What went wrong

1. Choice of development platform, XNA studio 2.0 Beta. People were having trouble running the game. I knew this before I started but things like Intellisence, love for C# and curiosity of XNA took the upper hand. This was my first XNA game, and my first use of an physics engine. I used Farseer 2d physics lib. Having no previous experience in both fields was challenging.
2. The controls are like standing 100m away from a real helicopter with a remote control keyboard that has a delay of 2 sec. It made the game totally unplayable for most of the people who actually got the game running.
3. Too advanced idea for the time frame.
4. No guidance when flying out of scene.

A lot of these stuff are related to the physics engine and my lack of experience with them.

What went right

1. The editor was whipped up in director’s authoring app very quick. Place and size different rects and run generate() to make the xml level file. Yeah, loading levels were easy too. with xml serialization.
2. Sound effects came out great thanks to DrPetter’s sfxr program. The xna audio framework was a bit confusing at first, but it did the trick. Adjusting the helicopter engine sound along with the thrust was effective for game play.
3. Game play is really fun once you get the hang of the controls. I found myself several times playing around when there was stuff to code.
4. Code. The code is clean and got unusually many comments for a LD contribution.

Porting

So I decided to try to port the game away from xna, to OpenGL, so that more people can play it. The rendering part went fine. But then the physics lib stabbed me in the back again. It uses the xna lib. So I dug out a version that did not. But I failed again. It turns out that that lib also is xna dependent. So I tried to get the source code and remove all dependencies. But failed to grab the source. Not much energy left to de-xna it.

Tags: heli, HeliChain, physics, post-mortem

What went wrong

1. Choice of development platform, XNA studio 2.0 Beta. People were having trouble running the game. I knew this before I started but things like Intellisence, love for C# and curiosity of XNA took the upper hand. This was my first XNA game, and my first use of an physics engine. I used Farseer 2d physics lib. Having no previous experience in both fields was challenging.
2. The controls are like standing 100m away from a real helicopter with a remote control keyboard that has a delay of 2 sec. It made the game totally unplayable for most of the people who actually got the game running.
3. Too advanced idea for the time frame.
4. No guidance when flying out of scene.

A lot of these stuff are related to the physics engine and my lack of experience with them.

What went right

1. The editor was whipped up in director’s authoring app very quick. Place and size different rects and run generate() to make the xml level file. Yeah, loading levels were easy too. with xml serialization.
2. Sound effects came out great thanks to DrPetter’s sfxr program. The xna audio framework was a bit confusing at first, but it did the trick. Adjusting the helicopter engine sound along with the thrust was effective for game play.
3. Game play is really fun once you get the hang of the controls. I found myself several times playing around when there was stuff to code.
4. Code. The code is clean and got unusually many comments for a LD contribution.

Porting

So I decided to try to port the game away from xna, to OpenGL, so that more people can play it. The rendering part went fine. But then the physics lib stabbed me in the back again. It uses the xna lib. So I dug out a version that did not. But I failed again. It turns out that that lib also is xna dependent. So I tried to get the source code and remove all dependencies. But failed to grab the source. Not much energy left to de-xna it.

Tags: heli, HeliChain, physics, post-mortem

Okay well .. it’s been a bit of work, but I got one together. Unfortunately, youtube wouldn’t take it. I think it had something to do with something to do with something. Which, means I need to upgrade linux to get … blah blah.

On the more interesting side, I wrote a linear video editor for the task in pygame + pug. It only took about 90 minutes to make the editor. The rest of the time was struggling with encoding issues. The editor works pretty good and plays music along with so you can get things synched just right

The program takes in a list of .png files (movie.txt) and lets you cut out chunks and do other things with ‘em. Here’s the video. It’s got great music – thanks to DrPetter’s brother!!

Tags: timelapse

I made a new level for Mr.Splode — good luck!  To play it, copy it over level 4 and then press 4 from the title screen to play the level.  I’ve also made it compile under linux .. you can grab the new .c and .h from this zip as well.  To compile:

gcc -g mr.c `sdl-config –cflags –libs` -lSDL_mixer -o mr

Check it out.

Tags: addons, mods, mrsplode

Someone asked for a pelly. I made one. It’s simple and boring, but I suppose it’ll do if nothing better comes along.

Here’s a psd file with suitable layers for making variations to suit all the themes: pelly_layers.psd

(I’m too lazy to do them now)

Tags: pellies

Someone asked for a pelly. I made one. It’s simple and boring, but I suppose it’ll do if nothing better comes along.

Here’s a psd file with suitable layers for making variations to suit all the themes: pelly_layers.psd

(I’m too lazy to do them now)

Tags: pellies

inspired by PoV’s posting of this:

I created this pelly (admittedly useless as an award):

Tags: pellies

Well, this started as a clever idea.

One of those drinking birds, with a pelican beak, drinking from a trophy. Alas, it really looked terrible, so I hacked it somewhat, creating this slightly more carnivorous scenario. 😀

The idea was to use something iconic embossed on a medal.

Tags: art, pellies

Since people are posting pellies, here’s the one I made last night:

(slightly tweaked)

Tags: art, pellies

Thanks everyone for coming out and making Ludum Dare 10 a great success. A fitting close the fifth year of of the compo.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the results can be found here. Final entries can be found here.

Now, as much as we’d love everyone to idle with us in #ludumdare until April, we understand this isn’t practical for everyone. So, in addition, we have a mailing list at gamecompo.com.

To subscribe, e-mail: gamecompo-subscribe@sykhronics.com

To unsubscribe, e-mail: gamecompo-unsubscribe@sykhronics.com

And when in doubt, hit up ludumdare.com.

– – –

Now, unlike prior years, we’ve tried to make it clear that the next compo will be in April. Anyone that’s stayed up with our shenanigans will know April is our magic month, the anniversary of the first Ludum Dare compo (the original 24 hour compo in 2002). If there’s one tradition we’ve kept over the years, it’s been holding a compo in April. Be it organized a month in advance, or pulled together last minute.

So the first order of business is to pick a weekend in April to hold the compo. I’m not looking for suggestions per se, but reasons to include or exclude a specific day. Our options include:

• April 4th-6th Weekend
• April 11th-13th Weekend
• April 18th-20th Weekend
• April 25th-27th Weekend

Ideally, we like to plan around such things as Game Industry events (GDC, E3, Game Connection, etc), Exam season (we love you students), national holidays, or any such event that either hinders or benefits the majorities chance to participate.

– – –

And in final, if you have any comments, suggestions or feedback for us, please do share them. Ludum Dare is and has always been about the community. Without you all, we’d just be an IRC channel.

Thanks again everyone, and have a great 2008.

Tags: compo, LD #11 - Minimalist - 2008, Planning

Thanks everyone for coming out and making Ludum Dare 10 a great success. A fitting close the fifth year of of the compo.

If you haven’t seen it yet, the results can be found here. Final entries can be found here.

Now, as much as we’d love everyone to idle with us in #ludumdare until April, we understand this isn’t practical for everyone. So, in addition, we have a mailing list at gamecompo.com.

To subscribe, e-mail: gamecompo-subscribe@sykhronics.com

To unsubscribe, e-mail: gamecompo-unsubscribe@sykhronics.com

And when in doubt, hit up ludumdare.com.

– – –

Now, unlike prior years, we’ve tried to make it clear that the next compo will be in April. Anyone that’s stayed up with our shenanigans will know April is our magic month, the anniversary of the first Ludum Dare compo (the original 24 hour compo in 2002). If there’s one tradition we’ve kept over the years, it’s been holding a compo in April. Be it organized a month in advance, or pulled together last minute.

So the first order of business is to pick a weekend in April to hold the compo. I’m not looking for suggestions per se, but reasons to include or exclude a specific day. Our options include:

• April 4th-6th Weekend
• April 11th-13th Weekend
• April 18th-20th Weekend
• April 25th-27th Weekend

Ideally, we like to plan around such things as Game Industry events (GDC, E3, Game Connection, etc), Exam season (we love you students), national holidays, or any such event that either hinders or benefits the majorities chance to participate.

– – –

And in final, if you have any comments, suggestions or feedback for us, please do share them. Ludum Dare is and has always been about the community. Without you all, we’d just be an IRC channel.

Thanks again everyone, and have a great 2008.

Tags: compo, LD #11 - Minimalist - 2008, Planning

If there is an LD11.

OK, at the moment I’m learning how to code in C++, is that a recommended language to be used in LD11?

I’ve tried to look at the pros and con’s, and found:

Pros:

1. It is Object Orientated, which may persuade me not to use plain structured and a loop.
2. It is a compiled language, so it should be easier to make it cross platform
3. It should run faster as well
4. It is great for text based games

Con’s;

1. I’m not great at it
2. I have no idea how to GFX in it
3. I’ve not touched the language since 2004, and the whole thing was different back then.

At the moment it looks like the pros are greater than the con’s, but, is it a better language overall?

I mean python is written on top of C++, so that means that the person who made Python can’t of been to happy with C++ if he made is own one, either that or he was bored.

If python is written in C++ then That could mean that it is an ”improved” version of C++, leading me to think that that is better.

However, I already know python, so it would be a good learning experience for me to learn C++, and someone gave me a Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, so I’m trying to learn that. (Not the average item on a 12 year olds list )

Only 4 people rated my game. Thats unacceptable, I need get rid of XNA. So I’ve thrown all XNA stuff out of it. I needed to poke a bit in the source of the physics lib as well to cleanse out the filth, thankfully that was easy. Now I need to tame the horrible controls (That was my fault, cannot blame XNA for everything), and then pretty it up and I’ll make a release. I plan to port it to linux too, with Mono.

I’m only using Glfw, OpenGL and .Net 2.0 as we speak. For sound it will be OpenAL.

Tags: .net, heli, opengl, port, xna

Only 4 people rated my game. Thats unacceptable, I need get rid of XNA. So I’ve thrown all XNA stuff out of it. I needed to poke a bit in the source of the physics lib as well to cleanse out the filth, thankfully that was easy. Now I need to tame the horrible controls (That was my fault, cannot blame XNA for everything), and then pretty it up and I’ll make a release. I plan to port it to linux too, with Mono.

I’m only using Glfw, OpenGL and .Net 2.0 as we speak. For sound it will be OpenAL.

Tags: .net, heli, opengl, port, xna

Did not quite make it in 2007, but here’s Partycle Popper 1.5

– Pretty much recoded based on cleaned up basecode which was based on the contest version of the game
– The widescreen bug fixed

– Audio recoded using SDL audio instead of fmod to make porting slightly easier
– Custom mixer for sound fx and midi instruments
– MIDI player (only supports one instrument and note on, but hey, it works)

– Gameplay tuning;
– Player’s bullets and bad pop bullets are faster, normal pop bullets slow enough to dodge around now
– Scoring is slightly tuned
– On player death, the same level is restarted with the same score as when the level started
– Couple new hint lines, and couple informative printouts here and there

Finally I’ve ported it away from XNA to OpenGL, still got the (almost) same lousy controls, for your pleasure. Still needs .Net 2.0 to be installed though, but should be compatible with Mono, and thus playable on Linux. If someone like to try to compile it on Linux, contact me. Some things have been tweaked and added. But the game play is the same. Added ugly clouds for better sense of height movement. Updated the physics lib to the newest version.

Arrows: (over) steer

Z: Claw claw claw!

X: TURRRRRRBO

Space: Reset heli position

R: Reset level

N: Next level

Download now! 441KB Now with dependencies included!

Tags: .net, 2D, chain, heli, opengl, port, xna

Finally I’ve ported it away from XNA to OpenGL, still got the (almost) same lousy controls, for your pleasure. Still needs .Net 2.0 to be installed though, but should be compatible with Mono, and thus playable on Linux. If someone like to try to compile it on Linux, contact me. Some things have been tweaked and added. But the game play is the same. Added ugly clouds for better sense of height movement. Updated the physics lib to the newest version.

Arrows: (over) steer

Z: Claw claw claw!

X: TURRRRRRBO

Space: Reset heli position

R: Reset level

N: Next level

Download now! 441KB Now with dependencies included!

Tags: .net, 2D, chain, heli, opengl, port, xna

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Game Development!

I’ve written a postmortem for my LD10 entry you can see it on my website here. I’d repost the whole thing here, but I’m lazy.

Today I’m standing in for my RSS feed which seems to have gone haywire. By the look of things it’s still refreshing even though I removed the xml file!? Phil?

Anyway, updated the page with two more projects from 2007. Go see while they’re hot… uh, pretending they’re not already 4-6 months old.