This MiniLD hits a good weekend, so I’m planning on doing something this time. And somehow this seems a bit more relaxed than the big LD lately, not too many people to actually follow what others are doing.

Generally my LD:s have been painful because I’ve always tried to think of something too out of the box with the theme and in the end run out of time to actually implement the cool parts. So this time I’ll just do a really simple desing without much innovation in it. I’m thinking of some kind of a Robotron/Tower defence combo/clone with lot’s of blood and guts. One screen, player war dude vs. increasing amount of enemy war dudes, just basic stuff. But hopefully get it done to the level where it’s actually fun.

My self imposed schedule:

Day 1 (sat): Setup project, implement rules, objects, controls

Day 2 (sun): Do graphics, sounds and effects

quick, name the most annoying part about RPGs…

bingo, Random Encounters every two seconds!

My basic random encounter system is working, but it runs about 30 times a second, but hey, I can get that tweaked!

Anyway, I might not get any story done, but at least with the random encounters done, I just need battle, levels, money, and shops, and that should be enough for the Mini LD!

No updates yet, as the changes aren’t visible, but there’ll be an update tonight, I promise!

FYI, the “Black Triangle” is a milestone for the programmer that nobody else knows/cares about, like outputting a black triangle on a black screen, it’s a huge achievement, but nobody notices it!

Tags: Black Triangle

I just uploaded a demo of my entry Guns for Roses on my site so try it out! Remember though, it’s nowhere near complete. =)

Try it out!: http://shard123games.weebly.com/ludum-dare.html

Tags: demo, shard123

This is actually my first time Im making a game for a competition! I had never really attempted since I always felt nothing I could make would be good enough, but I’m quite confident for this Mini Ludum Dare

Im using game maker because it is so easy for making fast games! It will be a retro themed artillery game. The idea is to make the controls and concept as simple as possible but give the game a lot of depth and strategy.  Hopefully it will turn out very fun.

Im excited but also a bit confused. Is it okay to start work before the Mini Ludum Dare begins?  If so, how much pre-ludum dare work is acceptable?

I have an idea for what kind of game I want to make, but I’m not 100% certain about how successful I might be.  I have been wanting to test out Unity more and the idea I have might have quite a bit of content, so between how much might need to be figured out and how much needs to be made I might not have enough time.  That being said, I still intend to try to make something.

The idea I had was to present a different perspective on war.  You play as a defenseless civilian in a war-torn area.  There are soldiers, tanks, artillery, and bombers throughout the area battling each other.  The city is being destroyed and crumbling around you.  All you need to do to ‘win’ is to survive to the end of the battle.

Tags: MiniLD #28, unity, war

I decided to go with a more or less linear shooter, with the variation that rather than have direct control over a single unit, you have more strategic controls over a team of units. I still like my other idea better (the god game where you try and keep two warring nations from destroying each other), but I was having some major design difficulties with making that work. When you are doing well, the game basically consists of watching not much happen, and when you are doing poorly there really isn’t the feedback to know how to do better. Going to shelve that idea and maybe work on it later!

So, how to do formations?  I have some pretty good ideas of how to give enough control to the player to really be in charge of the outcome of the game without it being challenging or turning into a click fest. I’ve started coding, but making the units actually work is going to be interesting. In addition I don’t think I really have much time to actually work on it

I will consider it a success if I can get the 3 formations I have planned to even work properly, and at least have some opposition that makes the gameplay necessary.  I have my doubts.

Here are the 3 formations:

Line – the standard formation. Think revolutionary war. Everyone lines up and fires at the enemy that appears in their sights. You can control the position and spread of the units. Best used in situations where the enemy is also in a line.

Circle – your units stand in a circle aiming in all directions. Most obvious use is when you are surrounded.

Concentrated – Sort of a diamond shape, with your units all aiming at the same spot. For when you really need to bring the firepower!

I’m sure I could keep going, but this is probably as far as I can get. I’ll probably have 2 types of enemies, a tough and a grunt, and they’ll basically come in waves and with very simple patterns. If that.

Here’s my repository. I’m coding in Clojure, which is going to be…interesting.

I have no idea what I’m doing with the theme yet. This is extreme writer’s block. According to the repository, it has something to do with a block moving around…

Ohai thar.

So I’m entering this time round, and it’ll be my second forty-eight hour stint, the first having been LD #20.

• Language: AS2 (Please don’t judge me! :P)
• IDE: Flash CS3
• Any extra tech: sfxr, probably.

I’m going to enter Mini LD #28, with hopes of writing a fun game that’s playable. I have an advantage this time, which is two good ideas and I’m not ill!

I expect I’ll be using HaXe/Swfmill (flash compiler), the GIMP, SFXR (or BFXR) and possibly Inkscape/Blender.

I’ll probably use my personal (messy) utility code too: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16895250/tools2.zip

[Insert cheesy locked-n-loaded joke here]

Hey LD48ers,

Just wanted to post a quick heads-up about my cross-browser Javascript game dev library, jsGameSoup.

I think you will find it a very quick way to make a game and get it in front of players! For example, I made this demo in a few hours.

Have fun!

Tags: dev, html5, library, web

The units go into formation and shoot. For now there is only the line formation, but you can toggle the direction the line faces by pressing the direction keys. The units shoot at a steady rate, but stop shooting when you change directions, so you can’t just go back and forth to quickly shoot all directions. I might add a timer to prevent you from changing to rapidly, or I might leave it. Right now with the small number of units it kind of just feels like r-type Not that that’s a bad thing but it’s not quite what I was going for.

The units only move forward when they are facing to the right, so you can stop to fight things off and then set them marching forward.

Nothing to shoot yet, but that comes next. Then I find out how tough I can make it to force you to need to change your formation.

Im ready, and armed with: Stencyl, sfxr, & Paint.net

My idea is, that you control a dude in this “peaceful” environment, and you evade mines, and bombs and mortars(?).

So far so good. My entry for Mini LD 28 is coming together pretty well, it already has ships, guns, working collision detection and a simple AI. It also has nice-enough graphics and some particles.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16895250/miniLD28/lunch%2030%20july.swf

Hey, this is my first Ludum dare.

I am going to develop a game for android phones/tables cause that is what i want to learn right now.

I’m looking forward to see all the results =)

I will use:

Andengine (www.andengine.org)
Box2d extension
Inkscape.

Yes that is pretty much it.

good luck y’all

So here comes a screenshot showing first progress. It’s still some steps apart from being a game. Just created basic class-structure and positioned sprites.

Next step is to add one round of fight with random/preset presets. After that the player interactions gets implemented. At the moment I’m unsure if I have enough time this weekend to really finish this game to a playable state. Btw, I figured out my project has a nice abbreviation: WotFF!

Yup, and I’m serious this time, the idea is pretty simple, you play the role of a Field Marshal in a tower-defense-ish game where you have to place mercenaries and other obstacles along the path of peaceful protests, If you follow the last events in the middle east you’ll easily see where this idea came from.

My gear:-

• Programming languages: C# -Maybe I’ll have me some JavaScript as well-
• Engine: Unity -With Monodevelop of course-
• Graphics: 3D Studio Max & Photoshop & Inkscape
• Sound: SFXR & FL Studio -probably Audacity if needed-

Now let’s rawk…

OK WAR it is I’m in!

Starting late but will limit myself to 48 hours from now 30/07/2011 15:41 UK.

What interests me about WAR is not so much the battles but why they occure, so I’m going to try and make a game about WAR that focuses on the resources we fight over! So I’m going to rebuild/remake in Unity my Energy Island Conquest game which was a Ludum Dare 17 attempt made in flash.

That’s my main goal, my steps are…

Phase 1 – Mechanics and Gameplay – First 24 hours

1. Landscape Sea and Islands [Done 16:40]
2. Ship Movable
3. Marine Moving
4. Robots Moving
5. Shooting / Damage
6. Hubs / Decoding
7. Energy / Resources / Unlocks

Phase 2 – Polish Gameplay / Sound / Music / Models / HUD

Regular uploads to a webplayer version of the game as I progress!

That’s the plan… b4n

My (male) partner is helping a friend of us to change houses, so I (weak female) am alone for coding at the moment. Thus I lost a lot of time creating a girly design that does not fit the theme at all. 😀

Anyway I wrote a few lines of code: I’ve done my memory idea for gathering “resources”. Like in Mass Effect 2 hacking passages, you see the symbols of the plate on mouseOver, until you click on a tile. Once you’ve clicked, you are in “hit” mode : if you can remember where the same other symbols where, you click on their tiles. If you find a different symbol or if you get 5 times the same one, the series ends and you earn X! resources.

I like this idea of a little “intellectual” challenge crossed with another more traditional game. I think I should add a limited-time dimension, with resources slowly decreasing or something, to stress the player.

But I have still no idea of what I could do with these resources. Maybe I could call them “Mana” and use them to cast some kinds of spells (yay! a war between magicians!)… And I still have to code a no-cheat system. For the moment, you can win the max amount of resources simply by clicking 5 times on the same tile. -_-

Hexagons ! Meanders ! Beautiful symbols ! Girly design !

You can try it out if you want!

Tags: girly, hexagon

Wow, I can’t believe the next MiniLD already started!

I’m not sure if I’ll be entering a game this time around since this weekend is pretty packed for me. I might try to create a game in a few hours and see how that turns out since the theme (WAR) sounds like it’ll result in a fun project.

Good luck to everyone participating and I look forward to playing your games!

I got to blackscreen late Friday night, but knew I was expected to go into work. While laying in bed, frustrated with work and not having the ability to join LD, an insane hack/idea popped in my head to complete my weekend work task in about an hour. Which to my luck has, mostly, succeeded. I could be working on the bugs it still right now but – I figured it mostly works and other engineers probably have better ideas at the areas I fail. Fast forwarding, my point is that I am now able to start working on my mini-LD project, something I’ve been looking forward to do since the theme was announced way back when.

So, here I sit, at 1pm Saturday, hoping that I my mini-ld project is mini enough to see through completion.