So my friend Ian and I made a Christmas album. I know it’s after Christmas, but I was out of town, so Happy New Year Everyone!

I finished the songs that I posted for the LD Christmas Album weekend (‘All I Want for Christmas is Presents’ is now all Phil Spectoredy, yay!) and recorded a few more. Then Ian did the lion’s share of everything else (He even made an incredible 8-bit song, The Ice Storm, that makes me wish I could us him for Ludum Dare’s). Anywho, here it is:

http://www.devonscott-tunkin.com/nonweb/xmas_album.zip

Tags: album, christmas, music

Hey hey,

This isn’t Ludum Dare news per se, but I figure it’s right up everyone’s alley.  I’ve been asked by the organizers to let you know about Global Game Jam, taking place on January 30th 2009.

http://www.globalgamejam.com

Unlike Ludum Dare, this is an actual event taking place in 49 (currently) locations all around the world.  RSVP, show up, meet some new people, form a team, and build something in a weekend.  True to the spirit of the compo.

Thanks,

Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

PS: Mini LD #6 is next weekend, hosted by matrin

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2008/12/21/minild6-collab/

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2008/12/22/minild-6/

Be there!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 pm and is filed under LD - Misc. 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.

Some of you probably want to see the framework that I planed for MiniLD#6 collab competition. Well, here are the first screen shots.

The framework is made in python 2.6 and pygame, I have learned how to do it from keeyai’s CGL, but I haven’t used any code from it, because I found it too well crafted for it’s own purpose, and not flexible enough to use it for my framework.

The current framework source can be downloaded here, under Download, and more screen shots can be found under Glog. ( I know the site is an ugly mess, I am going to get to that).

I hope a lot of you like the MiniLD idea, and a lot of you decide to enter. It will be fully opened, so even if your game won’t run with my framework, you are welcome to pick out one of the themes for yourself.

For a simple explanation of the compo rules, look at older post.

Tags: binary loader, LDCollab

Here is a link to the wiki entry for MiniLD6, where you can see the start time, read the rules, select themes,…

Please leave comments if you think i missed something, or if things are unclear.

Tags: wiki

The themes for miniLd #6 are up. Link

Have fun.

I will participate to this new challenge. The main theme is “monochrome” and I have choose the second theme “build the level you play”.
My idea ? A background in green (yes, it is really beautifull, the green) and a small character who need to go in a goal.
With your mouse you can make a segment which is dark. The character can move on this, but he is few lazy, and stupid, like a lemming. But be carrefull, segments become gradually light and when the segment has the background’s color, it disappear ! So if are not attentive, he will fall and, if this fall is too long, you loose ! So, I must begin the code …

Tags: MiniLD #6

I have added a score limit to the rules. You are only allowed to give a max of 1000 points in your game.

I have picked ‘Trains’ as my secondary theme for this Mini LD #6.  “Monochrome” is the primary required theme of the contest.  Instead of making a full game for this competition Matrin has tasked us with a limit to make the game a single-level.  Everyone who submits a game will have their game be one of the levels in a game “wrapper” that will join them all together.  The common theme being monochrome.

I want to create a game that will be of limited scope yet still fun and not too small.  I am trying to work out what size the level should be of my monochrome train game.

My current idea is a kind of 2d platformer that takes place running along a moving train.  You will have to watch out for tunnels and obstacles that would sweep you off the train if you are on top of a train car.  You will have to move quick enough that you aren’t on train cars that will become disconnected and drift backwards after a time.  I’m going to impose a time limit through the fact that if you don’t reach the train engine in time to stop it you will die due to train crash.  You will start at the end of the train on the caboose and have to work your way along.  I may make it old west themed as well.  You will have to fight off bandits on your way to pull the brake at the front of the train.  Perhaps I’ll have a minimap at the top that will show the trains progress on the level so you can know how close you are till the end instead of just time limit.

I’ll be using Ruby / Gosu gamedev library again for this competition.

Here is initial mockup:

Tags: mono, monochrome, train

I’ve decided to have a go at the MiniLD – this will be my first 48hour challenge, so my main aim is simply to have a working game at the end of it, and I’m not aiming too high.

I’ve chosen the theme “infection”, and I’m going to be working in Python with PyGame.

The idea I think I will go with is very simple – you play the part of some kind of medicine fighting off infections by zapping them somehow (I still have to work that bit out… I’ll see how the graphics turn out)

Ok, so I’ve got an idea for a lil game that I’ll whip up tomorrow. It’s going to use The Tower secondary theme and will be brought to you by the color Pink.

I’ll be using my usual c++ with allegro.

I have chosen the theme Balloon!. I think my color is going to be yellow. I’m itching to start coding even though I’m not supposed to yet. Normally I use C++ and SDL, but I’m considering using Flash as its capabilites might be better suitied to my project, though I’m not sure how to go about it.

If I do use C++ and SDL I’ll use my special library, which I am releasing right now here, if it’s not too late to be official. Please respond if you know for a fact this is valid or invalid! This is my own library, PlatyGame version something or other.

EDIT: I just realized this, apparently the compo already started.

Tags: Balloon, C++, monochrome, PlatyGame, SDL

I’ve been laying down the code since my last post and I already have a screenshot to post.  Basically the traincars currently come flying out of the left and head to the right past the various cactus, rocks and other western detritus that I will hopefully add for ambience.  I’m really liking the look of it so far.

Now, I have to code a player cam to track the train cars through the world coords.. fun fun!

Tags: gosu, mono, monochrome, ruby, screenshot, train

Right, so I’ve got my first few sprites done (two dangerous bugs, and the medicine that is going to be your weapon against them). I know technically this is more like “toxin fighter”with the chemical warnings, but after a whole load of attempts at drawing bugs I decided to go with things I could draw…

I’ve only added the basic code – collision detection etc. – but I’m quite proud of the graphics (I can normally draw graphics about as well as I can ride a unicycle). I guess the “monochrome” theme has been a blessing – it definitely makes sure the colour(s) match.

Now I’m going to start working on the gameplay a bit more – the simplest way would be to go with a space-shooter type game, but that’s a bit unimaginative. On the other hand, at least I know that would be fun, so if I can’t come up with an addictive idea I might resort to that.

I wasn’t going to start until tomorrow but I had nothing to do so I decided to implement a small tech test to see if what I wanted to do was at all doable in Flash. Space is filled with planetary bodies, starts and what not and it’s up to the player to feed the suns and make them grow to encompass each other (or something). Anyway, it’s all implemented with bloobs using flash’s bitmap routines. It looks a little something like this:

Oh and the color will definately change! 😀

Tags: bloobs, growth

Well, I think I have my basic idea drawn up. You’re a small mining drone of some kind, orbitting around the sun. You fire charges into the sun that blows out valuable plasma, which you collect in your ship. But you have to let it cool down a little bit before you gather it, otherwise it’ll eat away at your (constantly dwindling) shielding. Three buttons — speed up, slow down, and fire charge. You speed up and slow down at an angle perpendicular to gravity, and because you’re orbiting, speeding up makes you move up (away from the sun), and slowing down makes you move down (closer to the sun). If you touch the sun, you take damage very very quickly, but closer is also safer (other than hitting the sun) and richer, since the best plasma is the plasma that’s been blasted away from the sun, and cooled down as it drifts closer back down to the sun. If you collect no plasma whatsoever, your drone will be destroyed in two minutes, but every bit of plasma you collect (even that which has cooled down) reduces your shielding a small amount. Your job is to find the best middle ground between staying alive longer and collecting more plasma.

Now I’m going to play some Left 4 Dead while I think about more specifics.

Tags: Sun Diver

This is the state I’m leaving “infection fighter” in before getting some sleep (it’s 3 am here) – the basic code is done and thoroughly bug-checked, and it’s currently working very similarly to asteroids – although I’ve got a few ideas to spice the game up a bit that I hope might work really well …

The player is the cell in the middle (or at least that’s supposed to be a cell in the centre), and you can tell the rotation by seeing where the nucleus is facing. The pill on the right has just been fired.

I’ve got a prior engagement tomorrow (hence deciding to make such a simple game – and needing sleep), but hopefully I’ll have time to add at least some of the features I’m planning, try my hand at recording some sound effects and tie up the bits like scores and lives. And even if I don’t have time to do all of it – judging by the amount of time I’ve been wasting playing it it could be really addictive.

Generally my Ludum Dare experience is a lot of fun so far!

Tags: pygame, python

But Balloon Game will be amazing, you’ll see.

I’m not sure what kind of game I’m going to make or even if I’m really going to try to compete.  However, I did hack together the start of a little program, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.

I haven’t decided upon a theme yet, so I don’t know what kind of gameplay I’ll have.  At first I was thinking about the theme ‘Random,’ so I wrote up a little random terrain and trees generator.  I didn’t know what kind of colors I wanted to go with so I tried it with both day and night options.

I personally like the night scene more than day.  I noticed that “Light and Darkness” is one of the options, but I’m still not sure what I might do.  Currently there is no way of dynamically transitioning between day and night.

The themes I might be most interested in are, “Construction/Destruction” (Perhaps building cities on the mountains … or something?), “Indirect Interaction”, or “Swarms” (UFO’s?).

I guess I’m going to sleep on it.

Well, things are getting off to a slow start this morning as I have been dealing / fighting with 20%+ packet loss on my cable modem…. *sigh*   Anyway– after a few hours it has cleared up for now.

On the monochrome train front, I have been sorta zoning out watching my current tech test demo.  There is no gameplay yet, but I like how it sets the stage for the coding yet to come.

I currently have a wide world of train landscape with cactuses, rocks and tracks.  Populated with a boxcar only ghost train right now.  The train chugs along to the right and will run for approximately 2-3 minutes (not locked down yet) before crashing.

The player (yet to be drawn / coded) has that amount of time to race from the caboose to the train engine to hit the brakes!  There will be obstacles of various types along the way (yet to be drawn / coded).

In this demo, you can press the left and right arrow keys to move the viewport back and forth.  When you stop, it keeps its slow advance.  My current idea is that the viewport moves just *slightly* faster than the train so that if you don’t creep along with it you will also get swept off the back of the screen and fail that way too.

Here is a win exe if anyone wants to see my monochrome train test.

Tags: demo, gosu, mono, monochrome, ruby, train

So .. best game ever .. or something.

It’s a typing game.  Type the text in the center of the screen.  Quotes are from Tom Sawyer.

Have fun, or whatever  Again thanks to DrPetter for sfxr and to thirdcog for making an OS/X port.