Here is my lunch, cola, bread and some Olivier salad

As for game/idea/progress here is a screenshot

Basically I am going for something top down with massive amount of creatures. Want to finish basic game mechanics and technical stuff today and spend tomorrow adding graphics and sounds and polishing it, may be adding some more features. Will see how it goes by the end of first day. On game mechanics front nothing special, did not got any particularly good ideas so going with what I got

Also setting is mostly undecided, initially wanted to go for insects but now thinking to switch to spaceships

Tags: foodphoto, screenshot

Well adding features for my game idea and codding found a flaw with algorithm for collision detection I was using. Sadly some features were dependent on some features of that algorithm so quickly switching to other algorithm is not an option aether. So spending time for now reading about similar algorithms and thinking on how to fix it or write a different one with similar structure. Considering that 14 hours are left that probably means I am out of LD18 Epic fail on my part 😀

Have some things to do tomorrow, so will not have full 48 hours to work on this but am planing to make something simple. I hope 😀

As usual my tools will be Flash, depending on theme may use Box2d. That’s it I guess

Well I am off to “polishing” my tools using old LD entries and other experiments 😀

As most people say they find my game too complex decided to make a little video of my passing it and give few advices.

Here is the video:

And some advices:

• Use space to pause the game and issue many commands at once
• Remember about center of mass when you try to push
• Relaxed parts absorb shocks, stiff ones bounce, so its a good idea to be relaxed when you don’t want to bounce, or stiff all parts when you want to push with maximal force
• And it is space, if you are flying in right direction just relax and wait, no need to go crazy and ruin your right direction

Hope this will help some.

Go to the entree page and try yourself 😉

Tags: gameplay, video

From where I come

Haven’t participated for a while as was mostly interested in non game dev for some time.
Participated before a dozen of times and here are various previous results
Some finished, some not.

Plans and motivations

Actually this time hoped to participate in Jam version with one designer but he ended up too busy these week…

Participating again with aim to try do something for mobile phones using Adobe AIR/Flash as main tech.
Have only some experiments with AIR, actually participated in Global Game Jam in January making Java/Android game prototype.
Yeah native is cool with all performance and access but it definitely not good enough for quick prototyping.
So, I want to stress and squeeze all out of AIR this time around!

Tools:

• Target platform: Android(I own one duh) and may be Web, depends on kind of game I will be making
• Coding: FlashDevelop, AS3
• Art: Flash(animations, UI) and Photoshop(pixel art, textures)
• Sound effects: as3sfxr
• Music: probably none, depends on the time + if I find easy enough tool for quick generation of some music

Any advices on music generation apps?

Tags: in, LD#26, tools

Holy Moly! Its minimalism o_O
Who would have expected that  48 hours contest games will be minimalistic o_O
As usual LudumDare theme voting does not stop surprising as sidekicks almost always win 😀 It second choice all end up agree on right? 😀

Anyways good morning everyone, I am eating my minimalistic breakfast and brainstorming ideas that start to excite me.

Brace yourself 😉

Tags: food, LD#26, morning

I am off to a quick start, not really playable yet but somewhat working already!
Off to a little break.

Tags: progress, screenshot

Nothing better then getting inspired from incredible D&D monster book drawings to draw my own minimalistic…. eeee… pixels! -_-

Actually just drawing to help me understand conversions from one space to another when zooming in weird engine I am building

Tags: humor, math, progress

So, 2AM here and I am up since 8am… Weird I am not dropping dead yet.
Though I was making breaks and clocked something like 10 hours behind computer so far.

Anyways, satisfied with progress so far, almost all tech stuff done, adding sounds and stuff.
Basically for tomorrow tuning sounds and making tutorial levels is left, + there is bunch of bonus features to try to add.

Also as I use Adobe AIR both Android and Web version coming up fine and without slowdowns.

Good luck everyone and till tomorrow 😉

Tags: day1, progress, screenshot

Well, this time around my participation is going so good that I am calming down and  loosing pace ;(

Anyways went for a walk

Finnaly weather is good.

Also had great lunch:

• Brie cheese with fresh bread and radish 
• Kvass
• Melon
• Dark chocolate 😉

So, with such nice kick back to work!

Tags: food, walk

22 hours behind computer in two days zzz
And its 5am here and when uploaded only 3 minutes were left…

Well tomorrow small bug fixes, sources, and postmortem, but now sleeeep.

Tags: finished, sleep

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=232

What went right

• Finished something playable, check!
• Aim of making prototype I can later improve and release as a good game, check!
• Minimalistic, check!
• Idea came to me pretty quick, Google helped to find lot of inspiration that I remembered
• Made a game close analogues of which I don’t recall, check!
• Had loads of ideas and FUN, check!

What went wrong

• Photoshop after reinstall of drivers hangs because of color modes or something, did not check that before compo, obvious pitfall, ended up using Paint7 which sucked, then Pixlr, then Paint .Net
• Did not use Flash stuff for UI using bitmap icons instead, bad result and eats more time as its not WYSIWYG enough
• Did not slept enough, slept 18 hours in 3 days which is BAD, as now start of working week is ruined
• As usual ,went for quite experimental game which is impossible to polish in 48 hours to have good game play
• First day went so good that I was too calm on second day thinking all is good, while it was not -_-

Lessons for next time

• Learn to use AudioTool or something similar with license allowed for LD
• Check all the tools, even ones that worked yesterday
• Find ways to work in more stable and motivated way, aka more sleep, less slacking around even if I think that I am doing good
• Start making levels as early as possible, doing it too late, as usual

Tags: gameplay, post-mortem, postmortem, video

Participated since 2008

Will try to go for something simple thins time.

As for tools. Flash, paint.net, sfxr, and only last time learned of autotracker, great tool

Just not as myself
Managed to push more people to participate from my City this time and am participating as part of the team of 4
Soo more details here then http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2013/12/07/we-are-in-51/

Last year in December I participated as part of http://ludumdare.com/compo/author/teammightyfingers/
And sadly was traveling on both April and August LDs
Am planing to participate in LD31 for a while, buuut.

Garage48 GameDev
Recently found out that Garage48 comes to Riga, and not with usual “Build a startup in 48 hours” but a GameDev one http://garage48.org/riga
It works like that, you come, pitch game idea and gather a team to make a game over next 48 hours from ~100 people come from business, development and design backgrounds.
Super fun, almost as fun as LD(but I like LD more) but makes it easier to gather teams and is very well organized.

Problem is, it starts Friday 6PM locally, while LD starts something like Saturday 4AM which 8 hours later…

So far idea is to go to Garage48 and pitch about LudumDare trying to gather a team to participate in both, then go to sleep, wake up 6AM and start brainstorming game for Garage48 and LudumDAre theme.

What I plan to use
Like last year plan to use something that outputs HTML games + packaging them as mobile apps is a bonus
Here is a nice website found recently that has same game with sources made on many of JavaScript game frameworks/engines.
http://www.jsbreakouts.org/
Do plan to do it with WebGL as canvass is limited to just sprites drawing.

JavaScript + WebGL
WebStorm as IDE
Photoshop for graphics
Was thinking to use one of Autotrackers but this post contains lot of other cool apps I am playing with right now
http://ludumdare.com/compo/2012/12/19/automatic-music-composition-tools/

And that’s about it.
Is anyone else combining LudumDare with some other GameDev event, gathering?

So it will be my who knows which try
Few last times participated in teams(1 and 2).
This time go back to the roots and will try to do it solo

Won’t focus on graphics and audio much. Hope to do some turn based top down dungeon crawler if theme allows Played a lot of Pixel Dungeon recently on my way to work

Goals:

• Make prototype of a game that will be fun to developer after Ludum Dare
• Make it usable both PC and mobile phone

Tools:

• Phaser.js + WebStorm
• Paint.net for minimal editing
• http://www.leshylabs.com/apps/sstool/ for sprite sheets
• Phone camera + paper + pen ooor  I do have a whiteboard