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!