I’ve been watching Ludum Dare since LD1, and wanting to participate since LD2 or LD3.  I’m finally doing it.  I have no idea what I’m going to use, probably Python/PyGame or Flash/Flixel.  I’m all ready to fail!

Okay, last time kind of ended in a bombshell, so I’m hoping things’ll go better.

I’ll be using Stencyl again, and sfxr to make any sound effects, if necessary. I’ll be using Paint.NET to edit graphics, and good luck to all competitors!

Hopefully I will be able to finish the game in time! (Or finish it without too many bugs)

Hello, I would like to take this time to introduce myself to the community, because I have been told that the community is interested. Unlike many programmers I know, I do not have a Job programming. This would mostly be because I am too young to have a job. At the time of this writing I am about a month over 14. I know it’s fairly young, and I am a very inexperienced programmer compared to many people I know, but I would say that I have a fair amount of capability. I just might not do something the standard way because I didn’t know there was a standard.

As for my actual programming experience, I started when I was 12 with an interest in computers, specifically programming. I went to my local library and checked out a book on python with pygame. A while later, my uncle bought me a book on Java, (Headfirst Java specifically) and that’s where I learned my preferred language. Using knowledge from the fundamentals in the two language, I have learned many other scripting languages. Right now, I am learning C++ mostly for my High School’s Robotics team, but also because I know its still the industry standard for anything that needs high performance. (Everything)

As for non-programming related interests of mine, I play the Euphonium, or Baritone. If you don’t know what it is, you can look it up. Here is a guy who is really good, playing it. That’s not me though. I wish! I also enjoy listening to dubstep, and Skrillex is my favorite artist right now, with deadmau5 and DaftPunk behind him. My favorite

I can’t wait for the Ludum Dare compo, this is my first one if you didn’t know.

~geekygenius

Just realized that I never actually posted this post publicly. -_-;  well here it is…

I know I already did one, wait no two postmortems for One of a Kind, but I thought I’d give it one more look now that ratings are out.

So, how did I do?  Really freaking well!  Let’s go with the categories from bottom to top:

Humor: 2.07, #258
Well, no real surprise here, as my game has a distinct…lack of humor.  To be honest, I don’t know why people voted anything more than 1 here, other than just not wanting to vote 1 star just because.

Graphics: 2.92, #248
Yeah, 3 stars is about right for this.  I actually felt really good about the game’s look, because everything looks very clean and nothing like all of these chicken-scratch entries that you normally get in an LD.  Despite that, it’s still really simple, and a far cry from the entries that actually have really great pixel art and all.  So 3 stars is just about right.

Theme: 3.13, #187
This is…probably about right too.   I had a neat theme going with my game’s narrative, but the tie-in to “alone” was at least -slightly- tenuous.  So I deserved some points for -having- a good theme, but I didn’t deserve quite that many points since it didn’t tie in as well.

Mood: 3.30, #87
Did pretty good here–I might even have expected to do a little better, but I guess my game isn’t really quite so atmospheric or immersive as some of the other ones, so maybe it’s not worth 4 stars.  Still, the music I made really fits the kind of feel that I was going for, and even the character graphics were fine for that.  The ending was also at least slightly cool ;P

Fun: 3.21, #64
I did good here too!  Unfortunately I probably got docked here because of my level design which seemed to be a little hit-or-miss with people.  Some people seemed to really enjoy the puzzles, and other people just thought they were either too hard or too repetitive and boring.  And that’s sort of a gamble I took by making a 2D platformer with an untested mechanic.  Given that I didn’t know how the mechanic was going to pan out at all, I’d say I actually did pretty well!  However, I probably would have been able to get more points here if I created something like a shmup or something.  But that wasn’t the game I wanted to make this time, and it wouldn’t have been innovative or fit the mood.

Audio: 3.39, #45
I actually wish I could have done better here, since I’m quite fond of my music production skills.  But I wasn’t really able to showcase my traditional kickin chiptune electronic style because of the mood I was going for.  Ah well; I still did well anyways, which is honestly probably not that hard given that half of the LD entries you see have no music and most of the others have really shoddy music (understandable since I know most of you guys aren’t music people).   Top 50 is cool though!

Innovation: 3.63, #37
Getting good here!  I don’t think my mechanic was totally mind-blowing, but I think it was pretty new and definitely a new type of puzzle that people probably haven’t seen before.  So this seems about right too!

Community: 3.64, #32
Actually a little surprised I did so well here…I guess people appreciated my lengthy post-mortems and writeups.  I didn’t have any timelapses or livestreams and to be honest I didn’t feel very in touch with the LD community and wasn’t in the IRC channel much at all or anything.  The thing about the LD community is that it’s just so BIG–we’re talking 1000 people or something like that, so it feels like a huge crowd.  If I knew other people (whether IRL or online) doing it, I might interact with them and bounce ideas off of them/etc, but I didn’t, so…yeah.  It’s nothing like One Hour Compos at ThaSauce.net where we have like 20 people there and most of us are regulars.  I actually hope to have a little bit more community interaction next time around…it’s also a good way to get votes if you go into IRC and do “I’ll rate your game if you rate mine!”, which is how I got some of my last-minute rates

Overall: 3.70, #24
24th place!!!  I actually expected to do pretty decent here simply because I think my game works really well as a cohesive package when you combine music, sound, art, puzzles, and narrative.  But I certainly didn’t expect to be in the top 25!  Granted I really don’t have a good feel for the “distribution” of quality in LD games, but still, 24th out of 891, holy cow!  It’s really flattering, and really awesome.  Course, now this means I need to shoot even higher for next time…;)

Coolness: 59%
Could have done a little better here, but eh, I got my bronze badge and was happy with that. ;P  Rating other games can be kind of hit or miss…you have this huge pile of games that are half-baked and not really there, and then there are the really popular ones that everyone likes, and then every once in a while there’s a decent/good one out there that you randomly stumble upon.

So, what do I want to change for next time around?

First off, I hope to use something other than SDL.net.  I know OSX/Linux users are in the minority, but it’s still just a little too much trouble to run the game on those systems, especially for people who have 25 other entries to rate.  I might look into Flixel since that seems to be a really popular choice, and having  a web-playable game is great for getting votes (or at least, I felt that way when I was slogging through my 25 ratings for bronze).  Other options include Lua with Love2D or PyGame, but I want to try Flixel at least once.

I also really hope that I’m not super-busy and caught unprepared for next time, because that was just unfortunate.  I want to have my full 48 hours, please

Tags: postmortem

LD22 was my first time doing Ludum Dare, and I’m looking forward to participating again!

I used C# and SDL.net last time, but those proved to be really unwieldy for distribution on OSX and Linux.  This time I’ve decided to use Flixel, which I’m pretty excited about, because really there’s no reason I =shouldn’t= be using something like Flixel for the kind of 2D pixel-graphics chiptune games that I like to make.  Plus it’ll make distribution and everything a lot easier.

My primary task between now and next week is to make a test game with Flixel.  Probably some really really quick shmup or something like that, just to get used to the syntax because I have no actionscript experience (looking at example code, though, it seems like I’ll be fine).

Last time I got 25th place overall.  Although I’d like to strive for improvement this time around, I think that’s too high a bar to be setting for myself, so I’m going to just go into things with the expectation that I might not do quite -that- well.  And if I do anyways, well it’ll be a pleasant surprise

One of my main goals this time is to make something that’ll showcase my musical ability more, since that’s one of my main strengths.  So I’m going to probably try for a game that’ll lend itself to lots of great chiptune music.  I’m also not going to do another puzzle game, because those are really hard to design levels for, as we learned from last time around.  It’s not really that fun to sit around scratching your head like that, so I’m going to put less emphasis on being innovative so I can just make a game that’s =fun=.  Polish will also be important, just like last time.

Now, the bad news: Just like last time, I’ve got other commitments…2 dance events during the timespan of ludum dare, so that’ll be 6 or so hours out of the 48 that I won’t have.  I could just not go to one of those events, but my feeling right now is that I’ll probably end up going to both.  Well, it can’t really be helped.  Maybe it’ll be a good way to break and relieve stress anyways.  or maybe I’ll have some sort of gameplay mechanic breakthrough while I’m dancing ;P

I’m also pretty busy from now until LD so let’s hope I really have enough time to prep myself for this…*crosses fingers*

So another Ludum Dare comes rolling in soon, but not just any LD though. This time, it’s the 10th Anniversary of the whole shindig, which is an amazing thing in itself. A whole host of people, gathering together, from all across the globe to develop a game in super-crunch time restrictions. It’s pretty damn fun, and whilst I don’t really post so much as a blogger on these parts  I do usually log into the IRC to chat with folks and see how things are going, and I do regularly participate since from approximately a year or two ago. Having said this all, there’s only one more thing for me to add;

I’m In.

I’ve been meaning to give LD a whirl for…a few years now. 10th anniversary seems like an excellent point to jump in. I’m looking forward to participating and seeing what I can come up with.

Language: AS3

Framework: Very lightweight AS3 game framework I wrote for a TIGSource challenge. It is available here.

Sounds: No idea. I’ve never made anything remotely musical in my life.

Graphics: Paint.net

Timelapse: Unsure…

Other: Flash Develop, Notepad++, Graphics Gale

I’m putting together my framework for LD 23! It’s hosted publicly on Github, so go check out the demonstration and the source! I’ve decided to go with canvas, and instead of find some library, I’m going to write my own small library. So here it is. I’ll be updating that repository and pushing changes to it, so those links will be kept current. Watch or bookmark them if you care to.

I created a tileset format and tested loading and displaying tiles from it. It’s working well and took hardly any time, but there’s time I won’t have to waste during my precious 48 hours! You can see the animated glider on the demonstration page.

Also I put code for Google Chrome Frame. I’m currently on a Mac, so I can’t test it, but supposedly it will inform IE6/7/8 users that they should go get a plugin called Chrome Frame which allows them to view canvas graphics. So assuming it works (and I WILL test it and get it working before the compo), it should allow IE users to also play my game, despite their inferior browser choice.

Anyway that’s all for tonight, it’s really late here on the east coast of the US of A. More to come!

Previous post: I’m in!

I have released the current build of my pixel art tool PyxelEdit for use during Ludum Dare 23.

It has some special features that might come in handy for making pixel art and tiles.

Get it here:

http://danikgames.com/stuff/pyxeledit/

http://pyxeledit.com

A screenshot:

Here’s a video showing some of it’s features:

Tags: pixelart, pyxeledit, tool

Yet again I’m in,

This will be my second LudumDare and I’m looking forward to it. Ill be rocking the versatile(yet chunky)java and hopefully will have something presentable at the end of it

Language:Java

ART:The Gimp(I do my coding on Linux otherwise Id be rocking Paint.net )

SOUND/MUSIC:sfxr and what ever i can rustle up i guess???

I’ll probably be making some kind of plat-former but  I’m considering a text adventure. It all depends on the theme!

I look forward to making and playing games. until then, So long

Kix

I’m participating in ludum dare Jam for the first time after watching it for a couple of months

Language: java+slick2d

graphics: gimp, PyxelEdit

sfx: audacity

music: autotracker to generate music, schism tracker to convert music to wav, audacity to convert wav to oog

timelapse: chronolapse

I look forward to participating in ludum dare 23

Tenth anniversary. First LD. Why not?

I’m Hume. I’ve been working on a space game since before it was cool, and I’m currently at a little bit of a loss because lots of other high-profile projects are using a lot of good ideas I wanted to use.

I figured this would be the perfect way to clear my head, meet some cool people, and hone the under-appreciated art of cowboy coding.

Since this is my first time, I expect to crash and burn, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what everybody can create during brief interval of mass insanity.

• Language: Java. I like typing a lot.
• Framework: LWJGL. I’ll likely use a small resource library I cooked up, but I need to replace the borrowed PNG loader, so I’ll have to post the library later on.
• Graphics: Wings3d, Photoshop CS5 and maybe a little Fireworks for that authentic late ’90s feel.
• Music: Modplug Tracker, played back with JMonkeyEngine code. Yep. My sample library is probably tainted, so I’ll use SFXR/CFXR to make instruments. Quickly.

Of course, all of the above assumes that the theme merits some kind of graphical treatment. Or maybe I’ll do a text adventure.

>ENTER LUDUM DARE
You enter the Ludum Dare.
It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Good luck, everyone!

A Midlands Indies meetup for Ludum Dare 23: you should come along if you’re nearby.

Location: ComputerMinds Offices, 8 Edison Building, Electric Wharf, Coventry: Google map. You’ll need to phone me when you arrive to let you in the gate.
Time: 11:00 – late, Saturday and Sunday.

If you’d like to come, please email me and I’ll send you my phone number.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: meetup

Once again the Aberdeen University Computer Science Society will be hosting a Ludum Dare meet up (although attendance is restricted primarily to students of the University of Aberdeen and members of the Aberdeen University Students Association). Join us in Room 205 to jam, make a solo entry or just watch and hang out.

We have new workstations this time, the amazing monitors we had last time, and we’ve added a second webcam so even if you can’t make it in, you can still watch us from home from two angles.

You can see the write-up from our last event here.

This is my first time participating and I’m really looking forward to it!

So here’s what I’m going to work with:

• Language: AS3
• Framework: Going to figure that out during the Warmup Weekend
• Graphics: Photoshop and Flash CS3
• Sound: Also something I’ll try to figure out this weekend

Hopefully I’ll have a small game running by the end if this weekend so I know what I’m up for next week.

I’m going to be spending a few hours livestreaming my warm-up for LD, so if you’re interested in watching drop by http://twitch.tv/quill18 and make sure to hit “Follow” to be alerted when I go live.  I expect I’ll put in a bit of time tonight (around 7-9 EDT), plus a few more hours on Saturday and Sunday.  Note:  My channel is primarily for gaming and there will likely be a sizeable audience and a good chance that I’ll also be doing some Let’s Play.

I figure that the best way to do the warmup is to random from 1-100 and get a theme from the list at http://sos.gd/themes/?view=results — but since I don’t want to spend a full 48 hours I’m going to roll ahead of time so I have a chance to think a little before I dive in.

Roll Result = 46.  Theme = “This is your dungeon”.

Interesting.  I always love roguelikes and even old-school text adventures, so that gameplay screams out right away.  But the “your” part of the phrase is making me think that maybe the player should have some ownership of the dungeon.  Should I be looking to Dungeon Keeper for inspiration?

I have several hours to think before I can even start programming, so it’ll be interesting to see where my brain goes.  (Programming Language: I want to do a web app with lots of server-side stuff in Ruby on Rails.  Front-end will be HTML/JS.)

Tags: warmup ld23

Registration/details here: http://ludumdareboston.eventbrite.com/

Venue: http://the.echonest.com/company/contact/ (scroll down for directions)

Tags: ld23, meetup

There wasn’t a whole lot of information about it around but I managed to piece together a quick script to do live streaming from a linux desktop.  It’s simple and for speed reasons I’m not broadcasting sound myself. (I get unrealiable levels of upload lag so if i add sound it’s kinda distorted…I really wish their streams allowed speex codec :/)

SIZE=”1600×1200″
BITRATE=”128k”
FRAMERATE=”20″
KEY=”your key here”

ffmpeg -f x11grab -s $SIZE -r $FRAMERATE -i :0.0 -vb $BITRATE -vcodec libx264 -threads 0 -f flv “rtmp://live.justin.tv/app/$KEY”

if you do want sound, you can change it to this for alsa

or for OSS

Tags: tips

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2012 at 12:42 pm and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There we go; looks about how I’d imagined it.

There are a few bugs, most notably that the seeds have a tendency to go right too much.. Need to fix that one

Oh yeah, also, there’s zero interaction….. so it’s not really a game…

Anyway, I’ll try and fix it tomorrow, see if I can’t make something for you to download.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2012 at 12:50 pm and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.