Hey Ryan here and well, this will be my first time doing an LD(mini)!
I’ve not done a game jam for almost 2 years!
University work and stuff always getting in the way. I have always loved jams,
since the first one I did, but I tend to prefer to work in teams during them.

Thats why this mini LD is perfect, I didnt need to do it solo.
I’ve  Teamed up with a good friend from Uni Grant Rule, to make this game.

The theme(Contrast) had me stumped for quite a while, and I eventually went with a fairly cliché
kind of idea to follow, which is basically run with the idea of only using black and white.
Figuring out what I could do with only two colours, I thought of the only obvious thing…
If half of the things in the game are white, and half are black, if the background is black or white, half of the things will seem invisible!

At which point My idea started coming to life and I started drawing.

I wont go into everything thats gone on from then till now, I’ll just post a public link to the (very unpolished)
prototype-y current version!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694220/Contrast/contrast.html

W or UP to jump
A or LEFT to go left
D or Right to go right
and  SPACE to stop time and swap colour.

Not even sure how many people read random posts by random people, but feel free to comment etc 😛

Will make another post when I get a new build done

Today saw alot of improvement!
Added a gravity shifting mechanic (took no time at all)
which had to manipulate the camera (took way more time).

Added even more block types; an always out and always blocking – type block, the gravity changing block, and a lightning covered block (kills you)

And I spent quite some time making the jumping work really nicely (was a pain in the arse using unity rigid bodies)
Lots of ray casting fun 😀

Considering this is my first time using unity, and it being a full game, Me and Grant are making amazing progress!

There are lots of polished things I would like to add / do to this game, which are out of scope really down to the limited knowledge of unity, and the fact neither me nor Grant have any art background beyond simple photoshopping.

I’d very much like to use some actual models/meshes, and not just unity balls + cubes.
And have some things normal mapped, but we’ll see  in the last day how that is looking!

For now, try the updated game : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694220/Contrast/contrast.html

Today was a day where nothing felt like it was getting done…
I think there HAS been a lot done, it just went so fast, and felt so empty…

Fixed a whole of of bugs, created more bugs and then fixed even more.
Added a springy block to the game, feels all kinds of wrong at the moment (in my opinion)
Though Grant thinks it works allright (yay for creative difference and opinions!)

Currently 2 builds up of the game, one with an orthographic / 2d / flat camera view,
and one with a zoomed in perspective / 3D  view, will probably make an in game option to switch.

In the process of changing all the base blocks into round cornered hollow blocks with meshes inside
to denote  the block types. (I’m no 3D modeller so using blender makes my eyes bleed  )

Anyway, any comments on it would be good 😀

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694220/contrast/contrast.html  – FLAT 2D feel
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694220/contrast3D/contrast3D.html – PERSPECTIVE 3D feel

Well, today has been great really.
Grant made some more levels (he is extremely sadistic and thinks you should all burn in his level hell)
They are pretty difficult but they incorporate the new mechanics pretty well
New blocks are: the crumble block, you can only roll on it once! then it falls appart (will change gphx soon)
Confusion block, swaps left and right around.

I finally thought of a not so hard way to make the background transition a little better!
Took me a little while to play around and implement it, was pretty cool in the end.

I construct a 4 vert plane in code (because Unity’s plane has 121 verts!)
Construct its vert positions vert UV’s and its normals.
I apply a gradient material :

And then set up the UV coords of the plane so that, if the level starts white, all 4 UV coords are along the bottom,
and if the level starts black the UV coords are along the top.

When you press space to change the colour, the UV’s lerp from one set of vector2’s to the other! 😀

It was seriously god fun implementing and finally getting it working!

Have a play around
(only the flattened version is current)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694220/Contrast/contrast.html 

Done a whole bunch more now.
Changed the lightning blocks, and the player, to use some cool shaders.
(cant take credit for the shaders though I found them here)
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/60844-Lightning/page2

But they make everything look a little cooler I think.
I’m a bit iffy about the lightning shader purely because I wanted to only have black and white in the game.

BUT I think if this is the only other colour in the game, it makes it stand out, and doesn’t really look out of place at all.

Things I do need to fix though, are:
The physics of the movement, it just doesnt feel right in the air…
Also get round to adding kill box / area to each side, not only the floor.

Once all this is done, I need to rejig some levels, and somehow get some music and sound effects :/
oh dear!
Heres the current build
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694220/Contrast/contrast.html

P.S: If the lightning blocks (level 4 has 4 of them smack right in the middle) , and the player, dont look right
or their shaders dont play nice with your GPHX card, let me know

Although saturday I did nothing, I’ve done as much as a week will let me (and Grant) do!
It’s still got some placeholder art in (neither of us are 2d or 3d artists in the slightest).
And the background music is lifted (though we intend no copyright infringement it is also merely placeholder).

The game showcases exactly what I wanted in it (and a bit more) from the very starting concept/idea.
I’ll probably continue working on it a bit now after this LD and see what I can get done with it!
Maybe (if you guys like it) Submit it to kongregate or something
Work on making some cool and mind bending levels etc !

Just compiling it all now for a web, mac, and windows version.
I’m assuming linux users will be able to use the web version, and / or the windows version under wine.

Anyway this has been a BLAST!
Got me well into making something, and getting me out of my slump of not working =p

Next will be a 48 hour attempt!

The music in the game are these two songs :

Will be submitting / uploading ASAP

Ryan (The Code Troll) + Grant 😀

I can’t for the life of me, find anywhere to submit?
I can just link the web version here :
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37694220/Contrast/contrast.html

But I dont know where I should be looking to submit the game properly!

Edit:
Guess the deadline happened just a bit before I went to upload… Thought it would be the whole day =[