the game myself, and enjoy it without watching the clock every 10 seconds :).

–
[update] Only minor, but just found out that I can update/replace files where my file is being taken for Sellbox, and so I’ll be able to easily update that when I make any changes to the web version (I won’t have to add new sale/change links anywhere, etc), which is really really awesome.
On that note just fixed a couple things I found – exiting from pause menu didn’t work and your cannons still collided with an owl after it was trapped in a bubble.

Hello everyone,
I’m from Midnight Tinkering and hope to enter the Ludum Dare Jam this weekend.

I’ll be using Unreal Engine 4 to develop my project. Here’s a gameplay video of a something small I used to help expand my familiarity with engine, where I ended up spending most time working on the AI, which was a challenge because of how dynamic the gameplay was.

The game is fun however it wasn’t the best experience I’ve had using the engine with many issues popping up which would have destroyed my chances at completing a project within the Ludum Dare Jam time period, meaning I couldn’t complete it before this weekend (I hope to finish it off afterwards), so I’m glad I went for a test run and can learn from those mistakes.
Hopefully it will go smoother during the Ludum Dare Jam though as I would love to complete an enjoyable gameplay experience for everyone to have fun with at the end of this.

I’m mostly nervous now but regardless I wish everyone the best of luck and I hope it gets to be fun for both the developers and gamers who get to share in the joys of game design and development during this time.

I was never able to get my project as far as I had hoped to, so with the positive feedback I’m eternally grateful for by those who have tried what I was able to accomplish and submit for the LD48 Jam, I have continued forward with development for a Post-Compo release.

Above you can see me experimenting with the latest addition-the elemental effects your weapon will be able to gain through the destruction of boxes dropped by mini-bosses (the larger enemies seen). It’s not actually effecting anything yet, but I’m really happy with its implementation and the visual representation.
Your weapons attack will leave a trail based on what elements it has gained and to what degree, and crystals of each element will appear on your head-the slower they spin the less time left before its effect disappears.
A fun note-something I often hear is ‘I wish the enemies would be damaged by their attacks as well’, so a fun quirk I’ve kept is that while enemies won’t cast effects on each other for balancing purposes and to keep the experience fun, I have made it so they still deal damage-at 10%, and knockback. So it keeps all the fun of knowing they are being damaged without poorly effecting the experience or balance (having the mini-boss wipe out its minions before you even attack isn’t the best haha).

Other things I’ve changed/added since the competition.

• A lot of refining of the satisfaction of dealing and receiving damage along with more visual recognition (The sounds, color tint that builds up with consecutive hits-red for normal hits/yellow critical hits, and knockback).
• Background music from our music artist Kevin Green (heard in the video above).
• Refinement of attack mechanics (the orb on the left/right of your characters head shows your left/right mouse button attacks charge), the left attack continues to get faster as it is held-when the left orb is empty you can only swing once consecutively, the right-attack requires an initial cost and auto-casts when the orb is emptied-it also has twice the chance to deal a critical hit.
• Some noteworthy quirks with the elements-you’ll gain them separately for your left/right attack depending on which attack you break open the box with, and upon each swing you’ll have a ‘chance’ to cast any element you have up to its level (nothing is guaranteed). This keeps your normal attacks valuable and each swing playing a vital part while balancing out the experience (and if you manage to get away from an enemy after one swing you might escape the full wrath of their elemental damage too). It really expands the experience in a fun way instead of the traditional mechanics for this.

I hope you enjoy what you see in the video and look forward to more progress on this, hoping to complete it for a release soon after the Ludum Dare judging is finished.

Tags: jam, LD30, post-compo

A bunch more progress with my Post-Compo Ludum Dare release, and a demo available (by demo I mean it’s incomplete-final release will still be free).

Elements-a major part of the final experience are still missing as I ran into constant issues with the system and decided to work around it for now, balancing out the rest of the game.  So you can now progress through the worlds by defeating boss enemies-which spawn after defeating a certain amount of minions, and you’re able to choose which stat to invest in (which will be able to complement your play style more so when elements are added).

Below you can see a video showing the latest progress.

It’s incomplete but it’s at a good point to start receiving feedback on the current experience, so if you’d like to try it out you can download this demo here for PC – https://www.dropbox.com/s/i3q8mm0dbv6kek9/RageDOWPostCompoDemo.zip?dl=0

—Controls (keyboard | controller)–
Movement—  w/a/s/d | Left Joystick
Camera—  Mouse | Right Joystick
Invert Vertical Camera Motion— Middle Mouse Button | R3
Swing Attack—  Left Mouse Button | R2
Strike Attack—  Right Mouse Button | R1
Jump—  Spacebar | L1

—Gameplay Notes–
This shows your combat data indicators – http://i.imgur.com/mJTzMIY.png
This shows you what chests are available to get and how they help you – http://i.imgur.com/aRvDg1p.png
Currently there is no ‘end world’, however the final build is planned for you to only combat 5 worlds before facing the final enemy. It’s intended to be a challenge to reach that point and your score will be based upon how many enemies you defeated.
Currently you intentionally don’t die, so that you can continue forward and balance the difficulty growth of enemies throughout each world/how the stat increases balance, etc, without worrying so much about death. It’s more a test of how it feels currently.

I really hope you enjoy this latest update to the project and I look forward to rounding out the experience further for its completion soon

EDIT: A small update but one worth mentioning, made some balance changes and spiced up the variety in boss battles, now you’ll begin to face enemies who can only be damaged by the boss’s attacks. I’ve replaced the video here and updated the download with the latest build, hope you enjoy the changes.

All that’s left for the project is adding the interface/menus/end-game and death conditions, and it will be complete.
Conclusion so far? It’s super fun! And I’m so happy it turned out as I had hoped.
I’ve been having so much fun playtesting it for hours and making various tweaks to the elements/enemies/gameplay pace, etc, and it’s a brilliant feeling to spend time on a project and have it turn out as intended. It was definitely worth continuing after the Compo to round up the rest of the game.

Below is a video showing the latest gameplay through to stage 4.

All of the gameplay experience is there now, so if you’d like to try it out and give any feedback regarding your experience I’d love to hear it, hopefully you enjoy your time with it ^^!
You can download this build here for PC – https://www.dropbox.com/s/lzk2ttaut6vza6q/RageDOWfinalbeta.zip?dl=0

—Controls (keyboard | controller)–
Movement— w/a/s/d | Left Joystick
Camera— Mouse | Right Joystick
Invert Vertical Camera Motion— Middle Mouse Button | R3
Swing Attack— Left Mouse Button | R2
Strike Attack— Right Mouse Button | R1
Jump— Spacebar | L1

—Gameplay Notes–
This shows your combat data indicators – http://i.imgur.com/mJTzMIY.png
This shows you what chests are available to get and how they help you – http://i.imgur.com/aRvDg1p.png
Currently there is no ‘end-game’ or death condition for testing purposes (so you don’t need to worry about dying when experimenting), however the final build will have you successfully complete the game upon defeating the 5th worlds boss.

My experience in the Jam last time was quite fun, even though I regrettably still haven’t been able to make a final update for the project because of a bug introduced in an update to Unreal Engine 4 which I built it in (though I’m hoping that was finally resolved in the latest update).
Additionally I’m refining a recent game jam projects which I developed.

I don’t want to end up with another project I have to spend time post-jam refining with current projects that still need work, so for this Ludum Dare I’m planning to develop the game in Construct 2 which I’ve completed some projects in the past with, which will hopefully allow me to complete the game entirely across the 72 hour period and not require post-jam refinements/improvements to complete it, letting me make a fun small complete game that more people can easily access via HTML5/web then return to my current projects.
If I can’t get a fun and stable experience going with the game design inside the first 12 hours then I’ll have to pass and return to my current projects.

Largest problem beyond not having recent experience with the engine I foresee is, my 2D art…..is worse than programmer art, and I’m not even a programmer (unless you count visual programmer). So it’ll be rough with that, but hoping I can find a game design that works regardless, and I’m just hoping to take this opportunity to create another fun game for people to play and share.

RAGE: DESTROYER OF WORLDS
—————
Simple project with arena combat, that expands to gain some depth and variation with elemental abilities you can equip your left and right mouse attacks individually after defeating Mini bosses, and 4 stat options to choose from after each boss is defeated across the 5 worlds you battle upon. Mini bosses and Bosses also have progressively stronger elemental abilities you should look out for.

http://gamejolt.com/games/action/rage-destroyer-of-worlds/44502/

 This was a small game developed for LD30 that got cut significantly short of what I wanted it to be for submission, and was my first completed project since changing from Unity to Unreal Engine 4. I spent time expanding the gameplay afterwards but its release was delayed for a long time because of an engine bug spanning 2 versions that wouldn’t allow me to compile the project, however now it is complete and ready to play.

Hope you get to have fun playing this :), I’ve spent countless hours playtesting it as I developed it and though it’s relatively small scale compared to most arena games I’ve continued to enjoy my time with it. Though it’s extra reading I’d recommend looking at the element descriptions in-game to better understand what each does and how they may have advantages with each stat item you may pickup to get the most out of the game.

Though this Ludum Dare went even less smoothly than I'd prepared for, but I managed to create a core experience I enjoyed. Regrettably though it was lacking in enough meaningful content and balance for me to have confidence in it as a submission people might share/discuss.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/my-precious-orbit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-o83pJd788
Still I wanted to be able to round it out into a completed project as I enjoyed the base I had built for it, so for anyone else who were also engaged by the submission I entered,
its post-LD release can be found here - https://swiftillusion.itch.io/my-precious-orbit -
which I'm absolutely happy to have as a small completed game.

Below is a summary of my experience/followup plan if you'd like to see/read more
SATURDAY
Ludum Dare started for me on Saturday at 11am, so I was awake with lunch eaten and ready to jump in.
It got off to a good start with my favorite part (game design/conceptualization).
Below is the initial document where you can see how my thoughts trailed along.
Then I cleaned up and separeted the games core elements in-case I needed to adapt it to an even smaller scope
With all that done in the initial 3 hours I was happy and ready to get working on the gameplay.
My first priority was the characters movement as that had to feel just right. The prototype character was just a quick dummy so I could test the initial spatial movement.
http://i.imgur.com/QDUMjzJ.gifv
That was ready around 5 hours in. The camera was next though, while tweaking the player movement/rotation alongside it. It was a nightmarish mess of quaternion math trying to get the camera to smoothly/dynamically follow the players position/rotation. After experimenting searching and guessing for what felt like forever I stumbled upon one amazing person who'd shared the simplest equation ever that worked!
So this day ended around 3-4 am.

SUNDAY/MONDAY
These 2 days were so horrible with the little I accomplished I can't entirely recall the order of events/what happened separately across both days.
~~~The Sun/Planet models
I wanted to have a colorful array of planets/suns, so keeping performance in mind knowing I'd want a lot of solar systems visible together I wanted them to share the same texture/material and just offset it randomly for each. However somehow as obvious as this at least seemed to me, Unity had no way to accomplish this. Each material 'instance' actually costing individual drawcalls instead of like my previous experience with this in Unreal Engine 4 where instances were used to cut drawcalls.
This led to a mess of trying to find solutions, eventually stumbling across and combining/guessing my way through a solution to offset each meshes indivisual uv's which ended up working absolutely great.
(Because I'm unable to program/I use a visual programming tool -flowcanvas- finding even working code doesn't mean instant success as I have to try and workout how to translate it into that tool).
~~~Character revision
I wanted to work on revising the character with a roughly skinned character to test its gameplay functionality.
This started off well enough, however the process I've been using to import character into Unity since I can remember randomly decided to stop working. The root bone of the character wouldn't export/import into Unity, even attempting previously functional characters caused the same result.
Not having the slightest idea how this could have started I had to guess my way into a roundabout solution that involved extra work. However, once I tested this the original root bone, no longer attached even remotely to any part of the character and not selected for export decided to show up in Unity. I was beside myself trying to comprehend this. Eventually I had to just cross my fingers with the roundabout solution and hope nothing more would break.
This resulted in having to re-animate the character from scratch multiple times and a mess of other time wasting processes in combination with the ragdoll tools to get it ready.
~~~Character physics
This I know was the last event of Sunday/Monday, as it was 9 hours of headaches and squinting at the screen with intense concentration to spot whether or not the character was snapping between frames or the ragdoll was lagging behind. It was just a mess. I rebuilt the ragdoll/physics for it countless times, compared demo scenes, shut options on/off thinking it did/didn't work but then discover the camera jolting around and having to tweak that, only to find the issue was with the character. A serious nightmare.
After the 9 straight hours of this I just had to settle with not being able to have continued slow motion (the character would visibly shake/snap) and have the camera move only on the fixed time update alongside the characters physics.
At this point there was only 9 hours left until the submission deadline, so I had to skip sleep and brainstorm what kind of gameplay I could achieve with essentially only character movement working and planets blindly following the player.

TUESDAY
After madly brainstorming/calculating what I thought I could accomplish/what had the least risk of going wrong to move forward with, I roughly put together a mental concept/schedule of what I needed to accomplish.
Player defeat/loss condition, Element of progression/impact, Enemy Interaction, sound.
I hoped for about an hour each with an hour safety net for bugs/tweaks/balancing and time left to write up the project and upload/submit it.
~~~Player defeat/loss condition
I added a new element of the characters concept, the gems around the head/globe and thankfully quickly managed a solution to track them and remove 1 each time a sun collided with you, making sure the first ones to disappear were those facing you to make it more visually evident. This also helped in that I didn't need to start adding/working on 2d elements and it complimented the 'scenic' space view during play.
I Also wanted to make sure the defeat was impactful so I stopped the camera following the player upon death.
~~~Enemy Interaction
This was relatively simple, destroying enemies when they were hit with your swing. However at this point I worked on additional tweaking of the players collision/punch collision to try and get it feeling smooth.
~~~Element of progression/impact
I then split up the destruction of suns by having them lose their planets, starting with the furthest one out.
I also tweaked how their planets did so to make it more apparent (with an additional explosion effect for them-they also expand outwards from the sun before doing so).
~~~Sound
Thankfully this was mostly taken care of as I made the above additions though I didn't have time to find/add music, I barely managed to get the title menu and credits added very roughly onto a plane in front of the camera. I also made the title smoothly move off the screen instead of disappearing to feel less rough.

CONCLUSION
Somehow I still had something I was at least comfortable submitting even if I knew it was lacking thanks to the core experience I made sure to keep refining even throughout the lost time from the various bugs/issues.
If I had just pushed forward without doing so, I would likely not even be writing this as I wouldn't have been comfortable submitting something that was both incomplete and without a core experience/layer of polish and consideration that I hope comes across in this submission.

NEXT? (after playing and giving feedback to other entries)
While I had been working on a RPG Maker MV project I'm currently recovering from an eye operation, so working with pixel art isn't something I can manage when I still have to zoom in most webpages to read comfortably.
So the current plan is to enter the '1 game a month' game jam via Unity in 3D from the start of next/this month, and hopefully have a smoother experience with that than this Ludum Dare ^^;.

For a summary of my experience during the event - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/my-precious-orbit/my-precious-orbit-post-mortem-post-ld-build-now-available-also
Revised build thanks to feedback received - https://swiftillusion.itch.io/my-precious-orbit

Though I'm happy with the revised small experience I was able to have at the end of this, overall I was really disappointed by what I submitted originally. The frustration of how much time I'd lost to unimaginable errors in a previously consistent workflow, and the lack of time left as a result to make refinements only grew as I received more feedback when voting began.
The feedback I received did help me consider even further adjustments for the pace of gameplay than I'd already planned for the post-release build, however with the feedback being so consistent about the core gameplay I didn't get a chance to refine before submitting, I ended up not wanting the game to be found.
This led me to put a regrettable stop to making any contributions regarding feedback on other projects after that, increasing the disappointment with myself along with my entry.

I tried to scale the amount of gameplay in my Ludum Dare project even lower than my previous attempts and I still lost 2 days of work to ridiculous things, leading me to release something I thought could become a fun little experience, however though I play tested it throughout, I didn't have time to fine tune it at the end making me regret the time invested and lost by others who tried it.
I know not everyone's plans comes together easily in an event like this and for many it's just about the experience, but when working solo as I did what's important to me is being able to get something out there that's fun for people to discover while trying everyone's games, even if there isn't a substantial amount of content, so my disappointment can't be exaggerated.

If I'm able to prepare myself for another Ludum Dare I'll have to be more up front with myself about what I want to contribute, and if I'm unable to have a complete experience ready earlier to test and refine the 'final' build I'll need to cut my loses earlier and just not submit anything.
Regardless I'm still incredibly grateful for those who took time to elaborate their feedback on my entry during this Ludum Dare, and hope anyone who tries the revised game at the top of this enjoys their time with it.