Due to school and personal drama and other projects I have been absent from the game developer gig for a while. While I’ve stopped making smaller games and doing game jams I have been working on larger, non-game related projects.

Unfortunately I do not have screenshots to post, only this to say: Hopefully soon I will be back in the business when I have more time and motivation to do game Jams. Currently, I lack the motivation to host a mini LD which I am supposed to do in a couple of months. If things aren’t looking good, I might give up my placement. In that case, any one of you can take it… Or maybe I will do a contest or something 😉

Anyways, what I have been working on are short films, animations, larger game projects that will never be complete… etc. I might make a post soon about what I learned recently with third person game development and animation…. Sorry for being such a downer lol

Anyways, happy gaming <3

Hooray for being able to use the word team in that title! I’m working with two others in this project, which should be a fun experience.

We’ll be using Unity, which is not only awesome already but should help our experience in using it. Blender for modeling and probably BFXR for sound. Not sure how we’ll do music, but if nothing else there’s always abundant-music.com.

Still in the planning stages of a game, though something pretty good is starting to shape up. Going to stream to Twitch and drink many sodas. Best of luck to everyone!

Tags: mld53, start, Team

So I’ve spent the last 09hrs: 28min: 12sec at work on my MiniLD entry.

So far, so good – but it definitely needs a lot of work. I have some artwork done, a reasonable control scheme, and a number of reusable world-object classes for map creation. I still haven’t implemented all the textures that I have drawn, so please forgive the giant coloured-boxes that are meant to be trees, as well as the paper-white ground and no backdrop. These things are in the works. Oh, and there are some texture-splicing logic errors here and there – so things aren’t lining up all too well at the moment. Minor issues though.

After this, I next I need to focus on getting player/NPC interaction in place so that I can start implementing quests. Shouldn’t be too difficult – some simple x/y coordinate checks (to ensure the player is in range of the character), and some booleans to track quest progress. Hell, the code doesn’t have to be efficient after all! As long as it works I’m happy.

But that is a worry for later today. The sun is rearing its head, and my mind is numb. According to my trusty stop-watching-o-meter, I have a further 38.5 hours of time to work on my no-name-game. I just hope that I don’t waste too much time on sleep – I don’t want to hit the deadline with time to spare.

Off to bed with me. Happy coding everyone!

Tags: MiniLD #53

So, you know that game, Mad Libs? Lately, I’ve started doing something very similar to get my game ideas.
Here’s an enticing screenshot from the last game I started with this format and input from tacospice. It’s not yet finished:

… and then zaniness ensues when the Jolly Borg come to spelunk the world!

Here’s what I need for my MiniLD game:

authority figures (such as “police”)
adjective x 6
event
location
noun x 4
pluralism (such as: bunch, group, herd, gaggle, flock… )
proper noun x 2
title
verb x 3

[via IRC: awsumpwner27 “accidentally” submitted vitriol, sorceress submitted bouncers and constellation, and Bcadren submitted Congress after that, so not sure if I can use it but I’ll try]

[Update: DONE! Woohoo! Thanks Jacob123, drnick, oranebeast, Pitzik4, awsumpwner27, sorceress and Bcadren!]

It‘d be totally was awesome if that a bunch of you swooped in and each contributed several of these in the comments until there‘s were none left. The fate of my game is was in your hands, Ludum Dare! 😀
Thanks!!!

Hey guys, Yahar.alc made a plug.dj community for djing whilst people create ludumdae games!

Go check it out!

http://plug.dj/ludum-dare-unofficial/

So ime done with the miniLD#53 , and ime overall pleased with the resualt (not so much with the dev part)

any way, if you guys cant master it (ive got to the point where a had so many guns my CPU could no longer handle it) i will make a sort of a  “walk-throe” (although the controls kind of have to come naturally).

*pc runs out of juice*

I defianayly will be looking  at polishing it up and release a post version with a more advanced upgrading system more enemies (along with better AI) and better graphics.

The problems i had while making this game: overall the development went smoothly,  and my 2 weak old game engine helped alot. however the engine lacked some things

1. alpha values (hard fix)
2. no way to render text(there was a way to combine java2D with the graphics used by my library, but not all functions worked(including drawString()) wich is sorta a 20 minute fix (hove never got around to it)

link:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-53/?action=preview&uid=38420

This is the first time we (Jod & I) are doing an LD together, been doing compo’s separately, but decided to kick of some real Team Action!
Also the first time that we participate in a MiniLD, but that shouldn’t matter much. We’re keeping to Jam-rules within Compo time.

Concept:
The theme is pretty OK! Unlike some LDs I saw good possibilities immediately. But with two people it takes more time to crystalize one. We looked to combine our strongest points: Storytelling (Jod) & Simulation (Joror).
We settled on a time-travel game where you try to prevent a worldwide apocalypse! You can make three small changes to the timeline, and see how that impacts the world over a 100 years, hoping to prevent the Bad Stuff(tm). A mix of simulation of world-powers & storytelling events to steer the outcome, and a protagonists’ perspective to boot!
So what happened 100 years ago? Well that was when the first human Awakened.

Work work work:
First thing: time is limited, ideas are grand. They collide. So we work hard and cut where we can at first. And key to that is a good work environment! Did I mention it is over 30 degrees (86 Fahrenheit for the imperialists ;)) over here and we’re in a loft appartment?

Snapshots:

Jorors workplace

Jod’s temporary workplace

Nomrific support. Jod’s a great cook!

First notes. Do you see the great evil?

Tags: food, notes, workplace

Competing in the Mini Ludum Dare #53 this year. Daan and I decided to work together on this one, keeping to Jam rules in Compo time.

Check out his first post here! It includes sketches and pictures of sandwiches!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2014/07/19/minild53-team-joda-kicks-off/

Tags: mld53

Just a quick report. Despite almost melting, we are still creating a game! We took a quick break next to the Spaarne, which kept us from melting. I don’t mind the heat, but trying to work in it is really taxing!

So far working together is turning out to be fun, but it does require a lot of communication! I can’t wait to see the moment where our work comes together and turns into a game!

I’ll leave you with a quick screenshot of the story in progress.

Tags: mld53, progress

For MiniLD 53, I’m making a Battleship game which can also transfer files.In the future, you can copy a file from one computer to another.

https://digitaldoge.duckdns.org/battleship/screenshots/1.png

So, thats my very first LD and I am gonna to make something easier for the first time.
For some time I wanted to modify classic block breaker in some unusual way like magnetic walls or something, but now I got a brand new idea. What if you had no pad to bounce ball back to bricks? What if you had only a spaceship which prevents ball from falling out of screen with it’s laser beams?
At the moment I already have basic logic and levels finished, but gameplay needs some improvement and so do sounds, music, scores and stuff.

If anyone cares, the work is done in C++ with combo SDL+OpenGL and my own crafted libraries for easier setup, loading and blitting. And it works only under Windows (I have no linux installed so even I actually can compile it for linux, there’s no way to test it).
Signing off, so best luck to everybuddy!

It’s really bad.

So that was a few hours ago, and since then the A.I. has improved. It’s still not good, but it’s following the player decently.

Outside of that, we’ve gotten an idea in and started working on it for a while, having spent the majority of the day figuring out how player movement will work. Not much is getting done, but it’s nothing to fuss over. If nothing else, valuable experience will be gained working with Unity and each other, and in my case using Git.

Next up is working with raycasts to figure out a good way to accomplish base construction. The plan in the game is for you to be some guy in a field who needs to build a base so he can fly into space to get away from baddies. If time allows, you’ll also have to fight space baddies before getting away by upgrading speed.

Odds are, the full idea won’t finish in 48 hours, but we’ll see what we can do. Also, in addition to my stream my friend is also streaming development occasionally. Find him here if you want to watch!

Tags: artificial, base, friend, intelligence, mld53, stream

Suprisingly, during development of my minild game, (not finished yet) I created accidental cell automata. Although unpredictable it works and it uses a specific trick. Due to my limited range of gamemaker knowledge, therefore the inability to create a “is this over there” function made me think outside the box. Literally.

The trick

The cell creates a “drone” of sorts that goes either left, right, up or down until it collides with a specific block, if it’s the right block the drone deletes itself and turns that block into the new cell. All of this happens whilst the drone is invisible.

so that’s my little trick and my “go” at cell automata. It’s not really cell automata but it does what it needs to do.

– orane

So I’m 24 hours into my first MiniLD and it is going pretty good so far. I decided to do something different than I normally do with a more story driven game but it is going well so far.

• Animations are done
• First scene is done
• Basic Mechanics are done
• Story is incomplete
• Narration isn’t done
• Dialogue isn’t done

No spoilers on the story but I’ll give some screenshots 😉

Our protagonist standing at the edge of the first level/scene

Tags: MiniLD, Story Driven

It is a period of nonexistent civil rights. Piriform bouncers are trying to maintain the Congress, but the Ethmoid Constellation are having none of it! They keep running the whole of Space! Our hero, the malformed Rutherford clone, must use his parasympathomimetic compound-crossbow to defenestrate the bad guys!

The final friar, Jiggawatt, uses his friendly vitriol to contemplate some serious llama!

Ay – up, fellows Ludum Darers!!!

Just lettin’ you know I am back from my 10 – day trip, just in time to make MiniLD #53 game ( I had few hours to make it!!!), and I made it, so check it out:

The quest for the capsule!!!

Some progress to report:

• Simulation of world powers is running.  Needs some tweaking and initial values, but it runs. Excellent work by Daan.
• Graphical representation of the state of the world with regards to the largest powers (Russia, China, Europe and America) works and is a surprising amount of fun.
• Main storyline is written except for the endings.
• Story events and outcomes written. Needs tweaking after being run through the simulator.
• Some simulation events written.
• Graphical interface to show event-outcomes still needs to be done. Fingers crossed!
• Ctulhu is surprisingly cute.
• It is a lot cooler today. Thank god. Back to work!

Maps! Controlled countries!

Tags: miniLD53, mld53, progress

I know the event is not finished yet, but I’ll write it anyway.  I have nothing else to do at the moment 😛

It is the second time I hit the “submit” button and this time I think I can consider myself proud of this. My first game didn’t go very well. Lots of bugs, missing levels, features not present due to the lack of time. Things that happen to all of us during our first experiences. But this time I think it is different. I used a different approach. Instead of hard-coding the game for two days without any break like the nerd-est person in the world, I prefered writing a book-like game. No more advanced breath taking bind blowing physics (ha-ha) and graphics (double ha-ha, but it actually took me half a day and a lot of energy just to draw the player animations, lol).

Just THREE simple images(I drew them in two hours) and text. A lot of text. It was pretty simple to display it on the screen, since I was using my beloved SFML library (I fell in love with it at first sight 😀 ).

So… what is the text all about? Knowledge, my friends. Knowledge, and a bit of quantum physics.

Will we ever run out of new things to discover? I think it is the same question as “will we ever run out of new music?”. I don’t know. Who knows. We just know that everything, every discovery, even the “impossible” ones, like finding out more about the dark matter, for example, CAN be achieved.

They say our imagination is our limit. I don’t think it ‘s true. Maybe it’s like knowledge. Like music.

All we know for sure is that we have to keep moving, never stop, don’t look back for too long, since maybe we are the only human beings in this universe who can take the full controll of it.

That’s all.

Oh, and yeah, I quoted A.Einstein in the last part of the game, regarding the implications of quantum phyics in the macroscopic world.

I hope you like this entry and please, the most important thing: let me know what you think.

Thanks.

See you the next ludum dare 😀

Hi all. So we are approaching the end of our allotted time – midnight. Correct me if I am wrong though, but we can finish up later than the 21st at 00:00, right? I have about 10 hours of my 48 left, and I would love to ACTUALLY use all of them.

My game (which still has no name) is coming along though. Lots of dark elements, world exploration, and deep(ish) quotes. The basic framework is solid – it’s basically down to hardcoding each worldspace and its logic. Oh, and some final pieces of art; all this hand-painting is taking its toll on time though. My approach to the theme may not be to everyone’s taste, but then again it’s my game so you can all shove it . 😛

A strange version of our world, where you play as a small bird on a quest.

Because this is my first LD experience, I have come to a a few realisations – the main one being that I am far too pedantic about performance-oriented and neat code. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve wasted  code blocks because they are simply unneat, or wasting time of non-gameplay breaking bugs/control issues. If it doesn’t feel perfect, it bugs the hell out of me. But I’m learning to ignore it in this case – there’s no time for OCD-esque behavior here.

Happy coding everyone. See you on the other side.

Tags: MiniLD #53

I had a lot less time this weekend than I hoped I would, so it looks like I won’t make the deadline. I learnt a lot about some of Game Maker’s more advanced features and I’ll continue to work on the game until its finished. Looking forward to seeing what everyone else can do!