So, I just woke up and saw the theme. I already have some ideas but I’m not quite sure what I’m going to make.
I think the easiest thing to do would be to make something like Flow, but that would be boring.

Anyway, this will be the first Ludum Dare that I’m participating in. I don’t even know if I will get anything finished.
I’ll probably just sit here in 1 day and 17 hours, still staring at a blank screen.

The tools I’m going to be using:

• Programming: FlashDevelop with FlashPunk
• Art: GIMP as always
• Sound: AS3SFXR and SunVox (I just learned about this porgram a few days ago, but it’s awesome)

If I manage to start anything I’ll also try to do some screen recording with Chronolapse.

I wish everyone else good luck with their projects and hope we all have some fun!

After about an hour of throwing around ideas in my mind I finally got something I want to work on.

It’s been another hour of fleshing out the gameplay and design in my head and making this little mockup:

I just hope now that I’ll be able to finish the game now. I got a lot of work to do, let’s get going.

After another 5-6 hours I got the basic prototype working.

So I’ve already got the level layout done, enemy ai/movement/etc. (still missing 2 more enemy types though), player movement and interaction, score and life system and some other minor stuff.
But I’m still missing the evolvement mechanic for the player which is going to be a lot of work. Also I still have to do the menu and sound/music. I think I’ll do that tomorrow.

Seeing all the other blog entries is kind of intimidating. There are lots of cool ideas out there and other devs are making great progress.
I also fear that I interpreted the “evolvement” a bit too loose. Right now it’s more like leveling up than evolving, but this was the best idea that I could come up with.

Finally did a much needed break from all the coding to refill my energy (also had spaghetti, nom).

Here is a timelapse video of what I did today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kXYxGSaAFg

I’m going to finish up a few things now. And maybe later I’ll finally do the upgrade system or create some sounds for a change.
I also got some new ideas for the enemies regarding evolution, if I have enough time I will implement some of them.

Maybe I’ll also upload some gameplay later.

Tags: timelapse

I just posted my position on the world map… And I’m the only one in my proximity.
Is nobody else here from around Kassel, Germany?

#forever-alone

It’s been 14 hours since I started now.

I’ve got a lot of stuff done, and still have a lot of stuff to do.
I really like what I got so far. I never though that I actually could get so much work done in only one day, puh.

Anyway, I’m tired now, good night!

(PS: I also wanted to post a gameplay video here, but the upload would take too long. So I’ll post it tomorrow)

So, I just had breakfast (aka my medication and a glass of water) and I’m ready to start the 2nd day of development.
I don’t like being under time pressure but I think I can do it.

And finally here is the gameplay video I promised last night:

Now back to work!

Still 11 hours to go and my game is already pretty much done!

I still got to finish the menu, make some more music pieces (which I am horrendously bad at) and do more testing / optimizing / balancing.

Here is the last media update before the release:

I also just noticed that I don’t have a name yet, hmmm…

Hey, does anyone know a good place where I can upload a web version of my flash game?

A simple site, not like a major portal newgrounds or co. Something like mediafire but for flash.

I just uploaded my game. You can play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=12412
If you have any feedback, please leave me a comment!

It feels really good having finished the game. But it has been some amazing 48 hours (almost, more like 44 right now).

I will later, perhaps in a few days, post a postmortem on the game and the events itself. Also I’ll be posting some initial ideas that I had before starting on Super Robocade.
But for now I’ll be playing some of the other entries.

I’m too tired right now to write a postmortem, also I first want to see what will be happening tomorrow and how my game is being received.

So instead I’m going to post 2 game ideas that didn’t make it beyond conception. I’m interested in what you think of them:

I. Evolution vs. Creationism

This was my first idea. In this game you play a demonstrant who rallies for the teaching of Creationism in school. The gameplay is more like a mini game in which you have to convince pedestrians to join your cause.
The bigger your group, the more points you get. Also there are special characters who give certain bonuses, like polititians, famous people and “experts”.
After a certain time of demostrating you get to the end screen where you, depending on how you did, get one of 3 endings (creationism wins, evolution wins or both will be taught).
But in the end I didn’t like the concept. It was too stupid and the theme of evolution was only a set up for the background story and not part of the actual gameplay. So this game idea stayed just a theroy.

II. Stellar Evolution

I liked this idea more but I couldn’t get any solid gameplay out of it, so this one failed, too.
The game is about the creation, life and death of a star. You start of as a giant gas cloud and evolve to some form of sun. Depending on your actions you could become a red dwarf or end up as a black hole. The gameplay would be based around the interaction between gravity and pressure of the gases to from the different star types, maybe something with mouse control, like fusing molecules.

And than I got my last idea for Super Robocade. IT’s not the type of game I usually like to make. I like to have some more meaning to my game than “Shot all the bad things!”, but for a little side project done in 48 hours I’m pretty proud of it.
You can still plya it here and give me some feedback, if you like: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=12412

Before I start talking about the ups and downs of my game and its creation I want to talk a bit about Ludum Dare itself.

This was my first time participating in a Ludum Dare or any kind of competition / game jam for that matter. The decision to participate this time sort of came out of the blue, I heard that the LD was going to be that weekend only a few days beforhand and just thought to myself: “Why not enter?”. But I also didn’t expect anything to come out of this (more on that later).
Overall I had a great time that 48 hours. Seeing all the blog entries, people building games from scratch in only 2 days, and then playing them was really cool. I really felt like I was participating in something greater, not just sitting alone at home making some game.
It was also, of course, very exhausting. All I did was basicly work on the game and sleep. I only took about a one hour break every day to eat and fulfill basic hygiene standarts and some very minor breaks in between.
But I think that in the end, it was worth it. And I’m proud to say that I made a game for Ludum Dare.

And now to the exhumation of the game:

The Good:

Making a game
When I started on saturday morning (about 7 hours after the LD had started) I was certain that I wouldn’t get anything done. I know how I usually develop games and that takes a lot of time and revision.
So the first few hourse I couldn’t come up with anything good and I was sure that by the end of sunday I would have no more than a buggy, half-done prototype with missing art and sounds. But when I finally got a good idea everything seemed to wokr a bit smoother. The first thing I did (as usual) was to make a little mock-up in gimp of how the game would look, after that I really had hope that I could finish something.
And I think that everything turned out really good, I’m quite happy that I got almost everything done that I wanted to. I never do any schedules or structure my time, I just do stuff. But the process worked very smoothly and it was a lot of fun.

Super Mario Super
I remember playing the little minigame, which was a remake of the old arcade machine, in Super Mario Bros. 3 a lot of years ago. And for the making of Super Robocade I played a little faithful remake of the arcade version.
I am very glad how my new ideas for leveling up and shooting worked together with the old classic game mechanics to create something really cool. It all fits nicely and feels great to play. And I’m also glad I could make a tribute to these old days.

Gameboy Flashback
I am really, really happy with how the graphics turned out. The color pallete, the little intro screen which is a homage to the old Gameboy start screen and other little details like having pipes as a reference to Super Mario. I especially love then Super Robocade logo on the title screen. It has a little flash/reflection animation on the “Super” which reminds me of old Nintendo games for some reason. I love putting little details like this into my games.
Also the sounds work well with the graphics and overall the game really brings that oldschool Gameboy feeling across.

The Bad:

Sticking to the theme
I like the way the game turned out in the end, but I also feel like I was a bit to loose on the theme. I think that Robocade is more about upgrading than evolution in a strikt sense. But after I was already halfway done there was not much I could do against it. I improved the concept a bit later on by making the enemies evolve and changing some stuff with the player evolvement mechanics but I still think that most other games of this LD kept the theme in mind better than I did.

Super Mario Ripoff
Here is a little contra to the point above, where I describe how I adapted and improved the old Mario arcade mechanics. Because that also means that I didn’t really think up the whole game in 48 hours. Most entries are completely original with innovative and cool new gameplay mechanics and ideas. And even though I like how I could add the evolvement idea onto the old foundation it still somehow feels wrong to take ideas from another game.

Improvements that could have been
After playing Super Robocade the day after the competition ended I noticed a few thing that I could have done better. If you are working on a game 48 hours straight it gets really hard to look at it criticaly and from a distance. As I already said, I think that evolvement should have played a great role but also I only realized after I day away from the game that the difficulty curve would have needed some improvements. It feels to slow and boring in the beginning (at least if you already played it a few times) and gets really hard to early on so that you can’t actually reach the last stage of the characters evolution (where it looks really bad-ass). Also the weapon should be a bit faster and overall the upgrades should be more noticable to the player, so they actually feel like they are getting stronger. I might be overexaggerating a bit because these would have been really minor tweaks to a few variables, but I think that they would have made the game feel much better.

And the Ugly:

Programming
As always sometimes I like doing the coding of game features and sometimes I absolutly abhor it, especially if it involves bugfixing or I get stuck with my limited knowledge. I just don’t like the programming part of making games but since I am solo there is no way around it.

Music
I used SunVox to make the music of the game. And even though it was the first time for me using the program I think that it really awesome and powerful. But what I did realize during the creation of the 2 music files is that I just suck at composing, I just can’t get anything good out of it. Music cost me a lot of time, almost the whole evening of saturday and also quite a few hours on sunday. In the end the music turned out to be ok, but not really that much fitting and how I wanted it to be. That’s also the reason why I don’t have any music playing in the main game, because the music would become irritating really quickly.

So, that’s it. My postmortem of Ludum Dare 24. You can still play and rate me game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=12412
I don’t know yet, if I will be participating in the next LD but I will definitly consider it!

Tags: postmortem

Hey!

I’m currently in hospital, had my OP yesterday.

But I just found some internet (5kb/s) which means I’m probably going to participate in LD30.
If the theme is going to be any good, and if I’m not too high on painkillers. ;D

Here is what I’m going to use:

• Language: AS3
• Libary: FlashPunk
• IDE: FlashDevelop
• GFX: GIMP
• SFX: Hm, Bfxr?
  Don’t have anything for music. Maybe I’ll make some sounds with my voice.

I can’t promise much in terms of updates since I don’t know how long my thin connection to the world wide web is going to hold. Certainly no streams or videos from me…

Maybe I’ll be out of here before the deadline ends.

Shoutout to Ludum Dare Jam @ KHS Kassel. Wish I was with you guys XOXO  T.T

Tags: blorp, flashpunk, hospital

I got out of the hospital today! Yay!

I just came back home and am pretty exhausted (took 5 hours via train) and in a bit of pain.

I didn’t have much time to work on my game so far so I don’t know if I’ll make it for the compo, but I’ve got a cool concept in mind and will at least finish it for the jam.
Hopefully I can make up a bit of time tomorrow.

The game is going to be about communication.
I’ll give you a sneak peak when I’m a bit more rested tomorrow.

So this is what I’ve got so far. It’s still only a mockup and I’ve got alot of work ahead of me.

Omg, I will probably never get this finished.

Most of you are already writing your post-mortems while I’m still chewing through the code. Puh…

Only got 11 hours left, I have no idea how I’m going to make that.

Either way here is some ingame footage (CLICK FOR ANIMATION!):

Tags: gif, ingame

A bit late but this is my “I’m in” post. I’ve been working on my game for a bit already though.

I’ll be using the haxePunk lib for coding and Twine for my writing.
It’s going to be some sort of text adventure visual novel hybrid.

Since I’ll be using some code as a base and also will use some pre-made gfx and sound it will be a jam game. Also entering the compo would be just to stressful right now, I just want to have a relaxed game-making session.

I just finished my twine importer and hypertext-link-text function so I’m ready to get started for real. Screenshots will follow soon. 😉

For now here is a pic of my control center. (@chrispotty on the left there)

It seems no matter what I do during LD, I always have a major setback. Most often involving going to the hospital.

I didn’t have any time to work on my game today, but I guess I will continue for now and see how far I can still make it. Otherwise I will finish it after the jam.
So here is finally some in-game optic. What do you think? (click for gif)