whitetigle

LD19

LD19 preparation

Hi all !

for my first LD event, I will try to make a game using html5 + canvas (and maybe SVG with the use of raphaelJs library).

Having a flash + haXe background, I think this is a good opportunity to test the technology and see whether things can happen.

Anyway, as I don’t want to spend my whole week-end building a library, I will prepare a few helpers to get things started early so I can focus on the game code itself.

See you all !

Whitetigle

Comments

02. Dec 2010 · 14:10 UTC
Welcome to the fun!
whitetigle
03. Dec 2010 · 06:33 UTC
Ok !

If I manage to create something beforehand, I’ll release everything before the competition (even though, it may lack quality… ).
Folis
06. Dec 2010 · 16:19 UTC
So MrDude’s text in short version:
whitetigle
07. Dec 2010 · 08:31 UTC
All clear !

Thanks :)

finished at last…

After nearly 40 hours in front of my screen i’ve managed to complete my first LD entry.

What I can say is that I am quite happy to have finished. I am also quite tired. Of course there’s many features I had to cut. Still I am quite happy to have something which works. (of course due to the fact that my game is made in html5, it works only on google chrome and there may still be some bugs…)

The Week end was also a very good opportunity to gather with with some of my friends at motion-twin. Now is time to go to sleep.

I wish to thank everybody who posted on the blog. We spent great times looking the photos. I must confess I didn’t take time to do the same. But next time I will try to participate !

Now for the sad part : my server just went down… so here is a new link to my game: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7838262/ld19.zip

Comments

20. Dec 2010 · 00:10 UTC
40 hours in front of your screen? THIS IS MADNESS! Ok, apperantly it’s Ludum Dare *g*

I made another html5-entry, lets see, how this gets to the people :-)

Please, please, no WASD anymore, please !

I beg every developer here to think global !

Please, WASD keys are not funny on a non qwerty keyboard ! There’s a number of games I cannot rate because I cannot play to them because of the WASD choice.

I quite don’t understand why you won’t use arrow keys instead ?

Thank you all for your understanding !

Comments

21. Dec 2010 · 20:49 UTC
I think that if you *need* WASD, you need to give your control scheme a good look.
21. Dec 2010 · 21:15 UTC
An easy solution (when you don’t want to bother coding a key setup screen) is to simply implement both WASD *and* arrow keys! That’s what I did for my game:
21. Dec 2010 · 21:26 UTC
WASD is the globally recognized default control scheme for games that use the mouse and some form of arrow keys, as using the actual arrow keys and the mouse feels cramped.
whitetigle
22. Dec 2010 · 07:20 UTC
Thanks for all your replies ! And thanks to those who’ve patched their games !

I know we’re not many to live in countries where qwerty keyboards are not the standard. So thank you for taking our minority 😉 into consideration :)

haXe your flash, sdl, javascript friend :)

Hi all,

As a first part of my postmortem I just wanted to tell you about a language we used with two of my friends (ben & deepnight) during the competition : haXe.

The language itself is easy to learn and has many powerful features that make it a strong one. (link to doc)

It features a very complete API and multiplaftorm target. with the same language, using the same API, you can generate swf files, javascript code, C++ code, PHP code, C# and java coming soon.

Extending the language is pretty easy, so you can use your favorites game API (sdl for instance). And you can target specific platforms like android or iphone. Which means that with a single codebase you can quite make a game works on several platform…

So all the javascript I created has been generated with haxe. And the flash games of my friends too. We’ve been using the language for a few years now at motion-twin and it has enabled us to code fast, easy and switch platform whenever we wanted.

Of course, you can use the language on windows, linux or MacOSX (intel), the generated content will be the same.

So to finish this first post-mortem, I can tell you that having a strong typed language helped  me create my javascript project without worrying  too much. No js nightmare debugging at all !

Last but not least, it’free  and open source :) That was my fifty cent to rapid development 😉 (not a commercial, just my tribute to one of my favorites language, that’s all )

Comments

Devenger
22. Dec 2010 · 15:22 UTC
Interesting, thanks for the post. The cross-platform stuff sounds particularly good. Will give it a look at some point.
22. Dec 2010 · 16:50 UTC
I’ve tried haXe for flash before and liked it. Will have to deal with the process of getting Sam HaXe installed (I prefer is over SwfMill), which requires lots of fiddling with directories, but I’ll definitely look at that.
whitetigle
23. Dec 2010 · 01:56 UTC
In my case, I’ve being doing games for quite a long time at motion-twin using haxe for server app, flash client,, ajax and js stuff and lately c++ stuff. The fact that I didn’t have to learn a new language for each layer and that I could use quite the same api has been a real booster.

Help me ! I want to rate that game !

Hi all,

I am like everybody there trying to do my best to rate all the games I can. However, due to personal constraints I fiund it really hard.

The fact that I use a linux netbook at home allows me to rate the following kinds of games : linux based, flash based, wine compatible.

The problem is that there’s no way to know if a game fits these categories before going to the game’s page. I have to click on a page, scroll down ( thanks to my netbook super high resolution 😉 ) and discover if I can actually play the game.

I know, I know I could wait to go back to my office and launch all your wonderful submissions on my 90″ 3D extraLED screen on my wonderful Windows 7 mega pro 256 bits edition ;). But I am on holidays !! So I must wait next week to take time to do so.

Now, now, the idea I had is to be able to browse the game by label or tag. So I could know if the game works on linux, flash, mac osX, win7, unity, etc…

So I could focus on trying the games faster than light ! Well I would have to scroll down of course, but this would be really much better :).

Okay, that was the idea. Please feel free to destroy it as much as you like or consider it is my 50 cents to the next ludum dare rating system…

2.0 ? Noooo, much better :)

Comments

GreaseMonkey
30. Dec 2010 · 20:53 UTC
I can sympathise. In fact, I was going to try rating every game from LD18 using… FreeBSD :O
30. Dec 2010 · 22:43 UTC
This view should help:

LD22

In !

Yes, I’ll be there to make a second attempt after my previous game last winter.

I will be using HaXe + NME + Inkscape + The Gimp + SFXR + my brain + my hands + a few litres of YogiTea as well as some meditation and Taïchi, all this to find a way to entertain my fellow ludum darists 😉

As we say in French : Youpi !

Comments

cornedor
29. Nov 2011 · 19:36 UTC
+1 for using haXe :)
whitetigle
30. Nov 2011 · 05:29 UTC
+1 for you because you will be using HaXe !
Cdimaroc
30. Nov 2011 · 16:19 UTC
Hurray for Motion Twin !

Dev Blog

Hi all,

I am sad I could not participate to the last Ludum Dare mainly due to the simple fact that I was working to release the very  first commercial game of my very new small business.

Now that I have finished this project, and since I owe much to the Ludum Dare community because it is always a source of personal motivation as well as a trigger to enhance my creativity I would like to share some things about my developement (postmortem like ) in a series a articles which would cover a large array of themes  from project management, to languages, gfx, sfx, install process, strange device handling, etc…

So, would you be interested by this kind of information ? And is Ludum dare a good place to publish that kind of stuff ?

Thanks for your answers :)

Comments

7heSAMA
04. Feb 2012 · 00:02 UTC
Not sure about posting every article here, but maybe the bigger stories could be linked? Talk to a mod, but either way, definitely shoot us a link to the blog.
jeffz
05. Feb 2012 · 08:57 UTC
you might be interested in sharing your writeups on reddit.com/r/gamedev

LD23

In !

This time I will try to release something using Haxe + NME :)

A few hours later…

It was 3 o’clock when I started this morning (I live in France).

Since then I have come with a quite complete gamedesign and I am currently making my way through the code.

Things seems to go quite smooth, I hope everything will remain easy :)

I hope things are easy for you too and you will achieve great games !

Music

I am sure many of you are currently listening to fabulous music.

But if you feel inclined to try something (perhaps) new, you can try this : http://floex.cz/en/discography.html.

It’s the complete discography of the composer of Machinarium soundtrack.

It’s quite relax and won’t interrupt your thoughts while you’re coding :)

Comments

21. Apr 2012 · 08:37 UTC
just listening into it. quiet nice!
whitetigle
21. Apr 2012 · 09:00 UTC
:)

Coffee Break !

Ladies & gentlemen, isn’t it time for a coffee break ?

I begin to have something which looks like an interface :)

Working on the narrative structure

I have also started to work on the story.

Now I am going to do what I can to finish the first draft before the first 24 hours are over.

Characters now moving…

Even though they are not yet smart, at least they are moving :)

~3 hours to go…

Introducing… the King !

(no, no, no, not the King)

This kind of jokes helps me remember that I need some sleep, because 1 hour and a half since Thursday Morning seems a little bit low…

So, here is the very first photo of his royal highness, the King Green ! Hail to the king baby ( I definitely need some sleep. )

See you  in a little while guys !

Oops…

…I planned a gentle 1 hour nap and ended up sleeping a full 5 hours…

But I feel less tense and more relaxed. I did some taiji practice as well to get back to life more fully.

Now, I can make my king run before his queen !

Inkscape power

Since I started to make games on my own, thanks to a close friend of mine, I have started to use inkscape.

I cannot say how much time I have won, prototyping all my apps in this super open & free software.

And if you want to try inkscape with a very good tutorial : go there : http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisHildenbrand/20111015/8669/2D_Game_Art_for_Programmers__part_1.php

So here is my WIP using inkscape.

Comments

Devon
22. Apr 2012 · 03:19 UTC
INKSCAPE FTW!
sfernald
22. Apr 2012 · 03:28 UTC
What makes it better than say any other drawing program for making games?
22. Apr 2012 · 03:38 UTC
Oh well it is not better, I also use paintool sai and painter (which is the most unstable gfx software I have ever seen, even less stable than flash ! ).
22. Apr 2012 · 05:44 UTC
Your link seems broken :)

And the one on the main page of your site is broken as well.

But I had a look at the screenshots and I found it great.

Dear LudumDarists…

… It is now time for me to act like a proud citizen of our (very) proud French Nation in order to elect our new Super-President to make sure France, like every modern country we will not fail until the next big segfault happens !

Be prepared, Roosters are going to take the lead to get first into the big hard concrete wall that is just in front of us.

All this, of course , using  our french super glamour Rooster powers !

… Well,now I really should go…