In less than three hours this will be my life for two days (even though it probably would still be without Ludum Dare).

I am still unprepared and am having some trouble with java exporting and figuring out how to export an applet as an application(if that is something you can even do) so if anyone can help out awesome. Either way I’ll try my best to make a game and worry about that crap when it’s done. Good Luck Everyone!

After seeing the theme and thinking about an idea for about an hour, I decided on an idea and began to code my game. It was not until a few lines in when I learned that I had no idea how I would make this idea come to life. I’ve only been game developing in java for about a week or so, thus i’m still very new and can’t develop a game yet without using a tutorial or some sort of reference. But I’m not giving up, I’m re-writing the code for an asteroids game I made a few days ago to give it a twist that fits the theme. I don’t know if this is allowed for the competition because its recycling code, however I probably won’t be submitting it anyways because I really have no idea how to put an applet online. But, doing anything is better than sitting around and waiting for the next Ludum Dare. I might also make a Game Maker game for the jam if i’m not satisfied with my asteroids game. Good luck everyone and I hope to have a more successful experience next time.

This will be my second attempt at Ludum Dare (the first one didn’t go so well). Regardless, I will be using Game Maker and will be participating in the jam. I’m a lot better at game development than I was back during LD 25 so hopefully i will be able to make something. I have SAT testing the weekend after so maybe I should study for that instead of doing LD 26 which will probably mean I won’t participate. But since I probably wont end up studying… …COUNT ME IN!

I wrote a post before saying I was going to join the jam instead of the compo, however the only reason I did this was because I thought I couldn’t use GameMaker for the compo. Anyways, now that I’ve seen other posts of people using GameMaker for the compo I have decided that Ill be doing that instead of the Jam. Also if someone can confirm that using GameMaker for it is okay I would appreciate it.

My Tools:

GameMaker 8.0

FL Studio 10

sfxr

Paint.NET

After writing all these notes I finally came up with my idea.

It’s going to be a Robotron style top down shooter set in a minimalist world inspired by the art work of Piet Mondrian where each box is a new room.
The twist is that the enemies will be secondary colors and you as the player will have to use your weapon set of primary colors to kill the enemies based upon their complimentary colors. possibly painting the blocks with their color blood as you go along.

Anyways that’s about it for now, good luck everyone and have fun game developing!

So far the progress on my Mondrian/Robotron-esque shooter has been going smoothly. I’ve created pretty much everything I need for the player including movement, shooting, and color and bullet selection. Tomorrow I will be working on enemies and then on to building the levels. Good night everyone!

After 11ish hours of sleep (that’s what a week of school will do to you),I got my breakfast and I’m ready to begin my second day!

My game now has a title(screen)!

I have also finished the basic gameplay creation to where I now can build all my levels and enemy timing. After that I just need music, sound, and some polishing!

^A screenshot of the enemies

^And new rooms!

My game Mondritron: 2026 is finally done!

Check it out here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=17685

Mondritron: 2026 Post-Mortem

Ludum Dare #26 was the first Ludum Dare I’ve ever participated in. Mondritron: 2026 is also the first real game I’ve ever made by myself and released for people to play. Through this combination of little experience in game development and a rushed project, I found Ludum Dare to be incredibly beneficial to how i’ll go about designing games in the future and the what it’s like to develop with a deadline. While it was incredibly hard to do and even stressful at times, by the end I was able to create an actual game that people can play, and that fact that I can simply say that is incredibly validating and fulfilling. I have been trying to jump into the world of game development for about a year and a half now, and this ludum Dare really pushed me to finally create an actual game, and to get over my hangups of coding, programming languages, and the stigma I created in my mind that games made in Gamemaker are inherently low quality and un-inspired. I made Monditron: 2026 with Gamemaker and I’m incredibly proud to say that. Regardless what I used, I created a game and that’s a hell of  a lot better than sitting around thinking about creating a game.

I really owe it to Ludum Dare for actually encouraging me to make something, and I highly recommend participating if you’re trying to get into game development. Regardless of how you make the game, by the end you’ll actually have a game, and that realization is wonderful.

Anyways, about my game…

Theme: I started development by looking at the theme, reading some definitions of minimalism, then looking at some Google images, one of which was the work of Piet Mondrian – which would go on to inspire the concept for my game. After that I did a free-write in my super secret book of game development, and came up with a few ideas such as, minimalist renditions of other video games and a game where you collect music notes to create a song (both not very original). However, I quickly came up with the idea for Mondritron: 2026 – a robotron inspired top down shooter with a twist of complementary color battle, similar to that of “Ikaruga”, but more focused on the theme of minimalism and the color theory that goes into minimalist art.

Here’s all the notes I wrote:

Development: Development went fairly smoothly, I ran into a few problems regarding how to change the color of the player, and how to create the enemy spawns, but I eventually figured them out and got the basic structure of gameplay down by Sunday morning. For the rest of Sunday I worked on level creation/design and polishing, however as a result of all the time I spent on the basic structure, I did not have enough time to add all the levels I originally planned on having, and did not get to play test a whole lot and figure out that the game was actually incredibly hard, and that a better progression of difficulty would have benefited it immensely. However, such is the way of Ludum Dare… the fact that I was able to actually create the concept I drew up on paper to a good extent is very nice, regardless of the problems that it has.  The last problem I ran into was music, I don’t have a lot of experience with music so I opted to use inudge.net, However, once I created a song I was happy with, I tried to export it as an audio file but couldn’t find a way to do it (or didn’t know inudge doesn’t have that feature). Pressed for time, and not able to make a new song in another program, I unfortunately had to play the song through my speakers and record it with my microphone(MINIMALISM!(sort of)), that’s why the song sounds weird in the game.

Conclusion: By the end most things worked out well. There’s definitely room for polish in the areas of difficulty progression and lack of levels. I’m also now working on my FL studio skills so that I’ll be able to make better music in a nicer way. Through this experience I created something that I am incredibly proud of, and have been pushed over the hump of awkward pre- game development hangups all as a result of the motivation that Ludum Dare created for me. If anyone is going through the same phase of game development loss, I highly encourage you to participate in Ludum Dare, it’s incredibly motivating, inspiring, and rewarding. don’t worry about what you’re using to make games, just make games, and things will eventually fall into place.

Now that I know I’m capable of making a game, I am incredibly inspired and I can’t wait for the next Ludum Dare to utilize everything I learned during this one, and everything I hope to learn in between. See you all there!

Oh, and if you want to play Mondritron: 2026, here’s the link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=17685 (Oh my god, that’s awesome that I’m able to say that).

This will be my second Ludum Dare competition if I will have the time to participate.

I’ll be using either gamemaker or unity, it depends what my idea is.

For music i’ll be using FL Studio, and for sounds probably sfxr.

I hope to see you all there!

After doing some writing I finally came up with my idea…

The game starts with showing a large expansive environment and at the end of it is a giant man sitting on top of a pyramid. This man has a special power that allows him to shoot and kill the player wherever the player is, to do this though, the man must charge up his pyramid eye which takes 10 seconds. So every 10 seconds regardless of the players location, he or she will be killed. The game is about finding a way to stop the man from doing this by destroying him. The player does this by experimenting with different things in the environment and getting closer to the pyramid man. Every 10 seconds the player will start fresh and can get closer and closer to the goal through trial and error and figuring out what will take the least amount of time and will possibly work before the man charges up his eye again and shoots the player. So it’s sort of a puzzle game in that sense. I’m really excited about this idea, and I can’t wait to get started. Good luck Everyone!