It’s that time of the year again. So I welcome you all to the ho-ho-holy Ludum Dare gift exchange 2012, for the third time ever with merry cheerfullness and cookies.

Everyone who already knows the drill, just head down to the subscription link over here. Everyone else, do that too but keep reading.

So now 2 years ago a little fella called philhassey started this super cool ludum dare gift exchange. Some people might know this as “secret santa”. But we do it internationally throughout the whole community. It is super fun and all of you who have a little cash to spare should join these awesome festive activities.

So what you gotta do is, to keep around $50 (or €50, or whatever currency you have) to have ready to buy a present plus ship it overseas to your fellow ludumdarer.

Here is the quick timeline:

• subscribe to the event
• go shopping. Buy a present from your local area that you think other people overseas might like, because they can’t get something like that over where they live.
• Pack it all up
• Wait for your email with the address of the fellow person you will send the present to
• Go to the nearest post office and send the package overseas
• Wait until your very own overseas present arrives and be happy

Beware that the shipping can cost up to $30, though usually around $25 is okay, leaving you with another $25 for the present itself. But you can always spend more on the person, if you like so.

Pro Tipp: Maybe also add something you might consider just stuff from around. Old magazines that no one could get overseas, maybe some cool flyers and some postcards, maybe you even have an old programming book in your language to spare? I also like to add random local candy and teas, as it’s always fun for people to see what we do overseas.

Any questions? Just answer to the mails you get from the system, or just comment in here, so I will try to answer everything on time.

Go subscribe here

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2012 at 12:32 am and is filed under MiniLD #38. 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.

Another short update. I’ve decide to create some winter/christmas special locations for AniTower. For now i’m evaluating snow shader:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2012 at 7:24 am and is filed under October Challenge 2012. 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.

I was working on this for the October Challenge, but decided to make the game completely free (no ads), so I won’t make 1$ from it.

Anyway, it’s on Google Play now, I’d be glad to hear what you think about it!

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.wieringsoftware.sintnicolaas

Im going to create a game and I want someone to give me a theme

Here are the other specifications im going to use

Tool Used: GameSalad

Graphics: 8-Bit

Genre: ???

Length: Short

DotMan is the name and side scroller is the game

Im making a new Indie game called DotMan its going to be a Side Scroller game

A Flash Game made using Stencyl

DotMan is on an Adventure to save the world

He will travel through Many area’s adapt to many different genre’s of gameplay and most of all it will be fun

I will keep you guys posted

I Have started developing my first indie game

I Call it MoleculeMan

Created by Shubshub Productions [The one man company]

MoleculeMan… is a new 16-Bit Indie game in development that follows the adventures of the main character MoleculeMan as he travels the lands in hopes of saving his Friends

The game will feature the following
Stats that you can Upgrade
Beautiful Tiles from the wonderful Forge known as StencylForge
Equipment that will give you Bonuses
Many Enemies

Storyline
Lets begin this story from the start shall we
The village of AtomsVille was a Quiet village in the Molecule sized Universe it was filled with many happy and lively villagers until one day the evil Dr Electron invaded the small village and stole there new technology that can give anyone ultimate power
With the new technology stolen and still very unstable they thought that the world would soon come to an end until one brave soul decided to fight back his name was MoleculeMan and he wanted to get this new technology back and save the world.

So this is the first playable demo of what was my October challenge(Clearly not finished in time). Anyways, i decided to pick it up last night and I’ve got it to a playable state(I think???) . I’d really appreciate it if some people could play it and give me some feed back as this is one of the first games I’ve finished

Here’s the link…

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/48015021/Tower1.jar

Tags: demo, java, tower defense

If you haven’t had chance to play my game from last LD Compo 24, I have finally managed to find some time to record and upload a video. Game is called “Aeon” – evolved classical snake game.

Ludum Dare 24 – Aeon gameplay

Tags: AleksandarDev, CSharp, ld24, xna

About a year ago (LD22) Gijs and I decided to enter the Jam. We coded (me) and drew (him) furiously for a few days and built Together Alone, a story-based puzzler where you could switch between controlling two characters to solve tile-breaking puzzles. We came in 2nd in the Jam, and we decided to start building a sequel.

That sequel became Together Alone: Love in Limbo. A new and improved story, gorgeous hand-drawn graphics, many new game elements and even a level editor. We just released our second beta version and are looking for feedback. Please give it a try and let us know what you think!

Play the beta (Flash)

Big thanks to the Ludum Dare organisers; we thought about building a game for a long time, but this kind of competition is just the kick in the butt we needed to actually get going. We’re already busy designing our the next game, even. But first we need to finish this one. Your comments are appreciated!

This sunday I was finally again able to do some work on Boskovice (my initial October Challenge; now November Challenge game). I mainly worked on performance topics, enemy AI some new entities and game content. This includes different door types, collectables like health, ammo, coins and diamonds for score (be honest: who does not like to collect coins? ;-)), fire, explosions, barrels that can explode or inflict pain and glass walls.

I noticed quiet quickly that creating pixel art for complex enemies with movement/walking animations is quiet time-consuming, so I mainly tried to add some more static content for the beginning. I really like how the explosions and fire turned out. Check this latest video go get a feel for the progress so far.

In the next days I hopefully will be able to actually create some levels for the first episode of the game. Up to now, I am still working in my demo-level that basically contains all content that is there at the moment.

*Movie Voice Activate*
Coming This December to an Internet Near you

The Greatest Game ever made by Shubshub Productions

A Ludum Dare Project Made in 48 Hours

WALLJUMPER THE GAME
*Movie Voice End*
[It seems Im getting Ideas from People Raging in Video Games currently lol]

Scaling Walls Has Never been Harder
Now it is

2 Worlds 20 Levels [Ludum Dare Version] [I Will Try to Make as Many of the 5 Worlds as Possible though but 2 Worlds is the Goal for the Ludum Dare]

5 Worlds 50 Levels [Full Version]

The Story [Fixed by Cipher]

In Aeropia, it has always been peaceful, until one day the GroundTredders Invade from the world of Down Under!
They steal the very thing keeping Aeropia in the air. Their plan is to take over the universe by destroying every other world therefore, forcing people to bow down to them for food and water
At first it was just about getting back the Aero Crystal and saving your world and defeating the GroundTredders however, it soon becomes an Insanely difficult task to save the entire world from destruction at the hands of an Unknown Entity

The Worlds
World 1: Aeropia [Easy]
World 2: Down Under
World 3: Fire Kingdom
World 4: Portal Zone
World 5: Dark Aeropia
And Possibly More if the Game is Epic

Bosses
World 1: GroundTredder
World 2: King Tred
World 3: Fire Demon
World 4: Black Hole Monster
World 5: The Unknown Entity

Known Hazards
Water – Like all WallJumper’s They Can’t Swim they Instantly Drown
Lava – Like any Living Organic Creature Lava is Hot and Therefore Instant Death
Stopping on land – We don’t Know why But Stopping once activating the Grappling Hook Causes WallJumper to Die We never found out the cause for this its just like that ok
Lasers – Like 99% of the Beams that Emit Heat Lasers are Hot and therefore will Instantly Kill WallJumper
Toaster – No its not a House Hold Toaster its more like a Complex Trap that Will Kill You if you Touch it

Known Enemies
Like all Great games they have atleast 1 Form of enemy
Rust Cannon – Similar to the Rocket Launcher in the Super Meat Universe except that it shoots Rust and is Much MUCH Harder to dodge its projectiles If it hits your Grappling Hook it can Rust it instantly and it will break causing you to fall

The Goal
To Prevent the Worlds Destruction By Defeating the Ultimate Boss the Unknown entity
Which you discover after beating World 1

Extra Info
Name: WallJumper The Game
Genre: Wall Scaler
Theme:  [Not Yet Decided]
Release Date: December 17th
Description: An Epic Game all About Scaling Walls
Developed In: Stencyl Engine
Platform: Flash
Made for: Ludum Dare 25 2012 December 14th-17th

Current Confirmed Tools
Grappling Shot

Current Confirmed Characters
WallJumper [Originally Appeared in: WallJumper The Game]
Molecule Boy [Originally Appeared in: Molecule Boy…]
AtoMregal [Originally Appeared in: Molecule Boy…]
GroundTredder [Originally Appeared in: WallJumper The Game]

Some Information about WallJumper
WallJumper is the Main Character of this Epic Wall Scaler Game However there is some information
about him below

WallJumper is not very Agile however he is very capable of getting anywhere thats right anywhere at all
As long as he uses some kind of Grappling Hook Yup thats right Use the Grappling Hook Abillities/Tools to scale through each and every level

See Full Thread Here: Thread on Stencyl

Egypt Wizard is now available in the following apps markets:

* Apple AppStore
* BlackBerry AppWorld
* Google Play [Android Market]

here you can find a resume of the development process.

Promo video:

Tags: action game, android, appstore, blackberry, egypt, game, hack & slash, iOS, iPad, iphone, iPod, market, RPG, rpg game, store, wizard

Title

Space Storm is an in development Space Strategy Game by me, I’m 14 and a wannabe game developer, constructive criticism please.
There is a changelog hosted off of tumblr.com you can find here http://spacestormblog.tumblr.com/

I have made a launcher which will automatically update and run the game. You can get it from here, https://dl.dropbox.com/u/63217995/Space%20Storm%20Launcher.jar

To play, first add at least one enemy and one ally ship, select the one you want to place with left click, place it with right click. Press Space to start, select one of your ships with left click, then right click tells it where to move, the game is won when either team has no ships left, the star wars-esque intro is for the story/campaign I’m planning on adding later!

Please post any bugs/errors that you find 

This entry was posted on Monday, November 19th, 2012 at 11:56 am and is filed under MiniLD #38. 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.

So I figured I’d best post a gameplay video of it in progress.

The last few percent of completing as game are really the longest aren’t they?

View the Video on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz9C25nAyZk

I’m grateful for any feedback, there are a few more details on my blog post over at: http://refreshcreations.co.uk/games/2012/11/super-grid-run-gameplay-demo/ Hoping to release to Android and iOS ,paybe PC, Mac also on the 6th of December, just a little later than the..errr end of October…

mouse

Well.. I did not quit finish the October challenge 😉 But now 20 days due I’ve finally come up with an idea, created it and published it to the market.

Colours

Let my present to you my first complete game “Colours“. A game app for android. It’s a game about colours (duh!) and the objective is to match a randomly generated colour with the help of three sliders that represent the primary colours Red, Green and Blue.

The faster you do it the more points will you earn and you can submit your score to a high-score list. With every level completed the game also gets harder and harder.

I would be really glad if you would like to test it out and tell my what you think.
It comes in a “lite” version and a paid version. The paid version because of the goal of the October challenge to earn one dollar

Some screenshots:

Here is the links :

Paid



Lite

If you would like to follow the development:
Site
or
@dalsgames at twitter

Feedback is greatly appreciated 😀
~DalsGames

Tags: colours, dalsgames, gamedev, ld, October Challenge 2012

I Decided to start early but it seems I finished early

I will submit it on the day But I want to get your guys thoughts now to see what I should add or change and stuff

Download RetroTron for Windows

Its a Very Difficult Game
It was developed in Game Maker 7 Pro (I decided to use an old tool to make an old style game)
I can Probably add most things that you guys want me to add I don’t Mind I enjoy Making games

Although it doesnt seem it can have alot more Anyway comment what you think

If its not fun then I can easily make another game No problems there

I Just had an Idea of a New type of Ludum Dare

Basically you use a Game Development program that I will develop Prior to the Challenge and then you use that to come up with the Best game using its limited capabilities

Im just wondering who would be interested in such a challenge?

UPDATE: www.charitygamejam.com is LIVE!

See also: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/10/25/charity-game-jam/

Tags: 8-bit, Charity Game Jam, keynote, Kiva, Make-a-Wish, McFunkypants, nes, Nintendo Entertainment System, video

This MiniLD I am going to use 2 new tools: Unity and Guitar Pro 6. Unity brings more new tools, like Blender, so I guess that’s a plenty.

Since I’m going to make a 3D game, I won’t be able to follow the theme. But anyway, I’m in for this MiniLD!

It seems that the jam officially starts tomorrow, but the LD post says it’s Nov. 23-25, so let’s say it’s been day 0.

I’m using Unity, and I’m making my first Unity game. (Hmm… that’s why I get a bonus day!)

It’ll be a tower destroying game like “A Monster Ate My Homework”.

Here is the first screenshot:

Just set up the base template of the game for the MiniLD. I will go with some simple retro game though.
Wanna do this. Now!

Well, I guess i’m in

And it’s never to late to learn a new language is it?  Time to teach my self flash!

The Charity Game Jam just started, and we’ve already DOUBLED the fundraising goal of $250 that I set. I had to quadruple the goal just so that the “thermometer” wasn’t bursting before the jam had even begun! We’re all so grateful for your participation. This is going to be EPIC.

Was into the idea of this Charity Jam right from the moment I first heard of it. Maybe its the awesome theme, maybe its the fact that its for charity (which already doubled the initial funding goal) – Just noticed McFunkypants has increased the funding goal because of this, good move

Either way, I’ve gone ahead and started my day by donating, every bit helps, so I suggest anyone who is able to donate.. To donate!

Now for the game jam side of things. I like the idea of the template, but wanted to use the BGE (Blenders Game Engine) for this LD (as I do for most Ludum Dares), so yesterday I thought Id come up with my own 3D template, you can see the end result below.

Turn table of 3D Funkytron

*Edit* Removed gif, was unoptimized and bugging out my browser, click the pic above to see it^

This version was more of a ‘proof of concept’ for myself, as I wasnt sure how well the screen projection would work (if at all). So yes, that game you see on the screen you *can play*. Its effectively a 3D game, looking like a 2D game, projected onto the flat 2D screen of a 3D Funkytron in a 3D game world <- this is the kind of thing I think up when I say to myself “lets keep this miniLD nice and simple!”     -_-‘

Everything worked as I wanted though, VideoTexture (the BGE module responsible for projecting that realtime display onto the Funkytron screen) works wonders.  Then, to further complicate everything, I decided it would be a good idea to use the Burster plugin with this game. For those who dont know BGE too well, or havent heard of Burster, its effectively a web plugin which lets you use run your BGE games in-browser. It complicates things because Burster has a bunch of restrictions, mainly on what python functions/modules you can use. A bunch of them are blocked for security reasons.

Thankfully, it works, so you can play this template version right now! Controls for the game, along with instructions and links to download burster are all on this page – http://www.delta-edge.com.au/GameTest/game_test.html

Feedback on if this works for you would be great! Also just basic feedback on how annoying/easy it is to download/install Burster and get the plugin running would also be handy. Thinking of using this plugin for future Ludum Dares depending on how it goes for this one.

The only downside to Burster is no Mac support, but 32/64bit Linux & Windows are both supported.

Also, as with any Ludum Dare, I’ll be providing the source code/files for the project, starting with the template (would be great to see others using this!)

Template download: http://www.mediafire.com/?qkfr3ijlfoqwkqz (Youll need Blender 2.64a to open the .blend file and edit the game) – This game is using the Blender Game Engine (BGE)

Download template^

Template scene setup

So thats all for now. The LD starts in <1min, so I have a game to make! I’ve got a friends going-away party happening tonight, so Ill really only have the next few hours and the final 24 hours to work on a game, most of today Ill be afk. And Ill post about what type of game Im planning later as well!

Tags: 2012, 3D, ADEdge, BGE, blender, Charity, Charity Game Jam, Funkytron, MiniLD

So iv’e decided to make a charity game and upload it to Staticvoidgames. I’m basically going to make a never ending mario running mash-up game. I think ill use the original sprites off the nes to keep with the theme as well.Well time to get coding

kix

Tags: Charity, game jam

I’m 50 minutes late but am about to start on my Charity Game Jam game. As there are no categories for the charity game jam, I am assuming this is also the MiniLD #38 challenge so will post my progress reports in this category until told otherwise. I am probably going to be biting off way more than I can chew this time, as I am aiming to create a NES-Style RPG. The scope of the game will be fairly small and it will be built using the gamejam library I am creating for use in future game jams. This library is in a rather pitiful state as the time that was suppose to go towards working on it ended up going towards Torchlight II and Defender Quest but the scrolling map code is there so I shouldn’t have to worry too much about the dungeon/world maps.

Tools are Flash Builder, Flash, Fireworks, cfxr, audacity, starling framework, and tiled. I am in the PST timezone so my roadmap is to get the game skeleton finished tonight, get combat system finished tomorrow morning, rough world and dungeon maps tomorrow evening, artwork and fine-tuning on sunday. Now I better start coding.

Tags: Charity Game Jam, starting

We’re off and running in the Charity Game Jam MiniLD!

The theme for this game jam is the Nintendo Entertainment System.  The funkytron that McFunkypants wrote up can embed HTML5, Flash, and Unity games.  Unfortunately, I’m once again writing mine in Java, so I’ll use the image overlay he sent out in the e-mail.

5 minutes before the jam started, I was sitting here still wondering what to do.  I decided on a jousting game along the theme of Joust, but not at all like it.  I’m hoping to have the camera centered on the player and his horse, and charging along the jousting arena.  The player will control his speed, and the angle of his lance.  The combination of speed (power) and lance position (accuracy) will determine how well the player does!

Last game jam taught me a valuable lesson: Don’t expect the game to come out remotely how you want.  Well, I’ve got a concept and I’ll get as far as I can toward it.  We’ll see how it turns out!

I’m using some of the framework from my last game, Creature Ranger.  It’s available in my earlier blog post (from LD24).

I’ll post some updates as I go.

Good Luck LDers!  Lets make some games, and support a worthy charity!

Tags: belk, Charity Game Jam

Hey guy, I’m about an hour into my Charity Game Jam game and I’ve tried running my HTML5 project in the funkytron. I’m using Game Maker: Studio Professional with the HTML5 plugin. For some reason, when running it in a chrome browser I get weird effects like scrollbars and blurry sprites:

However running it in Firefox is fine. Anyone else have similar problems? Or is it just how chrome works?

Tags: 8-bit, Charity Game Jam

Recently I have noticed a HTML5 game that’s getting attention, called Lust Or Bust. In Lust Or Bust, you try and stare at your freind’s hot sister’s tits without getting caught.
For the 24th Mini Ludum Dare, the challenge was to make the most games in the time period. I made 28 games, which you can find here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/58474219/Wacky%20Little%20Games.zip
More specifically, one of the games I made was THIS game, created a good several months before Lust Or Bust:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/58474219/Mini%20Pervert.exe

Look familiar, Lust Or Bust players?

It’s called Mini Pervert, and was a quick prototype of a larger project I had designed called Pervert. The goal of the game was to stare at woman’s tits without getting caught. It had an Ogle-Meter in the corner warning you of when she was about to look, and the longer you stared without getting caught, the more points you racked up.

I suspect that the creator of Lust Or Bust found this game on Ludum Dare and ripped off the idea. It’s similar to my game prototype in so many ways, including the unique gameplay mechanic. It’s also possible that great minds think alike; but it seems a bit of a strong coincidence when you compare the two. The time period is also about what it would take for someone to see my game, decide to steal the idea, and develop it into a complete game and publish it.

At twelve thousand downloads last time I checked, the guy who made Lust Or Bust is probably making quite a bit of money. I’m not asking to get the lost revenue back but I WOULD like to make it public where the idea came from.

Something to keep in mind, fellow Ludum Darers: If you put your original idea as a prototype on Ludum Dare, someone might steal it and develop it.

Tags: announce, announcement, boobs, caution, pervert, plagaurize, plaguirism, rip-off, steal, theft

Nintendo had more than a few whacky peripherals. The game I’m working on is in memory of the laser scope, which as far as I can tell, only ever had one game made for it.

The laser scope was really just a light gun with voice activation. I’m taking the voice part and making it a control for my game.

The idea is to control the wind by blowing into your screen (if you have a mic on your screen like I do) or just making loud noises.

Blowing actually offers better control.

I expect to start a new game on day 2 after I finish this.

The main menu is up and running, though none of the buttons work yet.  I have each element loaded in dynamically, and I’m using a TrueTypeFont I borrowed from a free font site.  Music I made on Otomata plays when you load!

Here’s a screenshot of what I have so far.  Not too pretty, but the theme is the NES!  I’m not worried too much about art yet.

Next, I’m jumping right into the game.  I’ll come back to the main menu later and fix up the credits, exit, and add a volume adjuster.

Tags: belk, Charity Game Jam

My game is going good, but I need help with 1 thing:

How do I insert a swf file into the funkytron?

Please post code that works for you.

Thanks,

Nsmurf

Im about done for today’s work on the game. Made some progress, theres a player sprite which runs around, and a basic environment (road with buildings either side and an intersection) along with some cars that randomly spawn and can drive into you (blood splatter included), now I have other things to tend to

A friend of mine might be getting involved with the game while I’m away for the next 10-20 hours, so progress might be made (hes been working on music for it today). Then tomorrow will be time to sit down and start finishing things! Ive purposefully aimed pretty low with this game, I’ll just get as much done as possible and enjoy it.

Either way, the game Ive been wanting to make for this is effectively ‘GrandTheftAuto re-imagined for the NES’. I hope to have at least 1 gun, cars to drive/steal, blood to splatter and sidewalks to drive down, maybe even some simple kinds of missions. We’ll see!

Some screens:

Car driving past

Might also mention, I 3D’ized the gamepad texture recently released as well, so now theres 2 controllers in the scene (which adds to it nicely I think!)

Tags: b3d, BGE, Charity, GTA, MiniLD, nes, progress, report, retro

Seems to be the second miniLD I’m joining. this time I’ll be using Unity (again) to create a 2.5D kind of game.
Of course, the art with (mostly) follow the pallet given. Basically your a kart trying to gather supplies to help get
to the end of the level. Here’s a demo I’ve created in the past 5/6 hours:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85846965/MiniLDNov/WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html

Off to get some sleep, so I can stay sane and keep my efficiency up.  The main menu is done, I made it fully functional, and the framework for the game state is starting to come together.  I was also getting the physics manager written a little, and figuring out what variables I need to track for movement and player control.

Here’s some screenshots of the “art” I’m trying to work on now.  I’m not very good at this.

I’m going to try to get some more scenery laid down in the Game state (Weapon Racks, Stands with crowds, etc.) then get to work on the movement and physics.  After that I can work on the spyglass where you see the enemy knight coming at you, and eventually spruce it up with some more details.  We’ll see how far I get tomorrow!

Tags: belk, Charity Game Jam

In my charity game jam project, I’m doing real-time raytracing.

Real-time raytracing!? On a NES?

Yes. Not very realistic, I know. But at least I’m restricting the resulting image to use the palette of the NES.

What I do is for each true colour in RGB format, I map it to the closest colour in the NES palette. Well, actually I don’t do that. A GLSL shader does that. And it uses the following image as a lookup table.

Click to enlarge to 1024 x 32 pixels. Feel free to use this image if you too need to map RGB to the NES palette.

As you can see, the image contains 32 squares of 32×32 pixels each. The red component has the same value inside each square, and varies from zero in the leftmost square and full in the rightmost square. Within each square, the green value is mapped to the horizontal coordinate, and blue to the vertical coordinate.

So what you need to do to convert a color to the NES palette is to convert R, G and B to values in the range 0 to 31. (Just divide them by 8 and round down if you use 8-bit RGB). Then look up the pixel at

x = R * 32 + G

y = B

Here are screenshots of the resulting rendering from Firefox and Chrome respectively. I added some ordered noise to the RGB values before submitting them to the lookup image, to get some dithering.

(I haven’t found out how to do a 2x scale on a canvas in Chrome and have it rescaled without smoothing. This is why the Chrome screenshot is blurry.)

Oh, and a plug: If you’re in Stockholm, come join our real-world gathering for Ludum Dare 25.

Sexy programmer art. <3

This is the first screenshot of my game. The game will be a sort of defense game where you build up the environment and place towers on it to defend from multiple waves of enemies. The difference in this is that you take materials from your dead enemies to construct your towers and upgrade them. It’s working well so far – level scrolling, player movement and tile placement are all in. Next I’ll be working on placing towers and having enemy spawns!

I’m finally giving this jam a serious go, after not really doing much in the last few LDs. Hooray!

‘Heinous Yak Destruction’ is a name that came out of http://videogamena.me/ a week or so ago, and it’s going to be a b-movie-style “Giant Yak Destroys a City”-em-up. It’s just before 11am, I have the basic Flashpunk stuff set up, so let’s do this!

Tags: Charity Game Jam

A gamejam.. with NES style graphics… how can I resist!?   My idea is to create a two player HTML5 game, gamers will be able to use their smartphone as controller, so that will be interesting 😉

Started early this morning, and now have both players moving about a simple platform level.. for the ultimate chaos I’ll stick to a non-scrolling single screen level.

I just have to make two big decisions now:  Co-op or 1vs1..  and .. what will be the goal of the game!

The Beerman is in!

For my entry, I’m attempting an HTML5 NES-style demake of my October Challenge game, Lagertron.

Wish me luck! 😀

I think I’ve made my game! I planned to do more, but I’m tired, so that’s all. I made 10 levels with some features. No music. That’s enough for a first Unity game.

But when I tried on the FunkyTron interface, it looked ugly. So I had to correct the html file of my game to fit it in the screen. Considering the fact that I don’t know html. XD

Now I can’t upload it because Dropbox won’t launch .html files and other uploaders upload files separately (And I have 2 files: .html and .unity3d). Can anyone help?

Here is an offline version: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53633853/Destructor.zip.

Heinous Yak Destruction is going fairly well. I’m quite pleased with my little yak character. Turns out that small size + only 3 colours per sprite = really easy art. 😀

If you feel like being a giant yak, wandering a randomly generated (but currently rather dull) city, you can play here. I update the version on the site every so often.

Currently you can’t destroy anything, so you can start the game stuck in a building. Press ‘r’ until you get a city that lets you move.

Still to do:

• More buildings
• Heinous Destruction!
• People running in terror
• The military coming and trying to stop your aforementioned heinous destruction.
• Sound
• Music

So basically, all the things that make it a game rather than a remote-controlled-giant-yak simulator.

Tags: Charity Game Jam, playable, progress, yak

In case anyone else wants all the colours in hexadecimal form, here they are:

0xff7b7e7f,
0xff0000fc,
0xff0000c4,
0xff4028c4,
0xff94008c,
0xffac0028,
0xffac1000,
0xff8c1800,
0xff503000,
0xff007200,
0xff005800,
0xff004058,
0xffc1c0c1,
0xff0078fc,
0xff0088fc,
0xff6848fc,
0xffdc00d4,
0xffe40060,
0xfffc3800,
0xffe46018,
0xffac8000,
0xff00b800,
0xff00a800,
0xff00a848,
0xff008894,
0xfffbf8fb,
0xff38c0fc,
0xff6888fc,
0xff9c78fc,
0xfffc78fc,
0xfffc589c,
0xfffc7858,
0xfffca048,
0xfffcb800,
0xffbcf818,
0xff58d858,
0xff58f89c,
0xff00e8e4,
0xffffffff,
0xffa9ecec,
0xffbcb8fc,
0xffedb8fc,
0xfff4c0e0,
0xfffad9a6,
0xffdcf878,
0xffb8f878,
0xffa9ecec,
0xff00f8fc,
0xff000000,
0xff1f1f1f,
0xff595959

Hopefully I haven’t missed or duplicated any, but I might have done. These include an alpha byte first, as I’m using Flashpunk.

Well, it’s 9:30pm over here, so I’m stopping for today. (Yup, I’m hardcore and I know it. :P) As always, the current state of Heinous Yak Destruction is here.

I’m pretty pleased! I’ve got some sound effects, you can smash things, and there are little people who run in terror. So for tomorrow that still leaves the… bits that make it a game rather than just a toy. Some kind of difficulty or time limit, probably in the form of the military coming in to destroy you. Not entirely sure though. Oh, and music! Which I might not get done, to be honest. 😛

Not many people seem to be updating on the blog today. I feel like I’m spamming, but I last posted several hours ago. Where are you all!?

Tags: Charity Game Jam, update, yak

Not much experience with pixel art and I thought I had to make the sprites small to have them fit in the 256×224 screen.

Now the  sprites are really tiny! This is an actual spriteset:

Today wasn’t very good, but there has been some progress, so tomorrow there will be a game, hopefully it will be fun to play (that would make a change!).

you can play it here.

You can read more about it, and see my todo list here.

Mohammad here. I guess I better get started this Mini-LD if I wanna do somthing. But with a lack of gamemaker, Blander, and Other programming skills, it seems like I’ll be doing a text-based adventure game made in ruby! Yeah, I know, Pretty dumb and basic, but c’mon, how bad can it be? Besides, with one 2 days left, and the knolage of ruby and javascript, I don’t have much of a choice, considering either languages have good code graphics wise. So, to save time, (And because ruby and javascript is not very good graphics wise) I will simple get started on the olden days of the text based video games about a man stuck in a room. Happy Mini-LD to all! Mohammad out.

Hey everyone, just thought i’d let you know ill be live streaming my coding for the next while. Just search Kix334 on twitch.tv ,Please check it out.

kix

Head over to www.charitygamejam.com And Looks for The Create A Sokoban Cartridge

After I Finished Creating RetroTron I started to get bored and wanted to Know if I Could post more than one game and I Can

So I got to work on this simple Game/Level Editor

Basically what it is Is a Level editor so That you can Create Your own Sokoban Levels (If you don’t Know What Sokoban is the Game Information will tell you)
I Started at about 11am This Morning and Just Uploaded it less than 5 Minutes ago

I Will Probably make A Sequel if its Good

Well I think my entry (sort of puzzle/labyrinth game)  is half-finished; so what I have to do for this sunday:

• finish some sprites, create a fancy title
• create some levels (5 minimum)
• add sound FX (NES samples? bfxr?) and music. This part is my nightmare each Ludum Dare XD
• find a better title than “Blood, Loot & Soul”

Bonus: screenshot

GameMaker8.0Pro + GraphicsGaleFree

Missed posting at the 24 hour mark! ~19 hours to go, close enough.

Making some more progress, but the past few hours have been slow and problematic. I ran into one large problem, which was a kind of ‘grey’ area cause by modules/functions Ive never used in combination before (not sure if anyone has tbh). The main problem came down to the default use of ‘mipmaps’ in the BGE and Blender itself. Basically, mipmapping doesnt work well with sprites. It ‘blends’ the pixels of textures and the results are blurry, ugly sprites for super low-resolution stuff, ie the image below shows the effect:

Mipmapping (fuzzy) vs disabled Mipmapping (sharp)

This is fine in Blender itself, you can simply globally disable mipmapping, problem solved. But the issue existed when I then tried to run the game in the Burster plugin (for web-browser play), mipmapping was on by default – and theres NO way to turn it off. So the all-important browser version of the game was completely fuzzy.

My initial idea was to completely redesign the ‘architecture’ of the game. Splitting the Scene into two independent scenes, one for the 3D computer area, one for the mini-game area being projected onto the screen. I wasnt even sure if the VideoTexture module would work between scenes (which is the only reason why I didnt setup the game like this initially), but after a bit of hair-pulling coding I managed to get it sorted. I then applied a pixelated shader, which was applied to the mini-game scene so it would be pixelated, even though mipmapping was permanently enabled.

The new problem: The shader was applied to the scene, but the VideoTexture plugin wasnt ‘seeing’ the now pixelated version of the level, so the screen was still blurry even though almost everything was running exactly as Id planned.

After some more hair-pulling moments, another much simpler solution came to mind, all I had to do was increase the texture size to sharpen the pixel edges (compromising with slightly larger file-sizes). Major derp moment. This solution took 5 minutes to implement (thankful this is still early on and I dont have hundreds of textures to edit) whereas the previous failed method took almost 2 hours. Gah! At least the scenes are better organised now, the ‘architecture’ of the game is much more solid so its not a complete loss…

Either way, I just need to sort out a sprite animation issue and I’ll have a playable demo up and running for people to try out.

Damn Mipmaps…..

Heres a look at the shader too, it worked pretty well and I’ll probably use it in future projects. You can see it in the background scene, a kind of ‘distant city’ view which is the current WIP city for the game. I wont be using anything like this in final game now (happened completely by accident) but I thought it looked a bit interesting.

Distant city with pixelated shader effect

Tags: AD-Edge, BGE, blender, derp, drama, MiniLD, mipmaps

Hey guys, things are going great. I’m about halfway done on the game and with sleep, I’ll have about 8 hours on Sunday to finish. I still have to finish level selection, more levels, and a merchant screen to buy in-game upgrades but I think I will get it done.

Here’s a progress shot:

You can play the test build here: Play

P.S. I recommend running it in Firefox, Chrome has weird scroll bars.

Tags: 8-bit, Charity Game Jam

Finished with the basic idea of the game, and got all the assets I’ll need to create levels. Now to acually create the levels. right after some sleep

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/85846965/MiniLDNov/WebPlayer/funkytron_template_html/index.html

So i’ve finished my mario game. The levels are procedurally generated, with a little variation, and the aim is to get as far as you can. You can find it here at Staticvoidgames. Anyway i had fun and i live streamed an hour or two of coding so if you can be bothered check it out. I hope everyone else has as much fun as i did.

Kix

Tags: Charity Game Jam, Mario

I’m asking for help once more. I’ve finished the Unity game, but I can’t submit the web version because it consists of .html and .unity3d files, and both of them are required to play. Dropbox won’t launch .html files, and file uploaders store them separately.

I’ve uploaded a Windows build (linky), but the FunkyTron needs a .html file.

How do you upload Unity games?

I have version 0.5c of ‘Super Theft Auto’ now available for public testing/playing/things.

The title screen!

The game is my take on having a game like GTA2 on the NES (or at least a 3D Funkytron console) I havent really kept as close to the NES specs as I would have liked, but I think its turning out ok so far, its been a lot of fun to work on if anything.

Theres not much to the gameplay. I still need to add some major features in. But theres some initial pedestrians now, a title screen, various other much needed improvements – I can see this actually being a game sometime in the near future. I really need to add the car system in though, the map is quite large (spent too much time working on that tonight). Its too much to explore fully on foot.

Ludum Dare tip #9354 – Dont attempt to build a city

You can find the game embedded in this page – [LINK]

Youll need to install the ‘Burster’ web plugin to use it (unfortunately Mac is not supported), but Linix and Windows (64&32bit) will both run it fine. The plugin is a ~26mb download, and is easy to install. Theres instructions & links to download it on the page I made for the game.

Feedback would be great, I know theres not much of a game, but Ill take any crits or suggestions. Also knowing if the Burster plugin install is a smooth process for you would be great as well. I hate having to install a plugin to play a game as much as the next person, but Ive tried to make the page as helpful as possible.

v0.5c in action

Anyway, its past 2am where I live, and Ive been running on 2-3 hours sleep all day (was a bit night saturday night). Im starting to see random flickers/objects in my vision, so a good indicator to get sleep I believe! Plus programming in this state is so slow and frustrating Id be better off sleeping.

Im not sure how much Ill be able to get done in the final hours tomorrow, but I hope to at least implement a few more crucial features (like death and a points systems) – We will see!

Tags: auto, BGE, blender, Burster, demo, game, MiniLD, sleep, super, theft

It seems only Dropbox can host files as they are, at least Yandex and Google drives can’t. They would either suggest to download the .html file, or open it in a text editor. How dull.

I already submitted my game, but it didn’t work. If someone can modify already submitted games, can you please change the link of “Destructor” to either http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53633853/Destructor.zip, or download, unzip and then share http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53633853/Destructor%20web.zip in Dropbox or whatever works and then set the link to the .html file there. Thanks, Madball.

Basicly what the title says:

I have a swf on dropbox.  Can I submit now and edit the game later?

Thanks,

Nsmurf

Well, it’s done! No enough time to finish levels in the 48h limits but I’ll finish them anyway tomorrow. This is just a clone of a little japanese indie game (http://www.indiegames.com/2010/06/freeware_game_pick_hero_defeat.html), with a twist: 4 characters.

Each character has to fight one type of enemy:

• The knight fights only the orcs – if the knight’s level is equal or superior to the orc’s level.
• The rogue fights only the zombies – if the rogue’s level is equal or superior to the zombie’s level.
• The necromancer fights only the graves – if the necromancer’s level is equal or superior to the graves’s level.
• The wizard fights only the ghost – if the wizard’s level is equal or superior to the ghost’s level.

DL link >> https://www.box.com/s/ssovn84up6qm1chmnogk  (no HTML, flash, etc. just a good old .EXE file in a ZIP archive).

You have to use a keyboard to play:

•  ARROWS = move
• X = action
• C = switch heroes
• ENTER = restart game/level

Last year, I tried to Kickstart a game called Ninja Baseball. It fell flat on its face. And eventually, I stopped working on it altogether. It was a very public humiliation for someone as driven and competitive as I am. (though I did get good press out of it… even this great interview by Junglist at 5 Inch Floppy)

But this weekend… well, without further ado… the tiny revival of my dream!

It’s 100% new code, assets, etc. Of course it’s incomplete in some areas, but you can play a game and have a smile. In some ways, it’s more cohesive than the multiple versions and permutations (in full 3D) living on my hard drive. =p

And it’s all thanks to McFunkyPants. Cheers.

Direct link: http://oreganik.com/ninjabaseballnes/

For the 48 Charity mini LD, I just submitted my game called “Crazy Kart Flying”. A bit going passed the limits and using 3D, but I did
use the NES Palette and limited movement along the x and y axis. Programs used are Unity 3D and Paint.net.
Only 2 levels, but I like the idea and I’m extending on it so expect a 3rd level (hint: a “special” level )
Page to play would be here: http://www.charitygamejam.com/
Shoudl be able to find it.

Finished!

It still needs more levels (and some variation), but this time I have music. So gameplay still bad but certainly getting better.

Using Famitracker was fun! Making pixelart was hard!

With the funkytron I got those ugly scrollbars, so I have two links: to the .swf  and to the Funkytron version.

Maybe later I’ll do a postmortem or comic (maybe with J. McLeakyPants) .

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-38/?action=preview&uid=14225

Whoohoo! I managed to make a game that actually feels pretty complete! This is unusual for me.

Heinous Yak Destruction is now available to play on the charitygamejam.com site. It has music, explosions, helicopters, and an actual lose condition! Huzzah!

I didn’t quite get the time to add online high-scores in. The backend is there, just not the stuff in-game. I’ll fiddle around with it tomorrow and hopefully get that included.

If I had more time, I’d have liked to add more buildings – I’d hoped to have big tower blocks and shops as well as the tiny houses. Never mind.

Tags: Charity Game Jam, complete, yak

I have finally finished a mini GOT clone for the charity game jam.

Here is the link: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/89733612/got.html or https://dl.dropbox.com/u/89733612/Got.swf

Was fun … but did not have enough time for levels. Probably will create more in the future if there is any positive feedback.

Sleeping off my cold this morning (and, er, early afternoon) prevented me from getting this done in time for the official submission. But it was killing me to have temp art in there… so… ta-da!

http://www.charitygamejam.com/

http://oreganik.com/ninjabaseballnes/

I uploaded my game to the cartridge library and over here as well, but It doesn’t seem to be showing up in the cartridge library.  Anyone know what happened?  I don’t want to re-upload for fear of having it upload twice.  Help!

I finally got the game done and submitted with 20 minutes to spare! I had a really fun time making the game as always. The game came out great and I only cut a few things from the final version.

Here’s an in action shot:

You can try out the game here: Play and on the Charity Game Jam site.

I recommend Firefox because the sounds don’t work in Chrome >:(

Good Job Everyone!

Tags: 8-bit, Charity Game Jam

So I’ve uploaded and submitted my entry for the Charity Game Jam. It was a fun experience and I learned quite a bit, but the game is far from complete. But considering I didn’t know about the competition until about 8 hours after it started, I think I did quite well.

I just submitted the 48 hour version of my Charity Game Jame game, “Dolphin Story”. I followed Ludum Dare compo rules – all graphics from scratch with the Gimp, engine is Unity + Orthello 2D. It uses the NES palette.

It looks awesome inside the Funkytron … but in reality it’s not really finished yet. There are still two scenes to be made to finish the mini-chapter of this mini-adventure game, and sound is still to come. I plan to do this over the next two days.

I went against all sensible advice and used Orthello 2D for the first time for this compo … as a result I ended up wasting some time wrestling with it, but now I have the simple ‘point-n-click’ adventure base code written expanding it should be easy (famous last words ).

You can play directly it here, or find it in the list on http://www.charitygamejam.com. If the Unity plugin starts flickering (like an old TV with bad vertical hold settings – authentic !), blow on the cartridge then try reloading the page. I’ve no idea what’s up with that.

Tags: 8-bit, Charity Game Jam, nes, Orthello

got this game done just at the deadline, and overlooked a very simple error that caused me to stress for the last 5 hours lol, figured it out, and have the game submitted! enjoy, and I look forward to checking out everyones games!

Controls:

Arrow keys,

*Wanted to use gamepad, but unfortunately my usb gamepad wouldn;t work with chrome

Play Lock N Key!

Tags: MiniLD, nes

Creating a RPG mostly from scratch is a rather crazy thing to do, but I did mostly manage to succeed. There is a lot of things I would like to add to the game, so it is going on my rather large revisit in the future list. My recommendation is to gain a couple of levels before entering the caves and before going into the castle. Mind you, death restores your health while leaving you where you died so this problem isn’t overly disastrous.

On a side note, the template page doesn’t seem to hold my game properly (even though it is the correct size) but adds scroll bars roughly the size of the scroll bars. The game is located at http://blazinggames.com/gamejams/ldmini38/index.html . Enjoy.

But close enough!

Certainly didnt get around to a few major features that Id really hoped for (like being able to steal a car – kinda important in a game that references Grand Theft Auto)

But I’m certainly happy with what I did get done over the weekend. ‘Super Theft Auto’ is a good start for an interesting little mini game.

You can play the current version of the game at the following link after installing the plugin (links/instructions are on the page- the only major OS not supported is OSX):

[LINK] (youll also find it on the CharityGameJam games submission screen of course)

Theres also a link on the page to a .blend download of the setup for the computer VideoTexture scene, youll need Blender 2.64a if you want to mess around with it.

Features:

• A game within a game – You start in a 3D world with a 3D computer, the (kinda) NES style game plays on the screen of the Funkytron computer (press space to zoom in and focus on the screen to actually see what youre doing)
• Large city area to explore (sadly only on foot at this stage)
• Pedestrians wander around the city (they make good target practice)
• Cars driving around (rare and very basic implementation)
• Gun ammunition to pick up
• Basic scoring system (you can score points for killing people)

Fatality!

Tags: AD-Edge, auto, BGE, blender, Burster, Funkytron, MiniLD, nes, retro, super, theft

It’s after the time, but I really wanted to add high scores, so they’re in! Let’s see who can beat me at yak-based urban demolition! As always, go to http://charitygamejam.com/ and then click the cartridge that says “YAK”.

And now, the post-mortem:

What went right:

• I chose something simple. This is by far the biggest help. I tend to want to do something fancy, with lots of procedural generation… this time, a simple game, which I had plenty of time to do.
• I used a language I was comfortable with, and which made me productive. I don’t know AS3/Flashpunk as well as I could do, but I have made things with it before, and this helped a lot.
• I found simple solutions for things. The city is a simple grid. You destroy the buildings where you land so you can’t get stuck in them. The enemies are helicopters, so I didn’t need to do any pathfinding.
• I made music, sound, and art that I’m pleased with! It’s nothing amazing, but the NES theme meant that I didn’t try and spend ages making it look and sound great, I could  just make things simple.
• I added little touches as I went along. As the game was simple, I had the time to add shockwaves, tween animations, and little people who run away, which made it more fun but didn’t take that long to do.

What went wrong:

• Not a lot! I could have been more prepared sound-wise – I had no experience of musagi, or audacity, so fiddling with those took longer than it should have. But it wasn’t a problem in the end.
• I didn’t get time to add the building variety I’d hoped to. Very few of the city blocks were planned to be empty grass. I wanted tower blocks and things, but by the time I could have tried adding them, it would have meant breaking the code probably.

What I’ve learnt:

• I can actually make music that I don’t think is terrible!
• I can make a 48-hour game with a decent level of polish!
• Heinous is pronounced “Hay-nuss”.

Tags: Charity Game Jam, post-mortem, yak

The Charity Game Jam was a huge success. Our initial fundraising goal was $250 and as you can see, we destroyed it! Mission accomplished. Achievement unlocked. Boss battle won. Princess saved. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, EVERYONE! I’m humbled and grateful for all your enthusiasm, hard work, and generosity. Should we do this again next year?
Play The Games Here! | Keynote Video | Announcement Post

Tags: 8-bit, awesomeness, Charity Game Jam, Funkytron, McFunkypants, motivation, nes, pixelart, retro, screenshot, SuccessStory

After 3 attempts, I completed a game  for the October challenge. Ironically, it is not the one that I set out to make when the month started. It’s also late, but I digress. I’m sharing it now because I got to work with a bunch of awesome dudes at the begging of October. We met and finished this game in one weekend in Chicago.

This is how it feels to RELEASE a game to the public:

Presenting ‘Bells of Steel’ a Christmas Tower Defense Game. In the game, elfs must sacrafice themselves to save the north pole from an alien invasion. Not fast enough? Santa will handle the job himself. The game is now live IN THE APP STORE! The gameplay is sort of tower defense meets action. It’s ad based, so would love some taps of the banner, but it is free otherwise. Enjoy, share with friends. Team Krampus FTW!

Thanks so much to this community! It shows that making games(and completing them) is possible. Thanks for lighting the fire under my butt daily.

App Store Link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bells-of-steel/id570914908?ls=1&mt=8

Shameless plug(s):

Two of my teammates from this project have other game projects going on. They both look cool. Give them a look if you’re interested in Bells of Steel.

Moby Dick Revenge: https://www.facebook.com/MobyDickRevenge

Hidden Treasure Games: Old School Adventure game; https://www.facebook.com/HiddenTreasureGames

Hi, Gravity Games here, and I can’t wait until the next Ludum Dare! I do however have a few questions about the rules if you don’t mind.

1) I saw in the rules that we ARE allowed to use base code if its mentioned before the dare, but how far would be considered base? Like, a basic routine to open a window and draw graphics? A basic engine with a level editor (though I’m assuming that this would be a little bit too far to be considered a base).

2) Continuing the above question, I have a level format that I tend to use for every project I start. I was wondering if it would be okay to copy and paste the same code that reads these files, or would I have to recode the same format from scratch. Or would I have to make a completely new format entirely?

3) Continuing from the level format question, I already have a level editor for this format. Is it against the rules to use this level editor presuming I use the same level format? If so, would it be acceptable to program a new editor, or should I just type in the levels with a text editor?

4) Is it against the rules to submit a game to the dare, continue to work on it for the rest of the hours of the jam, and then resubmit it for the jam?

5) Finally, I’ve never completed a game before (not 100% anyway), much less in 48 hours. Quite obviously this is a big challenge for me, so how would I start practicing? Would you recommend going to past ludum dares and completing them, or is there an ongoing challenge I can use for practice?

Tags: help, question, questions, tips

Create A Sokoban Turned out really great in the end
And Managed to Get it Updated Once During time frame of the Game Jam
Since then I have Updated it again With more Features that are not Normally Part of Sokoban these Include the Doors The Switches the stairs and Holes Its Pretty Awesome

Head Over to: http://www.charitygamejam.com And Look for Create A Sokoban its Awesome

Im Currently in the process of Updating it Once Again I Have Changed the way you select blocks and use the Menu into a Drop Down List and also Fixed a few bugs though don’t expect it to be updated for a while with these features 😀

So I’m going to do this. I first heard about Ludum Dare about a month ago on AGDG, but didn’t really know the specifics until last week. I probably won’t finish on time, hahaha. In the past I’ve completed projects between 3 days to 3 weeks and ‘started without finishing many more‘ using everything from LUA, Basic, Flash, to Java, C, Objective C, and recently C# in Unity. I figure if I actually buckle down and used every waking moment within the 48 hours, I could at least do something half-decent.

Depending on the theme I will either use vanilla Unity for a 3D game, or GLBasic for a 2D game. I’m more designer/artist than programmer. I have terrible memory when it comes to syntax/API so if I make a 2D game with GLBasic, I will be using my own Phoenix Framework available here for vetting/download and randomly referencing GLBasic API Documentation.

I never actually used it to finish a game before and don’t know if I can even remember how to use it (from a week of work in Sept. 2011 for the Pandora console, which broke) so I’m on the same foot as anyone else wanting to use GLBasic and this framework, with 2 weeks to figure it out. If I remember correctly, the framework just helps deal with display settings, auto scaling, bitmap fonts, organizing on screen graphics, parallax layers, vector animation/transitions, and virtual keyboard/mouse.

Update: Wow, so I actually took the time to get familiar with the Framework and I see I’ve really messed up on a lot of things. I guess that’s what happens when you stop developing and can no longer distinguish between what you thought you did and what you planned to do.

Okay so what I’ve done since is fixed a whole lot of stuff that didn’t actually work, like graphic alignments, scaling, and other neglected details. There are comments and examples of functionality now in the main delegate and files are separated into different sections that perform certain tasks. I added sound functions. Sprites can now be loaded from TexturePacker sprite sheets (exported with Ogre settings) and will animate. Box2D has been crudely implemented and can be attached to sprites so that they follow the center. The barebones of file saving/loading is included now. Will import Tiled maps.

Things it still needs:
Listeners still need some work if I want to actually detect clicks within an object’s boundary. That’s if whatever game I make will need a mouse.

I made a video giving an overview of how it works. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7xW9X8O9pA

Tags: glbasic

Once in a while I find something surprises me by both the fact that it exists and because I’m probably the last person to know about it, hell, why didn’t anyone tell me about this before?!?!?!?. As of recently, this something has been the Game Developer magazine.

The Game Developer magazine is a thin little publication – with both print and digital (PDF) versions – with articles on the craft of, well, game development. The surprising part, however, lies on the pure quality of the magazine’s content, packaged in what seems to be an independent, honest-to-god straightforward bag of game development goodness.

Consider this. You’re looking at your game elements’ life cycle update() and postUpdate() methods, and wondering how should each method deal with each specific step of the frame update cycle, and whether you’re doing the right thing. You’d like to discuss this with someone else. And then you open the magazine and you find someone talking about the same subject for 4 or so pages. It’s unadulterated programming porn.

(This actually happened yesterday.)

More importantly, you don’t have to be a professional game developer to appreciate the content offered in its monthly installments (hell, I’m not one myself). However, if you need to do any kind of visual programming, or if you’re really just interested in the art of game development, this magazine is the real deal; it covers it all, from art to programming to marketing. And because it’s so thin – it’s usually around 80 pages – it’s easy and quick to read it every month. The noise is nowhere to be seen.

The magazine is available in really cheap subscriptions. You can preview a sample online too.

You have no excuse. Go subscribe for it now.

(This is a cross-post from something I’ve posted on my personal blog earlier this year but that I find bears repeating)

So I lost track of time and missed out on the Charity Game Jam aka this month’s MiniLD.

I’ve been working, but I won’t make promises yet.

The December 2012 Ludum Dare is coming up, and you can bet that I’m in for that!

I’ve been playing with Unity and the Orthello 2D game framework. As I’m writing this, I’m installing Unity 4.0 in the hopes that using it with the latest version of Orthello will fix some technical issues that I had.

For the LD, I might make a Retro Remake of a game that fits the theme or put a theme-related twist on an unrelated classic game.

That being said, no promises yet. Well, okay, it’ll definitely be a web game. I can say that for sure!

Well, I wrote a post mortem on my blog, despite never submitting my game.  I had a lot of fun creating my game, and I hope to go post-compo with it!

Ever since I was a kid I had something with video games, whether it was making silly card games with pieces of papers or making lame interactive stories in power point, I always looked for a way to create them…bla, bla bla! I don’t have time and nor do you to read the story of a 16th year old who always has dreamed about being a video-game designer, and has gone through everything form Modding to Unity 3d (which I guess is the case in many of us!)  so I’ll go to my point

When the charity game jam was first announced I told myself “Cool I’ll give it a try”…and finally, the day arrived,  November 24th at 12:00 A.M. I hadn’t read the rules or the jam’s theme until that moment. When I found out it was a NES theme I got excited and started working immediately.

After some minutes of thinking about my game, I found this book called “Mitos y Legendas de Guatemala”  (Myths and Legends from Guatemala) which is a compilation ghost stories and urban legends from my beloved country, Guatemala 😀 There I found this famous legend of a diabolical dog called “El Cadejo” who wanders the streets at midnight looking for drunken people, whose souls he devours. But there is another type of Cadejo, the white coated one, who instead of having a feast on it, protects the human soul from being cursed or stolen by demons and other supernatural beings. That’s how I came out with the simple story behind my game: You’re a white Cadejo who has to protect the soul of a drunken man from incoming hordes of  black Cadejos who are trying to devour it. 

Since I’m not good at 2D games in Unity, I decided to use an old tool called Game Maker. Everything (except the music and sound effects) was made from scratch for this game. The music is from ‘Retro PC Games – Tokyo Japan’ and for the sound effects I used SFXR. The barks and growls are from Nine Tails and Venusaur from Pokemon I would have loved to use my own FXs but I don’t know a thing about creating 8-bit sounds!

At the end of the post there are some screenshots of my game. You can look for it at the funkytron as “El Cadejo: A Guatemalan Horror Story” or if you don’t feel like it, go directly to the mini-site where you can download the game (just a simple .exe ;)) and watch the first five minutes of gameplay! I’ll be adding more levels and a boss fight at the end. If you are interested, follow me on twitter (@Hyde_WS) so you can know when the update has been done.

In conclusion, I LOVED the Charity Game Jam. It was a great experience and I learned a lot, I’m definitely in for the next Ludum Dare. I hope you enjoy my game and If you feel like giving some feedback and constructive critics, please do it

Tags: 8-bit, 8bit, Charity, Charity Game Jam, dog, First entry, Funkytron, Game Maker Studio, Guatemala, Hyde, nes, pixel art, post-mortem, thriller, Wyvern

So I actually sat down and made a game with no time limit or anything! It’s a small one, but at least it’s finished unlike the other billion projects I left lying around. 😛

Here it is on Kongregate:

The Corruption

The Corruption is a First Person Free-Running game where you have to run from the approaching darkness. Uses Shift/RMB to run and C/Ctrl to crouch.

Please give it a play and if possible a rating.

Happy Gaming! <3

Tags: action, first person, game, New, parkour, unity, unity3d, update

I was really looking forward to LD25. I’ve only been in LD23 and 24 and my games for both of those competitions were, how should I say this, TERRIBLE. I had fun, but the games were extremely buggy an not even fun to play.

So I was really hoping that this time I actually could make something that was at least decent. But then I found out that I had things to do on December 15. At first I was like: NOOOOOOOOO. But then I remembered that I could still enter the jam. I wanted to enter the 48 hour compo and I still loose a day so I basically only have 48 hours still.

But at least I get one day to plan my game out a bit or something. Plus I don’t have to follow as many rules in the jam.

Another thing I just realized is that the jam rules even say “This is helpful for those times real life gets in the way” and I guess this is one of those times.

LD #24 Deerfeast Tribe

Missed the October (or was it September, last few months have been more of a breeze than please) challenge to earn a buck from past or future projects, but I finally succesfully managed to wrangle up some time to put my entry Deerfeast Tribe to a store. It was also very nice to test my phone and Unity’s android stuff. Maybe I’ll build christmas Ludum Dare combo directly to Android

Jokingly I released it under Minicroix developer name. It was the best idea I had last night, it’s still moderately funny I think! You know, my nick is Detocroix, but the minigames are Minicroix. Yes? Funny? Yes!

Nick Wheeler from The Reticule wrote a review for Deerfeast Tribe, it’s a great read if you wish to take a look : On the First Day Of Deerfeast My Shotgun Brought To Me… (Awesome title btw!)

And the android version is on Android store / SlideDB (like Indie Database, but for mobile games): Android store link + SlideDB link (soon)

Hope to see everyone from the last Ludum Dare taking part to the December one!

The LD#24 was my first Ludum Dare and definitely won’t be the last. I had a blast.

Cheers!

Detocroix

Highly anticipated LD! Since my first LD last time which was a great and enjoyable experience and upon critical feedback ive wanted to 1up myself. I recieved great feedback and through improving my art,gameplay and narrative
design I look forward to the festivities

Tools:
Unity 3 – Javascript
Photoshop
Pyxel Edit
3DS MAX
Audacity
BFXR

After a long 4 months, the Hack-a-Jam is back, and starting in one week!

To join, you must create an account in the Posting section of the website, and then start posting! Note: All posts have been deleted since the last Hack-a-Jam, so that is why only I have posts there.

The Hack-a-Jam is a regular game development competition/jam where you must create a game within a set amount of time. However, it is not like any other gaming competition/jam. In the Hack-a-Jam, there is an infinite amount of winning categories, and no overall winner. While winners still must have superb games to win, there are no set winning categories, and there will always be multiple winners. Also, the theme will be voted on by the community, after they are submitted in the forums (Posting section) under the topic Theme Posting, in the Rules and Announcements forum.

To prove how unique the winning categories are, these are previous winning categories and other possible categories:

Most Psychedelic Visuals
Most Deaf People After Hearing The Game
Most Angry Bongos Involved
Most Rage-free
Most rage-induced
Most Suggestive Content Without Crossing The Line
Shortest Functional Game
Most Random and/or Annoying Sound When Picking Things Up
Most Things On Screen Without Lag or Crash

Like most game development competitions, there are rules, however, the rules here are more laid back and simple:

1. All game content must be created within the set time. Note: You can use other music, placeholder graphics, etc. as long as you are allowed to!
2. Your game is not required to follow the theme, but would greatly improve your chances of winning. Unless almost every other game is not following the theme, it is almost guaranteed that your game won’t win anything.
3. You must work alone, and you must create everything included in the game.
4. All game creation tools are permitted, such as GameMaker, Photoshop, Flash, Paint, etc.
5. All game extensions/DLLs are permitted. If you want to make it multiplayer (if you are using GameMaker), go ahead and use 39dll.

What do the winners get?

The winners will have the opportunity to post a message on the Hack-a-Jam website itself, whether it be something random and funny, like “I LOVE banana chicken pancakes”, or an advertisement such as “Play my new game TODAY!”. The winners will also get badges to show off to their friends and the gaming community.

The official 4th Hack-a-Jam starts in one week, so ready up for a double game jam week (if you are joining to Ludum Dare too)!

Tags: boon entertainment, cogex games, game development competition, game jam, Hack-A-Jam, hackajam, HJ, infinite categories, infinity, jam, terrified virus games, themes, voting

I’m here to let you all know that Game Jolt’s throwing it’s 3rd Weekend Jam this weekend and is looking for spectators and participants!

We’ll be having lots of live updates (including livestreams/screenshots/blog posts/demos) of our developers as they work on games, so it’s a good chance for you to either join in and work on something yourself with an audience watching or become part of the audience and give feedback on games that look cool. If you’re interested, take a look at the official page and check out whether you like what you see.

http://gamejolt.com/community/jams/

Hey everyone!

I’ve started some as3 dev some time ago and it usually came down to something that required a tiled map. I’ve tried a couple of mapeditors, like Tiled and Ogmo, but i felt not comfortable using them and they were lacking a few features i expect from a leveleditor.

In previous situations when i needed tiled maps i just made adhoc editors myself, but they were built only for a specific task with a specific framework in mind. Now i attempt to use all the experience i gained from those prototypes to implement a full-fledged standalone mapeditor capable of basic editing features aswell as nice to have stuff like trigger areas, custom locations, and linestrips for pathing or collision.

I’ve started work only earlier this week and by now completed the most basic feature set including tile brushes, layer management and multiple tileset support. It currently exports to XML only, but other formats like JSON will be supported later on.
I will provide an import template for FlashPunk in the next couple of days, so you would be able to immediately use it and try it out.

This is still in heavy development, but the basic implementation is functional. However i’m still looking for general feedback and feature suggestions as i want to make this tool like a decent alternative to existing editors. I’d appreciate your input on it!

Download: http://wzl.vg/src/LevelUpv0.5.zip

For more specific info visit http://wzl.vg/wiki/index.php?title=LevelUp

Cheers
wzl

Hello fellow awesome game developers!

Tags: as2, flash, kickstarter, LD18, progress, rubberkid

A meetup organised by Midlands Indies and Warwick Game Design.

Location: University of Warwick campus, room H0.01 (Humanities building)
Map link
Time: 10:00am to 10:00pm, Saturday and Sunday

If you’d like to come, please email me. I may not notice replies to this post.

Hope to see you there!

Tags: meetup

Since I plan to use JawsJS for the upcoming Ludum Dare compo, and considering the differences in audio format support by different browsers, I rolled a simple helper module to reduce my work… sort of (I’ll have to encode each sound file in both mp3 and ogg formats.) If anyone is interested, I’ve put it in this github repository:

https://github.com/rinaka/rinaka_ld25_basecode

As I believe is the correct way I am declaring the base code I intend to use for the Ludum Dare 25. I have written some blog posts with links to the code as I would encourage anyone to take this code and use it in their own project. I don’t want recognition – feel free to copy past to your hearts content. The blog posts should explain how the code works and if not then post a comment and I shall amend accordingly.

Tutorial 1 – working example

Tutorial 2 – working example

Tutorial 3 – working example

All the best and good luck for LD25

Filtoid (@filtoid)

Ludum Dare sounds fun.

I’ve been learning HTML Canvas and JS. I hope to put it to good use.

Hello folks,

I’m V, and at the moment I’m learning Flash for a school project, and I knew this site so I thought “what the hell, I’m just going to do this”. So my challenge is to learn AS and Flash in a few weeks, do LD #25 and get a good grade. Yes, it is impossible. Yes, I’m still going to try. So, a few things about myself:

As you probably have seen, I’m called V. I’m from Holland, in a place where there’s exactly NOTHING to do except internet (somehow we managed to get that :P). Usually I make websites  or play games (like Ludum Dare games, that’s how I knew the compo). I am bad at writing introductory posts. I like the name Bob. I like food, lots and lots of food. I use a lot of brackets in this post (wow). I have run out of inspiration for this introductory post.

My plan is to either learn Flash and do the normal 48-hour compo, or (if I don’t manage to learn enough to do it) do the jam in 48 hours (as I don’t have more time) and just copy and paste a lot of code, but make the graphics and stuff myself. If anyone knows some good Flash CS4/CS5 and AS tutorials (no Flixel/Flashpunk/FlashDevelop though, it (unfortunately)has to be Adobe Flash), please leave them in comments.

TL;DR: Learning Flash, and I’m in.

Best wishesish,

V

Tags: introduction

Join the merry slaughter!

Out of all 2784 theme ideas submitted for LD25, Sorceress filtered 1663 out by removing duplicates and spam.

Help out pick 100-ish best ones for next week’s voting!

I wanted to share the joy that is Ludum Dare with my local Warsaw Hackerspace (http://www.facebook.com/hackerspacepl), and though most (if not all) of them speak English fluently, when I wrote about it to the mailing list, I chose to write about it in Polish. I have translated the rules and the advices, and wrapped it in short, self contained form. I dunno if this’ll be of any use to anyone else, but hey – maybe it will. Without further ado, the text:

######################### Zasady Ludum Dare w skrocie: #########################

Na tydzien przed konkursem zaczyna sie wymyslanie tematu. Kazdego dnia wrzucane jest 20 pomyslow na temat (np Ewolucja, Mini Swiat, Zblizajaca sie Sciana Zaglady, Jednorozce, itp), na ktore mozna glosowac, kazdemu dajac +1, 0, badz -1 punktow. Po czterech dniach, w piatek, wybierane jest 20 najwyzej punktowanych, i z nich wybieramy najlepszy. Po podliczeniu glosow (niejawnym), temat jest oglaszany, i zaczyna sie (o 3ciej ranu czasu polskiego) 48 godzin na napisanie gry.

Branie udzialu w Ludum Dare jest proste. Tworzysz konto na ludumdare.com i tyle. Logujesz sie na konto, wrzucasz notki i swoja gre na blogaska.

Podstawy:

– MUSISZ pracowac sam
– caly kod i wszystkie media typu grafika czy dzwiek musisz stworzyc w ciagu 48 godzin **
– gra musi byc napisana na zadany temat
– wszystkie publicznie dostepne biblioteki oraz middleware sa dozwolone do uzytku
– wszystkie narzedzia developerskie sa dozwolone do uzytku (3dsmax, Photoshop, Flash, itd)
– zrodla musza zostac udostepnione

Kod gry napisanej w 48 godzin raczej nie zawiera niczego super tajnego. Chodzi tylko w razie gdyby byly watpliwosci i ewentualna dyskwalifikacja. Nie oznacza to ze kod musi byc otwarty, zachowujesz do niego wszystkie prawa. Jezeli nie chcesz wrzucic swojego kodu, zamiast Ludum Dare mozesz wziac udzial w Ludum Dare Game Jam, ktory ma nieco bardziej wyluzowane wymagania.

** :
> wlasne biblioteki i kod bazowy jest dozwolony, ale musisz to oglosic i podzielic sie nim ze spolecznoscia LD zanim zaczniesz robic gre. Zeby to uczynic, zrob notke na blogasku LD.
> fotografie i nagrania ktore robisz ludziom i rzeczom sa dozwolone, ale musisz je zrobic w trakcie trwania konkursu
> fonty, roznego rodzaju loopy muzyczne sa dozwolone jezeli masz do nich prawa
> generatory contentu sa dozwolone. ba, zachecamy do tworzenia ich i dzielenia sie ze spolecznoscia. SFXR, bardzo popularny generator efektow dzwiekowych zostal stworzony wlasnie na potrzeby Ludum Dare. od stworzenia zostal wykorzystany przez wiele gier indie.
> logo/intro screen ktory uzywasz we wszystkich swoich grach jest dozwolony (np ‘zrobione przez Super Duper Studio!’)
> portowanie na inne platformy (przede wszystkim na Windows) moze sie odbyc po 48 godzinach, ale pamietaj ze im dluzej czekasz tym mniejsza szansa ze inni ludzie zagraja w Twoja gre.

Gra jest oceniana przez spolecznosc LD, wedlug nastepujacych kryteriow:

– Innowacja – Niespodziewane. Uzywanie elementow w niezwykly sposob, lub cos na tyle innego ze zwraca uwage.
– Miodnosc – Jak dobrze bawiles sie grajac w gre. Popatrzyles na zegarek i zorientowales sie ze minelo 5 godzin?
– Temat – Jak dopasowana jest gra do tematu. Moze wykorzystuje go w jakis zaskakujacy, ciekawy sposob?
– Grafika – Jak dobrze wyglada ta gra, lub jak udany jest styl graficzny. Sliczna szata graficzna, doskonale wygenerowane lub geometryczne elementy, urzekajace obrazki programisty, itd.
– Dzwieki – Jak dobrze brzmi ta gra, lub jak udany jest styl dzwiekowy. Wpadajaca w ucho sciezka dzwiekowa, dopasowane do tego co sie dzieje na ekranie efekty, glos lektora, itd.
– Humor – Jak zabawna jest gra. Smieszne dialogi, zabawne dzwieki, a moze jest tak zla ze jest po prostu swietna?
– Nastroj – Historia, emocje, i odczucia ktore towarzysza Ci w trakcie gry
– Ogolne – Ogolna opinia o grze, pod kazdym istotnym dla Ciebie aspektem.
– Spoleczne – Blog, zdjecia, video z tworzenia gry. Wszystko co zostalo zrobione ponad tylko napisanie gry.

Poza tymi wszystkimi jest jeszcze kategoria ‘Zajebiaszczosc’. W im wiecej gier zagrasz i ocenisz, tym wyzsza ta punktacja.

Nie ma nagrod poza duma z utworzenia wlasnej gry. No i popularnoscia wsrod lasek (badz laskow), ktore to uwielbiaja ludzi umiejacych tworzyc wlasne gry.

Gra ktora zrobisz nalezy do Ciebie, Ludum Dare i organizatorzy nie klada reki na tym co stworzysz.

PORADY:

– Zeby dotrzec do jak najwiekszej ilosci ludzi, najlepiej tworzyc gierki webowe (Flash, Unity, Flixel, Flashpunk, HTML, itd). Latwo w nie grac i sa niezalezne od systemu operacyjnego.
– Nastepnym w kolejce co do zasiegu jest Windows. W LD bierze udzial duzo Macowych i Linuxowych developerow, ale sa w mniejszosci.
– Nie ma ograniczen dotyczacych jedno badz wieloosobowych gier, ale dla wiekszosci ludzi latwiej bedzie grac w jednoosobowe gry.
– Installery windowsowe (MSI, EXE) sa ok, ale uwaga: niektorzy ludzie nie lubia installerow! wersja spakowana ZIPem powinna ich zadowolic.
– Downloady powinny byc samodzielne. Potrzeba dossania Pythona, PyGame, runtimow MSVC, XNA czy innych dodatkow odstraszy duzo ludzi (to jest glowny powod dla ktorego webowe gry sa takie popularne)

######################### ######################### #########################
(tlumaczenie by mantis, sorry za ewentualne bledy, wszystko robione w dobrej wierze itd)
(translated by mantis, sorry for any errors, everything’s been done in good faith etc)

Jezeli chodzi o narzedzia, polecalbym uzycie czegos co dobrze znacie. Najwiecej gier pada bo ludzie nie znaja technologii ktora uzywaja w trakcie tworzenia gry, i duzo czasu zjada im uczenie sie jak wykorzystac narzedzia, czasu ktory powinni poswiecic na robienie najzajebistszej gry swiata. Jezeli chcesz uzyc czegos nowego, wykorzystaj te dwa tygodnie ktore zostaly do konkursu zeby nauczyc sie jak te narzedzia obslugiwac.

A wlasnie, narzedzia. Jezeli dopiero zaczynacie tworzenie gier, obejrzyjcie te strone:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/tools/

Osobiscie bardzo polecam SFXR/BFXR do tworzenia dzwiekow, GraphicsGale Freeware do tworzenia grafiki 2D, i Blendera do grafiki 3D (chociaz ja strasznie sse jezeli chodzi o grafike 3D, wiec na szybko wole sie opierac na proceduralnie tworzonym contencie, l-systemach, perlin noisach i innych takich).

———————–

And that’s it. See you in Ludum Dare 25, and let there be plenty of great games!

Viewers, look below. Participants, post a comment with a link to your live video stream.

Hello everyone, i just found out about this site, and i think its great for indie game developers. I am kind of new to  game developing. I did some programing in java, and i still am. I am working on a simple raycaster dungeon exploration game, i am still working on the engine but i have some problems. If anyone is willing to help, please comment below, i will be very thankfull. Sorry if there are some mistakes in this text, im not really good at english. I just wanted to say hi to everyone!