Unfortunately, I can’t share much info on this game, as part of the minimalist nature of it is the lack of information you are supposed to have going into it. That’s a big shame because it means I can’t share the most fun bits. But anyway, it works so far! I’ve got a leaf, see, and it falls on a still pond. Working as advertised. Pretty cool. It also reflects. I’m going to totally lose the journal contest, but it’s worth it – I don’t want to give away the surprises!
Yep, that’s a shot of gameplay! Hey, it’s supposed to be minimalist.
you may download the intense thrills of Still Pond: stillpond.zip (2MB)
It is for windows and includes source code. Developed using PTK, and I think I did things in the semi-proper way, shouldn’t be too tough to recompile for Mac. There are two exes, a windowed and a fullscreen, but on my computer the fullscreen one constantly minimizes itself, which is beyond annoying. I consider the windowed version official, but if the fullscreen one works for you, it is better for the gameplay.
Tags: final, leaf, minimalist, pond, still
If you are getting a blank white screen when you start my game (even if you used your intellect to then click on it and play the game anyway), your video card may be displeased with my non-power-of-two textures. No, I wasn’t just being SUPER minimalist! The version I have up at my site (sorry, it’s in an installer) fixes that, so it may work if you had visual problems before.
Get it here: stillpond_install.exe (1.9mb)
However, that’s also my post-compo edition. It has two new bonus game modes (they are hidden, search the title screen! Think of Strongbad!), but aside from those modes (and fixing the texture sizes) it is totally unchanged. So I think it’s fair for you to judge it for the contest, provided you ignore (or don’t find) the bonus modes.
Tags: post-compo
There are 10 months of the year that lack an LD contest. This simply cannot stand. It is a blight on the game development community. I feel that by filling those months, we will attract more regulars and more interest, and LD will be more popular. But on the flipside, LD is a special event, twice a year, a big deal. If it happened every month, you’d only have a small percentage of the contestants in any given event (and very little overlap, so you’d never get to know anybody). And so the proposal:
The LD48 Mini-Contest. All that I am about to say is just the proposal and up for discussion as to what is right or whether it’s just stupid in general. This is just my original basic idea for it. It runs once a month, on the first weekend. It does not occur in April and whatever other month Real-LD happens in (shouldn’t there be an official month for that too?).
There is no theme voting – the host simply dictates the theme. Themes for this are encouraged to be different from the type that LD48 uses, though the host does whatever they want. Basically, I’m picturing setting up a specific challenge for people, rather than a general theme. Like we might finally see the “no graphics” theme in the form of “Make a game that communicates with the user only through sound. The player can communicate back by any method you want.” Something like that, but also something that can be shorthanded to one or two words if needed (“Audio only”), so people don’t have to explain the theme every time they talk about their game to other people. Other challenges might be things like “Here’s a set of tiles, make a game with them”, “A maze game featuring zombies that is 64k or less zipped” (blah, I wouldn’t enter that one), or “You just got the Fight Club license. Deadline is in 48 hours. Go!” (I could see that one with a lot of movies… Office Space!) If people don’t like your challenge, who cares? There’s a new one next month.
Host also dictates the start time, so that he gets to announce the theme at a time convenient for him rather than at 4am. Contestants have 48 hours from that start time to finish their project, just like in LD.
Rules are relaxed – you can use anything you want to make your game, start with any code. If you just want to mod your existing game, go for it. It’s almost the opposite idea as LD is – instead of seeing what you can build from scratch, we want to see what you are capable of with unlimited resources (and very limited time). Content is just as unrestricted, just keep it legal.
The source code rule is equally relaxed (and rightly so, since you can use code that you’re not allowed to share anyway!). We’d really like you to post your source, but it’s optional.
People sign up on a list to host this, first-come, first-serve. You can sign up again only once your last hosting is off the list. This means Fydo gets to run a Kitties contest. Hosting is entirely simple: just come up with a theme and announce it when the time comes. Phil’s amazing wordpress code does the rest, letting people upload their entries (well, links and such) and shutting it all off when the time comes. All mini-LDs would go in one wordpress category, maybe, so we didn’t keep adding categories all the time. Don’t have that bit worked out at the moment.
Hosts can participate in the contest too, even though they know the theme in advance. We’ll trust their integrity. Probably hosting would have some simple restriction on it, like you must have been in 3 real LDs previously (or you must spend at least 70% of your life lurking in #ludumdare), so we don’t get a flood of people signing up and disappearing.
After the 48 hours, the entries are up for voting, and you don’t have to have entered to vote. You just need to be signed up on this site, to encourage people to check out the entries and see what they think. The voting (which Phil of course implements for us!) is simpler than the full-on LD, maybe just 1 category: Awesomeness (maybe Gnarliness, or Radicality, or maybe it shows it with a random name each time, or does the host get to choose the category too!?). You rate it 1-100, so it’s kind of like grading a paper. Voting can simply remain open until the next Mini-LD (or actual LD) starts.
Of course, each of these mini-LDs will get a much smaller number of competitors, and nobody would do them all (well, somebody would, I bet you, but not many), but they are a nice option for the bleak wasteland of empty existence between LD48s. I don’t think they’d detract from the bigness and participation of the real LDs, given their smallness and unofficiality. My hope is that they’d pull more people in for those. And we always have people in #ld saying “boy, I need a new LD!”, and with this, there’d always be one of sorts around the corner.
And yeah, it’s more work for Phil to get it up and working, but that’s what he’s here for, right? What else is he good for?
Discuss.
Hey, visit the rules wiki to see what I’ve put down for Mini LD. I’ve got a set of rules (well, a list of ways it’s different from normal rules), and a host sign up page, which I conveniently nabbed the first slot on. Feel free to edit and improve the whole thing. This isn’t my deal, it’s the community’s.
Things still quite unknown include: how judging works, or not if we don’t do that, and what category/tags/whatever the entries and journals need to go into. Will each one have its own category? Maybe a general Mini-LD category? If so, how do we separate the entries for different months? These things need work.
Tags: Ludum Dare, mini
Well, I spent all last night thinking up VS ideas, then watching TV and thinking of more, then when TV was over I said, “that’s it. I’m going with Schrodinger Vs. Pavlov”. I thought it’d be cool, an army of dogs that you can steer around with a bell cursor, vs. a guy who can place boxes that contain pop-up cats that may be alive or dead. Then I was thinking it would be like a board game, where the Pavlov guy has cards with various dogs and bells and things, and the Schrodinger guy has dice with 3 alive-cat faces and 3 dead-cat faces. The closest I got to an actual idea was that Schrodinger could commit his dice to various battles, and hope they were enough when actually rolled. It didn’t actually make a game, though.
So this morning I woke up still with no ideas that worked, and finally decided it had to be the very first idea that struck me as solid. I didn’t want to do a platformer, but here I go anyway: Miyamoto Vs. Yamamoto. You’ll hop from ship to ship, bouncing on their various parts to sink them, then hop off before you sink with them. It won’t be Mario, because you’ll be dodging fire directly aimed at you by the cannons and other oddities, and the ‘defeat each ship’ motif is a little different. Got some ideas, anyway! Time to build a ship editor!
Tags: dice, ideas, miyamoto, pavlov, schrodinger, ships, yamamoto
Super Miyamoto! I don’t have the foggiest clue how to actually animate him, but I’ll worry about that tomorrow. I really need to start on some code, I think…
Tags: miyamoto
Super Miyamoto! I don’t have the foggiest clue how to actually animate him, but I’ll worry about that tomorrow. I really need to start on some code, I think…
Tags: miyamoto
And there’s a good reason! I spent at least 8 hours of yesterday stuck at one spot in the game – dealing with the + and – signs of camera position versus ship position (the ships are like individual tile maps, but those tile maps are placed in the world… kind of inspired by DrPetter’s Swarming Of The Machines!) versus player position versus waterline. It is a trivial problem, solved in the end by swapping some signs around and actually watching which way things move (or, more quickly, by drawing a simple diagram, which I never did). The reason I spent all day on it was that I was watching TV and not even trying to think about it. Just haphazardly flicking values every so often. I don’t think I’m very dedicated to this project. But I’m gonna try some more today!
Once I finally stopped TV for a second though, I nailed that and now I have Miyamoto running and jumping along a set of 3 boats, quite successfully. He has no animation, but whatever. I think I will add enemies and things you can stomp to sink the boats today. I’m not feeling very pressured. The unofficialness is getting to me!
And there’s a good reason! I spent at least 8 hours of yesterday stuck at one spot in the game – dealing with the + and – signs of camera position versus ship position (the ships are like individual tile maps, but those tile maps are placed in the world… kind of inspired by DrPetter’s Swarming Of The Machines!) versus player position versus waterline. It is a trivial problem, solved in the end by swapping some signs around and actually watching which way things move (or, more quickly, by drawing a simple diagram, which I never did). The reason I spent all day on it was that I was watching TV and not even trying to think about it. Just haphazardly flicking values every so often. I don’t think I’m very dedicated to this project. But I’m gonna try some more today!
Once I finally stopped TV for a second though, I nailed that and now I have Miyamoto running and jumping along a set of 3 boats, quite successfully. He has no animation, but whatever. I think I will add enemies and things you can stomp to sink the boats today. I’m not feeling very pressured. The unofficialness is getting to me!
This might be my record for least finished LD entry (of ones where I actually bothered to submit anything), but here it is! There’s no game here, you can just hop around on 3 ships a little bit and then exit. PRESS Q TO QUIT! Z is jump, and arrows move.
You can download the awesome windows EXE here: Miyamoto Download (712kb)
Enjoy your hopping!
Tags: final
This might be my record for least finished LD entry (of ones where I actually bothered to submit anything), but here it is! There’s no game here, you can just hop around on 3 ships a little bit and then exit. PRESS Q TO QUIT! Z is jump, and arrows move.
You can download the awesome windows EXE here: Miyamoto Download (712kb)
Enjoy your hopping!
Tags: final
Well, I gave up on the actual contest. But lately I’ve really been having fun making generators (you know, web ‘games’ that randomly spit out some name like “Fluffyborg The Transient”), so I made another that sort of fits the theme! It’s not based on any particular movie, but it’s not hard to see elements of every Summer blockbuster in it. Here’s a ‘screenshot’:
In a world…
Where ice cream is optional…
ONE woman…
And a boy…
Must face the worst disaster the world has ever known.
A Spike Lee Joint.
Coming Summer 2038 to a holotheater near you.
The ‘download link’ is http://hamumu.com/random.php so go generate some previews of your own! I’m marking this as my final entry, but I do hope to add more possibilities to it right up until the deadline. Luckily, the link won’t be changing! Ah, the magic of the web.
(Yes, I included both turnips and unicorns)
Tags: motivation
Gotta get fueled up with a healthy dinner before you compete! Here’s to hoping the theme is “heartburn.”
Tags: foodphoto
Here’s my setup for this weekend. Laptop in the living room. There’s a shiatsu machine strapped to my chair, though! I will probably also venture into the actual office, because none of my good art or sound programs run on this computer (Yay, Vista!).
Tags: deskphoto
pymike: I don’t see the point to relaxing the rules just for resources. I favor either no relaxation, or the described “full” relaxation.