Only just got back now, and have about an hours worth of stuff to do before I can settle down to get any coding done. I’m still hopeful that something playable will get finished and submitted before the deadline.

Anyone who fancies listening to something different and new during the last sprint to the finish might like to check out one of our local bands here on the Isle of Man who have just released a self recorded E.P. via MySpace.

They’re called The Learning Curve, and I have to say I found their stuff quite motivating during last night’s art/coding session. The last track on their MySpace isn’t great (although the Middle 8 is pretty good) but I really like the other four.

http://www.myspace.com/thelearningcurveiom

One of many robots standing in a steamy room assembling devices, you suddenly drop your tools and walk away from your bench.

Who are you? Why are you here? Where are you going?

Without help of any kind you’ll have to figure out how to survive in this strange mechanical world. Your best clues are the ominous messages over the intercom from “The Master“.

Recommend controller: XBOX 360 pad, or similar. Keyboard also works though.

UPDATED: Now with Linux/OSX builds too.

Download for the system of your choice:

Windows – Ubuntu – Mac

Timelapse: youtube, high quality (24 MB)

PS: A big thanks to my wife and kid for letting dad ‘play’ with his friends all weekend

Tags: final

Been fun and got it done! My final version of Simple Dungeon.

Source is here: http://rapidshare.com/files/109092549/SimpleDungeon_Source.rar.html

Game is here: http://rapidshare.com/files/109092285/SimpleDungeon.rar.html

 I spent probably 12 hours or so on this game. It was a ton of fun. Hope to do it again. Love this contest. Can’t wait to check out other entries.

Use arrows keys to move, attack, pick up items, etc. It is really easy to figure out. Objective is to save the princess in the dungeon. If you die, game will exit, haha. Hope you enjoy!

 You need at least .NET Framework 2.0 to run. If you have problems, try the latest framework 3.5. I haven’t tested this on other machines but should work on all windows machines.

Now got to watch my lakers! bye.

 Note – one last revision -2:19 pst.

Tags: .net, final, RPG, simple dungeon

Minimalist by GBGames is finished!

UPDATE: Grab the Windows build here! (0.9 MB)

http://gbgames.com/downloads/ld11/LD11-Minimalism-GBGames.zip is a 12.4MB download.

EDIT: If you’re interested in just the Linux build to play, download http://gbgames.com/downloads/ld11/ld11-minimalist-gbgames-linux-x86-r12.tar.gz, a much smaller 1.3MB download.

The big .zip file includes the entirety of my project’s source in a zip file (LD11-Minimalism-GBGames-source.zip) and a GNU/Linux-ready tar.gz file (ld11-minimalist-gbgames-linux-x86-r12.tar.gz).

The source is ready to be used to build a linux-x86 distributable tar.gz. I created it using my Ubuntu system.

Tools I used:

• vim, g++, make
• libSDL, SDL_image, and SDL_mixer
• sfxr
• GIMP
• the build scripts I used for a different game I am working on

Tags: final

I’m behind where I want to be, but I’m still chugging along.

So, it’s not really obvious from the screen shot, but this is not your usual Breakout game.  The idea is the same; the ball bounces and removes the bricks.  The catch is that you aren’t controlling the paddle.  The computer is.  Your job is to build up the wall and protect the goal at the top of the screen.  You do so by buying different types of bricks and deciding where to place those bricks for the best protection.

I’m not sure if I want to ‘scale back’ the graphics to make it look more minimalist, more in line with the hollow ball and paddle.  I think I’ll be able to get at least a basic game ready to play before the deadline.  I can see myself adding more things into post-LD revision later on.

Tags: breakout, ld48_11, screenshot

Ok. Managed to scrape something up that might be considered a game. About as complex and innovative as my last few LD entries 😉

I actually had fun this time around, but mostly with irc and blogs rather than actually making a game of my own. Maybe next time.  Now sleep before getting on with all the games!

Giddit: marge.zip (windows executable, and a bunch of code that you probably don’t want to try compiling)

Tags: final

Tags: screenshot, screenshots

Here’s a timelapse! If it doesn’t show up, it might still be processing on YouTube.

Music by Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts – Track 34

Tags: timelapse

Windows exe + source (compo version; if it crashes, get the post- compo zip below)

Windows exe + source (trivial post-compo fix edition, see below)

Timelapse video

Updated with a fix version above. The game would crash if run at a bit depth lower than 24bpp, use the fix version if it does! The fix also removes a comma from brygge-s.lua to fix a copy/paste bug that prevented turning around/right when looking away from the wharf, this isn’t required to beat the game or even much noticeable though.

Tools used: kate (text), gimp (graphics), sfxr (sound)

Libraries used: SDL, SDL_image (png), SDL_mixer (ogg vorbis), Lua

Tags: final, fix, linux, lua, screenshot, SDL, Windows

Got to go to sleep.

Could not finish on time.

Tags: motivation

Here’s some of the latest models:

In other news, I suck at composing music so I have made sure that people can turn it off in my game.

Here is my early dinner of a calzone with sausage, onions, green peppers, black olives and mushrooms. All with my favorite soda Dr. Pepper! Oh, and red gravy naturally.

4.5 hours left! Can I do it?!?!?!

Tags: foodphoto, screenshot

My flash game is now starting to become a bit playable. I spent way too long on a recursive algorithm to fill up the areas that turned out to be very very slow, but now I use a kind of floodfill instead. The goal of the game is to surround areas so that a picture appears. Now it still needs some enemies.

Finally done! You play as gods messenger, trying do defend planets from asteroids. All controls explained in-game.

Dependencies:

Python

Pygame

or none if running from exe

Download source or exe!

And screenshot:

Tags: final, god, python, screenshot

1:00 PM 4/20/2008 – Okay, six hours to go. Looking at my original design for Resident Evil FLT_MIN, it’s clear that I’m going to have to make a few changes. Obviously, to avoid copyright issues, I need to change the name. For now I’ll give it the working title “RE FLT_MIN”. Also, it seems like it would take only a few minutes to come up with a prototype using Flash. Unfortunately, I don’t know Flash. Plus, even though the design seems somewhat minimal, it can easily be made *more* minimal. First off, look at all those fancy graphics. Font rendering? What was I thinking?

2:20 PM 4/20/2008 – Alright, I’ve got the first version of the game up and running. I still need to do some debugging, and put it through some usability testing… maybe a focus group. I want to post a shot of the source code, but unfortunately it doesn’t all fit on a single page. I suppose at this stage, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do some optimization.

2:25 PM 4/20/2008 – Was able to cut code down by removing some unnecessary #includes. Also, I think it’s bad style to have un-braced if statements, but doing so cut down a large amount of vertical space.

2:55 PM 4/20/2008 – Okay. First prototype version is ready to download and play.

Here is the entire source:

Tags: journal

I’ve accumulated some snacks for the final stretch. Some frosted mini-wheats, baby carrots, a banana, sunflower seeds, and some gatorade. The GF has offered to get some take out, so hopefully I’ll eat again tonight without have to waste time cooking.

And the jug

Tags: foodphoto

I just haven’t been feeling it this time around. It’s been too nice out, and I’ve had too much of a social life to work all weekend. I was able to come up with a quick semi-playable “game” though, so I suppose what little work I did isn’t TOTALLY wasted.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/kmil5h

I don’t think I abided by what I needed to to call this a final entry, so I’ll just call it a “So I don’t waste it” entry. No readme, but the controls are as follows:

Arrow Keys — Move

X – “High Jump” (Costs Fuel) “Walljump” (No fuel drained)

Z – “Hop” (Half the fuel drainage of high jump, but half as useful)

C – “Dash” (Costs Fuel)

Goal is to clear the platforming “level” without running out of fuel. Essentially, to beat the level in a “minimalistic” way. Probably would’ve been cooler had I given it more work.

Tags: So I don't waste it

23:34
Added the score counter and created a README info file.

01:23
Got the player route roughly finished. Looks like this will be a “2 minutes” -game. I also added a simple ending screen. There’s still work to do, have to populate the later half of player route
with enemies.

http://triorph.surrealix.com/ludumdare.zip

Feedback is appreciated, especially if it doesn’t compile.. So far only linux ports should be available, although feel free to check if it works under windows, you will need sdl-mixer, sdl-image, sdl-ttf, sdl, and g++ to compile it.

player 1’s keys are up, down, left, right, and enter/return for shoot

player 2’s keys are W, S, A, D, and Q for shoot.

To begin with, the game’s AI has control of both players, choose a character for yourself and press a key to disable the AI.

Well my pathethic attempt was finished. The actual game was decided in the last two hours. 😛

There are some instructions in the game, and more detailed in the added readme file. Also to compile the source code, compile the only cpp file, it should work anywhere as I only used standard C++ lib’s.

source code

ubuntu bin 

Ill change the links, I momentarily couldn’t access my usual FTP server.

Tags: final

Finally done, here it is!

Do not be afraid to shake it up, shake it up, sha..

The entry can be downloaded from here:

Download

Watch capture (stream)
Watch capture (xvid)

Requirements:

.NET 3/3.5
XNA 2.0

up2date DirectX dll’s

Tags: final, shake, xna

Ah, I’m done. I wish my entry were more polished, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve managed to accomplish.

Desktop Rox is an asteroids-like game, which was based closely off an idea I wanted to play with, specificly rendering the game on top of the desktop, rather than in a window of it’s own. In hindsight, it took a lot of time to get  all of the lower level rendering functionality I needed, so I wasn’t able to complete it to the level I wanted to. And, while I still have time, I’m really in no shape to be doing anything else with it at the moment 😛

Next time I will assemble/write some sort of library to reduce the workload, but for now I’m very glad I finished a game, and that it’s actually pretty entertaining to play – and it’s nice that the core design isn’t that bad, I’ll probably refactor it and stash it somewhere for future use. It was very rushed however, many things I wanted got left out completely or half supported and not really doing anything (sound, antialiasing, multiple rendering modes) and the UI is a very very hacky job (hope you can read the font)

Download the game (and the source) here: http://akkit.org/ld48/desktop_rox_final.zip
Also, if that one runs too slow or doesn’t work, I have a test mode build that you may be able to use in this archive: http://akkit.org/ld48/desktop_rox_final_alternate.zip

Tags: final, screenshot

You can find my time lapse video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fpXRHYU-hU.

Tags: timelapse

You can find my time lapse video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fpXRHYU-hU.

Tags: timelapse

02:21
Now it’s starting to be finished, time to start making some final packaging and so on. Another screenshot from the irrEdit.

02:36
Final fixes done, now for the packaging.

03:01
Tweaked a bit more after all, converting samples to more compact format and moving most of data files to gamedata.zip. Now it’s time to make the release (candidate) zip and perhaps call it done!

03:07
Took a screenshot of the final version.

3:15 PM 4/20/2008 – Next step: more optimizations.

Source Code: 44 lines, 1,065 bytes
Optimizations: Going to hold off on this one, since I’m likely to change the design.

Executable: 40,960 bytes
Optimizations: In my haste, I realized I’d posted the Debug version. Switching to Release and tweaking the project settings got me all the way down to 6,144 bytes. That’s an 85% improvement! Awesome!

Design:
When talking about videogame minimalism, one of my favorite examples is Wario Ware. Each of Wario Ware’s microgames (the meta-game is another issue in itself) gives a one-word instruction, and makes the player figure out the rules, mechanics, and goals from that instruction, and from the game itself (in around five seconds, no less). Nowadays, even the most complex games, built by teams of hundreds of developers, have very little in the way of prior instructions. This is mainly because players just want to jump into playing a game without reading about how the game is supposed to work. Most of the time, a player with some previous experience with games can experiment with different inputs, observe the feedback from those inputs, and infer the controls. By playing and watching the game for a few minutes a player can usually figure out the goals of the game. Players are basically doing a pattern-matching search over the game-element archetypes that they have already experienced. This is not to say that this process is inherent in a game’s design, however. There is often significant effort put into designing the game’s input and output in a such a way to hasten the player’s understanding of how to play the game.

The main point here, though, is that it is not required of a game to tell the player exactly how to play. The player is often left to themselves to figure out how a game works. Given that, I think I can safely remove about half of my game. The player does not need to be prompted, I can just have the game wait for their input, and from the response to their input, they can learn the rules.

Doing this let me cut out another 5 lines of code.

Here’s the new tally:
Executable: 6,144 bytes, surprisingly this isn’t any smaller. Crazy. Computers are indistinguishable from magic….
Source: 39 lines, 901 bytes

Tags: journal

Finished at last and it’s actually a finished game. The EXE should work but it’s the first time I’ve used py2exe and had it work.
Instructions

Move around the mave avoiding your enemies or destroy them by crushing the block they are in before they hatch, pushing blocks over them or stunning them by pushing on the wall they are next to and walking over them.

The level ends when all your enemies are dead or you have pushed the three diamonds into a line for a bonus which is higher if they are not along the wall.

Controls

• Use the arrow keys to move
• Use the spacebar to break or push blocks
• Escape to quit

Requirements

Python and pygame

Screenshot 

Download 

Normal python zip (1.4MB)

Windows EXE (4.3MB)

Tags: final, RobotGuy, ThingGo

Aaaaa!!. need more time… it’s ‘playable’ but only just barely… still no score or anything…  also my timing code was really sloppy and for a game that is so dependent on timing that’s causing me all kinds of headaches… we’ll see..

Tags: LD #11 - Minimalist - 2008

Yay!

After many, many, many hours, the murder generator is now working. It will generate, consistent with the house, a mystery for you to solve. I’ve now got 2 hours to write an interface for it, and until that happens (or doesn’t, depending on how well things go), here’s a screenshot of the console.

Exciting! It shows where each person was over time, and then an output of the logic used to solve the murder. Note that it generates this differently each time (aren’t I proud).

Oh and a footnote. It seems to have developed memory issues, and crashes nearly 50% of the startups. At this stage, this is something people will have to live with :/

Tags: day3, journal

1 hours 48 minutes remaining

Screenshots are in! I’ve tweaked the AI a lot and I really like where it is right now, although its pretty damn hard if you aren’t used to it. Next on the list is making an easy and medium mode :).

This was taken from inside the game:

Tags: journal

It’s done, and it is called “warrior”. So I’m continuing my naming scheme from previous LD compos – but in minimalist fashion, not having a prefix for it. It’s a railshooter where you only have to aim with mouse and shoot by clicking.
DOWNLOAD:

•  warrior by tonic for windows (or get the source)

Tags: final

Hello! I’m finally finished with my game, “Sailor”.

The game let’s you build a boat and sail the sea. Try to stay afloat

as long as possible, it’s not as easy as it sounds though.

I’m way too tired to write a more lengthy post, please download the game and give it a try

Windows binary and source:

http://gustav128.googlepages.com/sailor_win.zip

*UPDATE: The readme links to the wrong Visual C++ redistributable, here is the correct one:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=200B2FD9-AE1A-4A14-984D-389C36F85647&displaylang=en

(Only download this if you experience problems when trying to run the game, most of you already have this installed)

Tags: final, sailor, sea, water, Windows

Update: The Windows port is a no go.  I’ve tested the below package on Windows and it works provided all the libs are installed, but py2exe simply mangles it.  Too tired to worry about it.

Update 2: Moved photos to flickr to minimse murder on my site. Why I just didn’t upload them I’ll never know.

Only two-ish hours left, and I’m feeling sick and tired (in a literal sense).  I’ve created a game called Billy and Casey.  It’s about programming robots.

One can download this monstrosity here:

http://www.nfirvine.com/wiki/uploads/Projects/casey-0.1.0.tar.gz

If the .tar.gz extension didn’t tip you off, this one’s meant for Linux only at this point.  I’m going to spend the rest of the time trying to whip together a Windows port.  We’ll see how she goes.

Tags: casey, final, linux

Youtube timelapse video

Too fuzzy?? Try the high quality version here. (24 MB)
Music is a game remix of an amiga game, title: Nikamota – [Nicky Boom] Coming of Age(In the Club)

Tags: timelapse

I’ve decided to stop about 2 hours before the end, mostly so I can rest a bit, and eat some food. There shouldn’t be any bugs, although the game balance still needs some work, and there really should be more monsters to fight (there’s only two here, and I don’t really have the time or skill to draw more)

Here for the game and source.  Created in Windows with C++ and SDL.  Good chance of working on other systems.  Let me know.

There’s some simple sound effects created with sfxr. Basic controls are arrow keys to select a command, any other key will activate that command, escape exits the game. Advanced controls are listed in the readme (including save/load)

Tags: battle, final, RPG

The GF brought me subway. Hooray!

And the obligatory jug shot:

Tags: foodphoto

http://danieljgriffing.googlepages.com/LightCatcherByDGriffingPWord_dare.7z

Bump into the lights to get points. The music will help if you can survive long enough. This is minimalist because the gameplay is such =P

Edit: The .7z’s password is, if you couldn’t figure it out, ‘dare’.

Edit2: It’s password protected because googlepages doesn’t let you host a file with a ‘.exe’ extension, even when compressed. If I encrypt the filenames, it lets me get away with it; but the only way to encrypt the filenames is to password-protect the file.

Edit3: Its extension is .7z because I couldn’t encrypt the filenames *and* save it as a .zip. Sorry for the inconvenience =(

Tags: final

Ok, its a quite a stretch, but when playing with Chipmunk over the last 2 days, i have arrived at some strange form of Knightly bowling. “Minimize” the “castles” with your brutal morning stars.. the fewer balls used the better you did! It really is barely more than a physics demo. i just didn’t have the time i wanted.

Updated!!

Download it for Windows.. Only needs Python2.5

(py2exe version coming Monday)

Download it

ok, time to go surfing

Tags: final

Ah, Finished. The joy.

The theme, minimalism, instantly made me want to make a one-button game. Here is my attempt.

Two players battling it out in their cars!

I made the game using python and pygame, so you’ll need them to get this to run from the source. If feeling windowzy you can always use the windows package.

Source Package
Windows Executable

Remember, Space is THE key!

Tags: final, thepushers

After 48 hours of hard work I present to you all:

SPACEBATTLE! (Least original name in the universe, I know…)

download (python sources) (requires python, pygame and numarray installed)

download (win32) (edit: now contains readme as it should)

The archive contains both source and a win32 exe (Which will hopefully work)

EDIT: The exe in the archive didn’t work. I’ve recompiled it and uploaded a separate win32 version. The fonts are slightly messed up in the win32 version compared with running from sources but it works.

if you have a better server and can host it for me, please tell me in the comments.

The player controls a group of ships that try to shoot down the opposing ships. The controll is done entierly with the mouse.

Both the graphics and control scheme can be concidered minimalistic I hope. At least that’s what I was going for.

Here are the final screenies:

Lots of ships shooting each other up.

The shop between levels where you buy new ships.

The intro sequence.

There is a readme file in the archive with info about controls and stuff.

The game was made with python + pygame (also requires numarray) and absolutely everything else was created from scratch.

Big thanks to:

• Jach for helpingwith the win32 compile
• DrPetter for sfxr
• Jenny, my lovely GF for not going crazy with me.

Tags: edit, final, pygame, spacebattle

Here is my final entry. It’s a vertical shooter with a Minimalist Origami theme. You play a turtle who must rescue his origami world from bad origami. The only level in the game right now is waves of crabs. Ran out of time to do more. I would welcome any comments everyone has, since this is my first time doing one of these contests.

 Download from here:

http://piddlepup.com/files/OrigamiWarsSetup.exe

 Tools Used: BlitzMax and Photshop CS3

Tags: final

Well, here I am. I don’t know if this game is minimalist enough, but here it is.

It’s a tactic game in which you figth against the computer. Your objective is to destroy rival castle, or reach the enemy castle with your king.

To train a soldier, just click the button. It costs 50 GOLD. With the mouse, you can select a soldier and his objective (he can move or attack other soldier). That grid in the floor means the terrain “conquered” by you and your opponent. The more terrain you conquest, the more gold you take per second.

You can attack the castle directly with a soldier. Just move it to the doors of the enemy castle. But if you want to win quickly, you have to attack withyour king. To charge with the king costs 500 GOLD. He’s very slow, and if he is out of his castl, he’s vulnerable. If an enemy soldier kills him, you’ll lose.

The game is made in Flash 8. This is my first participation in LD, and finally the time went against me, so the game don’t have menu and these details.

Here is a screen:

Play. 

Download (.SWF and .FLA).

I recommend to open it with the Flash Player, not with the Internet Browser, which is a lot of slower.

Enjoy!

Tags: final

Ok, I am quite disapointed in myself. I wanted to have a fairly complete game, but I ended up screwing myself again like last time. I have a design document that outlines the entire game if anyone wants to know what I really wanted to make.

Becides that, what you CAN do in the game is create an apartment and create workers. I wanted to at least get the factories into the game, but I ran out of time.

I guess my entry can be known now as a minimalist rts. Its just a framework for one. 😀

download – windows binary + source code
design document -what I intended to create

april 21 1:30pm EST: I added the “.pyd” file so people can run the python source files with only python 2.5 installed. I am going to be making a playable version of this game this week, and I might compile a linux binary of my extension so linux users can run the game.

Tags: final

Here it is… the final entry:

Cowbell Hero Final

Not exactly 100% complete, but still a lot of fun I think. All music is better with cowbell.

Tags: cowbell, final, LD #11 - Minimalist - 2008

Its done! And it turned out pretty hard to win.

Windows only, sorry.

Download

If someone thinks they can help me port a PTK codebase then leave me a comment.

Tags: final, screenshot

Windows binary: http://disruption.ca/dl/dots/erik-ld48_11-dots-Win32.zip

Python source: http://disruption.ca/dl/dots/dotsSrc.zip

Tags: final

Here I give you my MUD in a facebook app.  I have long loved MUDs and thought the idea of a mud fit the theme well.  Even though it is on the web, everything is pretty close to real time.

It has the following features:

1.  Walking around rooms
2. Talking and emoting
3. Attacking monsters and other users
4. When you get enough experience you can train to be stronger
5. Leader board

To play, you will need a facebook account, and go to this link:

http://apps.facebook.com/minimud/

Add the app to your profile, then create a character and then click the game tag to play.  Once in type “help” to get a list of commands and get going.

It is also more fun to play with others, so bring a friend along for more fun!

Tags: final, journal, screenshot

Here it is: http://keeyai.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-download_monitor/user_uploads/minimalist.zip

EDIT: 9:01 PM — I didn’t get to make the executable in time, and I haven’t even tested it, but here it is
http://keeyai.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/wp-download_monitor/user_uploads/minimalist.exe

EDIT: 9:03 PM — Nope, it doesn’t work. You’ll have to use the source (it’s only 1 file, you should be file)

EDIT: after seeing the comments of people who either can’t or won’t install pygame, I made a windows executable. It is all the same code, just in an exe. Get it here.

Final Screenshot:

Tags: final

windows exe in zip file

run leap.exe to play

source code and media in zip file

run leap.py to play (PyGame and Python required, but should run on mac and linux then)

feel free to do whatever you want with the source code and media

Press SPACEBAR to jump, avoid falling tanks -that’s it!

I was working on this until there was 15 minutes left, so this is mighty unfinished. But it is playable and at least okay to look at. I think it has a lot of potential…

I haven’t ever used py2exe before so I’m sorry for the mess of a zip file. Just run leap.exe. Hopefully it works for you guys, it works on my end.

Leap was(is) planned to include more of a strategy element with raising blocks and a real objective.  Initially I thought it up of being reference to Kierkegaardian existentialism  and the “leap of faith” (notice the religious icon blocks in the spritesheets..) and the initial leap from objectivity (notice the emotionless faces and math symbols in the grasshopper’s home…) to the hearts, love platform that you can’t reach in the beginning.  Tanks and money and gameplay and love were going to make some statement about religion, but none of that is probably evident in this buggy “physics” demo.  And it may not actually be successful as a thoughtful philosophical game if it does get there… hopefully I can make it fun at least :). I like the grasshopper in anycase!

I spent 50/50 graphics and programming on this. I should’ve spent more time programming!  Since this is the second program I’ve ever written with user input, I think it isn’t too bad for roughly 20 or more hours work.  Sadly this is more finished than my first game that I’m still making with PyGame after starting 3 months ago with python.

All in all this competition was a lot of fun and a lot of work, I’m getting the hell out of this apartment! I can’t wait to play the other games and maybe download an IRC client and join the group, since I didn’t have time to do that this weekend!

Good game everyone!,

Devon

Tags: final, journal, leap

Remember how I said I was going to write something in haskell? Haskell won. So I wrote something in python in 3 hours. the game is a little poetic. Enjoy.

Tags: final, LD #11 - Minimalist - 2008

my super kewl ruby game programming library isn’t as mature as i wish it to be, so there’s no playable version of puit volleyball yet. but you can see the glorious source at the open source ever extending game world and 2d game programming in ruby tutorial PuitUniverse.

also note that it has space invaders:

and track & field (properly done as soon as i play the original track & field).

and a neat web2.0 style game selector:

…if HotRuby was better i’d set up wikipedia for games. think: edit the sourcecode online, wiki style, and instantly play your flash game.

so… even though i missed this ludumdare – stay tuned for oneup‘s PuitUniverse ^__^

 — flo

MinMo is my entry into the LD11 – Minimalist Theme compo:

Update:

Two win32 versions are now available, a fullscreen and a windowed.  No other changes were made to gameplay or bugs.  The resolution is 1024×768.  I recommend the fullscreen version for a more immersive experience.  😉

Fullscreen win32 available here (2.3MB)

Windowed 1024×768 win32 available here (2.3MB)

full zip with win32 exe and source here (3.5MB)

I’m hoping to post a linux version / instructions soon too.

The goal is to get from the left of the screen to the right of the screen. Each time you do the world will advance one level. Each level brings more flowers and enemies to overcome.

You play as a character with two forms. “Min” – who is thin, vulnerable and snakelike. “Mo” – who is an invulnerable and immovable gelatinous mass.

You can only move around when you are Min but if you are falling off of a block you can transform into Mo to crush enemies below you. If you happen to be cornered by an ememy as Min, you can transform into Mo to let them pass by safely. You can only get hit by the enemies once or the game ends. You can continue though so never fear!

The game world consists of rising and falling blocks that also play the music of the game in time to their movements. There are little flowers that grow from time to time that you can collect for points.

This was created with ruby and the incredible gosu game library.

I used the awesome sfxr for all game sounds too!

Bitmaps created in Tile Studio after some initial concept art inspiration in Corel Draw.

I finished this with 3 minutes left in the deadline. That means that I didn’t have a chance to play it that much to tune for fun. It is functional and seems stable. The player crushing enemies collision detection could be a little better for sure and the levels could advance in a more interesting way. All in all I am very happy with having completed this project in such a short time. I didn’t think I was going to be able to make it under the deadline the past 4 hours or so leading up to the end so I am glad that I actually managed to pull something off. I’ll post a post mortem later perhaps. I can’t wait to check out all the other entries! Good luck and congrats to everyone who participated!

Tags: exe, final, gosu, minmo, ruby, source, win32

Here’s the link:

http://shared.nincheats.net/zips/ld11-pepsi.zip

Windows executable coming soon. Requires Python and Pygame at the moment.

Newedit: Here’s the link to the WINDOWS version. Had to change directory structure for it to work. Just run main.exe for it.

http://shared.nincheats.net/zips/ld11-pepsi-windows.zip

Edit: The ZIP will contain the windows executable by tomorrow with no changes to anything else. Also, here’s the screenie. If I come up with more theme arguments, I’ll put them here instead of the readme before tomorrow, but I probably won’t because that wouldn’t be minimal. =P

(Still part of edit) I didn’t really like the idea after about 4 hours into it, but I decided to continue. I’m not too displeased with the final result, though I wish I had another hour or so to make a nice game over and win screen.

Tags: final, pepsi, pygame, python

Here it is:

http://portal.acad.cai.cam.ac.uk/~mml27/minim.tar.gz

Details to follow shortly.

Posted after close of competition:

Windows port: http://portal.acad.cai.cam.ac.uk/~mml27/minim.zip

Linux par/pp version: http://portal.acad.cai.cam.ac.uk/~mml27/minim-ld11-a-pp.tar.gz

Time-lapse video (2 minutes, 15 Mb). Warning: this video contains bright, rapidly flashing colours.

So what’s it all about?

I decided to interpret minimalism in a minimalist way, namely “minim” (half-note to Americans). You get a load of musical notes moving about the screen like particles and you have to guide them to certain points. You do this by drawing minims with the mouse. The notes then bounce off the minims. You can get more detailed instructions by running the game and waiting at the title screen.

How do I run it?

Linux users: download the tarball above and extract. Run minim.pl. You need SDL, Perl and SDL-Perl (Debian package libsdl-perl).

Windows users: download, extract and run the zip file above. It seems not to support fullscreen mode. The port includes a 1-line fix for a graphics glitch that didn’t show up on my Linux system. Linux users can get updated source here.

Linux users who can’t get a working version of SDL-Perl: download the par/pp version above. Extract and run “minim” (not minim.pl). You still need SDL, but not Perl or SDL-Perl. This version includes the graphical glitch fix mentioned above.

What’s missing in the 48-hour compo entry?

Some of the demo screens are missing animations showing how to draw minims. You can’t load in user-defined levels from an external file. There aren’t as many levels as I would have liked. I intend to add these last few things and post a second version some time in the next week or so.

Why is the game so hard? Why can’t I draw minims?

Drawing minims takes quite a bit of practice. It’s meant to be tricky, especially when you’re running out of time and panicking and can’t draw steadily. It may be helpful to know a bit about how the game judges minims. The most important things are where you start and finish the minim: these points become the ends of its stick. If you fail to draw a minim, you’ll notice a stick with a cross on the end appears nearby. This represents the shape the game expects you to draw. The head of your minim needs to pass through all four quadrants marked out by the cross, without deviating too far from it. Ultimately, this means that you have to start (or finish) your minim at a point on the stick about half-way up the head. One thing I noticed while making levels is that, because you can’t draw mirrored minims, it’s a lot easier to bounce semibreves to the left than to the right. I’ve tested all the levels to make sure they can be completed, but some of them will probably take a few attempts. Keep trying! Or (if you get fed up) cheat by pressing “S” to skip to the next level.

How did you make it?

My development machine is a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 1.5 Gb RAM, running Debian GNU/Linux (unstable). The game is written in Perl, using SDL Perl (1.20.3) for graphics, sound and input. My text editor is joe; my window manager is FVWM2. For playing the game I used a Wacom Graphire 2 tablet. Sound effects were produced by my voice, recorded and cut in Audacity, but otherwise unmanipulated.

As SDL Perl has no line or circle drawing facilites, I had to implement them myself using a putpixel routine. This was far too slow to be used every frame, so most things are pre-rendered and blitted onto the application surface.

The collision detection routines are not optimised. If you have a large number of semibreves and minims on-screen at once, the game is likely to slow down.

How did you make the Windows port?

Using par/pp. The documentation for how to do this is rather scattered, so here’s a summary.

The problem is that you need versions of Perl, SDL, SDL-Perl, PAR and pp for Windows that will all work together. Perhaps you can build from source, but as I’m not a regular Windows user, I’d rather just download binaries that work.

Perl is distributed freely for Windows by Activestate. I downloaded and installed version 5.8.8.822. 5.10 builds are available, but it’s more difficult to find all the other libraries for it.

Activestate’s Perl includes a utility called ppm for installing Perl packages built on Windows. That can be used to install the remaining packages. SDL-Perl was a little tricky to find. As this page says, you can install the package with the command:

ppm install http://www.broadwell.org/dl/ppm/5.8/win32/SDL_perl.ppd

The package includes the SDL DLLs needed to use SDL from Perl with SDL-Perl.

Now I could run my Perl program on Windows, but I wanted a way to distribute it without requiring the user to install Perl. For that I used PAR and pp. First I installed Activestate’s package of PAR using the graphical ppm utility. Next, following the links on the PAR website to bribes.org, I found a package of pp that I installed with:

ppm install http://www.bribes.org/perl/ppm/PAR-Packer-588_820.ppd

Note that pp packages may be specific to a certain build of Perl.

With everything installed, I could now create a Windows executable of my game:

pp -o minim.exe -gui minim.pl

The -gui switch stops a console window from opening when you launch the executable. The executable still needs the SDL DLLs to run. You can pack them in the executable with pp’s -l option, but I find it easier just to copy all the DLLs into the directory and zip them up for distrubution. On my installation, the DLLs are in C:\perl\site\lib\auto\SDL_perl\ .

Where is your time-lapse video?

Here (2 minutes, 15 Mb). Warning: this video contains bright, rapidly flashing colours. The music is “Corporation” from Makke’s album “It’s Binary, Baby!”. Buy it! It’s really good!

I had a few difficulties with mencoder, so here’s a short description of how I got it to work. For some reason, mencoder crashed on trying to encode the video. Perhaps it didn’t like one of the frames. I got it to build an MJPEG-like video:

mencoder “mf://*.jpg” -mf fps=25 -o output.avi -ovc copy

However, mplayer wouldn’t play that normally. It would write the frames to PNGs, though:

mplayer -vo png output.avi

That gave me a directory of PNGs that it was happy enough to encode normally.

My time lapse sceenshots came to just under 2 minutes (the length of the music), so I thought I’d add a few seconds from my game to the beginning and a still to the end. I used SDL Perl’s save_bmp() grab frames from the game, converted them to PNGs with ImageMagick’s convert (ls | xargs -i convert ‘{}’ ‘{}.png), then resized them (ls | xargs -n 1 mogrify -background black -extent 640×512) and changed them to 8-bit colour (ls | xargs -n 1 mogrify -depth 8) with mogrify. The still at the end I made using GIMP. Renaming them into the right order with rename, I could then join them together with mencoder’s “mf” video source:

mencoder “mf://*.png” -mf fps=25 -o output.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq

After that I used -audiofile to add the music (ripped from CD with cdparanoia):

mencoder output.avi -o minim.avi -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -audiofile cdda.wav -lameopts preset=64

Tags: final, timelapse

My final game is Mininode:

Download the source, Windows binary, or Linux binary (there was a problem with this last one, it should be fixed).

To execute from source, you need mzscheme with OpenGL support, libSDL, libSDL_image, and libSDL_mixer.  Execute with “mzscheme -u game.ss” from the folder. To execute the Linux binary, you need libSDL, libSDL_image, and libSDL_mixer, but you probably already have these. The Windows binary includes all required libraries.

Tags: final

note to self:

• never ever try to go for implementing keyboard on directinput during LD, too much time wasted there
• make sure that build chain works. i spent too much time figuring out why linux based mingw dont want to build stuff after adding 3rd party lib to the project and rewriting makefile to serve some less significant stuff
• dont get flu/cold just in time for LD – slows down your thinking

on positive side I managed to write pretty good code to serve as a base for my other projects, so yay me

it was a cool and fun race, see you all on next LD

Here is my final entry: download (start Game.html to play).

I managed to add some (minimal) music to the game during the last 15 minutes before the deadline!

Tags: final

http://blahwebstorage.googlepages.com/Game.html

edit- hopefully screenshot goes in now..?

Tags: final

This is my final entry.

http://bannergame.googlecode.com/files/color_eater_ludumdare_11_final.tar.gz

In order to run it, you have to install the following:

Python 2,5

pyglet 1.1alpha2

pymunk-0.6.1

chypmunk shared library

Tomorrow i will upload a binary for windows users.

update: Win32 Binary donwload

Here’s a brief explanation on how to play:
Objective: clean all ugly and bad triangles from the stage.
Controls: you move your ball by draging the mouse in the desired direction.(the more drags you made, makes your ball go faster). This is also valid for making the ball jump, and if you have the skills you will break gravity laws.
Pressing right mouse button change your ball color.

Tips: You have to camouflage like an enemy in order to clean it.

Tags: final

With 1 minute left!

Download it here!

Tags: final, screenshot

Introducing ‘Of Robots & Groglots’, which is a cross between an old favorite of mine, Star Fox 64, and the minimal and popular Helicoper Flash game (see link if you want to be prepared for minimalist controls):

The whole game is controlled using only two buttons, of which one is usually permanently down; the microplanets add another touch of minimalism. Downloads:

• Windows version
• Mac version
• Source only version (for Linux)

These links have been updated to point to a version that includes 1) a two-line fix for two levels that were unplayably slow on some systems, and 2) a one-line fix for a bug that could stop your show, depending on your style of playing. Other minor bugs and balancing haven’t been touched. If you want to see the original version, replace ‘opt’ by ‘final’ in the links. Thanks!

Be prepared for:

• No music — no need to stop Winamp 😉
• Gamepad support!
• Needing a minute until you can maneuver as smooth as you want.
• Two interwoven storylines (sort of) and very different levels. If you get stuck, see the Readme file for a cheat so you can inspect them.

Last foodphoto:

The timelapse is available on YouTube. I caught a cold and look pretty exhausted =) – and it’s probably only interesting if you know the game.

Tags: final, foodphoto, gosu, mac, ruby, timelapse

This is my first try with Bullet physics. Sort of a 3d version of Asteroids. The asteroids break apart with a primitive form of rigid body destruction. Break them up before they hit the planet.  Mac OS X only, sorry!   Download:  Steroids.zip  Source:  Steroids_source.zip

Tags: final

MiniMall

Build, upgrade, extend and manage your mall to attract and satsify swarms of mini-mallists (shoppers) wanting to get their shopping fix. Spend your money wisely to give the mini-mallists the best value for their money make the most money you can from the mini-mallists!

Watch and be fascinated for hours by the curious shopping behaviour of the mini-mallists!

Featuring:

• Electronic stores
• Clothing shops
• Food courts
• Males
• Females!
• Boyfriends being dragged shopping by their girlfriends
• AND endless hours of fun just watching the mini-mallists doing their thing!

Windows Download:
http://www.maceinvaders.com/ludumdare/build.zip

Linux Download:
http://www.maceinvaders.com/ludumdare/minimall_mono.zip

Source:
http://www.maceinvaders.com/ludumdare/source.zip

Hope to get linux build soon..

Tags: final

Original source: http://pastebin.com/m3194032

It’s a minimalistic space trading game, a la elite.

EXE, source, and data: http://www.mediafire.com/?dsdbyntsxn2

Press “F” to switch to fullscreen, it’s a much better game when you do this.  It’s kind of small and more confusing if you don’t.  Of course, if that doesn’t work, then you’ll be stuck playing it small.  Sorry for that.  Controls are pretty simple: left, up right; or a,w,d for turn left, accelerate, and turn right.  Z to shoot, X to dock, and tab to switch shops while docked.  Since there is no deccelerator, you will have to accelerate in the opposite direction.  Also, there is no friction in space, so if you accelerate too much it may become difficult to maneuver (plus you will waste fuel).  The idea is to accelerate towards your target till you hit some ideal speed, and then accelerate away from your target when you are closer.

Unfortunately, I worked on the basics right until the deadline, and didn’t have much time to balance the actual universe.  So many trade routes might stink, and it is probably a bit easy to die.  If you upgrade your health a lot at first, then you might survive longer.  I find it very fun, and hope you can too.  Enjoy!

By the way, I’ll definitely be working on this more, so if you have any ideas for improvements feel free to give me a comment.

Tags: final

Having trouble difficulty porting this to windows, but here is my final copy for linux at least. I will add the windows port slightly later.

source can be found at http://triorph.surrealix.com/ludumdare-triorph.zip

keys are up/down/left/right/enter for p1 and WASDQ for p2

Tags: final

So here it is. I began writing the story for this game at 11:30PM on 04-19 and started writing the code at 4:00AM 04-20. I have never coded before in my life. I have no previous knowledge of coding but I have spent time around people who do code. I came into this contest with 22.5 hours left and wanted to have a text adventure completed before the deadline. I came close. I did not have time to finish writing the story but I did implement quite a bit and learned alot. So, as far as I am concerned Mission Accomplished.

There Is No Screwdriver.

Text Based Adventure written in Python.

ld11-JamesDM.rar

1.19MB contains source .py file.

I had some hosting issues, hopefully I am not too late.

Tags: adventure, final, python, text

Here’s the final version of my game.
Source
Executable
Screenshot:

Final journal coming shortly.
Looks like I’m a bit late. So it goes…

Tags: final

This is a procedurally generated whodunnit. Minimal clues, minimal interaction, and a very minimal appearance.

A crime has been committed in Lord Fletcher’s manor. Someone has been murdered.

Upon arriving at the scene, you are told who is deceased, where their body was found, and what they were murdered with. You must interview the residents, trace their movements, and ascertain the identity of the killer.

The murderer, being unlikely to confess, will fabricate lies. The innocent residents, however, will tell the truth. By careful deduction and investigation, you will slowly build up a picture of the crime, and catch the guilty party.

Pretty screenshot.

Playable Version : Ubuntu Binary + Source (rar, 1.8mb)

Windows Port : Windows Binary (zip, 2.5mb)

It may crash on startup, so keep trying until it runs :/. Under linux, you’ll need OpenSceneGraph-1.2.2 to compile it (apt-get libopenscenegraph-dev)

(Update : Someone wrote a wonderful post-mortem of this game and saved me the work of doing it myself!)

Tags: day3, final, journal

I just uploaded my game so it can be played directly from your browser:

Play

EDIT: A minimalist game shouldn’t really need instructions, but (in case it isn’t clear what to do) the objective of the game is to clear the (minimalist) photos by surrounding areas, which you can do by drawing lines with the arrow keys. Don’t let the green balls touch the line you are drawing, also don’t touch it yourself. Once you have cleared 75% of the photo, you win the level. You have unlimited lives.

(see my earlier post for the zip with source code)

Here’s my submission for LD11.  It’s called Minimaze.  It only has 4 levels, but the basic mechanic of the game is there.  The idea is that you have a kind of snow ball that you have to guide through a maze, as you roll it it dissipates.  There are a few patches (shown in green) that will allow you to grow in size.    Click here to play. Here is the source code.

Tags: final

My junky 2 and a half hour game.

Micro Macro

• Left mouse button shoots.
• Right Mouse button gravitates shots (worth more points).
• WASD/Arrows moves the cursor. DVORAK friendly.

Includes Source. Allegro and C++.

If you’re feeling competitive, post your high scores in the comments.

Tags: final

CGA Quest is a weird little puzzle game.  The graphics are 4-colours and blocky, and the music was written in Monotone, a PC speaker tracker, running inside of DOSBox, which is hopefully enough “Minimalist” cred.

The really interesting mechanic is that you have a “Laser compass” which dictates the direction your lasers travel in.  Which means that when you pick up a token that changes the direction of your compass, all of your lasers change direction!

There are five levels, including the trivial first level in which you just walk to the exit.  Download here.

Tags: final

BlockOut v0.LD48_11
LoneStranger – 04/20/2008
—
This is by far not what I wanted it to be. There are only two brick types implemented, but I think its enough to get the idea of the game I wanted to do.

I wrote it using the Sun JVM version 1.6.0, however, it should work with version 1.5.0. It will not work with 1.4.2, because it needs the System.nanoTime() method.

My game is like Breakout… only in reverse.  The object of the game is to protect the goal from the bouncing ball by placing bricks on the field of play.  Bricks cost money, which you earn by playing and the computer’s misfortune.

The ball will bounce around and the computer will attempt to keep it in play. The player gets points/money for each couple seconds the game is going. If the ball leaves the field of play through the bottom, the player gets bonus money.

If the ball leaves the field of play through the top goal, the game is over and the score is reported.

I know the collision on the bricks from the side isn’t the best. I have some solutions in mind but not time to implement them.

You can download the game from my website and the code as well.

[Update] I used Eclipse as my IDE, and Photoshop to do the graphics.  That’s all the tools I used.  Oh, except for this pen and scratch paper.

[Update 2] I changed the above link to the zip version of the download.  The jar just wasn’t handling some pathing stuff right.  I’ll check into it for the eventual post-LD release.

Tags: , BlockOut, breakout, final, ld48_11

04-20-2008 8:40PM EST
With just over an hour left before the deadline I am taking a small break before I try and finish this one out. I have implemented all the features I wanted to and even a few I wasn’t planning on. I ran into a couple big speed bumps but I worked around them and I think I did alright. My story is not going to be finished I know that right now. I don’t want to end it abruptly so it leaves me with one option… Submitting an unfinished game. This really isn’t that big of a surprise to me considering this time yesterday I did not know a thing about coding and couldn’t tell you the first thing about python. I am proud of what I have accomplished though and hope that next time I can finish.

04-20-2008 11:00PM EST
Finally got the game submitted. I had alot of trouble uploading it for some reason so NegativeGeForce hosted it for me and I guess I made it(?) Anyways, I have learned alot within the past 24 hours and really had alot of fun. I didn’t get to complete the story but I was able to create a presentable game from scratch in less that 24 hours without knowing anything about Python. I am really looking forward to learning more and hopefully will be able to join up next time around.

Good luck to all of you who participated in Ludum Dare 11 and I hope only the best in the future.

Tags: , journal, python

Well, I was just playing my game before going to bed again, and I found a strange bug. The problem is it works fine when running from the source. It’s only in the compiled version. Must be an optimization happening or something, but Python uses byte-code so it should be the same. I’m very confused about it at the moment. It’s not a major bug, it just plays the losing sound and flashes the lose graphic for a second before flashing win and doesn’t do the nice animation.

I’m going to try and fix it now, and repost the exe after flipping around my logical conditions a bit.

Update: Of course, as always, as soon as you make a post, you find the bug.  And it just kicks you in the face.  It’s a really obscure bug, which if I had a legion of testers could have been found.  I apparently, would always end the game selecting two frames of the same size, and the bug occurs when it’s frames of different sizes.  What a pain.  Hope people won’t mind if I upload the fixed version to the small problem…  Just one small additional to a conditional…

Here’s just the small update fixing a winning condition conditional. Hopefully, I may be able to post a Mac version too, but that relies on a friend of mine who actually owns a Mac. Not sure if they’ll be able to do it before they leave for a trip tomorrow. We’ll see, I’ll post it here if I can later.

Framed v1.11: (windows) (src)

Here’s a time lapse of my desktop as I competed in Ludum Dare 11.

Here’s a youtube link.

I know, the screenshots got cropped. The program I was using to grab them wasn’t grabbing the whole screen. Sorry about that.

And yes, there’s a whole lot of downtime in there. I’m married and I have three kids. My wife made a pithy comment about my participation, which you can see in the video.

You can download a higher-quality version here.

Tags: timelapse

I’ve always been interested in minimalism in other art forms. This of course, opens another can of worms: the great debate as to whether or not videogames are, or could be, art. I actually take a more of a conservative stance than most game developers in that I don’t think games are inherently art. Videogames are a medium, just like film, television, theatre, or music or painting. These forms of media can be used to create art, or entertainment, or advertising. And for the media that are generally regarded as art (painting, music, theatre) there are artists who constantly push the boundaries of the medium. They force people—artists, critics, and ordinary people—to ask questions. “Is this art?” “Can this really be considered music?” “What is the defining characteristics of theatre?” Some in particular do this by trying to create a piece that meets the smallest possible criteria of the definition of that art form.

Samuel Beckett’s play, Breath – 25 seconds long, contains no actors, no movement, other than the curtains, and the only sounds are two cries and breathing. But it takes place on a stage, it has a script, it contains stage-direction.

Napalm Death’s song, You Suffer – Regarded as the shortest song in existence at precisely 1.316 seconds long. But it still contains all the elements of any rock/metal song: guitar, bass, drums, vocals.

John Cage’s composition, 4’33” – A three-movement composition for any instrument (or combination of instruments), made entirely of silence. The argument being that music is composed of sound that is organized in some fashion. Whether or not silence can be considered sound is up for debate, but some people consider the ambient noise of the audience and the performance hall (or location, generally speaking) to be part of the piece. You can even buy sheet music for 4’33”. Does that make it a composition? Does that make it music?

Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings – Seven entirely blank white panels. It is still paint on canvas. Is it still art? I’ve seen it displayed in the San Francisco MoMA, so by definition, it must be high art. Some argue, just like with 4’33”, that the painting’s interaction with it’s environment—the lighting, the shadows cast on the canvas, the museum patrons staring quizzically at the empty space on the wall—are part of the piece itself.

One thing is for certain. If we cannot ask these pretentious questions about videogames, then how can we consider them art?

So what is the most basic definition we have for games? Generally, it is regarded that all games must have a goal. This does not mean that the game has to be “winnable”. Take Asteroids, for example. There is no way to win Asteroids, but the goal is to get the highest possible score.

As another example, SimCity does not have a specific goal. It has a lot of numbers that can increase and decrease, but it is ultimately up to the player to decide how they want to play and what they want to achieve. Because of this, SimCity’s designer, Will Wright, refers to it as a “toy” rather than a “game” because there are any number of ways to play with it. But it is still regularly regarded as one of the “best games of all time” by numerous critics. Does that not make it a game? Clearly, even the requirement of a goal is somewhat lenient. Is score purely a goal, or just a metric? If so, what does this say about games, like Asteroids, where scoring is the only goal? Is the goal of Asteroids to achieve the highest score, or merely to survive the constant onslaught of cosmic rocks? If the latter, does that mean the player always loses?

The second requirement of games is that they must have rules. I once read somewhere (can’t find the source off-hand) that game design is the process of adding rules to a system to make it less efficient. The classic example being that if a boxer’s goal is to get his opponent to lay on the mat for 10 seconds, the most efficient way of doing that would be to shoot the other boxer in the head. Thus rules are added to the game so that the boxer can only cause his opponent to fall by using a certain style of punches. Whether or not this is accurate description of game design, or merely a cute sound bite does not change the generally upheld conception that games are made out of rules.

Another requirement often cited is that games must have some form of player interaction. This could be as much as maintaining an entire fleet of spaceships in battle against another fleet, while trying to manage resource collection, empire expansion, and technology development, or as little as pressing a button to jump.

So, if games are defined as a goal and a set of rules with player interaction, what is the most basic, minimal implementation possible? For the sake of this contest, I’m going to limit this argument to “computer games”–that is, games that can be played on a computer.

Even the current version of my game has more than that. Since a game does not necessarily have to be winnable, or have an end-state, I can remove that part of the game, but I still need to have a goal. The current goal of the game is essentially to terminate it as fast as possible. That can still be the goal even if I take out the “game over” message and the ranking system (which take up the majority of the code). Alternately, I could make the goal to keep the game running as long as possible, similar to Asteroids, or Progress Quest. I don’t even need to keep a score inside my game as the operating system and the Process Manager already keep track of how long the game has been running.

Since the goal has changed, and therefore the rules have changed, I still need to communicate the new rules to the player somehow. My game has to have a name of some sort so to get to the most minimal state possible I’m going to make the game’s title the same as the full text of it’s instruction manual. How’s that for usability?

I still need to have player interaction, but does that mean my game has to accept input? Is the input that it takes to start the game and stop the game enough? If so, I can remove the input code as well.

So what is left? I’ve got a game, where the goal is to keep the game running as long as possible. The rules are… to keep the game running as long as possible? And the player interaction is to start and stop the game. I’d say that’s about as minimal a computer game as you can get.

Here’s the final tally:
KeepRunning
Platform: Windows (Tested on XP, 2000. Probably works with all x86 processors Win95 and greater.)
Source: 2 lines, 76 bytes (including copyright notice comment)

Executable: 5,632 bytes. (Future plans: write it in native assembly code, Linux, Mac ports.)

Screenshots:

Tags: inspiration, journal, screenshot

I used the PTK library and wrote all my code from scratch.  I used Visual Studio as my IDE.  Paint was my trusty graphics app, but none of my graphics work made it into the final game!  (There was a little Photoshop Elements, but don’t tell Paint.)

Here is a look at my code.  You’ll be surprised how much GUI work I did.  Download Battle Magic’s source code

Tags: sourcecode

win32 binary file: http://triorph.surrealix.com/MikeIsAwesome_win32.zip

and of course, original linux source at http://triorph.surrealix.com/ludumdare-triorph.zip

everything is unchanged, just ported for windows.. no fixing bugs and making things work differently, judge as harshly as you want.

green player: up -> accelerate, down->deccelerate, left->rotate anticlockwise, right->rotate clockwis, enter/return -> shoot

blue player: W -> accelerate, S->deccelerate, A->rotate anticlockwise, D->rotate clockwise, Q->shoot

Tags: final

Congratulations to everyone who finished, or even just attempted the LD11. I really enjoyed it, and will be back for more!

I’ve slept 2 hours in the last 2-and-a-bit days, and am seeing triple. Had a meeting this afternoon with three of my course advisors, and could barely stagger along in my Monday evening social sport.

Regardless, I managed to hold up long enough to also fix some show stopping bugs, and write a comprehensive guide to playing “The Butler Did It”. Original unplayable version is still available if you want to use it for judging (*ouch*), but give this one a whirl and catch a murderer.

Looking forward to a good long sleep, and then working my way through 60 minimalistic games. Probably a windows port of TBDI, too.

Tags: day3, journal

Here’s the timelapse of the development of my entry [youtube.com], Mondrian. It spans pretty much the whole 48 hours, with one shot every 10 mins, (except the blank ones when I was sleeping with the screen on powersave).

For my own future reference:

Screenshots taken with the cronjob:

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * import -window root -display :0.0 /home/pansapiens/LD11/screenshots/$(date +%F_%R).png >/dev/null 2>/dev/null

Converted to video with:

$ mogrify -format jpg -scale 840x526 *.png

$ mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=4 -o timelapse.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800

Tags: timelapse

You don’t have to wait anymore, here is the win32 binary of  the great Color Eater.

Download

Tags: color eater, python, rollbak, win32, winxp

So, I actually updated my game a bit this morning, as I realized I should keep a mechanic going to make the game more challenging (also, indirectly fixes the problem I had before too), but I’ll wait to post a link until after the voting is done as its outside the 48 hours. Though I had plenty of time to spare during the competition, I think I must have only spent about 12 hours total on the project. The update also makes the Rogue Frame outlines thicker to help distinguish them. I mean, all in all it was about 10 lines of change, but it can wait.

* I really just wanted to note: While I don’t have a compiled Mac version yet, if you use the MacOS pygame packages from here, then you shouldn’t (hopefully) have any trouble running the source package with Python 2.5.

I’m alive! I expected otherwise! And, as I begin the early stages of my undoubtedly slow recovery, I will first post the timelapse video I recorded:

And, in case that doesn’t work or you want a higher resolution: The original, 720×480 Xvid w/ mp3 audio, 76.21MB

Tags: LD11 - Minimalist, timelapse

Here’s a timelapse for my game. Watch me repeatedly fail to draw stuff, write big chunks of code that was later thrown out, and also try to make music that I decided to not put into the game! (The music just didn’t fit at all. I extended it a bit and used it in this video in stead)

Contains spoilers obviously, so play the game before watching =)

Oh, and I noticed the counter shows -1:39:49 at the end of the video. I did go a few minutes overtime (mostly upload issues though, also I started way late so please go easy on that =]), but only by a minute or two. There was a bug in the counter that caused it to count wrong when it went past the deadline. (Also, the time skips when the sleep window pops up as my PC was off then.)

Tags: timelapse

Timelapse!

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=2WrnjfxFQ64

Strangely enough, very little of the final levels I shipped with are in there. I stopped recording when I rebooted about half and hour before the deadline, so you can’t see me fooling around with sfxr either =(. You can, however, see all the time I wasted on that math problem on Saturday >:).

Tags: timelapse

I was surprised I was able to finish this game. The level is actually pretty darn big with 10+ rooms to explore and an entire forest as well.  In terms of size, the dungeon is nearly a 100 screens large. There are about 8 or so different monsters. Each one you encounter is a little more difficult than the last.

You have two kinds of points. Offensive points and defensive points. Every time you hit a monster you lose some offensive points. Battles can take a long time if you don’t maximize your offensive points because your hit damange is a percentage of your total offensive points. So heal before battles (every step will heal one point) and search around for special items that may increase your offense points. This is the key to quick effective battles.

 Every time a monster hits you, you lose the corresponding  amount of defensive points. If your defensive points drops to 0 then you die. You heal one point for each move. Potions will heal your defensive points and look for other ways to heal your points as well. Always go into battle well rested with lots of points.

 The game also is completely data driven and you could build your own dungeon with your own set of monsters simply by editing the two files, objects.xml and map.txt. Have fun with it and let me know if you come up with a great dungeon of your own.

 Have fun! If you make it to the princess I will be really impressed!

Hello again! The linux binaries (and source) are up! These are post-deadline versions where nothing except the necessary has been changed. In order to get the game working on linux I’ve changed the following things:

• Reference parameters in the Vector2 class has been set to const

• One _itoa_s() call has been changed to a sprintf() call

• The time function has been changed from clock() to (clock() * 1000 / CLOCKS_PER_SEC)

Nothing else has been changed (in order to not cheat!), so there’s still a couple of bugs in there which can be used to get higher scores etc. I’m not going to tell you where though 😀

Linux binaries and source:

http://gustav128.googlepages.com/sailor_linux.tar.gz

I should probably mention that you can move your boat using the arrow keys and repaint it while sailing! (people often ignore the readme for some reason :D)

Tags: final, linux, sailor, sea, water

I did not write much in my last post about what my game is all about, so here goes:

In the game you defend the whitish circles, aka planets, from asteroids. You use the mouse and WASD buttons to play, mouse controls the white square and the keyboard controls the grey shield on every planet. There are currently 5 levels.

I have come to realize that my game has several flaws:

• Bad English: This is the result of stress combined with English not being my mother language.
• The levels are not particularly well balanced: I did not really have time to look into that.
• The whole God-theme seams a little misplaced: Well, I had a great idea that would explain everything, which I of course did not have time to realize.

Looking back,  I realize I might have had my priorities wrong, but It feels like I’m getting better and better every time I do something like this, so maybe next time I’ll avoid the stupid mistakes.

Tools I used:

• Gedit
• Python interpreter
• The Gimp
• Rosegarden
• Audacity
• Probably something more that I have forgotten

Here is my time lapse vid. I put the webcam time lapse inside the screen one and synced them up as best as I could, so it looks best in fullscreen mode. You can get the high res version here (~6.5MB)

Tags: timelapse

Temporary download site:

http://users.evtek.fi/~jarikom/ld11_most_entries.zip

About 160 megs or so. Notes:

• Only entries with trivial download links included (rapidshare and links to home pages not followed)
• Doubtlessly missing some stuff
• Did not uncompress stuff this time, so have fun figuring out how to decompress all the various formats =)

As always, this is just a kick-start package and you should read everyone’s blog for updates, missing files, as well as food photos and timelapses. Have fun, kids!

EDIT: Great minds think alike – mrfun was working on a kick-start package as well. Here’s his link:

http://www.codedojo.com/temp/LD11_for_windows.zip

Tailored for windows, entries unpacked in their own directories, etc.

EDIT2: Keeyai set up a torrent of mrfun’s package!

Tags: kickstart

Temporary download site:

http://users.evtek.fi/~jarikom/ld11_most_entries.zip

About 160 megs or so. Notes:

• Only entries with trivial download links included (rapidshare and links to home pages not followed)
• Doubtlessly missing some stuff
• Did not uncompress stuff this time, so have fun figuring out how to decompress all the various formats =)

As always, this is just a kick-start package and you should read everyone’s blog for updates, missing files, as well as food photos and timelapses. Have fun, kids!

EDIT: Great minds think alike – mrfun was working on a kick-start package as well. Here’s his link:

http://www.codedojo.com/temp/LD11_for_windows.zip

Tailored for windows, entries unpacked in their own directories, etc.

EDIT2: Keeyai set up a torrent of mrfun’s package!

Tags: kickstart

I posted a postmortem of my experience on my blog here.  Check it out

Tags: journal, postmortem

Alert!

I’ve added Mac and Linux builds of my game Strong AI so all the world can enjoy the fun of indiscriminately killing!

Until Phil gets around to fixing the link, give this a try.

/ludum/category/ld11/?tag=final+final&mythumb_nav=1

This should display the final entries grid, excluding the food pictures. Not sure why its final+final, but it works.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish in time… in fact, it’s still not finished, but I’m aiming to have it finished by Friday ( and certainly by 2nd May as I’m using it for AI coursework now, and that’s when it’s due. )

So, what went wrong?

Point One : My engine was a bit less useful than I had hoped.
It required ( and still does ) extensive amounts of work on to get something done, which scares me as I’ve been working on the engine for most of the year as my Honours Project, and there’s a hell of a lot of code in there, but to get it to do much game logic, it required a lot of work to the Entity classes and managers.

Point Two : The idea was a bit too ambitious.
The idea was that you’d “influence” the development of a community of shapes – the circles or squares. You couldn’t directly control them, but could assign them tasks from their basic pleb-like status to Attacker, Defender or Healer.
Plebs came in Male and Female forms, and hunted out the opposite gender to mate, increasing the population.
Attackers would actively seek out enemy units to attack.
Defenders would actively block enemy units that came near.
And finally, Healers would sacrifice their energy to top up every other unit’s energy.
Once given a task, they could not be influenced again.
Of course, this meant writing AI for each of these tasks as well as a CPU AI for the other player…

Point Three : Hardware Being Stupid
My laptop was being interesting and in the final two hours, it hard locked.
I would have been able to submit a basic version of it – with the Pleb AI running around and doing it’s thing – if my laptop hadn’t decided to bail on me in such a way that it wasn’t until half an hour AFTER the competition finished that I finally got the thing up and running again… by which point I was rather miffed at the thing and decided just to go to bed.

But what went right?
Point One : GL Renderer implemented!
I met my goal for implementing the GL renderer to the engine. Course there’s not much configuration from script side as I was trying to get it done quick to use for LD11, but it’s there

Point Two : The Scripting actually WORKED!
This one is a biggie as it’s the whole point of the engine.. there was actually enough exposed to Lua to get the Pleb AI doing it’s thing. There was a downfall I noticed here in that the Lua->C Stack was getting severely hammered which caused devastating performance hits, but that’s somewhat straight forward to fix by getting Lua to handle more data by itself rather than asking the engine to do everything, and requesting co-ordinate data for every entity, every frame, multiple times.

Although I didn’t get anything finished, I still managed to get a lot done in the time.. and I will be finishing the game off
At the moment, it’s interesting just to watch the Plebs run around and do their own thing.. Lua does sometimes freak out with the amount of data it’s having to shift, making some of them “explode” and move towards the camera, rather than hunt out another mate. And due to the rather standard C pseudo-random number generator, the majority of the Plebs congregate in the centre of the level somewhat, like a mass of worms.

Well done to everyone that did get something finished in time!
It was amazing sitting in IRC and watching the blog as progress was made on everyone’s projects, and there looks to be a number of really interesting games coming from this.. unfortunately, mine wasn’t one of them, but I’ll be posting binaries and all source by the end of the week when it’s finally finished – just for anyone interested in what I got up to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6fX5zzRf9Q 

Here’s my timelapse video. The picture-in-picture part is not completely in sync with the big video, but it should be somewhat close. I cut out the parts where I was sleeping or otherwise away. Music is Scattered Progression by JDruid.

Tags: timelapse, tiny hawk

Well, it’s here!

A Windows port of ‘The Butler Did It‘ is now available for download. It’s unchanged from the linux version (except the bits coded so badly the compiler wouldn’t let me get away with).

Download, run, and keep trying until it manages to start without crashing.

Windows Binary (zip, 2.5 mb)

Tags: journal