Hello,

This is my first LD competition. I found my way here thanks to Dock, and his entry in LD 15.  I’m using Unity for my game engine (and models), Photoshop for textures and will be using cfxr for sound.

For anyone who has the Unity web plugin, you can play the 12-hour demo of Explorer here.

In addition, here are some dev notes:
LD48 #16: Screenshots Batch #1
LD48 #16: Log 2 (0900-1500)
LD48 #16: Log 1 (0300-0900)

I’ll be posting another update in 12 hours. Good luck to all.

I wasn’t going to have characters in “Explorers”, but I just couldn’t resist this. Viking helm and monocle? Yus.

More information at Waddlefarm.

Dev Updates:
LD48 #16: Playable Demo (33 hours)
LD48 #16: Screenshots Batch #2
LD48 #16: Log 4
LD48 #16: Log 3

Cubees: Age of Exploration.

This was my first LD competition. I took nearly the full 48 hours (definitely down to the last 30 seconds). I enjoyed the experience immensely and look forward to seeing what others think of Cubees.

For more details about the development, I’ve kept a log on my site. Now, I’m going to sleep.

Cubees Entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=rate&uid=1481

Ludum Dare 16: Cubees – Timelapse Video

Ludum Dare 16: Cubees – Gameplay Video

My long-winded post-mortem for my Ludum Dare #16 entry, Cubees.

Background Information
This was my first Ludum Dare game. I’ve been working on games for about a year, and programming for about a decade. I’m not much of an artist, but I make due. I try to make up for that with more creative scripting techniques.

What Went Right

• Solid Start. Fifteen minutes after the start if the competition I starting outlining the core gameplay mechanics. After another fifteen I had finished with the essential elements I needed to have in this game.
• Rapid Prototyping. Four and a half hours in, I had a prototype for basic island generation and character movement. Five hours in, I had the hidden/reveal mechanic implemented. Nine hours in, I had the procedurally-generated islands completed. At this point, the game itself, save for a Win condition, is done. This allowed me to focus a day and a half on polish.
• Optimization. I’ve never used meshes this extensively, but because each tile, fog for each tile and decoration (mountain or village) were additional meshes, the graphics because very expensive, very quickly. I had never used the combine mesh functions, but they performed extremely well, reducing draw calls by 90%.

What Went Wrong

• Downtime Scheduling. I had slept most of Friday leading up to the start of the competition, in the thought that I would be able to work for 48-hours straight, which I may have been able to do a decade ago. I did get 7 hours of sleep Saturday night, and I took a 3 hour nap on Sunday, but I didn’t realize how exhaustive hour after hour of intense mental work really was. My scheduling for breaks, downtime, and sleep, weren’t ideal and it caught me by surprise.
• Music Prep. I didn’t have any music in mind. I had succumb to the realization that I had no idea how to generate this, and would just leave it. Late in Day 2, though, I figured it out, and it cost me at least an hour trying to find the right software, playing around with it, exporting, converting, and importing. Had I prepped for this, I could have changed this 60 minute chunk, into 5 minutes.
• Final Build Prep. I had never built for Windows using Unity before, and with my first test I only copied half of the files I needed. This was a pain considering that I only had about half an hour until the deadline. Figuring this out before, just as with the music, would have saved time in the critical last few hours.
• Not Difficult Enough. I focused on function, before design. This is the sign of a programmer who can design, instead of a game designer who can program. Many people have commented that the game is too easy. The problem is the island-generation equation. Current what happens is that as the levels increase so does the potential size of the island, and the possibility of resource, obstacle (mountain) and village tiles. What should happen is that the size of the island should increase and the amount of obstacles should increase (costing you more turns to find new ways to get around them), but the bonus tiles (resources, villages) should always have the same chance of being found, possibly decreasing after a certain point.

What Could Have Been Better

• Hacks. I am pretty appalled by the hacks I had to put in to make this work, specifically in the area of the dialog/sliding boxes. The initial scripting for island generation was nice, but after that it became more about the functionality than elegance. I didn’t like doing this.
• Characters. The characters don’t fit with the rest of the style. I think they are a bit of a glaring break of the environmental style. I don’t regret adding them in, but I really wish they could have mixed better with the rest of the game.

Future

Over the holiday break, I will be continuing to work on this game. I am satisfied with how it turned out with 48-hours of work, and I’d like to see what this could look like after three weeks. I think by that time it could be quite a fun little Facebook game.

I had plans for achievements and more of a story in the original 48H version, but those were cut because of a lack of time. I’d like to put those back in, especially in a Facebook app, with leaderboards and friend lists.

I’ve written up my first update (6 hours) here, with a screenshot.

It wasn’t nearly as productive as my first Ld16 segment, but I’m feeling good about it.

Heading to bed, but pictures will be posted in the morning!

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Here’s a collection of my food photos thus far.

Freshly baked bread, coffee grinder and press (with cozy), dinner (Friday night). some extra drinks in the fridge, and a Limonata.

Tags: foodphoto

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My entry for LD17 is Forgotten Isles.

You are a character who awakes on a shore, with a quickly fading memory. You will travel from maze island to maze island trying to figure out why you’re on on the island, with the intent of escaping. Click the screenshots to enlarge them.

Don’t Be Forgotten
One of the major elements here is memories. The character has a timer which represents how much of himself he can remember. It will decrease incrementally. If it reaches zero, then he’s forgotten who he is, and will fade away, into the Forgotten Isles.

You can restore memories by finding people or items which you have memories of (such as the dead shipmate in the screenshot above). These act as checkpoints, and restore your memory timer to full. You can return to them as many times as you like, attempting to restore your memory, and retain your sanity.

The Isles
The island itself is a maze which tests your own short-term memory. Environmental elements, such as the shore, trees, ruins, etc will rise out of the ground based on your proximity. This prevents you from ever seeing the full island, and therefore finding a way through the maze ahead of time. Only the elements in your immediate proximity are revealed and once you leave, they’ll sink back into the island.

The Game
It’s a maze game with a story. The challenge likes in being able to make it to the next checkpoint in the alloted amount of time. It will progressively become harder and harder to reach the next checkpoint because the maze will become tricker and more complicated.

I wanted this game to have some deeper message, which will probably not be finely polished by Sunday, but it will be present, in a rough form, within the story.

Tags: journal, screenshot

Well, the past few hours haven’t been that productive. I think my main blocker has been the simpleness of this game. I’m putting off “level design” because I want to get more of the code done, but the truth is that the coding is actually finished. Events, game logic, etc are all done.

So, I’m happy to announce that Level one is complete.

I’m going to draw out the other levels (4 or 5), make sure they’re challenging enough and that the story makes sense, and that’s the goal for today.

Tags: screenshot

The Forgotten Isles is my entry for the second Ludum Dare challenge I participated in. It is a simple game to play, using only the arrow keys to move your character around the island. Frustration will set in as you find out that the mazes become more and more complicated, but there is intrigue and mystery as to why you’re here.

This game has a lot to do with memories. As you wander the islands, you slowly lose more and more of your own. Some of them have manifested themselves in physical form throughout the mazes. These unintentionally serve as reminders of your past and help restore your memories, allowing you to continue to seek out an exit.

Lastly, the island itself doesn’t allow you to remember its own features, not for very long anyways. Terrain features only appear when you’re near to them. As you approach they’ll rise out up from the ground and when you walk away, they’ll disappear. This makes navigating a maze much more difficult.

The Forgotten Isles can be played on the web (Unity plugin) or downloaded for PC/Mac. Please take some time to explore the isles, and unravel the story.

Tags: final, screenshot

I posted a new version with a couple bug fixes and some tweaks. You can find Forgotten Isles here, available on Web, PC and Mac.

Praetor57 says …

Cool art style, nice work!

Thank you!

shrt says …

Pretty nice tune. I really liked the disappearing/appearing terrain obstacles too.

I found the controls weird to begin with, since the character would not move according to the camera’s orientation.

Thanks. For LD18 I plan to get some “real” music. The terrain was my favorite to work on. I added in a shrub in the latest version to help demonstrate the controls from the beginning.

Endurion says …

More like a book than a game.
Navigating the maze was getting tedious near the end, also as others said: Why not move oriented towards the camera?

It is linear, but the game is the mazes. It does tell a story and there isn’t a score, but there are win/lose conditions. The second version makes exploring a bit easier, with an increased timer and the starting locations counting as checkpoints.

I will consider another version with the camera directly behind the player if it’s requested more. I liked the isometric view, I think it helps display the island, and reveal maze better.

The responses to Forgotten Isles on the Ludum Dare site kept mentioning that that the music was missing. At first I just accepted this as a cross-platform issue, or maybe someone didn’t have their volume up (the music is pretty soft). After a few more of these comments it occurred to me that I probably left it muted.

Like during Waddlefield development, I disable the music so that it doesn’t play EVERY time I’m trying to test. Cute tunes are fun, for the first few repetitions, but then not so much after a dozen or two repetitions. So, bug fix for Version 3! The music has been unmuted!

The other tweak is that I’ve adjusted the camera’s position and rotation so that the character’s movement is relative to the camera position. before, the camera was at a 30-35 degree angle, and movement was less intuitive as it is now. While this added confusion to navigating the maze, the purpose wasn’t to make it more difficult.

You can download or play Version 3 now. Version 2 and 1 are still available for download and online play.

Now, responses to some comments:

AClockWorkLemon says …

great game, however i found this extremely easy due to the fact that on the 2nd island, my ‘memories’ glitched up and got stuck at 45.

Yes! A version 1 bug. If you lose, and start again, the timer doesn’t re-activate. This is fixed in version 2.

Jonny D says …

…I didn’t hear audio though…

Audio is now fixed!

Almost says …

…Some more variety in the type of objects within the maze would help to reduce the feel of wandering in a maze and more so wandering an island. (trees, not just bushes)

Yes, Original plan called for many more types of terrain, but maze design and implementation took up a lot of my time.

pekuja says …

…I do think if you work on this further, you should add something more than just the maze. Mazes can be a bit boring unless there’s a lot of different things to see.

I was thinking there could be some “guards” which you have to avoid, or even some platformer elements for jumping perhaps.

While mazes are the challenge and game of The Forgotten Isles, Ludum Dare is about more. Specifically, the judging of Ludum Dare. With 204 entries, time alloted to play each game is only a few minutes. I want to make sure all the other players can experience as much of The Forgotten Isles as possible.

Below I’ve posted the four maps so you don’t spend your whole time frustrated and lost. You should at least try the game, so you get a proper idea of the difficulty, but use the maps below so you can unravel the whole story.

Island 1
Island 2
Island 3
Island 4

I’ve announced my proposal on my blog for anyone interested:
http://www.nickbreslin.com/2010/08/engine-hacking-for-ludum-dare/

Facebook/jQuery/PHP/mySQL. Ludum Dare will basically be the first prototype for this engine. Looking forward to the competition.

Cheers.

I’ve done LD 16, 17 and 23. I’ll be joining the compo right after Friday Night Magic (my first), so I’ll use those hours just after theme announcement as my brainstorming session.

Framework: Unity
Music: Aviary (Roc)
SFX:  cfxr (Cocoa port of sfxr, for Mac)
Art: Inkscape, GIMP

I will be coding in C# in the MonoDevelop IDE (with Unity integration).

The themes so far seem to be sandbox-like (creation/destruction, worlds, survival). If my idea (and time) allows, I may be using a PHP/mySQL backend for a quasi-multiplayer game.

Follow Me:
https://twitter.com/EtiquetteStudio

Here’s a progress shot of level generation (main play area is constant, extra ‘bits’ are randomly placed. The WIP GUI has been hidden.

Enemies will approach from the upper-right, and the player (Purple cube), will attempt to prevent them from reaching the sparkling barrier separating them.

More will be explained over the next 13 hours. but some teasers are:

• The play area follows the “Parallel Worlds” theme.
• The player has cat allies (3 max, not 1000…but we just need 334 players….)
• The cats evolve both through active and passive means.

Tags: screenshot, unity3d, wip

I’m In

I’m be working on a simulation of adaptation (featuring a chameleon-like mechanic) along with secondary “time” feature. In my mind I have weather/temperature being a factor.

Not Game Theme

There will be no win condition, and therefore not be a game. It will be a growth simulator of the character(s) based on some environment factors and user decisions/choices/skill. When the end condition is met, the character is “released” into the environment (possibly encountered by other players?), and the player is prompted to create a new character.

Time Theme

I’d like to have the environments be representative of different locations worldwide, and their current weather/temperature. This would remove a random generation component (which would otherwise be used), and instead base the encountered environments on real world, real-time events.

Resources

I’ll be using Unity and using my existing C# WebCam wrapper.

I may be using a REST server (Zend PHP) if the “time” theme requires third-party APIs or data persistence. This will be utilizing a REST framework already in place and ready for Unity apps to extend.

I will probably use Inkscape for a bit of character art and Gimp for some textures.

I will probably not have time for audio, but may try to reach out to an interested party to contribute for background music.

 

 

“Progress is slow, but I’m in it for the long haul.”

I’ve committed about 6 of the 29 hours that have elapsed so far to this project. It’s coming along nicely, and I believe it’ll be complete. Although it will be scaled back from my original vision, both themes will be present, along with the featured mechanic:

This non-game does not use mouse or keyboard to play. You will use the webcam to control your character.

My initial tests are excellent, and it’ll be what I polish up and test on Sunday.

Themes:

The “board” represents locations in different timezones (-12 UTC to 12 UTC). The color selection is semi-random. The possible color selection is based on if it is night or day in that timezone, and then some light/dark influences are added based on the closeness to midnight or noon.

Each hour that you open the app, you should see a small change in the day/night border (obvious transition between blue and green/brown). If you open it with a larger window (6-12 hours), then you’ll see a huge shift in the colors.

More to come tomorrow.

My own jam entry, Unstable (as in, releasing horses from a stable) will be the focus of my Monday. Most of the shenanigans are based off the silly animations of the asset I found in the Unity Store related to the above horse. All silly. Some pun.

Saturday and Sunday, I'll be contributing scripting to a group project about a carnival management simulation. The bulk of the work will be the art assets, so my coding will be just a minimal amount of the overall project, but I'm excited to see it come together About half a dozen team members spent a couple hours after work today working through a number of different ideas and possibilities.