Of the games I’ve rated so far, I think this one feels the most complete, serene and balanced in terms of graphics, sound, story and music. If you’re able to play a Windows game, make it this one. It may be simple, but it’s quite a work of art.

Tags: artgame

[My name is Carlos Leituga and I’m a junior Game Designer / Implementer in a Portuguese company, where I’m working on a Hidden Object Adventure for a year and a half now. So here I am again, creating a game in 72 hours with the Make A Game team for Ludum Dare #22. ]

As we were packing our stuff after making Eggscape, someone said something in the lines of “Let’s do this again in December!”, and since that day in August we’ve been talking about participating once more in Ludum Dare.

As the final week till LD #22 began, we followed the theme voting closely, coordinated our votes and shared the possibilities of each theme that interested us. Having learnt a lot with LD #21, we were confident that this time everything would work out better, even with two fewer members.

 The whiteboard calls the shots

The Idea

Something that we might never get the hang of it is figuring when in our timezone will the theme be announced. Finally, at 2 of the morning, “alone” was crowned the winner. After fumbling around with multiple ideas, it was about 5am and only Manuel, the other designer, and I were still awake while the others slept.

We started talking about a game where you played a kleptomaniac at his girlfriend’s house, having dinner with her parents, and stealing stuff when they weren’t looking. This sounded fun, but there wasn’t much variation, and we suspected it would require a lot of scripting to be interesting.

The best part about that idea was picturing the main character trying to conceal every item beneath his clothes, so that evolved into a shady guy wearing a trenchcoat on a museum, that would stray away from his tour group to steal paintings. You couldn’t remain alone for too long or the guide would start searching for you, but this was dismissed since it could limit the player’s movement too much.

Always great when the artist nails it better than we do

We then settled with a lone shady character walking around a museum, stealing art when he was alone and no one was looking. His trenchcoat would get as large as the concealed art, preventing him from navigating through narrow doorways. If the painting you were carrying was blocking your progress, you could swap it for a smaller one to proceed. There would be security guards on a constant patrol, and visitors walking around and stopping to admire the art, but running away and warning the guards if they spotted you snatching something.

The tour group made a brief comeback, as a moving hiding spot for the player, much like the monk groups in Assassin’s Creed, but that was cut earlier due to time constraints and issues that where delaying the development of more important non-playable characters.

Not even the size of his desk could constrain our artist’s talent

What went right

– An environment that nurtures creativity™

This time everyone was in the same place. There was no design or art by proxy, which made things much easier, specially since the extra hand in art determined the quality of our entry.

There was constant communication between everyone, and when there wasn’t, we quickly rectified that, which help maintain a good mood throughout the development process. If someone started sighing or getting upset, we asked what the problem was and tried to figure out solutions together.

The whole project gained a perfect harmony pretty quickly: the art style match our vision from concept to execution, and our sound choices were on the spot. All this thanks to communication™.

Image soon to be available on all of your favorite stock photo sites

– Good “marketing”

We wanted our game to be different. For that, we decided to keep an eye on the other participants. We didn’t want to steal other’s ideas, we wanted to avoid them, so we set up our Twitter clients to follow #LD hashtags. Eventually we started talking with other ludum darers, giving support and sharing links.

This lead to mutual interest and hype between projects. We can’t be certain of this, but hopefully they remembered to rate our entry as we did theirs.

Our updates at the Ludum Dare blog were also well spaced between to avoid spamming people and getting pushed by other posts. The Tumblr blog we made last time wasn’t forgotten, and we tried to use Facebook and Twitter in a controlled manner. Tried.

And then everything was about notch’s game

– A team of fast learners

For the second time competing in Ludum Dare, there were some amazing first times.

Manuel was in charge of level design, which he never once worked on before. We needed content, a lot of it, and we didn’t have time to prepare the game for multiple levels, so we all though that a huge museum was best. Though we now realize we were wrong, the map he made is still cleverly challenging. He even added color coding for areas that were the most far away from the exit and contain the most valuable art.

To avoid pulling the programmers from their tasks, we decided to use the DAME map editor to build our level. Learning how to use it was surprisingly easy for me but there was still the issue of exporting it to Flixel. We were exporting our map in LUA, but Flixel wouldn’t identify entities like the paintings, so when everything was rendered, it appeared as a solo background. So basically, Pedro, our engine programmer, spent one hour learning the [email protected]#% basics of LUA to write an interpreter! Just wow!

Teamwork!

– Adding value

To encourage exploration and add value to the game, we made the Gallery one of our top priorities. This Gallery is accessed through the main menu and contains all of the paintings the player steals. Having classic, well known paintings wasn’t funny enough, so we made our “own”.

We have in total 72 unique paintings in the game, all of them are scattered in the museum, and each have a title on them. Most are nods to other games, while others are Internet jokes.

fArts

What went wrong

– Again with the framework

Last time we had problems with our tools, so this time the programmers decided to research in advance for something that suited their needs the most, and found they Flixel. Unfortunately, this engine turned out to have it’s own brand of headaches.

We had problems swapping animations, changing and rotating the guards’ cone of vision, setting up spatial sound and developing better pathfinding than just by points and that avoided getting stuck in objects. Most of these features had to be dropped to meet the deadline.

But worst of all, it was picky with our sound files. Some wouldn’t play completely, others wouldn’t embed when compiling the SWF file, giving multiple errors when trying to stream external audio files. We nearly missed the submission window because of that, forcing us to release the game without sound. Only on the following morning, after the Jam had ended, that we figured out that the problem was related to file size, so we got back to work and solved some minor bugs.

At least this time we were able to test a prototype early in development

What’s missing

We made our best effort to make this game rich on content. From all the features we had to cut due to unforeseen problems with the engine, the quantity of paintings and the gallery menu were elements that we had to deliver. Though we should have spent some time looking up how to save the player’s progress.

The guards took so long to implement that we had to drop the visitors and change the setting to a museum at night. The placeholder circle around the guards, used to test their cone of vision that we didn’t finish, stayed in the game with a different color and opacity, and we gave a flashlight to the sprite to pretend it was a circle of light.

There’s a lot of art missing from the level, mostly museum props used either as decoration or obstacles, because not everything was exported from DAME.

And after these 17 days of voting, we read your comments about the game and completely agree that it should have had a smaller map or multiple exits.

See? It’s not that big!

Conclusion

Although we had our share of problems, everything worked out better than last time. We took our time planning who would do what and how.

Manuel worked on the game design with me, designed the level and made additional art (paintings and props). Fred took care of the AI and sound. Tiago made all the characters and animations. Pedro and Daniela programmed the gameplay mechanics and menus. And I translated the level into the editor, while also making mockups and acting bossy.

We prepared in advance, setting up a local SVN server instead of using Assembla like last time. We forced ourselves to be original by identifying the theme’s common patterns and avoiding them. We tried to sleep at least 6 hours per day and were well stocked up on food.

There was a lot of stress in the final minutes of the Jam, but it was a great experience nevertheless!

Regarding future Ludum Dare events, we’re talking about of at least finishing Eggscape before competing again, but we also have other side projects up our sleeve. So we can’t decide on Make A Game’s fate just yet. I mean, third time’s the charm, right?

You can play “alone I art” at Ludum Dare or at http://makeaga.me/aloneIart/.

Don’t forget to rate. 😉

Update!

Here’s a video of Banksy that Manuel showed us when we thought of the trenchcoat guy and swaping art. Totally had forgotten about it!

Tools Used

FlashDevelop, Flixel engine, DAME map editor, Audacity, Tortoise SVN, Adobe Photoshop CS4, Google Docs.

Tags: 2D, 72h, alone, alone I art, jam, LD22, LD72, Make A Game, post-mortem

Thanks to DontBeNoobish for making this awesome gameplay vid:

You can play the game here

I’ve added a web (Native Client) port of my entry Tomes of Solitude. Maybe this will allow more people to play it and give me some more ratings in these final three days.

So many games, so little time. How to choose which ones to try?
Two things I thought would be useful are filtering by platform and who the ‘coolest’ people still with a low vote count are.
I’ve taken the data from http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=misc_links and thrown it into a spreadsheet with a couple of additional columns to help with filtering. HasWeb, HasWindows and HasMac are pretty obvious, Karma is the ratio of votes received vs votes given.

Here it is in case anyone finds it useful.

OpenOffice format

Excel format

To update with fresh data, just copy the table from the misc_links page above into the top left cell.

If this was useful for you, I’d appreciate it if you rate my game

I’m trying to do a study on what aspects make a game fun (and specifically how that works with the Ludum Dare), but I need to get a good sample size in order to do that. Since this community is likely interested in the results of this and also are the judges in the Ludum Dare, people here are ideal for this. I would very much appreciate it if you took 3 minutes of your time to follow the instructions on the following page:

EDIT: Thanks for all your data folks! I’ll see if I can make meaning of it…

EDIT 2: Didn’t get conclusions. Probably need more data and better experiment.

After using my Ludum Dare account for a few weeks now, I’ve been noticing a few weird things… If anyone can help me (and others with the same problems) please don’t be afraid to speak! 😛

1. Association With WordPress.com And Gravatar.com

• I tried logging in to wordpress.com with the account I created for Ludum Dare, but it was saying someone else owns the username So for some reason either the Ludum Dare account is completely different from a wordpress account (which makes no sense, being that I’ve seen those people running around with avatars :P) or the password is not being accepted from wordpress for some reason.
• The Home Page on LudumDare.com/compo says “Add an avatar – gravatar.com, use same email”. So I did. And it didn’t work. Because it said I didn’t have a “wordpress account”.
• Instead I created a separate wordpress (using wordpress.com and not ludumdare) account with the same email.
• I got into gravatar using the wordpress account, and changed the avatar, but it didn’t change my ludumdare account’s avatar (No surprise there)
• I tried logging into LudumDare with the wordpress account, and it failed.

Suspicion: I think for whatever reason, LudumDare accounts are just not compatible with WordPress accounts.

What Could Be The Fix: That “WordPress 3.3.1 is available!” always bugs me. Maybe because Ludum Dare does not have the latest wordpress, the accounts are no longer working with each other.

Question: How did you people out there get avatars? How can I log into WordPress with my Ludum Dare account?

2. Video Embed HTML Code not working

• I tried to embed a video by going into HTML mode and pasting the HTML code that YouTube gives you to embed. It didn’t work, all I got was empty space.
• I tried the “Old Embed Code” and it had the same problem.
• I tried the visual edit view and clicked “Add video with URL”. It gave a link to the vid, which was not the embed I wanted.

Suspicion: Ludum Dare’s HTML is outdated or is not compatible with the standard YouTube embed code.

What Could Be The Fix: Whatever code other people use to embed videos should be public or on the ludum dare home page. OR, Ludum Dare needs to update or make sure their HTML code is working properly.

Question: How did you people out there embed videos? What code did you use? Is there an easier way besides code?

3. Visual Edit for adding pictures and videos are messy

• I’ve added pictures into a post before, using URL, but they came out stretched and distorted.
• Instead of adding pictures using URL, I added them from the computer, and they came out perfectly.
• The “Add Video” button for URL, as I said before, just gives a link to the video. I don’t know what happens if you upload a video from your computer, but definitely the easiest way is to do it from YouTube or another site.

Suspicion: The Visual Edit mode needs to be updated, or fixed, or made easier to use.

What Could Be The Fix: Updating WordPress.

Question: How did you people out there make your titles in a larger font and make your pictures not distorted, to the side, and embed videos? (The last one being the most important)

Sorry if that seemed a little noobish, but I am a noob at heart, and the best way to get help is to ask the community! 😉

Please comment, and thanks for the help in advance!

EDIT: Gravatar problem fixed, you need a wordpress account with the same e-mail as your ludum dare account. (Thanks Chaoseed)

Video embedding is solved thanks to matthias_zarzecki. “The video-embed-thing drove me mad when I tried to figure it out. Turns out just adding the link into the text automatically creates the embedded video.”

In making An Empty Room, my Ludum Dare 22 entry, I foolishly overlooked the fact that not all microphones are the same. This means that different microphones give different results when Flash calculates a microphone’s activity level, which is what I use to gauge microphone volume in An Empty Room.

Then it came to my attention that some people couldn’t play my game, because, regardless of how much noise they made, they were unable to make enough to start the game.

The game works great on my laptop, using my laptops internal microphone, since that’s what I tuned the game for. In fact I cranked Flash’s gain way down so that my laptop’s microphone gave reasonable levels, instead of always maxing the activity level to 100%.

Sort of a foolish oversight on my part. I even had a second, usb, microphone which I used to record sounds, that I could have tested with, but it never occurred to me to do so. Testing now, my usb microphone does seem to give slightly lower levels than my laptop’s internal.

Anyways, I went and made a post competition version of An Empty Room. This version has a configuration menu that lets you adjust Flash’s microphone gain, so that should solve the problem of people not being able to start the game. Otherwise the game is essentially the same.

Feel free to ignore this version for rating purposes. There’s less than two days left in the voting period anyways.

I toyed with a couple other methods of solving the volume problem, but this seemed like the easiest solution that was reasonable. The effect of gain on volume is not linear, which makes automatically adjusting the gain to match the desired levels a pain. And since Flash seems to round off the activity level to an integer percentage (capped at 100%) using lower baselines for quieter mics would result in less precision.

The other option would have been to calculate volume myself directly from the samples instead of simply using Flash’s microphone activity level. I have no idea how Flash calculates it anyways. Doing things myself would involve me figuring out how exactly to do so in the first place and would require me to rework who the effects are calculated in game, since I would be using a different measurement than Flash’s vague percentage. Which is far more extensive than I wanted to make this little update.

An Empty Room’s entry page is here, which has links to both the compo version and this new version.

Having been away and sick I didn’t get a chance to write this, but I’ll do so now(with a little over 24 hours to spare)

Let’s get started then. Not with the beginning, that’s what is expected, let’s go for a random order.

“A form of monotheism” a silly name, thought of in the last 30 minutes as a better-than-nothing name. It surprisingly works and fits the mechanics of the game. You’re an exterior force with equal control over everything in the game world. You can chose sides, be impartial, have some work for the benefit of others and so on.

The original idea was to have the player be some fellow that clones himself amd tweaks said clones to accomplish some end (repopulate the planet, fight off aliens/ zombies/ in-laws) but someone already  had that idea. Can’t remember who.

The second idea was to make a platformer and beat the theme into it with a stick. Since I forgot to make a platformer framework before the compo, I decided that’d take too long so I dropped it.

Back to square 1.

I wanted the player to start with one individual, and have the ability to spawn more and breed a populaton.  That took too long, so I ended up spawning a whole bunch right from the start.

Species and similarity

What you’ll notice is that creatures are divided into specias: humins, cats, rats, and llamas (the llamas were supposed to be centaurs but I gave up on that) . Each individual also has an empathy-o-meter/ similarity-rating, the color under them. The more you interact with an individual the more that changes. New creatures get one based on their parents.

Breeding and killing

Creatures of different genders and the same species will produce an offspring if they are similar enough AND one or both of them are assigned as breeders. This is mostly to avoid population floods encountered in early testing.

You might wonder why breeding and killing are in the same subcategory. Because they both depend on similarity. If two creatures are too dissimilar they’ll want each other dead(regardless of species). If you keep a similar population confined and breeding you’ll notice that eventually they’ll start killing each other to keep ‘strange’ ones away. Much like history isn’t it?

Social commentary much?

Yes. The only time when you can be sure things won’t be killing each other is when there is only one left. Hence alone. After I finished the game I was left disgusted. I unwillingly made a game about racist intolerant cartoony critters that strip the land of resources and kill eachother because the color under their feet is different. You know: like real people. The relative accuracy of my ‘simulation’ was even confirmed by someone who actually bothered studying these things.

Anyway

The good is working with processing and making html5. A lot easier than I thought.

The bad was not getting to add sound effects, which I knew how to do, and making a cheap hack to loop music. Uneven distribution of resources and a lot of other gameplay and balance tweaks.

The achievements: The end game, when you have a single individual left, a single species left, or one individual of each species. A total of 7. I don’t think anybody got any.

Want to give it a try? knock yourself out:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5432

Tags: html5, postmortem, processing

At the beginning

When I woke up and saw what the theme was, I found myself lucky to be able to come up with an idea so quickly. This was the very first sketch.

The idea was simply: You can’t jump on a platform because it’s too high, so you’ll need to jump on another guy, so you can jump on the platform.

First problems

So I started developing, and with my lack of programming knowledge, I started looking for tutorials or examples of platform engines. It took way too long, and it caused only bugs, so I decided to make you not really jump on the other player, but just move you there with an instant. Hard to explain, but when you play my game you’ll understand 😛

The music

In the middle of the development I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I just started making the music theme. I was afraid I was going to have trouble with this, because I never really make music. Luckily, the theme ‘alone’ made it really simple, because the mood had to be sad. I just picked a random piano tune, and placed the notes on random places. I don’t say the music is a masterpiece, but for the alone theme it sounds quite well.

Bugs!

If I hate something, it’s bugs. And I had a lot. I spent way too much time on bug solving. I also spent way to much time on things I didn’t included because of the many bugs. So yeah, fack you bugs!

To make it short: Things that went right, things that went wrong!

Things that went right

– Coming up with an idea

– making sprites

– making music

Things that went wrong

– Bugs!

– The script wasn’t clear, and had to look for specific lines sometimes.

– Level design

Did the warming-up LD help?

Yes! It did!

In the warming up Ludum Dare I learned about id and instance_id. If I didn’t knew what that was, or how to handle it, I probably could never make this game.

Timelapse

Lonely Tower – Ludum Dare #22 Timelapse

The game itself

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=5959

Have fun

Well, here goes…

Building:
Okay… This went rather smoothly. I chose to use GameMaker, which I am highly familiar with, rather than PyGame or XNA (as I am still learning these), or a lower-level environment (o_o). I went in stages. I first built a mockup, then basic movement, then enemies and victory/defeat conditions, then a frontend, then sound, music, effects, and art, then I tweaked it and eliminated as many bugs as possible (thankfully few). I was able to run a lightweight timelapse program as well. Actually, now that I think about it, all 6 programs I used are built to be easy and quick to use: GameMaker, Paint Tool SAI (Paint for tablets), SFXR (you can use multiple sounds from this at the same time for better sounds; I did this in both my LD20 entry and this entry), Chronolapse, the Autotracker-C script (for music), and Schism Tracker (a .it compatible music synth program, perfect for replacing the beeps with instruments) Everything was smooth, I even got sufficient sleep and submitted my game to several sites and into the compo an hour before the 48-hour deadline.

Then, votes and comments meandered in… Universally, the game was fun and intense and the music and graphics were considered good. However, there was one very common complaint (EVERY comment, including my own, mentions it). This complaint is the very high and often sudden difficulty of the game (odd for LD especially). What makes this especially ironic is that during playtesting, the difficulty was even higher…

Contrary to public belief, the game is possible to beat, just extremely difficult.

All in all, the Ludum Dare (my 3rd, along with 19 and 29) went pretty well. Once my computer is fixed (which is why my Coolness is 0), I can address the complaints and create a gameplay video to entice more players (not that this will affect the competition)

Thank you for your time, for your votes, and your patience!

–Fenyx

Hello happy LD community !!

I just upload a tiny video from the creation of the game.

Mr. Treevil’s Lonely Heart – Timelapse – José Eduardo Terán

And you can play the game here:

Mr. Treevil’s Lonely Heart

Thanks for watching.

Tags: timelapse

Here’s a timelapse I made for ld22.  It’s an mp4 download.  Better late than never.

Also, here’s my LD22 Entry “A Visitor”

Timelapse audio track is Danny Baranowski’s

I’ve been making effort to play a significant amount of games, and to complete, rate, and comment on every one that works on my computer. So far I’ve rated 55 games, while mine has been rated 26 times. I find it really cool to see how many different ways the theme is interpreted by different people. Anyway, I since the rating thing is almost over, I’ve decided to share a few of the games I really liked. I’ll try to talk about games that I found myself, rather than ones people have mentioned before.

Paper Dream

My favourite thing about this game is the art style. The hand drawn style adds a lot of charm to the game. Especially notable is the way the player character moves – He really does seem like he’s made of paper. You kind of have to play the game to see what I mean by that. The goal is also quite neat. You must tasks to please various objects in the environment. For example, take a starfish from the sea and put it next to actual stars. Or, you can fly around for a bit. It’s an enjoyable experience either way.

 First

The concept of is this game is sort of odd. You’re a, er, floaty thing that must make other floaty things appear by collecting pellets that are drifting around. Soon viruses appear and you must fend them off so that your race may survive. It’s surprisingly enjoyable and satisfying slowy filling the world up with your floaty friends. The visuals, music, and even the the floaty controls all add to the feeling this game provides. The atmosphere within the game is done excellently. It’s difficult to explain exactly how, so just go play it.

A Life Apart

In this game you play a sort of ghost of someone who hasn’t been a nice person in life, and must now help people out in order to compensate for the bad things he has done. Or something like that. The main focus of this game is the narrative it takes you on about this guy’s quest for redemption. I’m not sure if “alone” is an accurate theme, but the story ends up being very deep and emotional, which is enhanced by the atmosphere the graphics and sounds provide.

So, that’s it. Just a few of the many amazing games that I really enjoyed. I would have liked to included more here but I’m quite tired as I’m about to go to sleep, so this will have to do. Thanks to everyone for making such great games, and thanks to you if read this. I hope you like the games I have recommended here. I suppose I might as well link to my game…

Duckling

This is literally the most perfect game in existence. Amazing gameplay, excellent graphics, great sounds, and a compelling storyline, there’s nothing this game doesn’t have. Okay, just kidding!

I am thinking forward to the next Dare. What is the rule on being part of two different teams submitting a game?

Situation: I want to participate in the compo by myself.  My son and his friends want to submit their own game for the Jam — but they have no programmer. The games would be totally different and not share any assets.

Can I submit my own game and help them out with programming for their game?

Susan

Solitaire of Solitude is headed for iPad! With the help of couple of friends, the game has been polished & ported for iPad (with GameCenter achievements and leaderboards), and is almost done. Expect it to hit iTunes within about a week.

Here’s a couple of screenshots from the latest build: #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 25%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Also, we’re about to start looking for potential publishing partners for a physical card game version of the game (with rules for multiplayer), so if you happen to know any / are one yourself, feel free not to avoid sending me a message!

And thanks for everyone who played the game, doubled for those who left feedback!

Guess I’ve procrastinated long enough, here are my thoughts on my LD#22 entry Moving Day.

Statistics

These are probably pretty typical stats for games that don’t generate much buzz during the rating period.  I tracked my clicks using bit.ly and so far the source code has only been downloaded 6 times, total game clicks of 111 and total timelapse views of 144.

I also posted a link to facebook late at night, but that link saw very little traffic. I’m guessing it got buried in the flood of posts and most people saw it in the morning when they couldn’t play a flash game. I don’t think my social network made much of an impact on the statistics… it would be better to post such things just as work is letting out in your target location. The demographics were also interesting, you can see how this is really a global community:

What went right

• I’m pretty pleased with my tool selections. FlashDevelop + Flixel has been fun to learn and I was able to come up to speed fairly quickly.
• Inkscape saved the day for graphics as I quickly realized that I lacked the skills to make decent animated frames with pixel art. I’m pretty satisfied with my run animations.
• Recording a timelapse was actually pretty helpful for me. When you  get into the zone it is easy to lose track of time, the timelapse helped show me that the time I spent browsing was really pretty trivial when compared to the time I spent prematurely tweaking gameplay.

What went wrong

• I spent too much time tweaking gameplay before implementing randomized game levels. I usually get stuck obsessing over gameplay in my other prototypes and I’m glad that Ludum Dare forced me to go beyond that but I still wasted way too much time here.
• The innovative part of my game was supposed to be a physics-based gliding system that let you trade speed for jump height. I spent many hours tweaking these equations with a static game level and that work was basically wasted once I replaced the static level with randomized one.
• Animating the death scene was also pretty tedious. I should have learned how to use a tweening engine before the compo.
• Last minute bugs. I ran into a randomized null pointer error in the last hour of development… which was solved with a comically stupid hack: while(x==null) x = randomobject();

Next time around I’ll make sure to implement basic gameplay, levels and a win/loss condition before spending time tweaking any specific parts.

Tags: LD22, postmortem

Okay, it’s been a while since Ludlum dare and I thought I may as well do one of these as I have some time on my hands.

So here is what I think of my game :

Graphics
I thought graphics were the strongest part of the game as they were the parts I spent most time perfecting (to my style). It may be really common to have that style of tiles or whatever but I really wanted to have a go at creating a low-res game and I thought they were okay at the end.

If I had more time though, I would of spent even more time on the graphics. I would of probably made the tiles 16×16 so I could add more detail in and maybe add more effects.

Gameplay
The gameplay was bearable in my mind, it wasn’t too complex(well I don’t think so), and I didn’t try and make it really hard for the player either. But I have a long way to go with gameplay ideas, as this is my first ever game, so it won’t be great.

I had this idea in mind a few hours into the competition and just sort of went with it, and I hope people liked it as I did. But I do think over time, I will understand more about game design and level design so they will get better in the future.

Sound
The sounds in the game were pretty much rushed because I wanted them in the game, but didn’t have enough time to perfect them. This also goes with the music, if I done it again I would of spent maybe an hour longer on this to make sure it suited the mood.

Cross Compatibility
I thought I had this under control, as I knew LOVE2D would work on Mac, Windows and Linux. But for some reason when I was compiling some windows users were having trouble playing. As far as I could tell from researching the problems it was to do with old integrated graphics and some could be probably fixed by updating the drivers. But oh well, maybe next time I’ll properly test an engine before I do another 48hour competition. 😉

Overall
Mainly, I think the game went well because as I said it is my first game and to me any good comment makes it worthwhile. I did it to try and help me learn LOVE2D better and it did! The idea of Ludum Dare is very effective and helped me more in them 2 days more than my whole time with the engine.

So that’s what I think of my game,and maybe if you haven’t checked it out yourself you can do a quick play now?

Play Here.

Tags: cryptix, first, game, im, where

This is the end, my friend. Here are the results:

How did I do?

You can view your results here:

My Results: ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=me

The individual category results are just above your comments.

Top 50 Games

Check out winning competition and jam games here:

Compo Top 50: ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=top
Jam Top 50: ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=top&cat=Overall(Jam)

Winners are decided by the Overall category.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Categorical Top 25s

Here at Ludum Dare, being the best game isn’t the only way to win. Games are rated in 8 additional categories, with a special “Coolness” category highlighting people that went above and beyond to be sure you got a vote.

Categorical Top 25s: ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?more=1

(And for the press, a shorter Top 5’s is available here)

*NOTE*: You can click on the titles of the categories for Top 50 style lists per category.

More Ludum Dare 22 links

– Keynotes!, with Fydo, NieloGD, and special guests Sos and Dogbomb
– Theme Voting Results
– Post Event Post
– Survey Results by Breakdance McFunkypants
– DogBomb’s 100 Game Video Extravaganza
– Wallpaper of 890 games, by ExciteMike

Ludum Dare 23 – April 2012 – ** 10 Year Anniversary! **

It’s pretty crazy when you think about it, but the next Ludum Dare event coming up in April will be our 10 year anniversary. Yes, we’ve been doing these silly events for 10 years now! Wow! Be sure to stop by in April for the big one! Lets break 1000!

Ludum Dare at the Game Developers Conference

Phil and I are regular attendees at the Game Developers Conference, so if you too are attending, stay tuned. Last year we did a meetup as well as an afternoon Game Jam at NoiseBridge. It was a lot of fun hanging out with with everybody. We don’t have our plans figured out for next year yet, but stay tuned!

January Mini LD, hosted by The Grieve

Afraid of life without Ludum Dare?

Tune in next week for a brand new Mini LD event hosted by The Grieve. Unfamiliar with Mini LDs? It’s like a regular LD without the weeks of voting (and waiting).

Suggestions

If you have any suggestions for us (website, observations, etc), we continue to collect them in the comments here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/01/09/suggestion-post-2/

Thanks everyone for coming out and making Ludum Dare 22 such a HUGE success! We hope to see you again in April! Lets break 1000 on the 10 year anniversary!

– Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

Eyes of the Exorcist was made as the first collaborative effort
between six strangers from who met through the San Diego Game
Developer’s Meet-up Group. The team consisted of 3 programmers, two 3D
artist, and one 2D artist/musician. We spent the full 72 hours of the
Jam in the living room of one of our member’s home. On a whole it was
an incredibly fun learning experience.

What went Right:
* The Location – Caryn and her family were gracious enough to let 5
strangers take over their living room for the weekend. Sharing ideas,
sketches, and code face to face was far more productive than a more
technology based solution.
* Concept Voting – Once the theme was announced we brainstormed for a
while but had not reached a consensus. We agreed that main proponent
of each idea would do a final pitch, then we would vote on all the
ideas. Voting was handled by anonymous paper ballet. Each participant
wrote the numbers 1-8 next to each of the eight ideas. Eight indicated
their favorite idea and one was the least favorite. Each idea’s ballet
score was added up, and we picked the one with the highest cumulative
value. This process allowed all of us to air our ideas, and choose one
that we could agree on.
* Team Energy – Working face to face and having other people depend on
your output brought about a tremendous energy among the group. Two of
us had participated in prior Ludum Dare’s as individuals. We both had
far more energy and drive working as a team than our individual
experience.
* Using Unity – We used Unity for game development. We were able to
take advantage of the input, GUI, character controller, particle
system, and camera components that unity provides. This saved us a
great deal of time not making basic game control objects.
* Art Asset Naming Convention – Despite using Unity for our project
our artists used the Unreal Engine’s naming convention to organize the
art assets. This naming convention allowed us to keep track of who was
working on what, and what stage it was at.
* Division of Labor – Since our team was comprised of programming and
art specialists the programmers could focus on the scripts while the
artists could focus on the art.
* Food – Prior to the start of Ludum Dare the team acquired a large
quantity of sushi, sticky rice, tea, coffee, and chocolate covered
banana chips. We were able to graze off this bounty over the course of
the contest and only had to go out for food three times.

What went Wrong:
* Ambition – When we selected our initial concept we voted on the idea
that we felt would be the most fun game, not what we could complete in
the time limit. This concept involved a spooky ghost town, two
different vision modes, multiple attacks, power ups, inventory items
and a leveling system. In retrospect this was way too much for a Ludum
Dare.
* Lack of Documentation – We kept verbal and mental track of what
features we wanted to implement and in what order. As development
progressed new features were added to the list, but there was no clear
indication as to which features were vital to the build and which were
nice add-ons.
* Tool Familiarization – Since this was our first collaborative
project the artists and programmers were not familiar with each
other’s tools. As such we spent valuable contest time figuring out how
to get art assets into the game. Also we could not utilize the
artist’s time to do level design due to their unfamiliarity with the
unity editor. These things should have been resolved prior to the
start of the event.
* Lack of Leadership – We did not have one person in over all control
of the project, and instead spent a lot of time debating amongst
ourselves over the proper course of action. Also we were unable to
incorporate some of the art assets since the programmers were too
focused on programming tasks.
* Lack of mile stones – We had an idea of what we wanted the end
result of our project to be and when it had to be done. We did not set
time limits on the intermediary steps to get to that final goal. There
were two attempts to have working builds by a certain hour, however we let
both those deadlines slip trying to get it to work perfectly instead of
Kludging together something so we could move on.
* Wasted time on Kitty – One of our team members (Wilson) was insistent on
getting kitty bonus points and wasted valuable time creating scripts
for an NPC cat that did not do much for the end game experience. This
feature was cut from the contest build and all that time was wasted.

Conclusion:
Ludum Dare Game Jam was an incredibly fun learning experience. Working
as a team kept us incredibly motivated. Sadly we bit off more than we
could crew and the end result suffered for it. We now have a better
idea of each other’s capabilities and what can be accomplished in 72
hours.

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem, unity3d

So how about a small challenge: Three hours to attempt to double your coolness by rating more games.

Go go!  😀

Well, my game did pretty well, so I guess I’m happy.  There were a lot of cool games this time around.

My big lesson from LD22 is that I can make a game in 48 hours, seeing as even in the Jam I had pretty much wrapped up by the 48 hour deadline.  My second biggest lesson is that I can’t psychologically handle 72 straight hours of LD Jammin’.  I’m going to try the compo next time around.

And we are very happy with how we did! We did pretty well and even placed in a few categories. We are very pleased with this since this was our first LD and all. To everyone else who enetered, great job! The games that placed were amazing and many of the games that we played were great too, even though some of them didn’t place. We regret that we were unable to play all of the games, but we’re sure that they were great too!

Overall, we had a blast and look forward to the next LD that we are able to take part in. Hopefully, we’ll see everyone in April!

Wow! All I can say is that I’m amazed!  For those that don’t know, the voting for LD22 ended today, and I am shocked at the great feedback and votes I received!

I got #43 Overall out of almost 900 entries, which I wouldn’t consider to shabby for my first dare!

It was an amazing experience, and something I most certainly will be doing again! Really great atmosphere, and there were some really great games made!  Special thanks to everyone who participated and made it such a great time, and congrats to the other winners!  And a huge thanks to everyone who played and commented on my game, I really appreciated the feedback!!

Results
I cant be happier with the results, in the end my entry got a great tied-2nd place on Graphics category (along with superb Deepnight’s Last Breath) and 21st place on the overall results, wich is pretty freaking awesome if you consider the 717 entries that participated on the compo 😀

I wasnt actually expecting that much from my game, since there where many, many other great games to play, so i’m very happy with the results!

OMFG! Statistics!

On this ludum dare i did something just to please my own curiosity, i set up an automatic statistics grabber for my game, using an old method i set up for some of my older projects. The thing is pretty simple, just retrieves the current date, how far the player has gone into the game, number of lives and time played. The result was pretty neat; you can check it out on my website on the link below (or click on the iamge above):
http://invadergames.com.ar/ld22

Overall results arent that impressive trough, the game got played mostly after the compo ended, and then it dropped to a more constant rate of (about) 4 plays a day

So, rounding up; Thanks to everyone who played my game, and thanks to everyone for making of Ludum Dare an awesome experience, i really hope to be around next time!

So my first LD comes to an end, and a pretty tragic one at that.

After failing to secure a score above 2.5 in any category, I’m just not sure I’m cut out for this contest. Pouring a whole weekend of work into a game

which apparently sucked across the board has just been a pretty significant disappointment for me. The disappointment is coupled with the frustration of a glut of comments on the game

stating that it didn’t work at all when looking in the instructions provided with the game and reading my numerous description updates directing people to RTFM would have

shown people that they simply needed to install a VC redist which was also included with the game. I swear people just don’t read instructions any more.

Unfortunately comments can’t be removed and so the number of comments from people who failed to read the manual probably put off a number of people who skipped over the game.

Oh well, what it comes down to is the thoughts of the people who DID read the manual and play the game. Sadly they thought it sucked in pretty much every way. I’d have to agree.  Don’t think I’ll be entering next time. I don’t think I have what it takes to be honest.

Anyway, I had fun trying and I suppose that’s what counts. Maybe I’m being unjustly moapy, I’m just disappointed that the only positive comment my entry received was one thanking me for not cheating.

Thanks all who voted and competed along with me! It was fun and exciting to finally join Ludum Dare, and I can’t wait to join again for the 10 year anniversary!

Once again, I’m going to honest (and critical) and try to make this mega-post interesting! 😛

PLAY THE GAME HERE

My goals for Ludum Dare 22

• Before the competition started, I had some goals in mind that I wanted to make.

1. I wanted to make sure “Fun” was the best category, so that people could replay the game, and have a good time playing.
2. I wanted the gameplay to be smooth and the animations smoother.
3. I wanted to beat Notch in at least one category (knowing how hard that would be). 😛

What software I used

• Unity 3d Game Engine
• Blender 3D Modeling Software
• Pixlr Photo Editor
• Cfxr Sound Generator
• Unitron Script Editor
• Garageband Music Creator
• Text Edit Text Editor

How I made the game

• I quickly had come up with an idea for each of the most likely themes before LD22 started. My theme for “Alone” was a game where you would be sometimes alone, and then all of a sudden, you would be crowded with people.
• After the theme was announced, I decided that the game would be first person (the easiest of all the persons) and that you would have to fight your way through endless hordes of cubes (the easiest of default shapes). You could only see the cubes when your glasses were on, but if you weren’t in a shaded zone when your glasses were on, you’d start burning. This was a way to keep the player moving, and a way to make them constantly nervous.
• I worked on the player controls and LockCursor, etc. But the gameplay does not complete a game. I needed an enemy. One that would appear only if your glasses were on.
• I whipped up a cube model and texture and soon came up with this:

• Whoo Hoo! Now I have a cube!
• Next I worked on making the cube look at the player, and then having it disappear when the players “glasses” (A semi-transparent plane) were off.
• By now my Unity Scene looked like this:

• Soon I got Health implemented, and then it started to look like a Test level.
• I kept at it, knowing it would soon look like a game.
• The cube could soon move towards the player, and deal damage at close range.
• The first “Shaded Zone” was created, (using a Trigger) and the player would not take damage while inside it.
• I worked on making the zone a little prettier, and expanding the floor plane. I added a skybox, and changed the ambient light to near black.

• All along I had been slightly working on a music track, but now I decided I needed to finish it.

• The level was extended, the cube had a spawn code and could replicate itself, and the textures for walls and the floor was created in Pixlr.
• I created a variety of sound effects in CFXR like jumping and enemy death noises (my favorite).
• I worked on making an in-game tutorial, by timing when the music starts with the same time that it tells you that there is no one there.
• The menu was easy, all I had to do was come up with a name and choose the font, and soon my game looked legit. (Sorry for the lack of photos here)
• I asked my friend if he could play a test version on his computer (a windows) and I’m glad he did. The font I chose was bugging out on his computer, so I changed it to something else, and it worked fine.
• Now I knew my game was compatible on Windows AND Mac

• I created another music track for the menu, a helicopter to go to as the goal, and a stats screen so you could try to beat your own score.

Rating Other People’s Work

• I specifically rated the games that had the fewest ratings and tried to give most of them a fair, solid score.
• Mostly I gave 3.0s when I thought something was average.
• For a few people that put little effort into it, I had to give some 1.0s.
• I was sad that Notch had not really implemented the theme and pretty much made a different version of Minecraft. (Most likely this was just because he wanted to, or he felt like it.)

How people rated my game

• I can thank my friends, family, and Ludum Dare community for playing the game and enjoying it, especially DontBeNoobish‘s Gameplay Footage:

• I was proud with how my game turned out compared to most of the other entries.
• People mostly liked the audio and innovation of the game, but there were a few things I could’ve made better (More enemies, options, etc)

The Results!

• Coolness – 52% Bronze medal | At first I thought that the bronze medal meant third place, but then I realized Coolness didn’t have the same rating system. Oh well, it was still good to see that my playing of all those low effort games went to good use! 😛
• # 40 Community – 3.55 | Wow! Community? I didn’t realize I was that popular! 😛 I guess this rating makes sense because of all the excited posts I made with links to this game. I did a LOT outside of the game (Time-lapse, post mortem, gameplay video, tips)
• # 108 Innovation – 3.20 | Good, people liked my idea of the sunglasses and whatnot!
• # 113 Mood – 3.20 | I think the music accomplished the overall feel of the game.
• # 118 Audio – 3.00 | Once again, the music, but also the enemy death noises made this count.
• # 113 Theme – 3.33 | Well, you are sometimes alone…
• # 202 Humor – 2.29 | I wasn’t even going for this (other than the ReadMe) so I have no clue how it ended up higher than overall.
• # 323 Graphics – 2.67 | Although mine was one of the few 3D first person games, I guess people didn’t really like the low effort GUI and enemy textures.
• # 435 Overall – 2.50 | Oh no! Overall score seemed like an important one…
• # 487 Fun – 2.06 | Really? This was the category I was focusing on, but yet it got a 2.06! Yes, I guess I did better than almost half of everyone else, and I’m not complaining, but this ended up at the bottom of the list, when I had worked for it to be the top.

Comparison To Notch 😛

• My goal was to beat Notch in at least one category, and it turns out that was too easy:

• I ended up beating Notch in 7 different categories!
• A comment on the community rating: Last LD, Notch won third place (if I recall correctly) in the community category, but now he received a #49! And I received a #40! So after all the years Notch has spent on Ludum Dare and Minecraft, and the entire fan-base he collected from the Top Computer Game Of 2011, I was able to receive a better score than him from 3 weeks of posting on Ludum Dare!

I send out a huge thank you to all who rated my game (yes, even those of you that got me that horrible “Fun” score) and hope to join again for LD 23! Please remember Rob Productions again for next Ludum Dare, and you can expect a post-compo version coming in time!

Links:

TIPS ON MAKING A UNITY GAME

POST MORTEM

TIMELAPSE

THE GAME AGAIN

Tags: blender, comparison, LD22, Ludum Dare 22, notch, post-mortem, progress, results, screenshot, timelapse, unity3d

Hoorah!

Just a note to inform the general universe that ‘Fishslap’ (born from a mini LD) is now available for Android!

fishslap for android

Cheers,

It seems my little rant I went on about my results has generated some attention and I wanted to qualify it by saying it was never intended to appear as a rant of anger or rage. It was meant to be a rant of disappointment in myself that came off as a little aggressive. I stated that I may not participate in future events but I have in reality never considered giving up. I was simply feeling sorry for myself. I want to thank everyone for their kind words of encouragement even after I said some things that could have been taken as digs on reviewers. This was never my intention and I acted solely out of disappointment in my own performance. However I am glad the discussion happened in that I am sure there are other entrants who may be feeling disappointed whom I hope will be encouraged by the community’s positive and reassuring response to my post. I apologise once again for becoming emotional, I hope everyone understands that as a first timer I threw everything I had at this contest and perhaps I was unprepared for the high level of competition I would be up against, I’m sure we all know what it’s like to try your hardest and not succeed, however, what I didn’t consider during that time was that a sub par performance this time is a learning experience I am sure every newcomer goes through. I will be entering next time and hope my little rant has not damaged my reputation here. Thanks to the community for their support and kind words, as one commenter said, I am still a ninja in training, now I need to show that I can use my sword next contest

Thanks to everyone, for everything

James

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 at 2:04 pm and is filed under LD #22. 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.

This LD was the first time I entered the Jam (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=1078) and I’m pretty happy with the results, especially the 3.21 for Fun (my best score in that category out of 4 LDs, and 19th out of the Jam entries). It’d be nice to be able to see the individual scores again – removing them does prevent some of the usual LD drama, but it’s nice to be able to look at each individual rating for a better idea of peoples reactions, because an average of 3 could mean a lot of 3s, or could mean a mix of 1s and 5s, and while comments are more useful, not everyone leaves one.

Anyway, taking the extra time instead of releasing something half finished seems to have paid off, though I still wish I’d been there at the start – I forgot about this LD and the LD Facebook group seems to have gone silent. My initial feeling about the game was that it wasn’t really anything special, but it was the most solid game I’d made, and I don’t normally feel much passion for making stuff like that yet I have a lot of respect for those who do, so if I can find myself being productive outside of LD time then I might turn this into something bigger and better.

So I have been ranting about this all day now on IRC. Building games together! This LD almost 900 games were submitted. If you think about it, the time and effort invested is mind-boggling. Roughly estimated when each participant invested maybe 30 hours in the weekend, that is about 30.000 hours of time invested in game creation in a weekend. But when the weekend ends many people walk away and don’t really look back until the next LD. I think this is a bit of a shame, because LD is the perfect opportunity to meet like-minded gamedevelopers.

So I am trying to figure out if it is possible for more people to collaborate on game creation, to meet more game developers and channel all this energy to create even more complete games. Because creating games is usually a team effort, and the more game developers you know, the higher the chance that individuals meet up that have fun together building games, or make the next big indie hit. I have even written a little word document that introduces the concept: Ludum Dare: Co-op:

Ludum Dare: Co-op

It is a rough concept at this point. The interesting thing is that many people on IRC like the idea very much, but are not sure on the execution. So discuss away! What would be the best way for you to collaborate with other developers, and together build something bigger than what we usually see in a LD?

Vic

Do Dungeon B11

Back into working on the Do Dungeons (With even more IRC people!) (Less sugar)

😉

-Cell

Stop Sopa Pipa Acta Game Jam

Submissions are now closed!

Let’s protest! Make anti SOPIPA games on January 18 and make the internet crawl with these!

It’s the best we can do, let’s abuse it and help the internet stay the awesome place it is now!

Follow #sopajam on Twitter!

EDIT:
SOPA is down already, but there’s still PIPA.

For those who doesn’t know – PIPA is SOPA with two major changes

• S is changed to P
• O is changed to I

The hashtag is quite popular by now, so I think it’d be best to just use it.
The fight is not over even with SOPA down!

Ciao!
I got past my first LD. It was fun making my game, it was fun playing games and there were lots of great games.
My target before entering LD was “reach top 100 overall”, i didn’t reach it, but i think #118 / 717 is still a good job for my first (and only) released Unity3D game.

My entry:
Space Mission

I got top 100 in 3 categories:
#50 Audio, i am the last in top 50 audio rating. Both the music and the audio effects were made during the 48H compo, but these were generated by automatic scripts, the only tweak i made was to better loop jetpack sound, so this rating’s credit goes to generators.
#62 in Fun rating is a satisfying result, i thought the game was too short and too easy, actually it was, but people still rated it fun and it’s my half victory: Fun is what games are about.
#78 in Humor rating. For some reason people found my game amusing, probably i should thank the starting angry cat or the first game over most player experienced.

Now the really bad ones (under top half):
#393 Innovation. I cloned game boy colors, made a platform/shooter game featuring a Jetpack, a Kitten and Slimes. Oh, there were deadly spikes too! Yay, lots of innovations there, I thought i was going to be over #700 on this rating
#439 Theme. In most single player games you are alone versus something, but you’re not so “alone” if there are monsters around. Most of the games i played followed “alone” theme better than me, and i feel my mediocre theme rating was fair.

For those who might still want to play it or to see my post mortem and timelapse, here’s links:

Space Mission | Post Mortem and Timelapse

So after the compo ended, I decided to reskin my entry, Starlighter, into something new. What resulted is a borderline obscene (yet inexplicably hilarious) new product fit VERY only for adults. Kids, stay away from this one!

I did this partly out of boredom and partly out of the desire to see how with a simple reskin and a crude sense of humor, a game with a depressing and drab storyline can become a game which had numerous people in the room rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter and disbelief. If the theme were “Crude and Borderline Obscene”, I like to think this would have won the humour category 😛

Seriously though, this is ONLY intended for adults (18+) to play. It’s not pornographic or anything and contains no real life nudity, but is just by it’s nature, pretty darned inappropriate.

It contains wanton use of cartoon *ahem* dongs and other related (cartoonized) bodily fluids.

Really, it’s just for fun, I intend no offence by linking to it, I just wanted to share the result of a reskin which had me and some friends in fits of laughter 😛

I can’t really provide any technical support for it other than if you get an error message about MSVCR100 missing, install the redist package included in the folder. Any other problems I can’t help :S I know there are some bugs with the engine for some users and if the original game didn’t work for you, this probably won’t either.

So, for your entertainment (and purely for laughs for over 18’s only), I present what may be the first reskin of a Ludum Dare entry:

Super Turbo Fertilizer Extreme 2: Gentleman’s Edition

Made using the Starlighter Engine

Download (Windows Only I’m afraid!): http://www.mediafire.com/?aw70coj4144i4da

Hi all, Just updated the online map editor app im developing. v0.3-beta:

- Fixed several UI bugs
- Added unit selector for tile size
- Added status pannel and tile info
- Added default tiles for demo use
http://www.callidusrex.com/mapper

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 14th, 2012 at 6:44 am and is filed under LD #22, LD - Misc, Uncategorized. 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.

Command-line tool that generates a single *.as file containing all the embeds of the folders passed.

An example of what this tool can make is found here.

This will help you if you, like me, like to store all your embed on a single “Resources.as” file. Every time I make a couple of assets I don’t want to add them by hand, so I run this application and it’s automatically done and embedded. It also handles *.tff (setting fontName and embedAsCFF=false as optional).

Usage

You can run resmaker -h to get the available list of parameters, but it’s really simple: you specify a bunch of folders where your assets resides (separated by comma), and where is the file Resources.as (will be created), and it will recursively iterate the folders. Remember to use always absolute paths.

For example, the sample I linked above was done using:

resmaker c:\Projects\LD22\assets -o c:\Projects\LD22\src\Resources.as

If you use it, let me know! It was originally made as a Python exercise, but as I found it very useful, I decided to share.

Download link here.

Tags: as3, python, tools

Hey all,

ImaginAudio is a Paris-based audio project, willing to work for credit (for now!).

Check us out at imaginaudio(dot)com and if you like what you hear, get in touch and we’ll see if we can help make your audio dream a reality! (not making any promises obviously ^^)

woo JSRF…

OK! So, two mini jams coming up! It’s time for the ULTIMATE JAM; learn a new language (Actionscript) and code a game with it in one day (for the SOPA/PIPA jam)! Is this a poor decision? Yes – and I doubt I’ll finish. Perhaps I can mix the S/P jam and the “Fear’ miniLD into one entry?

My idea for the S/P jam is to have your character running around sampling works of art (probably musical) and, once you have enough samples, remixing them and uploading them to the internet. However, your efforts are obstructed by the police for violating totalitarian laws. Stuff like that. Run/hide from cops, sample bands, keep your website running despite takedown demands… yes the scope of this is impossible to complete in one day, so the plan is to stick with just this flow of action:  Collect music samples for your awesome remix. The more samples you have, the higher your final piece will be. Don’t be seen by police while recording. Get back to your computer and upload the sample (I know this is not accurate to the effects of the bill at all – I just want to make a semi-related game within the time limit).

Now how to work fear into there…

The title says it all. Before starting my SOPA/PIPA protest game, I decided to release a new version of EpiCat.

Play it here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27464471/EpiCat/EpiCat-1.1.0.swf

It’s mostly art improvements, with some bug fixes, a new enemy, and gameplay balancing. Please let me know what you think!

Things still to do:

• Add music
• Add more enemies
• (Maybe) Add a better intro to tell the story

Tags: post-compo, update

So, around 7PM yestedey – someone on the IRC channel posted that Ludum Dare was hosting a mini-compo. I’ve been following LD but never had the chance to actually participate in it. I fired up Netbeans an started coding a console that draws text, I found a proper console font (PC Senior, great 8×8 font) then started drawing some text. After a while I noticed that the colors didn’t look very appealing so I got Solarized color scheme (Brilliant one) and edited some colors of it. Made some color constants for my use and started gathering up some Screen and Main Menu code

I ended up having a tiny menu with a nice “shifting” effected title. At first, my idea was to have a dodging reflex game or whatever they are called. Then thought that I’d rather do some shooting action and merged both together. Not sure where the name came in to my mind however. I continued thinking, and got the idea of a difficulty menu, Easy-Normal-Extremely Hard. It affects pretty much everything, spawn rates, damage, health, everything. The difficulties also stand up for their names, Easy is casual fun, Normal is a little challenging and Exteremely Hard is.. Extremely hard I guess.

The biggest problem was that I wanted to sleep early and started rushing the coding a little so I jumped into the actual game. I wasn’t sure how to do the architecture at all so I just started putting some game objects in the game class (Player, Censors, Bullets)

Non-stop programming action continued and my code started getting fattier and fattier (In a good way). I continued coding and by the time I thought I finished I noticed that a lot of bugs were present and it was around 10.30PM as far as I know. I continued fixing and went to bed in 12PM. I wasn’t quite confident of my game as there were still bugs and a lack of content. When I woke up about a hour an half ago I directly started up my laptop and noticed that the charger stopped working (Probably my sister, will question her when she wakes up). It has replacable tips so I got another one and started working. I fixed the remaining bugs, changed powerup hitboxes, edited movement on some constructive comment (by Drabiter), added a speed powerup. You still can’t win though, not sure of any win conditions still – so PIPA has 100% chance to pass unless you keep up until forever (Will think of a win condition soon)

By the time I started writing I also noticed that harder difficulties increased powerup spawn rate, well v3.1 soon I guess!

The game is called Red America.

The concept is simple, to oppress all the continental United States. Each state will have it’s own oppression meter, once it it hits %100 it stays there, otherwise it declines overtime. The United States a whole also has an oppression meter which is the mean of all the states.

When the player starts he’ll look at a political map of the USA, and all states start at %30 oppression. Every few seconds an issue will arrise and the player can choose how he responds to it. At first he only has two options: Distract (Starts a new season of American Idol / Starts a random war with a random country.) And Propaganda. Distract is effective against large groups/organizations while Propaganda is effective against the individual. After about 6 events, the player gains access to the NDAA: Dissapear option, which makes an individual dissapear because the goverment says they are a terrorist. A more effective version of the propaganda option and the player should always end up using this option over Propaganda. After about 6 more events the player gets access to the SOPA/PIPA: Censor option, which is a more effective version of Distract. When the player reaches %100 operation, Russia invades America because they believe that America is a communist totalitaristic dictatorship and must be purged from the world. Russia obviously wins because most intelligent Americans decided to hide that fact on the account that they didn’t want to get NDAA’d and thus couldn’t help with the war even if they wanted too.

Tags: design

The starship NALS – Not A Lost Sale – is making a run at the wall of SOPAPIPA.  Firing blasts of education, it will bring down this construct of ignorance!

I made a SOPAjam entry, but for some reason when I try to submit it it tells me I need to log in. I do, and then it give me the same message. It’s on a url, so the least I can do is post it here! http://stoppipa.netii.net/StopPIPA/ Move with the arrow keys, don’t get hit!

so i made a game for sopa jam.

youre a person and you help disco pirates fight off pro-sopa jetpack policeman, with the power of rainbows.

i couldnt figure out the kongregate api/flixel stuff, but I think I will do that when I finish a bigger game. heh.

enjoy

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/sopajam/?action=preview&uid=7853

Tags: sopajam

My SOPAjam entry Congress Chainsaw Massacre is ready!


Play on my website!
Play on Newgrounds!
Play on Kongregate! (with high scores!)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 11:25 pm and is filed under LD #22. 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.

For anybody who was aware of me in the last LD48, I have made a stop SOPA game! It should be way more playable then my LD48 game.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/sopajam/?action=preview&uid=8522  Enjoy!

So yeah, it’s done. Play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/sopajam/?action=preview&uid=5267

Remember: SOPA is no one’s friend!

My SOPA themed DX:HR hacking / Uplink LAN hybrid is finished! You can find it here http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/sopajam/?action=preview&uid=3939

Hope you enjoy it!

SOPA and PIPA see online communities as the childish clubs of pirates and script kiddies. I indulge their delusions in Netbaby, my first game jam entry!

Download for Windows and OS X at http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/sopajam/?action=preview&uid=10237

Tags: sopajam

Hey everybody, Dan from Lantana Games here, and this is my first LD48 entry for the SOPA Jam, entitled ftp://Breach. It’s a hacking-based text adventure which takes place in an unfortunate dystopian future where the net is completely text-based.

The game isn’t done yet however all the core mechanics I wanted in are in. Going to different IPs, jumping to nodes, hacking servers, trace countdowns, pinging the server to buy yourself more time, etc. I even added in lives because it was getting a bit too unfair to keep dying while trying to write “ping” as quickly as possible.

Feel free to test it out, only available for Windows right now as my Flash exporter seems to be busted. :/
http://www.lantanagames.com/breach/ftpbreach.zip

Well-p, i managed to get a game made even though i thought that i wouldn’t get it made. BUT I DID. So here’s a link to my little game:

Play Adventures in [REDACTED]

It’s made with Twine, an wiki based engine to do your own “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of games. The game is confusing, short, and like in real life, there’s no happy ending. Then again, this is my first game, a warm up for the upcoming mini LD with the Fear theme.

I hope you enjoy it, and please be gentle

The usual pride before a fall:

Ludum Dare Mini 31: Fear – Team and preparation

That mentions our little ‘barebones’ framework we’ve made for our LD entry, and a tiny bit about our team members.

It seems the audio and video kind of lose sync when youtube transcoded it – the original was about 40 seconds longer and somehow it got squashed.  Most atypical of Googlers.  Hmm.   Anyway, excuses aside, its understandable.  Mostly.

I trimmed off a spoiler describing what we’re going to build; I’ll post that and timelapse and stuff when we start our 48hrs, which will be Friday evening European time.

“Mr War” hasn’t much free-time this weekend so he’s been putting some of his 48hrs in in advance.

Shameless blog promotion: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/

Hey there Ludum Darers! This is my entry for SOPAjam, the almighty: “SOPA censorator 3000x”

You can see the entry here or play it directly on my website. (best viewed with Chrome)

Tags: sopajam

We were very happy to win the 2nd prize in the Jam with our game Together Alone. Although this was our first LD, Gijs and I have worked on creative projects together for a long time, including games, and it’s gratifying to see that people appreciate our imaginings.

As we’re planning to do more games together, we’ve decided on a name for our two-man team and created a website: Qwok Games. Qwok was a minor character in our old comics (see the site if you’re interested), and we both liked him so much we’ve adopted him as our mascot.

Together with a few other LD22 participants (including Midas and Follow) we were asked by JayIsGames.com if they could host us. We were happy to say yes, and worked hard to provide an even more polished version. It is now up on the site, along with a very positive review. Woohoo!

Tags: jam jig

Today’s screenshot looks a lot like yesterday’s.  

Squiggly thing == Internet

I still have a few things to do after work before I finish.

In my spare time yesterday and today I created a game in HTML5, It’s officialy is my second one, but the first one isnt realy a game so I say this is my first “real” game created using HTML5/JS/CSS3.

I used:

• Sublime Text 2
• The Gimp
• Some internet browsers.

JS vs AS3

Now I created a game in JavaScript I can say what I like more. For me AS3 is much better to create a game with at the moment. Maybe it will change in future but for now it is slow, and it is not easy to script with (At some point is is fun). However by using CSS3 you can make some thing easier.

My entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/sopajam/?action=preview&uid=4506

Corné

Tags: html5, sopajam, Sublime

Im entering MiniLD31  I will be Using Game Maker 8.0 Pro

Gonna try my first MiniLD (#31), working with Unity, blender, and Photoshop.

Here’s hoping things turn out all right.

Hey everyone,

I’m the fellow developer CWolf mentioned in his post.  This will be my first MiniLD as well and can’t wait to get started!  The language and tools of the trade I will be using are Java, Eclipse, Slick2D, GIMP, Inkscape and GoldWave (as well as a few content generators).  I will also be attempting to stream my progress here as long as my bandwidth allows it.  My synchronised start with CWolf (8pm UTC+1 Friday) is 6am Saturday for myself (Melbourne, Oz), which should be interesting!

Good luck and have fun to everyone who is participating!

Hehe, I`m in! It`s my second Ludum Dare!

I`ve failed with innovation in LD #22, but this time i won`t take it easy!

Ok, this thing really needs a name now :-/ anyway, update 0.4 beta adds the following:

• Works in Firefox
• Maps support multiple layers
• Data can be loaded as layers into an existing map

map editor 0.4 beta

EDIT: link is http://www.callidusrex.com/mapper thanks to SusanTheCat for pointing out it was missing :-).

Ohh yeah, I’m in. Though I think I may struggle a bit with this one. Good luck to all!

My game for the SOPAjam (also my first entry ever) is finished! I finished it yesterday, but I didn’t have enough time to post anything about it until now.

It ended up looking kinda ugly, having a couple of annoying glitches and it wasn’t even close to what I attempted to make, but I have never made a game in under 24 hours before (including school, sleep and other stuff), so I am very satisfied with the finished product. I learnt a lot very fast and I had a lot of fun.

Not the prettiest thing in the world, but it is something

Download for Windows and Mac on my website!

PS: My game isn’t showing up under the all games category for some reason, but it is clearly uploaded (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/sopajam/?action=preview&uid=10299). Am I doing something wrong or is it supposed to be like that?

Tags: First entry, sopajam

I’m going to try to mess around with sounds and processing + html5. That makes me very afraid. Yes I do realize that it’s not enough to match the theme. If that fails I’ll break out regular processing.

With that in mind, does anybody have any useful links for javascript/html5 sound stuff?

Alright, I’ve just installed FlashDevelop and Flixel on my brand spanking new laptop. I’ve pretty much nearly finished my SOPAJam game (my second ever Flash game, and first to use Flixel), and now I have an idea for MiniLD, which I’m very much tempted to participate in.

SOPAJam game so far:

Me and a friend are going to be entering in this months MiniLD.

This will be our first attempt in creating something for LD. We will be using the Unreal Engine/UDK for our Engine, Maya and Photoshop for asset development.

Wish us luck!

I`ve already started making my game. See the lastest demo!

I`ve made a full to-do list, which contains 74 lines, so my progress is 67/74. (In case of something, I keep it edited)

So good morning everyone!

I just started to work on my game 2 hours ago.

I got the main idea of the game.

I really need some graphics…

Tags: screenshot

Hey everyone,

once again I’m in for the miniLD. By now I have my own little record of failing at these: #29 and #30 didn’t end well for me and although I pretended (to myself) that I’d finish the things I started some day, well, I didn’t. But that’s nothing new. I  think the past times I failed because I wasn’t focused enough. I also kept believing that the idea would flesh out as I go. Well that wasn’t the case.

After these weekends I was a bit frustrated. For one thing that frustration came from knowing how it felt to finish a LD game. For another thing it all feels in vain. Not only the time I spent on it but all my time I devote to video game development.
Thankfully these feelings don’t stay for long and by now I am hyped for this mini Ludum Dare. I hope i can succeed this time.

Starting my thinking process on paper: I think fear has always to do with the possiblity of losing something: your life (both physically / socially) or someone else.

One difference to my previous approaches is that I’m starting on paper. Another important aspect is audio – which I’d like to put an emphasis on this time around.

To everyone who’s participating: good luck and focus on getting the game in there!

So I’m entering a LD compo for the very first time – Mini LD#31, ‘Fear’, hosted by my distinguished associate TheGrieve.  This should be fun.  And by ‘fun’, I mean ‘humbling and embarrassing’.

My entry will be browser-based, and built for the latest versions with WebGL + Canvas support.   I’ll be working with the following base code:

• HTML5 Boilerplate – for a nice stable base to build the game hosting page on
• Three.js – for WebGL rendering
• Tween.js + requestAnimationFrame.js – for movement animation
• jQuery – for the UI stuff
• my own partial Javascript port of the Python libtcod library – for procedural map  generation and management
• a HTML5 audio API wrapper of some description

I’ll also be busting out GiMP, FLStudio, and whatever else I need to get this going.  If I can get it going at all.

Happy developing, everyone!

It’s  a game.

You, platforms, someone, bats and lives!

Tags: screenshot

Finally we no longer get that annoying, “A new version of WordPress is out!”

It seems with this update they seemed to fix all of the problems I had before (Noob Confusion Post Here) and more!

The new Upload/Insert button is easier to use than the other ones, and the GUI makes a lot more sense.

Thanks, Ludum Dare website managers!

A first day passed. What can I say about my game? I’ve tried to create a scary atmosphere… and failed.

I would give it:

Innovation – 4
Fun – 2
Theme – 2
Graphics – 3
Audio – 3
Humor – 3 (I haven`t made the ending yet!!!)
Mood – 3
Overall – 3
Community – 4 (When everything will be done)

But I have some fancy pixel graphics.

It was a very fun and productive day!

Play The Game Here! (May take some time to load)

Tags: screenshot, timelapse

I’ve been working in a raycast engine made using Lua- Love2d. Lights working.

To do:
– Include sprites
– Music
– Sound

Not sure if I will have time tomorrow, but at least I would like to share this video with you:

http://youtu.be/iof0-jNhjfg

Good luck to all!!

Tags: progress, video

My partner and I are only about 6:30 hours into the mini dare and we have quite a bit done.

We have a player entity that is controlled by the arrow keys.
Two passive mobs, a pacer that walks between two defined points and a follower that will follow the player if he gets close.
An item-goal (for lack of a better term) that is the core of the puzzle mode. It can block your path until you have specific items and it can give you items. It can activate on collision or on action button.
A one way block that only lets the player move though in one direction.

The next step is building some levels and maybe making some graphics. If we get time we might even make is scary 😛

A bit late announcement, but I am in. I am using Haxe, GIMP, Audacity and Flixel.

Here’s a simple one-button game I have got so far:

Two stages now, another two might come tomorrow.

Tags: flash, progress, screenshot

Progress for day 1

Here’s a screenshot of what I got so far. Basic code is already in there but still needs refining tomorrow. Some of the most critical sections are yet to come. Tomorrow I also want to take care of audio and animation as well as finalizing style and setting.

I am fairly satisfied for today.
I wish everyone a good night and will read you tomorrow!

I’m controversially trying to make a game that is at once capable of inducing fear, yet also incredibly colourful… I have to say I’ve really been enjoying messing around with this idea. It’s a sort of reality-screwing first-person puzzler (Portal – also Narbacular Drop actually – is an influence). It’s all about the colours…

Tags: unity

My video game will be about bacon and donuts. Or it will be based on the compo theme… and bacon.

Hi, I’m pretty new to ludum dare but  i had a lot of fun making my game.To be honest i don’t think it’s that scary but It’s quite a nice little side scroller.

Here are some screen-shots: #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 */

p.s  you can beat the boss but theirs no wining screen.

I really should stop coming onto the site to have a quick look… Everyone else’s games look awesome, while mine is looking… not so awesome…
Anyway, first solo Ludum Dare of any kind. I’m normally just the visuals guy in the Jams, so I’m sticking to Game Maker for the actually game-y code-y stuff. I know a bit, and I’m hoping it’ll be enough to pull some sort of a game together.

Here’s a screenshot, about 16 hours in…

Tags: Game Maker, GIMP, screenshot

Me and my friend are working hardcore together on this mini 31. This is mostly practice but we are really having some good synergy.

Weapon of choices = gamemaker as it is super fast at creating games.

Heres a pic of our games so far:

I have never participated in a Mini LD and wanted to give it a try, besides the theme seemed quite intriguing. Instead of the whole weekend, I have dedicated just around 6 hours to this Mini LD. I have completed all three of my personal goals: make a game in haXe, create sound effects from recordings and complete the prototype.

The game has 4 stages and is controlled just by the SPACEBAR.
I have thoroughly enjoyed making monster sounds

Looking forward for other entries!

Tags: final, flash, screenshot

Yay! Finished another LD game in 48 hours!

Again, it was very fun to build it!

You Can Play It Here!

So, time passes with 1-2 things left to do, chronolapse launched and empty stomach.

I’ve made a boss that consists of 99% evil and I`m proud of him. I still don`t like how fearsome, or fearless my game is. Everyone else’s games look awesome, while mine is looking… not so awesome…

All the objects

So that’s it – I actually completed my first ever Ludum Dare game.

The version of fear I was aiming at was more along the lines of tension than scariness. The entry is here and I hope to have the time lapse up within the next day or two.

What worked out

The best thing was that I actually managed to complete the game. I made a point of setting myself something reasonably small to do, which was definitely the right decision as I don’t think I could have done much more than I did. Looking at past entries, it amazes me what people can get done in such a short time.

In general I was fairly happy with how it turned out. It plays as I wanted it to play so that’s good enough for me.

What didn’t

Nothing really went horribly wrong, but what bothered me most was not being able to really spare any time for re-factoring and re-writing things to work better. I hate saying, “It’ll have to do like that.”

I was expecting my sprites to be much worse than they were, since I’m pretty terrible at graphics, but even though I consider them to be “passable” I’d have liked them to be much better. Unfortunately that would probably be beyond my abilities.

Sounds would have been good, but it’s not something I’ve done before and would have required some research in advance, so I decided to leave sounds out.

By the time the game was nearing completion I was running out of steam and really just wanted it to be done. It was a pretty tiring experience, but despite the fact that the last thing I want to do right now is look at any code, I’d probably do it again.

Game Location -> Dark Choices

I finished my 48 hours with 9 minutes to spare then slept. This was a gruelling experience but one I’m glad I’ve completed. Now that I feel a bit more human I can talk about the game. As Jargon mentioned in his post we sync’ed our start and end times up and set at it. Since Dark Choices is set at night the lighting was crucial in getting the feeling right. It was a hard job getting the right look but I think I finally pulled it off ok. I used pre-made open source art work and Inveracity did an amazing job with the music (as per the rules agreed in the Ludum Dare IRC channel).

This game draws influence from Dear Esther, Silent Hill and Amnesia in a way. I find their way of telling stories is very creepy and that’s the kind of fear that is the worst in my opinion. By the end of the 48 hours I truly hated this game but I am very, very proud of my first ever Ludum Dare game. In fact, this is the first full game I have ever finished. Thank you for the support and I’ll see you in one of the future events!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 1:22 pm and is filed under MiniLD #31. 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.

Slowly getting there, not long left though.

Another fun jam.

I got the idea for my game Friday night, and really had to think how to do it effectively.

What went OK

I used my usual tools : VS2010, XNA 4.0 framework etc, so I got a lot done in very little time and without any problems this time with vertex buffers or other silly problems like that. Except when I inadvertently added instead of multiplied two transformation matrices.

My idea and goal was simple and effective. Not a lot of content was needed to pull it off, and the premise of the game is familiar to anyone.

Had a fun time jamming with FuzzySpoon and learnt a lot again.

What went otherwise

Exactly because the premise is so familiar, I tried to make the game not boring.

Also because of that, I had to make sure it looked and felt the part, so visually it was a challenge to get it right.

Animations. It was the first time ever doing animations in 3D. That took me a few hours to get right, and to get learn the basic implementation and usage.

Not enough people pitched up and took part from in our community.

So anyway, entry page is here : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-31/?action=preview&uid=8138

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-31/?action=preview&uid=1626

Thanks to my friend @Funktimus_Prime for the genius title “Three Colours: DEATH”! Have at it!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 6:24 pm and is filed under MiniLD #31. 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.

Well I finished, this is probably my best finished game in the shortest time…

Go play it!  http://www.mediafire.com/?k6615rdjm4kwa9j

Or review the post: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-31/?action=preview&uid=5287

Updated: Chainsaw level, zombie amount nerfed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 9:17 pm and is filed under MiniLD #31. 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.

Well, I’ve had 5 hours additional sleep now after submitting my entry earlier this morning, so I better post this up now :).

This is Catch 2122 (direct download for Windows), an action-packed zombie shooter with a twist.  It took exactly 48 hours.  Me and CWolf synchronised our start times for each of our entries and for me (living in Melbourne, Oz) this was at 6:00am on Saturday 21st and my system clock was reading 6:00am on Monday 23rd when I made my final save/commit.  I started out live streaming my progress at my justin.tv page but midway through my connection became seriously unstable and I couldn’t continue.  In hindsight I wish I had taken a time-lapse video but I didn’t have the tools set up.

Couple of people asked me why it’s called Catch 2122.  Well, the game does have a bit of an unexpected twist midway through, which is where the fear factor should come from (blasting zombies isn’t scary now is it?) but I don’t think people who have play-tested the game got far enough to experience it.  This twist is a bit of a Catch 22 scenario, but I couldn’t call it that, too over-used.  So it became Catch 2122, referring to the dates the game was developed on (21st – 22nd January).  I like to think it fits.

This is the first time I’ve done proper game dev competition.  It was a lot of fun, but also frustrating because, as I progressed, I knew the game would not be completed by the end of the 48 hours.  So tasks got prioritised and a lot of things got left out like the blood splatters, shooting animation + muzzle flash and zombie sound effects (Sorry Zeis, you made some awesome zombie sound effects for me, I could have sworn you were actually undead).  There was also a mouse-to-world alignment issue that I spent far too much time trying to correct and in the end had to fudge, it’s not perfect but had to do.

In the end, I am proud with what I’ve come up with in such a short amount of time.  It was good to have a proper challenge to stretch the skills as far as they go and I surprised myself in some areas (a pretty good story scripting engine kind of evolved from nowhere within the game code, it’s how I did all the triggered sequences).  I know I made excessive use of pre-made content, but this was a solo effort and I am certainly no artist.  The content is freely available and I will be posting up a credits list soon (another task that got chopped from the game).

Anyway, last of all goes out my thanks to everyone who supported me; my girlfriend who encouraged me to continue and put up with my uselessness over these 48 hours while making sure I still ate and generally stayed alive; and my friends from IRC (shout out to all of #deadworld @ irc.globalgamers.net) who all provided encouragement and ideas while watching the live stream.  However, a super special awesomesauce thanks goes out to Christopher Baklid (aka Inveracity), the Scottish sounding Dane who volunteered up his insane musical talent and created the background music tracks for not only Catch 2122 but also CWolf’s Dark Choices.  You sir, are a legend!

Right, I think I’m going to take a break from the computer for a bit so I can regain control over my faculties.

“It’s been emotional.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 11:50 pm and is filed under MiniLD #31. 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.

My first ever LD game, The Platform Master, is now complete. This game is based on Platform Masters by Ulillillia, who has a whole page of his fears. I’ve based this game of his fear of mirrors

I am proud of the 2d mirror effect in my game

Entry page

It’s been around a month now, but now I want to take Enola to a new level, and make a full game out of the concept. The game I made for the 48 hour competition was purely an exploration game, but for the full game I want to implement other stuff, including puzzles and death traps. I’m crowdfunding the making of that game, so if you want to help, you can visit the campaign page at www.indiegogo.com/Enola and donate. Also, please share the link with everyone you know.

I actually added new stuff to the game I made for ludum dare, so you see what other mechanics I want to implement in the full game. It has a puzzle, a trap, and 2 endings, including the “good” ending. Since the contest was over a month ago, and I made this as a way to present a small prototype, I did use a couple of premade models for this build. For this same reason, I’m not switching the download link on the contest entry page (I will simply post a link on that page to this blog post).

A lot of people found Enola a very mysterious and even somewhat unnerving/scary game. The full version would be a “horror/adventure” game, but not the kind of horror found in games with monsters, zombies, and such, but rather horror related to the human nature. Enola will focus on a different kind of horror.

Play it! Me and my friend are pretty proud of ourselves. The game idea was ambitious and we had tons of outside work to get done.

Incase you haven played “Obscuro”, go now!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-31/?action=preview&uid=4843

It is an explorational game where you can switch time periods.

I now have a respect for people who work on making scarygames without going crazy xD.

PS. Do Mini-LD not get ratings anymore?? :O Just wondering

Boca Tabla, Curaçao. Fuertes olas del Atlántico esta cueva tallada mar. De rodillas en la oscuridad de la cueva del mar, vas a ver el surgimiento de olas azules de cristal en que entren en los pies de usted, rugiendo en la cueva y de nuevo al mar. Artículo recomendado por novias

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 8:49 am and is filed under MiniLD #31. 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.

Forgot to post an “Im Done” message yesterday when I submitted, so erm, Im done! also I just updated it with some firefox specific fixes.

Hello there!

This is my “Mini entry” for Mini LD #31. It’s called “height” and tries to deal with fear in an unusual way (but I will deal with that in a post mortem).

This is my entry link or you can play it directly on my website.

Tags: fear, height, minild #31