Okay, 9 hours in, gonna sleep now…
I’m making a shmup, it’s 3d (though until I get some nice textures and particle effects going, it doesn’t really look interesting…), and the premise is that you control a cargo ship of some sort with powerful magnet/tractor beam-ish tech, so you can “force push” enemies into each other (I’m using bullet for some fancy physics), or pull an enemy in to use them as a shield and use their weapon to destroy other enemies.
Here’s an early shot:
I’ve decided upon my genre/game/application/whatsit. It’s going to be a fairly gruesome platformer done in a film-noir style. Assuming I get time for art, that is.
As it stands, I spent four hours implementing a verlet physics engine, two hours implementing collision detection, and finally started on gameplay during the last hour. I can create levels with arbritrary collision geometry, put ragdolls into the level, throw them around, and most importantly, dismember them!
This all fits into my grand game plan where you are required to dismember enemies and use their heads, legs, arms, or tentacles (aliens, maybe?) as weapons.
The artwork is currently all stick-figure, but the code is already written allowing me to replace the sticks with graphics. All I need to do is draw something.
.
In lieu of awesome graphics, here are some awesome ragdolls. Naturally they look better in action.
The ragdoll being punched or kicked or shot in the chest:
Ragdoll being dragged around a level:
Dismemberment!
So I’ve decided on a name, and I’ve got my background rocks into the game (though they don’t scroll yet). I give you The Lair of Fungal Wonder:
I think the lower foreground is a bit too similar to the background, but that’ll probably be less of a problem once I add the fungi and the background rocks start moving parallax-ly.
After spending the morning working on all the ‘back end’ boring stuff, I’ve got the map rendering with some items on the floor (torches). The lighting system is also working.
Now I’ve got all this basic stuff done, I’m starting to get really excited about my game although I haven’t thought completely about the design yet.
So far it’s like this: you’ll be exploring some ancient tomb hunting for treasure but there are also bandits who want to steal it. I want to be able to add some puzzles and traps and more of an element of stealth than fighting (hence the darkness and torch stuff). To fit in with the theme “enemies as weapons”, you’ll be able to”read their minds” and see what they can see every now and again (probably in random flashes when something significant happens on their end e.g. falling into a trap). So it’s kind of like your secret weapon against them (and it also is them). Hopefully that is enough to qualify it :p.
Anyway, enough talking. Back to the programming and graphics design (it’s all typical programmer art sadly!)…
Ok, here’s a screenshot of the single graphic I have drawn and the window I have got it appearing in:
I tried to get Felix to design me a game, but she hates the theme.
Tags: cat, first screenshot
I’m gonna try and participate again for a change.
And my latest experiment shall be developing the game in pure OpenGL. Also, structuring it in such a way it is easily portable to an iPhone. I just got an iPhone you see, and I am somewhat smitten with it. So in celebration of me having a new gadget, I shall make a game that is hopefully easily ported! 😀
Here is a random screenshot. It shows some red lines which I think will be the world boundary, a green rectangle which is probably going to become a circle eventually and indicates the player character, and a blue line, which is the path the green circle is following.
First screenshot!
Actual gameplay? None yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something as I go along. 
A fairly slow start, game ideas slowly coming together, an I decided to make something isometric this time. Which unfortunately means that I need to do more art usual… Very placeholdery iso tiles for now, until I get some gameplay together, then I’ll have a go at redrawing (or maybe rendering) something a bit nicer…
Next comes the ‘fun’ bit… proper sorting of the tiles with moving objects like the player and enemies…
I am giving LD a go, to take a break from some work code. I plan to but might not finish, either way works for me.
SO! First, i came up with a concept : Angry sentient code. Their enemies are the programmers (for making the code primitive).
, They attack in an army formation, converting programmers to their langauge, converting teams to their cause. Subtle domination – they will take over the world!
Then, a mechanic : Eufloria/Bladestorm/Top down unit control.
Im avoiding mockups until i have gameplay as i have a tendency to get distracted in the art.
For now, here is where i drew the logic out (it explains a lot more of how the game works).
The image is quite big, and i would type it but im in a hurry so Read this instead
Draknek gave me a makefile that takes a screenshot every minute. Why it was a makefile I have no idea.
I wrote a proper shell script to do this (fully configurable) which does stuff better.
Download it here if anyone is interested.
Finally we’ve got a title for our game!
Hi Everyone,
After a late start, this is the first screenshot of my upcoming game “HOME”:
The story is about a sole survivor in a spaceship floating in space, and he wants to go home. Weapons and shields are down after a hard battle, so all he has to defend himself with is a tractor-beam – which will allow the player to drag enemy ships/asteroids and throw them onto other enemies.
(Very) Basic physics are already there, as long with basic sprite drawing and handling – hope to get it all up and running in this retro, vectorized style.
Girlfriend has made Lasagne, so soon, eating!
Thanks! I’ll be happy to hear comments!
Daniel
After a few hours of brainstorming, I’ve got an idea that is simple enough. So…
I have to go now, so after 9,5 hours of challenge, I’ve done:
Oh yeah! Smells like innovation. Innovation and placeholder graphics.
Desk
Food
Yesterdays birthday party only cost me onle nine hours! Could’ve been worse. 😉
I really like the theme although I only have one real idea as of now: I’m thinking of a “Mega Man”-esque platformer but — wait for it — with a TWIST! Stages would be controlled by two bosses with somewhat opposing “themes”. You would then get to control the enemies by shooting at them with a special weapon, for example. By using the powers of the enemies against each other would then allow you to solve puzzles.
The problem is that this is a very content heavy idea. The fun here would arise from good level design and I don’t know whether I could make enough levels to make it into a good game.
I’m gonna take another few minutes to maybe come up with a “simpler” idea, but then I better get cracking to at least have something playable in the end. 😉
In part thanks to Hamumu, who’s list helped me put a collection of mechanics into game form, I now have a decent idea I want to run with. (not like last time where my idea changed like 12 times)
Here’s some basic (and crappy) graphics I’ve made up for it.
As for no-game related things, I had small snack in the form of Red Leicester sandwiches and a can or Red Bull.
ONWARD!
There’s an idea in here somewhere, but as usual I’m geting bogged down trying to the language I’m using (this time Javascript and the HTML5 canvas) to do what I want it to. I need to stop messing around and just get something controlable moving around on screen. But first to grab some festival food.
Really tight on time as got guests visiting us this weekend and so. So I’ll probably try to make a “few hour” entry. Will mean I’ll probably go for C# and .NET 3.5 or something like that. I do like the theme at least a bit. Got some idea I’m comfortable I’d be able to whip up fairly fast.. Good luck everyone!
Mmm sugary goodness!
Doughnuts and milk
Hey, some of you might remember me from the last mini LD. This is my first proper Ludum Dare and I’m having loads of fun so far.
Like the last LD, I’m going to be using Photoshop and Flash with AS2 (don’t feel confident enough with AS3 just yet).
I’ve been going for about 4 hours now, and I’ve got the basic collisions and sprites sorted. Here’s a screenshot:
My idea is this: the rabbit has a big cannon and he needs to kill the enemies on screen (of which there are currently none drawn) but he has no ammo. So he has to load the enemies into his cannon and fire them at other enemies to kill them. At first this will be pretty easy but the plan is in later levels you’ll have to make some much more difficult shots to hit them. I’m hoping to make those tiles destructible too.
I’ve got the cannon rotating and firing at the moment (but nothing fires out) and the collision with the tiles and everything works.
Hurrah for placeholder graphics, no?
Anyway, I’ve got basic enemy AI all tidy and everything so that’ll be very easy to both create and adjust. Now I need to make weapon AI, and then make the player thing move.
download here: Go Left to not die
It should be called “Go Right to not die” , but i was tired when i drew the logo, so thought i’d stick with it :/
Here’s a screenshot of the current status, after 7 hours of work.
Well, for now at least, let’s see how much of the day I’ll have off. My idea for enemies-as-weapons is as follows. You control a wizard who has two spells. A fireball which does some direct damage to a creature. And a zombification spell which resurrects bodies of fallen creatures as zombies loyal to their master. The game now has a few areas with creatures of different strength and you are to build up an army of zombies to face the final boss.
The screenshot below is how far I am right now after about 2 hours and also how the final graphics will look. It shows the wizard and some enemy creatures.
A ready to bake baguette with my own special pizza sauce and some cheddar. Mmm…
Going on, the next step is to get the background scrolling, then I’ll add the player’s ship and start adding fungi. Hopefully by the end of the day I’ll have the scanning and spore->weapon mechanics in and can spend tomorrow finessing things.
Tags: foodphoto
In a reverse of my usual process, the game currently looks interesting, but doesn’t do anything.
The plan is for an arena shooter style game, with you trying to influence a large battle between your minions and the enemy. The inclusion of the enemies as weapons theme is going to be fairly predictable. Instead of destroying enemies by shooting them, you enslave them to join your army. Then with alternate fire you can detonate all your current captured slaves, destroying all other nearby enemies. Destroying lots of enemies at once by detonating will give more score, but might leave your army vulnerable.
Notes drawn on bus on the way into Cambridge:
Other indie game devs hard at work at the Cambridge Friendship Club:
After some initial brainstorming in the morning I decided I would like to write something like this – A* search for Mario – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s3d1LfjWCI
The idea for the game is a platformer, where player doesn’t control the jumping character, but rather positions the enemies to slow down/kill the AI player. Basically Platform Keeper. With progressing levels the AI will be smarter.
I did some progress on the AI – currently it’s capable of finding platforms and progress to the right.
i just woke up and im ready to start coading!
i hoping for at LEAST 30th place in the comp 😀
i wish every one good luck on there game!
Tags: v
Well, I have only just come up with an idea and I might try to get it working in time for the deadline.
I was thinking of having some character/ship which moves around shooting controlling blasts at enemies which you can then control for a short time to blast other enemies.
Not very original I know, but hey…whatever works LOL
I am going to use freepascal for the game and a Pascal (Delphi) 2d engine called Hadron Games Engine (HGE)
Good luck all with your entries!
cheers,
Paul
…I have made progress on the graphics side of things! (Also, it took me 3 hours to get sound working, not 5.)
Turns out that I spent a lot of time wrestling with the code where the problems were in the .bmp converter (I was loading the two nybbles in the 16-bit image around the wrong way and then putting the colour information into bitfields around the wrong way, too), although it goes without saying that I also had plenty of mistakes in the VDP code itself.
I’ve yet to get sprites working, and there are still more flags & stuff in the VDP registers which aren’t (but should be) implemented.
So here it is! http://pubacc.wilcox-tech.com/~greaser/stuff/ld18/gm-d002.jar
And now it’s half past Sunday and I have to be up early for church so I really should go to bed. Good night!
So here are the first screenshots off the game, the basic collision, shooting and particles are functional.
Progress screenshot
Ill try to make a puzzle platformer with jello enemies since im not sure if i can manage any advanced Ai in this point. There are these pillars of ooze creatures which hold different weapons. You’ll destroy the enemies in your path trying to find more ammo in the goo monsters. You’ll win the game when you find a good with a nuclear bomb inside which you have to expolde to advance in to new levels.
If im fast enough i migh make some “shooting” mosnters allso but we’ll see.
I just scaled down the graphics and realised how much better it looks. I’ve been drawing some more item graphics (that little golden cup is the treasure you are searching for) and a player graphic (yes it sucks). I need to make the lack of light cause entities (such as the player and the treasure cup) to become darker. Now I need a few more graphics (traps, other treasures, ladders, bandits) and then I can actually get some work done on the real gameplay. My aim is to get most of that done today, so that tomorrow I can focus on polishing it off (menu system, adding some sort of GUI for your inventory/score) and adding some levels to play through.
Yeap that’s how far I got into 2 hours, Doesn’t look all that impressive I know, but thats the only way to avoid over-stress.
I haven’t had the chance to formalize my entry, so here we go!
I’ll probably be using my usual basecode of C++ and SDL with many little libraries. They can be found at my website:
http://code.bluedinosaurs.com
So… I don’t have a game design yet. Heck, it was my theme suggestion! I should’ve been ready.
Wow, everyone seems to be way ahead of me! Your games are all looking awesome! Here’s a shot of what I’ve got so far, just some art:
Well, thanks to some stormage, I haven’t had an internet connection since yesterday afternoon. I just now saw the theme. Internet is still out, so don’t expect any updates from me during the compo. I may not even be submitting a game if I can’t find a way to upload in time.
The theme is great, and I’m looking forward to playing the games, regardless of whether or not I can submit something.
Have fun!
Update reporting in! Intersect point is working now so forcing the enemys away should be possible now.
A few enemys!
as you can see a healt filled lunch!
Pate, cucumber cheese. what else could a man want?!
Good morning Ludum Dare!
Managed to catch about five hours of sleep–my regular nightly amount for most LDs.
I was thinking–if timelapses are fun after the compo to watch they are certainly fun to watch during a break while the compo is going right? 😀
Before I head over to the Portsmouth NH Ludum Dare meetup I figured I’d render out the timelapse of me creating my first playable prototype (always an important milestone for me) in the first four hours of the competition.
Not sure if you can embed videos here so here is the link:
So I finally cleaned my desk. You might think I didn’t, but I did. Really!
Also got an idea that involves wandering enemies, explosions and chain reactions… I’ll see what I can do with it :).
Tags: deskphoto
That is one ugly asteroid...
My intention is to create a scrolling shooter with very little shooting involved. Instead, you will use a grappling hook (behind the blue ship) to grab enemies and throw them at each other. So far, I have a few graphics, a small physics engine, and no sounds.
It takes some time to get used to the hook’s controls, so I might have to make a way of shooting the enemies instead of throwing them at each other. Or I might not. We’ll see.
Oh, and hopefully there will be some awesome explosions when I’m done.
My game doesn’t suck yet. But don’t worry. It’ll start sucking soon.
Different souls give you different powers. For example, red souls let you explode. Blue souls let you jump higher. Yellow souls don’t do anything yet.
Progressing nicely.. Got my “characters” drawing and basic frame loop somewhat set up. If things keep up, I can keep to my schedule. The name of the game I’m working on is “Psi Keepers”. In the game there will be enemy units that move closely towards the player and shoot rarely. If the player gets hit by a bullet or hits an enemy, it’s game over. The player controls a single character that can move and use psi powers. Moving will be with the keyboard (WASD or arrows) and psi powers will be with the mouse. With the psi powers the player can capture one or more enemy units (a circular are which will be where the posession will happen). The captured units will move towards the mouse cursor and shoot rapidly. These bullets will not harm the player but will harm other non-controlled enemy units. So in essence, you use your awesome psi powers to make the enemies shoot each other. No idea how well this idea holds up, but lets see..
Okay so I’ve been working pretty hard away at the program all day today and I don’t really seem to be getting anywhere, but 1 day, 17 hours, 11 minutes, 34 seconds left according to the Ludum Dare site. I’ll give some updates about what they gameplay will be like once I have a few screenshots up. I will say this though, there will be a level editor available for it.
Thought I would update now I have a basic scene and a controllable player. See for yourself:
Use left and right keys to navigate.
(hmm gotta play it on my site for some reason)
Here –>http://mikecann.co.uk/ludum-dare/ludum-dare-hour-11/
Next step is a gun and destructible terrain, and not forgetting particles!
At the Cambridge jam, so far my progress has been slow. This is not good. But I did find time to make this lovely montage of what I’ve been up to.
Really need to crack on with the actual game now. Hopefully update with some gameplay shots in a few hours.
Progress is slooow, but that’s okay – it’s still early! My game stars a robot… and it’s currently leaning towards some sort of low rent stealth-em-up, but so far there’s just the ability to slide around and fight with the camera. Hurrah! 😀
Meanwhile, my game is non existent.
Here’s today’s tea and coffee so far.
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
Waiting for lunch. Mmm. Lunch.
After about 6 hours straight messing with the platform engine, the graphics, and … pretty much everything, I think it’s safe to say this theme isn’t for me. I’m sorry guys, I tried really hard, but I don’t think I’m gonna get anywhere in the time frame. I could do the Jam, but I’m gonna be gone the extra day anyway so it doesn’t really matter.
Oh well, it’s not entirely a loss right? I still have this “awesome” (Awesome is subjective) intro I made!
CLICK ME??? (aka the download link)
f4 – fullscreen
esc – end
Best of luck to the rest of you, hopefully you won’t run into the same fate as me. 😉
Here’s my first quick progress update!
I’m calling my game Rainbow Hero – here’s the main menu screen and some gameplay screenshots:
#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */
I’m trying to make an arcade puzzler similar to bomber-man, but using enemies as weapons – this will literally work by walking up to an enemy, mind-controlling it (using your Rainbow Super Power, which Double Rainbow Zombie accidentally gave you while kidnapping your girlfriend) and then using the controlled enemy’s (generally destructive) ability to overcome other enemies / obstacles in the level.
Unfortunately I have to go watch sports and pretend to like it now 
– so more progress will only happen later tonight… Hoping I can get all the gameplay building blocks done by midnight, then grab some sleep and start adding content tomorrow.
Old game had to be abandoned. The code got really,really messed up.
BRAINSTORMING !!
And here’s lunch. Unfortunately I ate most of it before I remembered to take a photo.
Trying to make a simple 2d maze generator for my idea. This is about four hour’s work
Hmm.
Please don’t let me call this game Ludumzilla!
I’m at CB2indies in Cambridge UK, making my 48 hour game with cool people. Here’s some photos below, taken on my awesome webcam 😉
In my game, you are the mayor of a big city which is being trampled by Godzilla-esque monsters. You need to hypnotise the monsters to make them attack the others, and different monsters are good against different other monsters so you have to think strategically.
Got the train in from Wiltshire to Cambridge early this morning and started coding on the train. Good times
Had a load of things to do this morning/early afternoon (didn’t know about the competition until around 10pm last night) so haven’t’ started anything yet, and I’m out tonight, but have around 5 hours now to get this under way.
The plus of not getting any coding time this morning is that the ideas have had plenty of time to develop, and I’ve now settled on one which I’m really happy with. It involves a monster juicing machine. Fun times!
Going to put together some placeholder graphics and my goal is to get the basic game mechanics in place before beer-o-clock, then, hangover permitting, I’ll have most of tomorrow afternoon and evening to bring it all together. This might end up being a jam entry.
After I was told by someone that I barely know, and had only talked to for the first time today that my artwork was awful, I knew I had to up my game. Here’s another in progress shot:
Also, some music!
I’ve got Flex and Flixel working properly now. (Thanks to the fine folks on IRC for their patience with my impatience)
I also have a playable demo ready. All you can do is fly the little ship around, but it’s not nothing!
If you want to play with it, the demo’s here. (Plays in the browser, opens in a new window/tab)
Here’s a screenie, as well:
I’ve spent my morning/early afternoon coding generic things that I’ll need whatever game I end up making. I also drew a ninja while trying to think of something.
The two ideas I’ve had is the (probably standard) possession/mind-control based game idea or a side-scrolling beat ’em up where you can only counter attack, Aikido style, possibly throwing them into another enemy in the process.
This theme doesn’t seem to be being as nice to me as I thought it might be.
Wifes made me a lunch! It is delicious!
wifes-built tortillas!
Tortilla and chili!
Basically, sometimes your Ludum Dare is like lunch. You eat and eat, and then it’s gone. Same deal.
Oh and I am making a game too. I have spent all day debugging HingeJoints in Unity. No idea what I’m doing. Basically.
GOOD LUCK!
Tags: sometimes the tortilla eats you, sometimes you eat the tortilla
Just finished my lunch:
Good chicken takeway…
Anyway, got the tilemap working, which is read from a text file…
The blue thing on the right is the castle… need to change the colors, looked better when I was drawing it… Maybe swap the rock for trees for “impassable” and use grey for the castle walls…
Anyway, now to get the army moving…
Tags: foodphoto
screen shot of title!
and the sun attacking you 😀
im glad i fixed a bug with the shooting in record time! (20 min)
Im liking other peoples game they are looking VERY good 😀
Tags: lol
HI!
The last 12 hours have been rather productive – although I slept for 5 of them.
The engine is half done – I have yet to add animations, and picking, but animations are prototyped as a skeleton. I’m going to go with frame by frame animation, using multiple cells in one texture.
Here is what i had for lunch: 
Its salad, with various leaves (the salad part is not important) with basil and chilli marinaded, pan seared salmon, a mustard and vinegar dressing of my own creation, a dollop of ceaser sauce, and a grating of chedadar cheese. I asked in the shop if they had salmon which was in the shape of an L and a D but they told me I would have to cut it myself, so I didnt bother.
Here is my desk:
The monitor on the left is the one which im recording, the one on the right is currently dedicated to IRC (still a time sink even when you arent chatting )
[edit] fixed images. Stupid imageshack.
My maze generator is starting to actually make interesting levels!
My idea is to make a dungeon crawler where you equip your defeated enemies. For example, defeating a Vampire allows you to equip his fangs, and so on.
Forgot to put up pictures of my breakfast, so he’s a double value food photo post:
On the left is my second breakfast (the first was cereal, it was a long morning okay, OKAY?!). On the right is my lunch, chorizo + caper pasta, lovely
Work on the game is going pretty well too. There’s a build containing most of the core game mechanics that I’m planning to use (but very little gameplay) up at http://jonathanwhiting.com/ld/18/build02.html
I’m really pleased about how well the shot enemy rolling thing turned out. With a bit of luck I might be able to make the game feel really punchy. For now, back to work I suppose.. There’s still loooooads to do.
Game is called Leave Me Alone, is about when life is overwhelming and you just want to be left alone.
Tags: leave me alone
Yes, placeholders, but enemies can explode and take out others (and the player, the burnt green square in this shot). About 10 hours worth of code behind this, looking forward to actually putting some levels together tomorrow.
Tags: progress, screenshot
So in the spirit of actually getting some gameplay into the game, I made a player class, and dropped it into the game. It’s a horrid colour, but it moves when you press the arrow keys, and jumps on command. It also doesn’t fall through the ground.
Note the blue box, which bounces down the hill, reacting and colliding realistically. I’m not sure what gameplay purpose it can serve, but now I’ve got the ability to use it, I probably should.
I need some enemies in the game too, so I recolored the player to green, made enemies red, and gave them a body (the blue stick figure). I also added a simple uppercut type attack where you knock the enemy out and send them flying.
Here’s a sequence of shots showing the attack, because it’s too much effort to record and upload video.
Now, well and truly time to get some sleep. Good night and happy coding!
Cooked a quite late lunch. Progress on my game is much more late then the lunch :).
So I’ve got the background scrolling nicely, I’ve got the player’s ship moving about, and I’ve added random fungi generation (currently from a pool of 7):
I’m not too sure about the design of the player’s ship though. I might change it if I have time after everything else. Slightly concerned also that the fungi don’t stand out enough from the background.
Next step is to add collision detection with the fungi, then fungi scanning, and spores.
A lot less of the graphics are placeholders now.
After some back and forth with house mates and a walk to the shops to let the ideas settle. I have a plan.
Unfortunately my ninja isn’t going to be much use with this one.
It shall be called Illusion and will be all about tricking your enemies into killing themselves, each other or basically anything but you.
Hi, my game will be Hokus the drain master. It will be based in Kirby and Yoshi. Hokus is a creature who has masterized all absorbing techniques at one point he can take all enemies powers and replicate them.
I think it will be a 2d plataformer but I am deciding yet.
At least I will show my workspace:
And a basic mockup of Hokus character:
So after spending a couple of hours working on an isometric tile sorting algorithm, I made the fatal mistake of spending time on art… I could have just kept my placeholders, but started messing with my Wacom Bamboo (these seem quite popular amongst LD-ers this time?) and try painting some rocks and grass…
Going to have to stop for dinner soon, but I need to hack together a little entity system as quickly as possible, and attempt to get some gameplay in, before spending a lot of time on player/enemy graphics…
Haha, I just introduced a sort of bug. Check out my Java applet! Click and hold your mouse on a bird to see the spin bug.
Thought I should post a progress shot. Currently working collision detection and then will be getting onto more gameplay stuff.
Do you like? :D
Seriously need to fix my camera, and I’ll do one last attempt at a base environment before proceeding to getting all the play systems in place. Want to have a simple version of gameplay done today so that I can spend a good chunk of time on graphics.
I think I might focus on getting a quick dialogue and inventory system working, so that I have some tangible gameplay.
Alright, I’m going to give this theme a try with Flixel. I have come up with a hastily scrawled notebook page of ideas:
Hey guys, just wanted to show you some character art I’ve been working on:
My game is the story of an ant named Joe, who was captured by humans and placed in a anthill full of small arms, deadly for an ant.
Now it’s just a little more work!
See you guys later!
Just want to show you my draft for the gui. To get a feeling for sizes and the overall game.
Tags: gui
I’ve created the first tutorial level which is currently being loaded from a text file. Still need to display the tutorial hints along the top and make it so you can proceed onto the next level.
Once I’ve got all those done, it’ll be time for the enemies (this is now top priority so it fits into the competition theme!) and some basic AI for them. Right now they’ll probably just hinder you but won’t try to beat the level themselves.
end of day 1. play what i got so far here:
http://nyarlulabs.tumblr.com/wip
nothing too exciting, just learning as3/flixel (which is lovely!)
cursor keys = dance around, space = fling your partner away. knock down the other dancers. you get knocked down if you’re hit whilst already partnered. ;P
needs some AI. and sound. and lots of stuff.
After another burst of coding, I’m still with very little playable/visible things
Well, I have 1 day, 10 hours, 33 minutes, 49 seconds
to turn it into *something*
Our gameStats like menu, deathScreen and so on are working now. Parallel to the gameStats we are working on the first steps of the game-logic.
Here is a pic of our game. You have to conquer all the towers with your little Helgas!
Well, I am making progress.
Force fields are working, but gameplay is not much fun yet – I think I might need some spring physics… should be easy to incroporate. Here is a current screenshot, the yellow thing is the ship’s forcefield:
This is the Lasagne I had for lunch, and it gives me strength, thank you dear girlfriend!
In the meantime I made some music, it is atmospheric as I could make in 30 minutes, but it will work. I’ll upload it later…
Daniel
Not much to look at so far. But it’s starting to emerge.
I’ve been working on a new game design methodology that I call “PEWPEWPEW” (seriously). This will be my first game trying it, if it’s successful I’ll post about it. Kind of similar to Danc’s great description of the creative process at http://www.lostgarden.com/ It’s a different thing but it dovetails nicely with that.
Anyways, about the game. I was kind of thinking about doing more of an art game this time, but with the “Enemies as Weapons” theme lends itself so well to platformers and shmups. And I’ve always wanted to make a more-or-less straighforward platformer, something fiendishly hard like megaman2. So that’s basically where I’m going with it. There is a bit of a twist with the enemies-as-weapons thing, but I’ll save it. Hint: it’s like a horadric cube that eats monsters instead of items.
Anyways, I think I’ll have some stiff competition with a platformer, plus there’s a lot of catchup I have to do to people using flixel and stuff (i still haven’t written the tilemap yet), but that’s OK, and if it works I’ll fold it into my basecode for next time.
I wasn’t super exited about the theme when it was announced, but it’s growing on me. Best of luck all, looks like a lot of fun stuff is showing up.
Awesome dinner have been had!
Game is progressing well! Player can walk around and punch zombies right in the face. Once they’re on the ground, player can pick them up and hurl them at another zombie. This is how the player beats enemies of higher difficulty.
And I spend waaay to much time on tweaking blood and gore… 😛
Sorry. The playable build is a lot less fun than I had hoped and a lot harder to tweak. I don’t have time to start another entry. I guess I’ll see you guys for the next miniLD.
If all else fails, at least I have a good looking background. 😀
Today, I’m away all day. I did check the theme this morning and I’ve been thinking about what to make, but haven’t decided what to do yet.
Anyway, here are a few pics I made:
Spacenoid = Space Invaders + Arkanoid
So glad somebody is on the same wavelength you’ve got at least one vote Looks like once again I’m starting late as theme is not appealing to me (I’m not into action games).
First I had an idea involving gangsters but then I realized I lack the willpower to do all the graphics required in such a short time.
So here is a screenshot of babysteps of my second best choice, as you can see digging is involved, and bad graphics.
And sure, enemies will be weapons 😉
Here is my lunch, cola, bread and some Olivier salad
As for game/idea/progress here is a screenshot
Basically I am going for something top down with massive amount of creatures. Want to finish basic game mechanics and technical stuff today and spend tomorrow adding graphics and sounds and polishing it, may be adding some more features. Will see how it goes by the end of first day. On game mechanics front nothing special, did not got any particularly good ideas so going with what I got
Also setting is mostly undecided, initially wanted to go for insects but now thinking to switch to spaceships
Tags: foodphoto, screenshot
Did you say "BSG"?
I also have complete physics with 6 dof, and cool gamepad support. But appart from flying around an empty universe, there’s not much to do.
This feels so epic already!
Tags: screenshot
This is our first playable version! After you have started the game, you have to conquer all the towers. Therefore click on one tower and then on the tower you want so send your units to. After you’ve finished you move, press enter! Sometimes, specially in Ubuntu you have to mark the jar as executable. Right-click – permissions – Allow file executing file as program.
http://bazinga.nerco.de/LudumDare.jar
Hope you will enjoy your first version!
1 red bull
1 mountain dew
2 pints of pepsi
And I’ve ended with with the basis of a really boring shooter called “The NME is the weapon” which basically will only interest people of a certain age who like derivative shooters based on a single weak pun.
To improve matters I added lots of other weak puns based on popular song titles so if you want to see a level based on the combined premise of a Donovan song title merged with some classic Sultan of Pings FC lyrics and understand why shooting 23 sheep on a level called Wednesday 3am will trigger a 3am Eternal event you are in the right place. With added Sinclair ZX Spectrum style palette choices.
Man I’ve really limited my audiance. Still it’s got a level where you throw Doner Kebabs at Chavs who wouldn’t like that? Once what each of them are explained the concept is universal I’m sure. Think of them as Burritos and Red Necks or local equivalents where available and everything still won’t make much sense.
Baby is still asleep, eldest son is on the 360 and Wii and my perfect girlfriend is making a massive pizza that is about an hour away. I can spare about 5 hours tomorrow to finish off. What can go wrong?
Apart from the concept is alien to most people, the gameplay sucks and I have no gfx or sfx done yet
Got some more game logic in the game: the army now advances…
The army can only spawn in grass-tiles on the left side, and it advances choosing randomly a direction (up, down, right), prioritizing up and down (to avoid having too many “straglers”).
Took me longer than normal, since I did an XML system to be able to customize any unit… so adding new units, is just editing the XML file (data-driven code ftw!).
The sprite is traced from Oryx’s sprite pack from the TIG Assemblee competition (really like that pack)… I zoomed it in Photoshop than placed all pixels by hand in a new image, adding the small feet animation aswell… Think this is allowed and it looks much better than something that I started without a reference… Going to do that for the rest of the graphics, since it looks nice…
Now to get some wall-destroying logic going… The army will only attack the wall if he can’t move forward anymore (the army never retreats!).
Hi my game will be Dude that’s my bullet for now the basic idea of the game is that the hero is surrounded by enemies who shoot bullets, but he can’t. The only way for the hero to defend himself is to trick the enemies into firing at him, dodging the bullets so they hit another enemy. If I have time I will try to add some other interesting mechanics to the game.
This is a simple mindmap I made while thinking about the game. It is just a lot of random ideas, but maybe they can help someone who has trouble thinking of a game.
