Hi Folks,

I am in for LD23. This will be my second attempt at the contest, and hopefully my first actual submission.

Tools I plan to use for various purposes, should said purposes arise:

* Unity3D Pro for design, animation, various testing, and publishing
* GIMP for pixels
* 3DS Max for geometry & texturing
* Bfxr for sound effects generation
* Audacity for additional sound effects work
* OpenMPT for music
* Sublime for code and text
* MonoDevelop for debugging
* Mercurial for source versioning
* Pen & Paper for ideation and problem-solving (Pilot G-2, 8.5×11 .25″ grid graph)
* IRC, Bandcamp, and various musics on my hard drive for motivation and inspiration

Additionally, I’ll be using AutoScreenshot to take screenshot at regular intervals throughout the 48 hours. I’ll try using 30 second intervals during the warmup, and use that during the official compo if that doesn’t cause too any problems. Otherwise, I’ll use the default 2 minute interval. At the end of the compo, I’ll encode all the resulting images into a video and upload it to either youtube or vimeo, so you can all see what I did.

My target platform is a one-click/touch format, primarily using Unity Web Player for the compo, with additional publishing to Windows, Mac, and Android. (no Unity Pro iOS license just yet.. :P)

I’ll try a warmup game or two this weekend with this setup. If everything goes smoothly, this will be how it is for me next weekend.

Looking forward to making some games and playing some of yours!

I finished my entry in time for the jam deadline (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=7773). While it is far from what I’d call a finished game (i.e. no sound, still some placeholder graphics & design), I did manage to squeeze in enough time to add an attainable win condition – after fixing a real doozie of a coding problem (several, actually) central to the game’s idea of being set in a world shaped like a cube.

What Went Right:

* Zeroed in on a simple game design and ran with it – Despite the urge to abandon the project due to a seemingly insurmountable coding problem, I stuck with it, solved the problem, and wrapped up the game just in time to submit for the jam. I had no problems cutting parts of the design that were obviously too ambitious for finishing in time for the deadline, while still maintaining some core element of gameyness and a distinctive look & feel.

* Submitted for the jam – Initially, I had wanted to make it in for the compo, but the extended amount of time working on the coding problem for when the player wraps around a side of the cube nixed that idea. Since I was satisfied with the simplicity of the overall game design as well as my ability to simplify it further if needed, I felt that it wouldn’t take much additional effort beyond just solving the wraparound problem to have a finished-enough game and kept going, as mentioned above. This had a hidden added bonus of allowing me to use a bit of additional content I had laying around my hard drive, which came in handy when I needed to put some text up on the GUI. I just went over to C:\Windows\Fonts, Ctrl+C’d Bauhaus 93, and dropped it into my assets folder. Problem solved. Given another five minutes or so of time, I might have even added some sound.

* 3D assets were pretty easy to make. I deliberately kept the game’s look as simple as possible, so that I wouldn’t have to attempt to do anything remotely complicated in 3DS Max, which would’ve likely ended up taking days instead of a couple of hours tops to do. All I did was create a set of cubes with chamfered edges and corners to use as level design elements. I focused in on one tool within 3DS Max and used that for all the 3D assets. With relatively little effort I got a small set of repeatable design elements that give the game a distinctive toylike look.

What Went Wrong:

* Spent entirely too much time getting just the basic gameplay working – I literally had just a couple of hours to spare for the jam when I got the basic gameplay working. This can be attributed more or less to working in 3D with anything less than an absolutely solid understanding of 3D math, which I can tell you now is a lot more than just knowing how matrix multiplication works. While the game did gain a pretty cool look for when you traverse the sides of the cube, IMHO, I had no time to implement any AI or even some simple sound effects. I tried mitigating this lack of time by making the game more maze-oriented, entirely eliminating the idea of having  to evade AI opponents; however, I had to stop about five minutes before the jam deadline to get a build up on the site for my submission, so there are a couple of sides of the cube that are not much if at all different from the placeholder designs I had originally set up.

* No sound – I could have just made some very simple placeholder sound effects in Bfxr at one point while I was banging my head against my desk trying to figure out the wraparound problem. I didn’t. And I didn’t solve the wraparound problem until it was too late to do much else. As a result, there is no sound at all in the game.

* Didn’t zero in on what I would eventually make soon enough. My original ideas were a wee bit more ambitious than a ball navigating a plastic cube labyrinth looking for dots. Some hours at the beginning were spent working on designs I would eventually throw out once I realized I could just make the entire world a single cube with a grid texture and just build on that. Had I started on this design earlier, I would have finished the coding problem earlier and had more time to fully implement the maze design, add some sound effects, and possibly even some AI chasers.

 

 

All in all, I did have fun working on this, and I did manage to solve a pretty tricky problem, which I may apply in the future. I may just touch up the game a bit and port it to Android and maybe iPhone. What’s really awesome though is that I made a (debatably) finished game in an (extended) weekend. I can’t say that’s happened very often for me, so that’s definitely a real confidence booster.

I had a lot of fun last time, but only managed to get something done in time for the jam deadline. I got some awesome feedback on the game I made and have been working on polishing it since then.

This time, I’m going to run with just entering something into the jam. My aim will be to make something totally different, probably go with a much simpler design (i.e. a 2D board), and focus more on creating a more complete and fleshed out and polished game.

Bring it on!

For this Ludum Dare, I’m going to try using my newly repaired laptop. I installed the release preview of Windows 8 on it (it’s free and runs Unity, so good enough for me). I’m in the process of setting it up with tools that I may use over the weekend.

Definitely (90-100% of using):

-Unity3D – looking around at 2D frameworks to use if i decide to go that direction. otherwise I’ll just default to full 3D using either Blender or 3DS Max
-Gimp
-Audacity
-sfxr
-Sublime Text 2 with Unity3D plugins
-famitracker

Maybe:
-Blender for 3D stuff (will revert to 3DS Max on my main machine if this becomes too much hassle) – haven’t used this before, so I’ll be reserving a bit of time between now and Friday to find my way around
-Bamboo tablet – new gadget arriving in the mail soon. will also have to figure out how to use it. hopefully will not be too difficult.
-Inkscape – vector graphics tool – i less than three me some vector graphics. spent a good semester in college learning all about how to draw curves and write code to draw them, so i’m guessing this should just be a matter of taking a couple of hours to learn the UI. would be awesome if this works with the bamboo tablet.

I was just thinking about polishing up one or more of the prototypes I have laying around into a full-featured, marketable game and putting it up on Google Play.

Accepting this challenge is a little extra motivation to do so this month, and maybe even look into finding a way of selling a PC version of the game.

I’m not sure exactly what game I’m going to do this with yet, though. I’m looking at my previous LD entries as well as some other unpursued prototypes and doing some new-game-brainstorming on the side.

Since I already have an LLC and bank account set up and all the paperwork and waiting that goes with that taken care of, the “selling” aspect of this challenge is at least mostly, if not completely done, and all that remains is finishing a game and advertising it somehow. Will probably also want to beta test, too – although selling an alpha for a larger project might be an option, if I can find something that I can honestly say I’d like to work on long-term, and enough people express interest in playing/buying my unfinished game. Might be good to have a smaller game ready to finish and put to market anyway, just in case.

There’s one idea in particular which I think might have a lot of the right things going for it in terms of marketability and I think would be really cool to work on. The question remains is how much/good of an alpha would I be able to make in less than a month on my ownsome.

So, I’m giving myself another day or two to really work through a few ideas on what to do. This month-long timeframe is nice hopefully I make good use of it.

Also, I wish everyone participating in this the best of luck, and hope everyone involved does make a good, honest buck (hopefully more!) off something they’ve made!

-Tom

It’s time to make some more awesome. I’ll be doing the Ludum Dare thing this weekend with all of you. I’m looking forward to the challenge of making something around whatever comes about from the theme voting and playing what everyone else has made.

 

Pretty much the same setup that I’ve used before, with some small tweaks and additions:

Core i7 PC, 20GB RAM running Windows 7
2 24″ monitors, one in portrait view for coding
Unity3D for making the 3D games that work on Windows, Mac, and Linux
Gimp 2.8 (just upgraded recently, still getting used to it..)
Bamboo Pen tablet
FamiTracker for making authentic NES-style sounds and music
Bfxr for quick & dirty 8-bit-esque sound hacks
Blender for 3D modeling and skinning, possibly animation as well

I’ll try and actually do something for the competition this time, so.. we’ll see how that goes.

Best of luck to everyone participating!

Done with a crazy hectic week, time to make a game!

The theme.. is minimalism….

 

4/26 – 7:51pm Looking at stuff on the Internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism
http://kotaku.com/the-most-gorgeous-minimalist-gaming-posters-youll-see-470835956
http://www.shortlist.com/cool-stuff/design/minimalist-video-game-posters
I like the use of 2-color visual design to create a minimalist look to the posters. The form is crisp but the details are left out and don’t bother the casual viewer, while the intent viewer can reconstruct a more vivid picture in their imagination using the detailed outer form.

I’m listening to the Fez soundtrack right now. It’s great for getting lost in thought with.
7:59pm – http://www.touchebitches.com/2009/06/minimalism-in-gaming-considering.html

internet went out for a second. *brain fart*

“Before considering the game in these terms, let’s take a brief look at what defines a minimalist text. For the purposes of this article we can compress the definition to three key components. I don’t purport they are comprehensive, but they give you a working idea:

Minimalist texts embrace the core elements of their category; they are stripped to their essentials

Features of minimalist texts are highly economical. For example, in a lot of minimalist architecture, one component will serve multiple purposes.

Less is more: much can be expressed by only using simple features. E.g, minimalist writing is defined by an almost complete lack of adjectival phrases, using basic sentence structure and context to convey meaning.”
If Canabalt is a minimalist platformer.. what other genres of game could be done in a minimalist form? I think they all could, but only some have, and maybe some are more easily put into minimalist form.

I”m thinking a minimalist RPG would be something worth trying.

Could this be done within the 48 hours of Ludum Dare?

8:03pm

8:05pm – http://www.trollishdelver.com/2011/05/4-best-minimalist-roleplaying-games.html

These are interesting.

I have whole bunches of d6s laying around I could prototype something with. I could also just code up some dice-rolling code using some Random() calls.

8:12pm

What about a minimalist MMORPG?

I’ve seen MMOs done before on here. I wouldn’t think it would need to handle a load of more than, say, a couple thousand simultaneous players at the most.

oh, wait, wait – that one big mmo co-op diablo type game.. i forget what it is called.

8:19pm – creating a new unity project

8:32pm – ok, so minimalist RPG is probably a little too obvious. there’s probably going to be like a dozen of these entered.
8:34pm – screw it. let’s make an arcade game.

8:36pm – camera background is white. because. maybe it should be darker so as to put less of a strain on laptop/mobile device batteries..

 

I will be jamming something up this weekend following the theme that is ultimately selected this week.

I will be using Unity3D, some C# scripting, some models done in Blender.

My image editing will be done using GIMP.

Sublime Text 3 as my code editor

MonoDevelop 2.8 for debugging. (or Debug.Log’ing, as appropriate)

Probably Famitracker and Audacity for sound, if nothing else. I’d have to see what kind of random audio toys I can dig up before this weekend to make sounds with.

Oh, and I also have an Oculus VR dev kit.. I might play around with that this weekend as well.

I /might/ be able to do a TwitchTV thing.

Looking forward to making something new this weekend along with you all. And playing the abundance of awesome games afterwards!

Have a great weekend, everyone!
-Tom

I got insta-banned from Twitch.tv – for – (wait for it) – logging into my account using Tor!

I’m such a horrible person, aren’t I? Anonymizing my IP address…

I know this because I did so last night to check up on things and to get ready for the weekend. As soon as I logged in, there was a little banner pop-up saying that I’d been sent a verification e-mail. I go get the verification e-mail, click the link verify my account. All is well, right? Wrong. About a minute later my entire session is replaced with a little “You have been banned” message on an otherwise blank page. So, I guess I won’t be streaming using Twitch this weekend.

I’ve seen some (understandably) cautious behavior from sites like Facebook asking me security questions when I would appear to be logging in from another country. I’ve gotten the passive aggressive silent treatment from Youtube not playing any videos (which is really more of a technical problem of some videos not being encoded for tor-friendly streaming). I have never before gotten outright hostility such as this.

Leaving my tinfoil hat off with regard to this, but suffice to say, the site no longer adequately meets my requirements for security and privacy.

tl;dr – screw Twitch.tv.

I’ll use autoscreenshot or something to grab screenies every 10-15 seconds or so and make a video from that.

 

so, the weekend after next is ludum dare.

also i am traveling to visit friends and family for the holiday.

i am so doing this.

i’ll probably do a warm-up game this weekend.

i haven’t really done much game dev in a while

so i’m really looking forward to this ludum dare

i would like to make something cool

but above all i would like to make something that is fun and enjoyable for everyone here

and finish it within 72 hours

i will be on my laptop. against my better judgement, i think i’m going to stick with what i know and use Unity3D.

Blender, if i need to make any custom 3D objects. i might try to minimize the need for this. keep it simple.

GIMP, of course.

i’d use a tracker program to do music, but something tells me that will either involve a lot more work than necessary and/or involve gathering a bunch of external content to use as instruments. so, i’ll just stick with famitracker for doing the music and probably the sound effects, too. it will sound like a nes game. maybe i’ll throw in some bfxr just to mix things up.

audacity for any audio mixing or digital recording i may do

that’s all i can think of as far as tools, besides using sublime text for editing and monodevelop for debugging.

 

let’s do this    :]

 

I’m in for LD#29.

Can only do the 48 hr jam b/c I have to work on Monday.

ill be using Unity, Blender, Max,Gimp, Audacity, an MS-20i, Sublime Text 3, and MonoDevelop.

the themes doing well in the voting look pretty awesome, so I am hoping this will be an interesting side project for the weekend from my unnamed and not-quite-announced game that I’ve been working on since January.

also looking forward to playing and rating some of the cool games you all will be making.

happy weekend!

Hey All,

 

I’ll be doing the jam this time around. I’m really excited about this weekend. You can just feel all the energy flying around – it’s pretty awesome.

 

As for what I’ll  be using, it’s looking like:

Unity3D, Sublime Text 3, MonoDevelop, GIMP, Audacity, Blender, 3DS Max

If I do any multiplayer or online stuff (keeping it really simple, of course), I might use UnityHTTP and use that to talk to a small node server somewhere. I’ll have to timebox this, since I might not be fully aware of all the unknowns involved here.

I’ll probably stick to the conventional PC/Mac/Linux build target, although I might entertain the thought of Android / iOS builds, if there’s sufficient interest.

Nice selection of themes this time – should be fun!

 

–TH

Tags: ld31

This is the view in the editor of some sprites I drew in gimp and then imported as groups of voxel cube gameobjects.

Here is that same view with the game turned on. The voxels are able to be individually colored without having to stored a gazillion materials in the unity scene by storing the color in a script and then updating the instanced material at run-time. The downside of this is that nothing has any pigment to it in the editor – you just see an outline of a form. Also lighting. Might as well put that to some good use..

Still have another 12.5 hours to go! I’m liking how this is coming together. Might need to simplify down or cut short a couple of things, but I see this as being pretty finishable for today.

Looking forward to playing some of the other games afterwards! (after I get some sleep, that is!)

–TH

Seattle Games Cooperative Meetup group is hosting a Ludum Dare 32 event at Atom Jack studios.

If you’re in the area and would like to participate, RSVP ASAP here:

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Ludum Dare 32 – Seattle

Friday, Apr 17, 2015, 6:00 PM

Atom Jack
3131 Western Avenue, Suite 303 Seattle, WA

14 Game Makers Attending

Do you want to participate to Ludum Dare, but cannot handle being alone all weekend? We’re going to have a real world gathering in Seattle for Ludum Dare 32, on April 17th! Ludum Dare is a game jam where you have 48hrs (compo) or 72hrs (jam) to create a game.This gathering is for anyone who wants to participate to the Ludum Dare event. You will be…

Check out this Meetup →

This will be a nice opportunity to try playing around with a fresh idea. If it fits with the diablolike starter code I did for 7DRL, I might use that as a base. (that’s allowed, right?) Otherwise, you know – Ludum Dare!

I’ll be working in my spare time from a day job during the weekdays, so most of my work on this will probably be done over the weekend, with maybe some beta testing and polish work done after that – assuming things go well over the weekend. hehe

Looking forward to finding out what kind of theme we’ll be working with!

–TH

Tags: #miniLD58, 7drl

(was in earlier, but site was down when i was about to post this ಠ_ಠ)

Compo’ing unless someone at the Atom Jack location reeeally wants me on their team.

@ Atom Jack Studios in Seattle

Equipment:

Mac Mini, Unity, Blender, Gimp, Audacity, Wacom Bamboo, Sublime Text

may record some synth fx later on my windows machine using a ms-20i

might try some music program. Not sure if/what just yet

i will be using:

• a mac mini
• a portable usb monitor – fits inside a backpack
• wireless keyboard and mouse. actually fuck that mouse. i’ll use a wired laser mouse.
• power cord, surge protector. not anticipating any major thunderstorms, so a basic power strip should work.
• software installed: the usual suspects – unity3d, blender, gimp, audacity
• also mac os x – unix, baby!

i’ll find a coffee shop somewhere and hang out for a while and maek gam. if any seattle folks want to hang out and hold down and area of a coffee shop during one or both of saturday and sunday, i think that’d be a nice quasi-event, in lieu of atomjack (who hosted the seattle LD event in april) closing [:(]; i know there are quite a few LDers out there, so feel free to PM me or post on seattle indies (also here) if you find a good spot for a bunch of us to sit down and jam..

i may also go back and do some audio work on my main workstation, running windows 8.1, all the software that’s on the mac mini (except os x)(the windows versions, obviously), plus :

• cantibile solo, with VSTs for emulating some old school synths – SH-101, MS-20, Bit-1, some others
• a MS-20i midi controller for the MS-20 VST, also the keyboard works as a keyboard
• two 24″ dell monitors, one in portrait, one in landscape
• one squarish 19″ samsung monitor from like 2005 i think, because more monitors
• a clippy desk fan, because it might get hot
• lots of tea
• also an oculus rift dk2. it doesn’t really work on the mac mini, so if i use it, it would be on a second attempt type game if my first game done on the mac fails for whatever reason halfway through.

i look forward to making a game along with everyone else, and to seeing what everyone comes up with.

until then, o/
–TH

Happy to announce that I’ll be jamming along for LD34!

The setup I’ll be using:

• Desktop PC
• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
• Unity3d
• Sublime Text
• GIMP
• Blender
• Audacity
• LMMS

Also probably:

• a pen tablet
• Qubicle – if i can get it to work via WINE
• streaming – probably running on separate box and just pointing a webcam on me as i studio

 

i'm in for this one. some ideas i've been tossing around this week that i'd like to try out. should be fun. :]

softwares/things: - Unity3D - Visual Studio - Photoshop CC - Blender, if i do anything 3D - Audacity - Might break out the MS-20 and/or SH-101 emus - Asana - some base code for ANNs in Unity: https://github.com/Blueteak/Unity-Neural-Network

doing the compo this time because why not

my equipment: a pretty nice workstation PC Unity3D Visual Studio GIMP Audacity Famitracker probably Sublime Text maybe Blender maybe Magicavoxel maybe

good luck and happy ludum daring