This will be my first “official” Ludum Dare entry. I kind of took part unofficially in #22 & had a blast! Learnt a lot too. One of the things I learnt was that packaging issues can suck up a lot of your time if you write your game in C++, so this time I’m gonna use JavaScript and WebGL. Hopefully that’ll mean someone besides me gets to play it. 
So yeah, can’t wait!
I’ve already declared myself in, but now I know which tools I’ll be using so here they are:
Sound is my weakest area, so I’ll only try to put some if I have time left at the end (ha! unlikely!). If I do, I’ll probably just use Garage Band for music and record myself beatboxing into the mic or something for sound effects.
I’ve found a couple of really nice helper libraries for javascript, which I plan to use too:
I’ve got some WebGL learner projects in my github account which I’ll probably copy and paste from too.
One thing I don’t have yet is a good blogging platform. Any recommendations? I want to be able to post screen shots and code snippets of my progress & that’s about all.
So I think that’s everything. Can’t wait to get started!
I struggled a bit to find an idea for this theme so most of my time so far has been spent brainstorming. But I’ve got an idea now & I’m forging ahead. Here’s where I’ve got to:
Pretty basic, but at least it’s a start. If you want to read more about my progress, I’m blogging about it here: http://codervil.blogspot.co.uk/
So after a slow start I’ve got something that’s finally starting to look like a game. It isn’t one yet – you can’t win or lose and the map is randomly generated for now – but it looks like there’s a chance it’ll actually become one before the deadline expires. Whew!
I’ve been posting details on my blog, but this is what it looks like so far:
As you can see, it’s a bit light on artwork right now. I’m still working on the game mechanics; hopefully I’ll have time left for some drawing after that.
Ready for your playing pleasure, at long last, my first official completed Ludum Dare entry: Solar Sailor.
You can jump straight in and play it.
There were a bunch of extra things I would have done if I had time: better AI, more playtesting, better artwork for the planets (any artwork, actually), etc… But I guess that’s true for all of us. Looking forward to getting comments, criticism, sleep and – most of all – a chance to play all the other amazing looking games everyone’s been posting!
I’ve written up a post-mortem for my 48hr comp entry, Solar Sailor.
Play & rate the game here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10456
… and then read the post-mortem here:
http://codervil.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/solar-sailor-post-mortem.html
I’d also like to say a great big THANK YOU! to everyone who’s tried the game & left a comment so far. This is the first time I’ve put an entry into Ludum Dare and the community here is wonderful!
I’m in. I’ve learnt a few lessons from LD23 & I’m hoping to do a bit better this time – maybe even (gasp!) finish in the top 50%…!
Code: Javascript + WebGL
Graphics: Pixelmator, Autodesk Sketchbook, Nuke
Sound: GarageBand
Can’t wait to see what the theme is!
Invaders: Evolution is done! Try it out and vote for it … please?
I’m in for the compo. There’s been some great themes so far & I’m getting pretty excited about it.
I’d like to use Unity this time around now that they have 2D support, but I’m still very much a Unity beginner. If I can’t get up to speed with it in time I’ll be falling back to writing plain ol’ JavaScript, using my basecode library (https://github.com/vilya/LudumEngine).
Good luck everyone!
So it’s been a long and busy, but fairly productive day. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
It’s an underwater shoot-and-rescue-em-up inspired by the likes of Defender and Resogun. You control a state-of-the-art combat submarine tasked with defending an underwater research facility from an invading army. Or at least, that’s what it should be if I can finish it in time…
The controls are arrow keys or WASD to move, left mouse button to fire.
There’s still loads left to do, but I think it feels like the beginning of a fun game. Hopefully at least some of you will agree. I wrote a blog post about it too, with a bit more info about what else I’m planning to add.
Can’t wait to see what everyone else is coming up with… after I get some sleep!
I’ve just uploaded what will be the final version of Project Tethys. It’s a fast-paced underwater shoot-em-up inspired by such greats as Defender and Resogun. As always I had loads more ideas than I had time to implement, but I think it’s already kind of fun so this seemed like a decent place to leave it. Check it out and judge me.
If so, you might like my LD29 entry: Project Tethys. Please give it a try and let me know what you think.
I reckon this game is one I’d like to take further, so I’ll probably be doing a post-compo version and any feedback I can get would be great!
Project Tethys was my entry for this Ludum Dare. You can play it (and rate it!) here.
I’ve written up a post-mortem over on my blog, for the interested among you. TL;DR – not much went wrong but plenty went right, I just need to get to know my tools better before the next compo.
In case you’re wondering what the game’s all about, here’s what it looks like:
That’s right: intense underwater 2D side-scrolling combat! I hope you’ll all have as much fun playing it as I did making it.
As a little experiment, now that we’ve all spent a few weeks judging other people’s entries, here’s a question for you: how would you rate your own game?
Try to forget everything you know about your game and pretend you’re seeing it for the first time, then judge it like you would any of the other entries. If you’ve done any post-compo work, make sure you’re playing the original. Be honest. Apply the same criteria you usually apply when judging other peoples work. What do you think of it when you look through the eyes of a player instead of the creator?
If you’re comfortable to, post the ratings you gave yourself here. It could be fun to look back on when the results come out: you’ll be able to see how much of a gap (if any!) there is between what you and your audience thought of the game.
I’ll rate my game in a comment below.
By the way, I can’t take credit for this idea: Jeremy Nikolai suggested it after LD 24. I just thought it was a cool idea & wanted to bring it back this time around.