Just thought I’d share what I have so far. It’s a game about one’s preference for being alone or around people. The goal is to be understood, which gives you a feeling of worth. If you fail to be understood, your self worth declines, and eventually you are alone, whether you want to be or not. Working title is “Leave Me Alone Never Leave Me Alone”

screen shot with debug info (sorry...lol)

Tags: alone, extrovert, introvert, whilefun

Just finishing off some bugs with the level switching and anxiety reducing logic. Right now, one of the cases is broken and I dont know why

I also didn’t read the manual and started my game with sounds from freesound.org. Then I realized I couldn’t use them, so I had to go record them myself. Thank goodness my playbook has got a stereo mic, or I would have also wasted all my positional audio work.

One thing’s for sure: I’m learning a ton, and will submit whatever the heck I have when the time is up.

Fun!

For those interested, here’s my timelapse and the contents of my notepad from the 48 compo I can’t wait to see what everyone did – but first some sleep.

Switching rooms in game maker was a hazy mystery to me during the end of LD22. It caused me some headaches at the end of the compo, so I’ve taken some time to understand it and write a sample bit of code for general consumption. Here it is (requires game maker of course). Enjoy, and use freely for whatever

I am very excited to participate in this weekend’s compo! I even made a warm up game!

This time around I want to focus on pulling together something that is fun and interesting to play, and also has a semi-respectable art style. We’ll see how long into the weekend those goals last though…heh. I plan to use:

• Game Maker
• The usual mish-mash of SFXR/BFXR/Audacity
• Paint.NET
• My PlayBook for sound recording
• Perhaps some base code a snippets (e.g. xbox controller base code for GM) from http://whilefun.com/games.php (please use them too, if they seem useful)

And of course the internet for inspiration, research, etc.

I think I’ll be on IRC and twitter (@whilefun) as well for some fun. See you this weekend!

Richard

Edit: Just wanted to declare possible use of base code (for things like xbox controller), and organize my resources into bullets

I have never made music for a game before, and in 15 minutes, I was up and running with my first “song” in my game. I used PXTone, which is dead simple and produced some passable results on the first attempt. Check it out! As a result, my warm up game now has a simple song in it, to add some mystery and wonder to the Purple Coin Castle. *makes wavy ghost hands*

first shot of game so far

Well, the theme I almost abandoned is now in full swing. The core mechanics are just about final, I think. Now for the visual polish, some sound, and level creation phase.

Sup, brah?

I’ve got (what I consider to be) a great attack and animation system in place for my games baddies. I am very happy with the progress on it so far. The baddies have very simplistic animations since it takes a long time for me to do them. I am doing ~8 frames per baddie, whereas my avatar has probably a couple dozen.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=7424

With 2 WHOLE minutes to spare. What a weekend 😀

Here’s a brief lessons learned from my 48 hour compo entry for LD 24:

• Seriously, really plan backwards from the deadline (even if to the nearest hour). And build in a couple hours of “oh yeah, that too” time. My goal was to be done and submitted by 7pm, and I pressed the submit button at 8:57pm
• If you believe in your idea, stick with it. I found the LD 24 theme to be quite intimidating in terms of doing something original. I came up with a great idea and immediately wanted to discard it. I slept on the idea and decided it was worth the effort. As a result, I am very happy with my entry, and have something fairly original and fun (in my opinion)
• Automation will save you a lot of time. A put some common code snippets into Hoekey, and I would estimate it saved me 2 hours over the weekend. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+D is way easier than finding, copying, and pasting a snippet of code dozens of times (mind you, I am using Game Maker, so things like the fairly lengthy draw_sprite_ext() will kill your time like crazy)
• Scope is never as small as you think it is (related to the first point above)
• Planning is worth it. I stayed up late Saturday roughing out ideas for my story and level  structure on paper. The next day, this brief (~1 hour or so) of planning paid off big time

Timelapse and Notepad:

• I’ve finished my desktop timelapse video. It’s on youtube right over here. (note as of 12:45am August 28 it’s still uploading…)
• I also have my notebook pages up for viewing over here.

I’ve played and rated some cool games so far, and I look forward to doing some more!

Cheers,

Richard

Unfortuantely, I am unable to take part in LD 25. But, over the last couple days I’ve been playing around and have managed to finish 1 game, and have another one on the go. Both are dead simple and fun. Just keeping up the habit for LD 26

…for about 4 hours. But still!  Yay! 😀

I am trying to push myself to learn something new technically, while coming up with something half-original. It’s not working, and I am demotivated. Perhaps I should drop out of the compo and refocus in a couple days.

4 hours to go! I’m going to focus on a minimalistic approach to my design this time, and might not even touch my PC tonight. I really want to deliver a very small scope with a good core mechanic that is fun. As always, I will strive for some satire and humor, and adhere to the theme.

I’ll be using the standard issue items from the past:

• Game Maker 8.1
• Audacity + SFXR + BFXR + maybe my new fangled Zoom H1 mic
• Paint.NET + Icon XP
• Pencil + graph paper

Edit: I should also mention that I may use templates posted on my http://whilefun.com/games.php (font example, tweening example, etc.). Feel free to use these as well!

Good luck everyone!

Progress so far :)

Time for bed, some decent progress so far I think.

Level Select Menu

I’ve got my level selection menu, 10 levels, and end game completed. I am running out of steam fast for tonight, so I think it’s time for sleep, or at least rest for my brain

Tomorrow’s focus will be locking down art style (not happy with some of it at the moment), creating sounds, an icon and splash screen, and maybe creating some more levels if time allows. I hope to have 15 levels for the end of the weekend.

I’ve got all 15 of my levels done, and now it’s time to add music and sound effects. FUN!

Entry submitted, right over here.

I think this is my favourite LD48 entry ever. Maybe one of my best games ever. I am really proud of it. I hope you enjoy playing!

Also, my timelapse and notebook are coming soon (probably tomorrow).

Small update – I’ve posted my time lapse and notebook (updated links in my entry page for this, too).

Great looking games so far, everyone. Can’t wait to start playing and rating 😀

Just a small update to say thanks for all the awesome feedback so far. I’ve created a “post-compo” version of the game, for download here. It includes a number of fixes to small issues/annoyances with the original 48 hour compo version. I’ll be updating my entry page as well to include a post compo version. And in case you missed it, here is my desktop timelapse.

Thanks!

whilefun