My game is almost finished as a short game. With the rest of the time I hope to make it a better short game instead of a longer, but still short game.

The most important part of programming is finished, and I can spend most of the remaining time on level design, animation, sound and perhaps things like secrets and achievements.

A key in the shape of a kitten? What will be behind the door it unlocks?

Designing levels isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. On top of that the puzzles are very trial and error in nature. But I still think it can be a lot of fun to play through.

At the moment I have 5 levels done, but only two (maybe three) of them actually offer a challenge. I think I’ll stop at 10 levels, then focus on sounds and animation, and then if there is time left add some more levels.

But looking at the clock, there is still a full day left, I think I will be able to deliver something decent this time.

I have a small video with the gameplay in it. I lose in it because I don’t want to give away any solutions in a game with only about 15 levels. It also doesn’t show any of the items yet.

http://vimeo.com/33860030

(is there a way to embed?)

This was my second Ludum Dare and I feel like this entry is an improvement over the last one, so that’s nice.

The result is a 13 level puzzle game with an exploration vibe and three possible ‘endings’.

I did manage to hide a kitten somewhere, and even though it is pretty obvious where it is, it won’t be easy to get there!

My submition can be found here.

Since most things that went wrong happened in the first 6 hours, I’m going to start with what went wrong.

What went wrong:

I didn’t really love the theme. Not because I couldn’t come up with anything, but because it was so obvious what to make: An atmospheric metroidvania/ zelda clone. The problem was that that sums up pretty much 50% of all the games I have ever made, including the game I made for the last Ludum Dare, and I was hoping that the theme would force me to make something different.

So now I had to do that myself, and that wasn’t easy. Most ideas I had required too much animation talent to tell the story. I’ve played around in unity to come up with ideas for a 3D game, played games to come up with ideas. It didn’t help. 6 hours into the competition I decided that there was nothing left to do but make an atmospheric zelda clone, and I made some music and tiles to capture the right mood.

 Music

What went right?

Then I decided that I really didn’t want to make another zelda clone. So I went through all the gamegenres to find a genre that I didn’t make any game in yet and I got excited when I realised I had never made a turn based stratigy game before. I knew from the start that I wouldn’t be able to make that within the 48 hours, so I decided to simplify it. It was going to be turn based, but I was making a puzzle game instead. I also still wanted to keep the atmosphere I created before. A concept was born. I was going to make a puzzle game with exploration elements.

After that it was programming with the usual problems, making programmer art, realising some of the programmer art was going to be final, level design, adding extra’s, adding endings, hiding a kitten somewhere etc. The game was finished 10 minutes before the (first) deadline.

Lessons learned:

When stuck: Don’t think, just make! Ideas will come later.

When stuck and tired: sleep.

The game:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5496

This is my third time entering. I’m trying to make something less ambitious and focus on polish this time. I also only have one day this time, so I really have to hurry up.

I have no concept yet, so I decided to make a piece of music inspired by the theme and work from there. That piece of music is done now, two hours in. I like it a lot personally.

Have a listen! http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4358735/TinyWorldJaj.mid

Best Ludum Dare I’ve entered yet! I’ve played 75 games now, when I get to 100 I’ll post a list of games I liked most. But first my post mortem.

What went wrong
I start with what went wrong to end positive.

Wanting complicated things

I promised myself I would make something simple and polished. I knew I wouldn’t have the full 48 hours for my game (I had other things to do as well) and after having made an entry that was too confusing to understand (escape) and a game with controls that were too slow to be enjoyable (alone), I wanted to make something simple and fun.

Well forget it, what I want and what I want are two completely different things. I decided I wanted to make a game where you can walk on each side of the platforms, causing a lot of problems with the controls.

There is no right solution to this!

It turned out that not a single control method I came up with worked well. When I used the method where left always makes you walk to the character’s left and right to the character’s right (the method most similar games have used in this competition), players got confused when the character was upside down. So I decided that it would be better if you always walk in the direction you press, with the option to press space to jump regardless of direction. I, and people who tested this game, thought that this worked pretty well, but quite some people have disagreed. My guess is that it feels natural for people who don’t play games often (my testers this weekend) but not for gamers. Perhaps there is an option I have missed?

Funny glitches

The game has no known ways to get stuck or cheat, which deserves a place in “what went right” since that’s pretty rare for me, but I’ve already said it now. However, there are quite some funny things that can happen due to the gravity switches.

What went right

The theme

I loved it! I was so afraid that the theme would be “death is a new beginning” or some other theme that seems to be based on games that already exist. You can do so many things with “tiny world” but it still manages to inspire you. Those are the best themes.

Starting with the music works for me.

This is the third time I composed the music first, but this time I took it one step further. Before I even had a concept I made this song based on the theme alone: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4358735/TinyWorldJaj.mid . Nothing is as inspiring to me as a piece of music, and I guess having this so early made it a lot easier for me to create the mood of the game.

Autopilot.

I don’t know what came over me, but I just worked and worked without actively thinking about what I was doing too much. Going forward and not looking back. And when I finally looked back, I liked what I saw. I still can’t believe I managed to finish this game in less than 48 hours, with time left to tweak, test and polish.

I’m already looking forward to next Ludum Dare to make something even better!

Play and rate here!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=5496

This was the best Ludum Dare I have participated in so far. I actually managed to get into the top 50 this time! (38th to be exact)

Thank you everyone who played and rated my game and gave feedback! And to those of you who couldn’t play my game or didn’t want to download anything, I have good news: I’ve finished an improved html5 version of my game!

Unfortunately that doesn’t mean everyone can play it now, since in order to keep a lot of things in, the game requires WebGL. But people with a recent version of google chrome or firefox should be able to play it. Let me know if it works for you, since I’m getting mixed reports.

Play it on Kongregate!

Okay, so I might have read “8×64” instead of “18X64” and now the challenge is even bigger than it would have been.

I’m not really far yet, and I don’t think the end result will have more than 8 hours in it, but I’ll try to finish something.

Tags: MiniLD #34

I made a tower climbing game for this miniLD. The game was made in a resolution of 8X64. I didn’t have much time to make it so it is a bit rough, but it should be enough of a challenge to get to the top!

Here is the game page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-34/?action=preview&uid=5496

I did great last time so I’m a bit nervous to enter, especially since I don’t have a lot of time to work on my game… again.

The main thing I’m going to do differently this time is that I’m going to make a windows downloadable as well as a html5 version. I also want to make something less complicated this time, but the concepts I’m coming up with so far don’t fit that requirement… as always. Why is coming up with something simple so hard!

What always seems to work out for me is doing the music first, so that’s what I did.

Listen to the song I composed here >  Hey, listen!

Since slow progress is progress too, I’ll show you what I have.

Click the image to “play” (html5)

Left and right or A and D to walk

Up, W, X or Alt to jump

Space, Z, Control or Shift to shoot.

It’s probably because I’m so tired, but things are still not picking up. I’m now working on the first enemy. There will be 5 (if I get my way).

I want to show you what I have before I go to sleep

Click the image to try the game out. It’s made for html5.

Globally it comes down to this: The game isn’t as polished, long or varied as last time’s entry, however, if I do decide to continue working on it (and I can tell you that I will,) it has the potential to kick a lot more ass.

Since every upside has a downside, I find it hard to devide everything in “what went right” and “what went wrong” so I’m putting them together.

Programming: I have to say the platform physics turned out pretty great. The friction might be a bit low for the terrain you walk on (dirt), but it actually plays well, so I don’t really care about that. What can’t be seen in the final product is that the programming allowed for slopes and other things, but that does make adding on to it a lot easier later, which is of course a good thing.

The programming of the enemy behaviour and evolution is what I had to spend the most time on, it got more complicated than I had hoped, and in the end there was little time left for level design. This is what I am getting the most criticism on: that the game isn’t long/ varied enough. I don’t think the problem is that I spent all this time on enemy behaviour though, since the evolution of the enemies is at the core of the concept. What is a problem, is that it was done too subtly. A lot of people seem to miss the whole concept altogether, and think the enemies just evolve randomly, if at all. In truth, enemy evolution actually depends on your interaction with them. If you miss this, the game appears to be a lot more simple than it actually is. I just know this will cost me points, especially in the “theme’ category.

Visuals: This turned out pretty nicely. I’ve worked with the NES palette and colour limitations before, but I don’t think I  ever made a game that actually felt this old. And I love that. It gives me all the appropriate nostalgic feelings. I’ve looked at a lot of NES games for reference, and games like kirby’s adventure and later megaman games do look a lot better than this, but somehow I like it that my game doesn’t look that good. Those games don’t really look like NES games anymore anyway.

The palette I used. As you can see I even had one color left at only 15 in total.

Audio: Making a retro game, I used SFXR for the sound effects of course, so that didn’t take too much time. The music was made using 8bitone . The composing process was really fun, but export options are extremely limited, and this cost me some time trying to get the end result on my computer. I havn’t gotten any complaints about repetitiveness of the music yet, but having listened to it over and over again for two days, the music is starting to get on my nerves at least.

Design: I still like the idea, but in the end, there just wasn’t a lot of time for designing levels. I didn’t have as much time as previous LD’s, and I was very tired before this LD even started, so I guess it just can’t be helped. I am really looking forward to making this my next big project though. I think I will make it another metroidvania type game. The evolving enemy concept certainly allows for it, making backtracking less of a chore. There isn’t much, but what is there just feels like a good basis. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the main complaint is that people want more.

Conclusion

I’m not completely happy with the entry as it is, but if I continue working on it, I think this game could potentially beat all of my previous LD games. Especially when it comes to fun.

Play the game!

Personally, I don’t care half as much about getting ratings as I do about getting comments. And not just the positive ones, but any constructive comment. The comments I get on my game are mostly constructive, so that’s amazing.

It isn’t always easy coming up with something to say about the game you’ve just played and rated, but everyone has spent hours and hours on their game over the weekend, and we didn’t do it just because we were bored. Perhaps we wanted to learn, perhaps the theme inspired us, perhaps there was something we just really needed to say with the game, but there is always a reason, and because of this, there is always something to say. And if there isn’t, perhaps we havn’t given the game enough time.

Why are we rating each other’s games? The first reason should be that we’re interested in what other people have done over the weekend, but if I’m honest, for me that’s only part of it. I’m also rating other peoples’ games because I want my game to be played and commented on as well. I can only expect that other people rate games for that same reason.

The voting system makes games with less ratings, by people who rated a lot of games more visible. But what this system measures is ratings, not comments. I have been playing games, I have been rating them, and I have been thinking of something to say for every single one of them. Sometimes I said what I liked and didn’t like, and sometimes I just commented on the way the theme was used, if that’s what stuck out for me, but I left a comment either way.

I was going through this proces of rating and commenting on games, and noticed my game had appeared on the front page again. I was happy, waiting for karma to do it’s work.

5 people rated my game, and then my game left the front page again. I was excited! What did the people who rated my game think of it? I clicked on my game and scrolled down for the new comments.

No new comments.

Of the 5 people who rated (and presumably played) my game, none of them left a single comment. Needless to say I was disappointed. Was my game that uninteresting? Did it not work for them? I’ll never know, because they didn’t leave a comment.

And just like that, the sense of community I always feel when entering Ludum Dare, got just a little bit less.

I don’t know if leaving a comment should be required. I can understand some people are perhaps too shy to leave a comment. But leaving a comment should be encouraged! With the way the system is now, your game is only on the first page for a minute at most. Sometimes you’ve rated and commented on quite a lot of games to get there, and to see that your game is once again practically invisible between the 1400 other games, without having received even a single comment was a bit depressing.

Perhaps the system should check for comments, and not just ratings?

(to clarify: 32 people rated my game, 20 commented as well. More than 1/3 did not comment.)

There are a lot of good ones this time! I have voted +1 on about 50% of them and usually it’s not even 10%

Let’s hope round 5 is just as good.

Anyway, I’m in for the 5th time!

Three guesses what game I’m ripping off  inspired by?

Game goal: Use the friendly critters you can find around the world for your own personal gain.

I finished the essential tiles and the main character (+ animations)

Also finished the main music theme:

Like last time, instead of making something ambitious that would be interesting but likely very rushed and flawed, I promised myself to make something simple, fun and polished.

Last time I managed to do that, but this time I came up with a concept within the first half hour of seeing the theme that just seems so awesome at the moment that I can’t help but ignore all of that and go full speed ahaid in the hope of making something that is probably not even going to get done for 10%

And honestly, that is kind of what Ludum Dare is supposed to be like.

I don’t usually update so quickly after a previous update, but I think this battle theme is the best thing I made in a while and I can’t keep it in, so here it is:

I used anvil studio (a free tool) to compose it and ableton live to edit it.

The instruments I used are from tweakbench: http://tweakbench.com/