LD21 August 19–22, 2011

Finished in 48 hours!

15:18 and uploaded, not an official entry as it is based on my own start time!

Follow this link for the details, instructions and link to the game!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-28/?action=preview&uid=680

What went right, got the basic mechanics working and more gameplay than the original just by concentrating on the basics!

Got the control mechanism wrong should be mouse look 3rd person, got around it a bit by adding in a jetpack jump mechanic!

No Sfx/Music/Main Menu/Repeat Plays (without reloading browser ;o)!

With a template I could have done better or if I had gotten the control mechanism right the first time, spent far to long trying to tweek it when it just needed to be ripped out and replaced!

Bring on LD21! ;o)

 

Tags: unity

Mini LD #28 – Dodge! – Post Mortem.

Now it’s time for the shortest post-mortem you’ve ever seen.

I’m Done. You can play it here

THE END.

First level, easy.

Nah, jokes aside. This was one crazy experience that happened so fast, I didn’t really realize.

My game was made in 6 hours. Yesterday I worked from 6:30 – 11 pm and today from 11:30 – 1 pm.

What I created was greatly different from what I originally had in mind, but it turned out to be simple and fun to do. The basic concept was that you are being shot by soldiers and you can stop their bullets by pushing crates in front of them, this would make a very simple puzzle game. I started coding the player, with normal controls, but those felt to fluid for this kind of game, so I changed it into a movement working on a 32×32 px grid. This felt way better. Then I started working on the enemies, on which shot right and one which shot left. They worked out very fast and I implemented the possibility of death. Then came the crates. Rage. I tried to do my best, but they wouldn’t work out how I wanted, I only managed to make them pushable in one direction, I chose down for that. So the basic mechanics worked out. It was kinda fun already, but I still needed walls, and some kind of background. So I quickly drew a brick wall, which turned out to be a bit ugly, but I was kinda stressed out, because I didn’t know we would get extra time. The walls were solid, bullets worked like a charm with them. Then came the tileset, which I drew today. I was already late and when I asked Legacy I only had 1h 35min left to do stuff. So I quickly drew the tileset, designed cheap-skate levels and drew a game over, main menu and win screen with paint. I hacked everything together in the last few minutes and finally was able to submit.

And that’s the story of my 6-hour-fast-crazy-game-development-thingy-stuff-experience!

Also, if you REALLY need it, here’s a walkthrough!

Dodge! – Walkthrough

Comments

02. Aug 2011 · 02:07 UTC
I’m completely blown away by what you accomplished in six short hours. Congrats! You rock.

Ok I’m done

I technically still have about another hour left. I should go to bed, since I have things to do tomorrow and it’s 2:45 AM right now.

#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 */ Junk-Collage-010 Screen-shot-2011-08-01-at-2.40.20-AM Screen-shot-2011-08-01-at-2.40.18-AM
Screen-shot-2011-08-01-at-2.40.06-AM

Time Lapse Video

Moonbase Shootout: Texture Mapping Issues

So in Moonbase Shootout, my entrant for Mini LD #28, I ran into some texture mapping issues.

I'm on LibGDX (which was great to work with!), and here's what my model should look like, textured:

Ufo-should

Unfortunately, in-game, the textures didn't map correctly to the mesh.

As you see here, the stripe that should circle the UFO is actually on the bottom, and the purple dome doesn't sit flush.

Ufo-observed

Here's my texture:

Ufo-texture

And here's the offending code to load the mesh and the texture:

      InputStream in = Gdx.files.internal("data/ufo.obj").read();
      Mesh alienMesh = ModelLoaderOld.loadObj(in);
      in.close();

      Texture alienTexture = new Texture(Gdx.files.internal("data/ufo.png"), Format.RGB565, true);
      alienTexture.setFilter(TextureFilter.MipMap, TextureFilter.Linear);

Anyone seen this before?

Comments

JohnColburn
01. Aug 2011 · 23:04 UTC
This is just a guess, but is it possible that the texture is being flipped?

Update – “Dodge!” and it’s future

Hi, cool guy!

As my game already received a lot of positive feedback, from various players, it seems a good idea to take my Mini-LD project further, possibly to a fully playable game.

I already redesigned ALL graphics and the first level got a makeover.

The new first level, doesn't look as bad anymore, eh?

Above is the NEW first level, which has quite a few features added.

+ Hedges (as horizontal blockade, it stops bullets.)
+ Fence (the vertical blockade, this DOESN’T stop bullets, so it isn’t exactly the safest spot to hide at)
+ Walls made of sandbags (Hiding spot)
+ New Graphics (Looks almost like glittery rainbow-unicorns *_.*)
+ More Crates (Because this game is all about them it seems..?)
+ More enemies (The harder, the better ^_.~)

• Same movement system

- It’s only the first level. (I’m slow..)

I am also possibly gonna rename it, if I can come up with a better name. (You can post ideas, if you have any ;) )

Also, if anyone wants to test anything I’ve got so far, you can catch me on IRC quite often.

Soo, that’s it!

I hope my plans work out.

In case your interested – total dev time: 12 hours.

I’m off to go swimming.

- Folis

P.S: Your game should never look like that;

AAAHH, my eyes! THEY BUUUURN!! ARGH! *dead*

6

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 at 6:36 am and is filed under MiniLD #28. 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.

Post-mortem for MiniLD #28

Good intentions, poor planning.

With a pretty good idea in mind, I started on my entry after dinner Sunday evening.  I only got as far as the splash screen and sprite graphics before I ran into a Processing file IO bug and threw in the towel.

 

The idea was:  Air Conditioning.

Update 2.0 – Level 2 – It’s pretty and you need crates!

Pretty! Also, I'm a sucker for details, so you may find a few of them :3

Woop, level 2 done! It contains enemies, crates and walls! AND DETAILS!

Yeah, It may look a little bit overloaded, but I love it! You need those crates now. Or you’re instantly dead.

So, nyah! There you go, on to level 3 *epic music*

Also a little shout-out to Mr. Sir. McFunkypants for motivating me to do this! :)

4

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 at 6:44 am and is filed under MiniLD #28. 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.

Post Mini 28 Vile Artillery

I really enjoyed making this entry =). It was very fun, and even though this was my first Ludum Dare competition, it wont be my last for sure!

 

 

I’m going to turn Vile Artillery into a full game, add new enemies, new artillery, add a challenge mode and an arcade mode with online highscores. Many ideas come to mind but I’ll try not to be too ambitious; my plan is to work on it as much as possible for one entire week!

Hopefully it’l turn out as a fun and polished game.

3

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 at 2:07 pm and is filed under MiniLD #28. 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.

c++ help!!

Hello!
I wanted to ask people that are developing games in c++ for a little help.
I’m familiar with the c++ language and studied it once, and I want to write a game in c++ in this ludum dare.
I’ve tried to install visual studio 2010 and 2008 but they both keep failing (due to some odd setup memory leak) and also I’ve tried to install eclipse++ but I had a problem with the libraries.
So can someone please give me a good c++ IDE that he is familiar with, or maybe someone familiar with my problems and can help.
Many thanks for help.

Comments

05. Aug 2011 · 09:44 UTC
It’s probably worth persevering with VS, as it’s widely used and well-supported. A memory leak wouldn’t stop you installing, unless it actually ran out of RAM during the install. What is the error message?
05. Aug 2011 · 11:41 UTC
I liked Code::Blocks, but as Winterblood said, you should try to stick with VS, as it’s the IDE I had the least problems with.
05. Aug 2011 · 12:21 UTC
I agree with both the others. Code::Blocks and VS.
05. Aug 2011 · 13:40 UTC
Doesn’t seem to me like a particularly good idea to keep switching IDEs due to installation problems and minor technical problems like that. You will need to give us a bit more info on what the problems you’re having are though.
05. Aug 2011 · 15:51 UTC
I never really got an error, but I waited about 3 hours after the first ‘next’ button and the installation process took >1GB RAM instead of the 100MB RAM at the beginning, so I just killed the process. I’ve tried this with 2008 installation and got the same results.

The first time I’ve tried to install VS 2010 it run fine but in the middle of the installation my computer crashed and so the installation, since then any VS installation started to crash. I’ve found this problem familiar at the microsoft forum and they gave me an uninstall tool that should fix it but it didn’t work.
huhwhozat
05. Aug 2011 · 15:57 UTC
I personally don’t like it very much, but DevC++ has quite a bit of credibility.

Wow, I’ve come a long way…

Hey guys, I just wanted to show you guys a comparison between my first game and one of my latest games:

Compare my first game Ghosts and Diamonds,

http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/87819-ghosts-and-diamonds

 

to one of my latest games, The Struggle for Humanity:

http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/179700-the-struggle-for-humanity

Tags: comparison, for, humanity, progress, shard123, struggle, the

Story! (or something like that)

Rub a dub, can you give me a buck?!

Nah, I worked out a little bit of story! :)

Here’s the first page of the diary (drawn in MS Paint):

I usually write stories in this style. (Don't mind the blank site, that's for entry 2)

Well, BAM, there it is.

– Folis

Comments

05. Aug 2011 · 19:08 UTC
haha! Awesome points for including crates in a text-based form.

Another c++ help

So I’ve finally successfully installed VS 2010 express and I’m ready to practice some c++. So this time I wanted to ask for a recommendation from people that are familiar with c++ and graphics libraries like allegro, openGL, directX…
So my question is: What graphic library should I use for a 2D game? What is better and why? etc.

Comments

phalseprofet
05. Aug 2011 · 18:47 UTC
My vote goes to SDL. I learned it after teaching myself C++ out of books and online tutorials. It should be even easier to learn for somebody who actually studied the language. Learning DX or OGL could also be beneficial in the long run, but making games with SDL is usually quicker than the others unless you have a repository of templates or classes you can use for the initialization code. Allegro may also be good for getting started quickly, but I’ve never used it at great length, so I can’t really comment on that.
Tourgen
05. Aug 2011 · 23:05 UTC
SDL for 2D.
RandomM00
06. Aug 2011 · 06:11 UTC
I agree, SDL is probably a good move, and I think you can use Open GL with it, although it’s a long time since I did anything with either…
06. Aug 2011 · 18:58 UTC
I’m not familiar with SDL, but I’d recommend OpenGL over DirectX…
SirNewt
07. Aug 2011 · 22:28 UTC
That question deserves a huge, it depends.

Entering LD21…But I Need Some Java Advice!

Hi, my name is Jonno.

I’ve been self-teaching Java for a few months now, after a few years of self-teaching code in one language or another,  and I have decided to use LD21 as a good bit of motivation to push myself into simple game development in the language. I’ve had a passion for gaming since I was young and have always had a back-of-the-mind plan to write games.

I’ve come to the point where I can write applications in Java with confidence, implementing drawing methods and the Swing API to create a good event-driven GUI app.

My only problem right now is animation and timed events (like game loops, for example). I have read that in Java, Swing Timers do not work so well on Microsoft’s Windows Operating Systems…so I was wondering what other methods are available for gaming. I have a small example application that uses a method to define the game loop, which performs all the actions that would normally happen with a timer tick, but it’s not very clear in its implementation and I’ve so far failed to replicate its function.

So, can anyone help me out?

As a side-note, if I’m not supposed to be posting anything at this time (seeing as there’s no category for LD21 yet), I apologise.

– Jonno

Comments

RandomM00
06. Aug 2011 · 19:29 UTC
I don’t use Java usually, but when I tried writing games with it the best way to do it was with a specialised library like LWJGL.
ghillieLEAD
06. Aug 2011 · 20:30 UTC
Games are not like a normal program. Games are weird. If you don’t yet understand the basics of creating a game, like how a game loop works, you need to do a little reading if you are going to be successful. My advice would be taking a look at these two free books:
06. Aug 2011 · 20:50 UTC
@ghillieLEAD:

I guess I forgot to mention that I’ve written games before xD

I program in VB for college (I know, VB :/), and as soon as I could I started taking the work home to write games. I even released one to friends a little while back.

I’ve also been playing and studying games since I was very young; I fully understand the workings and concept. I even make it a habit nowadays of seeing game mechanics and working out how they’d be done in theory.
RandomM00
07. Aug 2011 · 09:01 UTC
Depending on how much practice you’ve had, it might be possible to get started with a new library within 12 days, if you go for a high level one. I’ve switched compiler and main library in the last couple of days, but I’m still planning to compete with the new tools (from HaXe to Flex and Flixel).

Change of plan…

In the last few days, after doing Mini LD #28, I’ve changed my mind about which tools I want to use for Flash development.

For a long time I’ve been using the open source HaXe compiler to build Flash 9/10 swf’s, but I ran into some show-stoppers with it. The biggest is that I can find no sane way of making a preloader work with external API’s (Kongregate, Mochi, etc.), and some other lesser issues with compatibility. This isn’t a big problem for LD, but for anything I want to publish it’s a huge problem.

The best solution is a change of compiler, and main library. As far as I can tell, the best alternative (for Linux, and my code style) is the Flex framework with Adobe’s mxmlc compiler. While it’s slower and not completely open source, it should get round most of the big problems, while still running on Linux and not needing a specific IDE.

At the same time, I’m also starting to use Flixel, because it provides neat ways to do most of the tedious work for me (I hope that’s not cheating :P).

The first test will be if I can re-write my Mini LD entry using the new kit. So far I have an almost working core, with stats, players, SFX and AI.

Current public build: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16895250/flixel_sea/build.swf

Comments

ahnimal
07. Aug 2011 · 18:36 UTC
Adobe Products isn’t an alternative to HaXe. HaXe is an alternative to Adobe
08. Aug 2011 · 15:11 UTC
I warmly suggest using “FlashDevelop”: pure AS3, no Flash CS5 slowness, no timeline BS, no mxmlc markup junk, all pure open source, fastest, tastiest, best possible solution, and definitely works with all wrappers for all portals. Worth investigating!
RandomM00
22. Aug 2011 · 07:03 UTC
Haha, there’s no way I would go near Flash for a sensible development! I really hate the way it does, well, everything. Mxmlc I can put up with, despite the amount of time it wastes every time I compile.

I’ve looked quickly at Flash Develop, but as far as I can tell it’s Windows only, and I’m not going to put up with Wine or VMware having to run whenever I start my IDE. I’m quite happy with Geany, as it’s lightweight and doesn’t get in my face too much. Given that I’ve done two LD’s and a Mini using only a netbook, a resource heavy IDE is not an option!

Thanks for the advice! 😀

HGE-unix

I’ve been using HGE for all my LD games so far, and it’s been used for a few other LD games such as Hockey Islands, but it’s previously been Windows only. Thanks to the need to port the excellent Hammerfight to Mac/Linux for the Humble Indie Bundle 3, there’s now a port of HGE available here. Development of HGE itself seems to have died off, but as it is I’ve found it ideal for LD and now with it having some cross-platform potential other LDers might want to consider it as an alternative to SDL/Allegro.

Comments

08. Aug 2011 · 08:43 UTC
yeah man, this is pretty awesome! I am excited to see more options for crossplatform stuff.

Updating you on that crate-based game called ‘Dodge’!

OMG! IT'S SO PRETTYYY!!!!!!!!!!!! MY EYES!!! THEY BUUUURN AGAIN!!!

So up there is level 3!

You may notice a few new things:

+ New bushes!
+ Directional sandbags!
+ Reset Button! (I actually only added it, because I was annoyed to restart the game, just to play the level again ^///^)
+ The factor of thinking, before doing! (I messed up on this level 2 times myself [I’m such a shame])

• Metal Crates (they’re invincible now!)

I think I may have created a really, really good level! :)

So, that’s it for now. :3

Comments

Yrael
08. Aug 2011 · 12:45 UTC
It’s getting the polish the game deserved !

Good work, keep at it 😉

Dodge! – More Story!

Man I’m sure I already annoy you guys with my game [ :( ], but.. but.. STORY!

Yes, level 4 DOES bombard you with bullets, but these bullet hells won't happen too often ;)

So yeah!

P.S: If you wonder why he knows what date it is know: Just pretend he saw a calendar or something for now, I’ll integrate that into the story a little bit later 😉

Pyoing live on the app store!

Hey folks! Pyoing is live on the app store. I didn’t do much to it past the compo version, but my friend / co-worker Yann at Lucky Frame made the sounds for it. He also spent all day yesterday throwing together this amazing promo video and website.

I guess I can do a bit of a post mortem? Eh?

So about 12 noon, uk time I decided to throw my hat into the ring on this LDmini. I was otherwise just watching tv that weekend, and wanted to muck about with my game engine a bit more. I spent about two hours working towards getting something like Rampart in place, where you could place bases, and then you would be able to chuck cannonballs from your base. That seemed to fulfill the war theme, and was something I had been interested in making since the last LD.

At around 4, I went out to have a BBQ and did that until around 5:30pm. It was nice to get away from the compo for a bit and kick a ball around, and eat a ton, etc, etc. While I was there I talked to Yann (the man in the gif above) about the game, and he suggested a few things. First that I should just make crossfire, forget all of the ramparts stuff. Second he asked if I was using box2d, and I said “no, I think I can figure out the physics just fine thanks”. When I got home I spent about 5 minutes banging my head against the idea of doing the physics myself, and then about 20 minutes setting up box2d. I think I went to sleep that night with all of the basics in, except for the win / lose states. You could chuck around the balls, etc.

The next day, I got started on it and first put in the win / lose states. Then I did the full game loop with the beginning and ending screens. It was nice to have a tweener library around to get cool animations for everything without much work at all. I play tested it a bunch with my partner, and decided to add the limited shots mechanic. That made the game a whole bunch more even, and about strategy. After that, I still had some time, so I did the retina display version of the game. I had the graphics pretty well integrated with the box2d stuff, so I had to retune everything for the larger masses that were flying around. This resulted in the retina and non retina versions of the game playing slightly different. Hopefully this is not a huge problem. The last thing I did was integrate the audio engine, and throw in a few sfx. They were not super great, but good enough. I think I finished everything up by around 11pm. I want to say that the whole process took about 11 hours of computer time to get finished.

The next morning, Yann did all the sfx over again, and it made everything better, and we submitted to the app store. Done 😀

The final thing was all the promo video, which is basically a scene for scene rip of the crossfire video. That took about a day to do, and we had to learn apple motion. Our greenscreen was a pink blanket purchased from a charity shop around the corner:

Anywho, thats about it! Here are a few promo codes, if you could please post the one you use in the comments, that would be great! If you don’t get one, let me know and I can post some more:

A4PE3LMF7AL6
EYJJWAFXKRNL
NFMN6LNJKKMY

Tags: iphone, postcompo, postmortem

Less than 10 days!!

Woo, exciting!

The next major bang!

Looking forward to it, and I’m hoping none of any silly themes will win.. I don’t wanna have a theme like “cookies” or “This and that” ._.;

Also:

BAM! Level 5! Flowers for manly men! You need intelligence for this!

Heh, yeah!

– Folis

Comments

10. Aug 2011 · 19:31 UTC
What theme would you like?