Well, according to the rules I’m releasing the source of the framework I’ll be using for the compo. It’s not finished and needs a lot of work, plus I’ll be modifying it during the compo.
I’m having a problem with the repository (already opened a ticket on SourceForge, but they won’t reply until monday), so I uploaded it somewhere else.
When I’m done with JFK and the repository is working, I will create a proper post.
So I decided to create a Quick Time Event based game. For those who don’t know, a Quick Time Event is a game where one has to follow on-screen instructions, with information like what key to press, or what action to perform, in order to continue a sequence. A nice QTE modern game is Heavy Rain (see an example here).
In The Escapist, you are tied, caged, hidden, blinded (for a reason I’ll disclose later), and you have to try to solve all obstacles. The aesthetic of the game will be fuzzy sticks (because I can’t draw any better).
I give you a video as a preview.
Tags: escapist, screenshot
Making progress with the effects, but now it’s time for Absinthe 
Being 3.44am here, the upload of the timelapse finished (Click on the image above)
I see you on the next LD!
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).
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 It was originally made as a Python exercise, but as I found it very useful, I decided to share.
I started very late… And had less than 24 hours to make something. My framework was not working, I got no idea of what to do, and I was working alone (no team motivation). Anyway, I decided to go with a simple idea, but somehow got stuck with making fancy effects to hide my inability to draw.
Tags: 2D, as3, screenshot
You need to socially evolve to get the girl you want. To have money, a car, popularity, etc. That’s what I tried to tell in my last game.
Warning: This is intented to be a parody game, so please don’t take any advice in the game into the real life 😉
In this post-mortem, I’ll try to explain what things of the development process made me mad, what made me sad, and what made me glad.
At least for the last 30 minutes, the game wasn’t fun. That was driving me nuts through all the development process. I was thinking “I need to make this game fun, but how?”. Finally at the last moment I decided to make the “power-ups” come from the right side on a random basis. Before that, they were static.
Indeed it wasn’t. I wanted to make a more strategic game, in which you had to train yourself to get more girls, and eventually you could get Lucy, the girl you always wanted. Of course, that was out of the scope because of the short time.
I woke up at around 8pm (yeah, I know), looked up the theme, and tried to think something cool. Obviously, nothing cool came about, or only ideas related to genetic algorithms, which I didn’t have the time to implement. At the end, I could have made a better and more balanced game with those extra 24 hours.
Not a bit. I lost too much time drawing and redrawing the characters and the background, and even though didn’t come with something cool. This is definitely something I need to improve for the next projects.
I had many versions before the “final” art
My framework was on process on refactor when I learned that LD was the next day. So for obvious reasons, I couldn’t use it, and had to stick with plain Actionscript.
Indeed it did! If you haven’t checked out, my Resource Maker can process a folder and generate a Resources.as file which contains embeds for the assets found in that folder. I made a simple *.bat with a call to Resource Maker, hooked it on the pre-compile process, and I didn’t have to write a single embed line
There is something I’m more and more aware of: TODO list are a win. After I had some idea of what I wanted to do, I wrote a TODO list on a text file with what I needed to make in order to complete the game. Next, I had to stick to the plan, adding and removing things as necessary. After 12 hours, I was already implementing sounds and music, since the core game was already finished (although it was still boring).
I wasn’t interrupted at all (except for going to sleep, going to the toilet and sleeping). That was a good thing since I was fully concentrated on the development.
Since I woke up at 8pm Saturday, I already had a full sleep. So all I needed was sleep only 4 hours during the development.
I followed this tutorial to make my fancy post-render effect. It took me around 3 hours to implement it, and it was well worth it
A quick comparison between normal mode and “fancy” mode
Since I’m not a musician, this tool helped me a lot for the music. What I needed to do was to generate good sounding music, and put them together in a sound file.
Tags: as3, evolution, flash, jorjon, ld24, post-mortem, postmortem, social evolution
Looking for a Console for your Flash game? I’m currently developing Consolator, a simple library which attachs a console to your project, ready to use and fully customizable.
You can use it to debug your variables, or change your game while playing. You can easily call the methods of the objects you bind.
Some features:
Your ideas are welcome at consolator.uservoice.com
Tags: as3, console, library, screenshot, tools
No? Well I do. That’s why I decided to show how much I detest watching news and hearing about the world sometimes. Ok, most of the time.
The game was developed for the MiniLD#40 competition, themed: The Real World.
Avoid the world is about defending yourself against media information (or misinformation). You fight with your only weapon while watching TV: your remote control.
Your goal is to push away all the words that the TV screen vomits upon you. If they reach you, your brain damage will increment, and when 100%, you lose. Note that you can’t win against the TV, you will always lose at the end.
Good question. Yes you do, so please play carefully.
The words are automatically read online using advanced alien technology, found in a cave by honorable scientist Giorgio A. Tsoukalos. In the modern world, this is know as RSS, a format which most newspapers have.
I’m glad you asked. Well probably you can’t imagine, but this was rather hard to make. Read the full post-mortem in my blog, I dare you! I DOUBLE DARE YOU!!
Tags: as3, post-mortem, postmortem, screenshot
So, MiniLD 40 votation closed! I got a 
on Theme! My first silver medal in LD! Thanks!!
But as I was scrolling through the overall ranking list, I noticed the ranking was:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (TIE), 5 (TIE), 5 (TIE), 8, 9, 10, …
My question is, shouldn’t the guy in the 8th be in 6th place instead? Since there is 3 guys tied at the 5th position.
Maybe the script that assigns the numbers doesn’t contemplate the tied positions?
Essense is an atmospheric serene first person “puzzle”. Really cool for a relaxing moment before going to bed.
In this post-mortem, I’ll try to explain what things of the development process made me mad, what made me sad, and what made me glad.
Yeah, now I know. Usually I don’t play puzzles, so it was a real challenge making one. I was trying to figure out good puzzles to include in the game, levels that would be fun to play. I guess I didn’t chose well, because…
I think it’s a problem of communication. I wasn’t able to find an effective way to communicate what the puzzle was about. Sure, you have to grab the red cube, but what’s the mechanic of the level? That and some difficult controls (which I modified now), has led my game to be almost unbeatable.
I guess the world didn’t want me to participate in Ludum Dare. I have gathered a list of things that happened to me this weekend:
If you watch my timelapse, you will find that I was spending lot of time testing my game. That surely was one of the reasons why my game is difficult: the more I tested my game, the easier it was for me, so the more I increased the difficulty.
But why I tested it so much? Well because the atmosphere was really cool so I played lot of time to hear the music, read the messages, etc. That’s because I was…
So I had to make lots of things, but I couldn’t make a list like my previous Ludum Dare. I don’t know why, I just didn’t think it was necessary. So I wasted a lot of time working on the atmosphere first (I had the music very early on), and not much time in the mechanics.
So one of the wonderful things about Unity3D is that you can extend your editor to make custom tools. I created tools for the logic puzzle and the jumping puzzle, which allowed me to modify them quickly.
For creating the blocks in the dodge level, I made a parser that reads a simple script, describing how the level should be created. Then Generate creates all the blocks in the corresponding positions.
The first letter correspond of where the block will be coming from, North, East or West. The second letter correspond of what position the block will have, Left, Center or Right. If there’s an X at the end, then a Checkpoint is created instead. The special letter S is speed, and O is offset, both followed by a number.
For the logic puzzle, I needed something to tell me how was the level being connected. I figured I could do it using the Handles class, using a white arrow indicating a floor that turns on another, and a black arrow indicating a floor that turns off another.
Visual clues helped me know what’s happening. Click to enlarge.
So with Unity Pro it is really simple to add fancy post-process effects. I added vignetting and reflection, which lot of people told me it was really cool looking. I was about to add more effects, but that wouldn’t be minimal.
I used Paul Stretch along with Audacity to remix a version of Four Seasons of Vivaldi. It was an easy and hacky way to have a beautiful dreamy music. I also was worried that it would be against the rules to remix a song, but I asked in #ludumdare and it was ok.
Tags: 3D, final, LD#26, post-mortem, postmortem, unity3d
Tags: animated gif, final, LD#26, post-mortem, screenshot, unity, unity3d, video
I have rate many games already. I also rated many Least ratings games (instead of the default). I see that those getting very low rates are because they have coolness 0, which means they didn’t rate any other game.
What surprises me is that some of them are wondering why they don’t get comments on their games.
As I saw dozens of games with coolness 0, I was wondering if any dev have the actual number of games in that state.
Is this a problem with communication? I mean, maybe those who made a game don’t know they have to rate others to get their game rated as well. Or is it simple laziness? Can we do something to motivate these little guys to start rating other games?
I have been thinking about this for a while now. How can we help ld’ers get some money for their efforts making games?
With the popularity of indie bundles still rising, and considering the high amount of games developer for each LD, I believe this is an excellent choice. Why not pack a couple of entries together and sell them for an inexpensive price?
I know there are games are aren’t worth anything. Also I know there are developers who don’t care about their games (those who get 0 coolness in the competition). So only the post-compo or HD editions of the games will be qualified for the bundles, proving that the developer cared about his game so much that she released a new fixed version with improvements, and in some cases, new features.
There are some categories that comes to my mind, for packing games together:
As for the categories, there are obviously more to be explored. It’s important to keep in mind: as a buyer, what will I want to buy? What will I be looking for?
Can a game be in more than 1 bundle? Yes. If you have made an innovative game in Unity3D, it can be in both bundles. So a category is more like a tag for a game.
How much to charge for these games? I think the Humble Bundle approach is the best, and let the buyer provide the amount. Some of that money should be send to Ludum Dare for the costs related to the store.
So, what do you think? Do you believe this is achievable?
For the creative stage of my LD48 game, I researched the topic of Connected Worlds, but found myself picking up planets references. So I decided to break up the Connected Worldsconcept into two categories.
Connected Planets it’s the common concept one can think of. The planets represent a different space but same time / reality.
Connected Dimensions it’s the more dark subject. It represents a world in a different dimension / reality, and probably different space. If it’s the same space but different dimension, the topic becomes darker.
The word connected means that the worlds are connected by something.
I have picked up movie references for these two categories, that you can see in my blog post.
Tags: motivation
Tags: foodphoto
Tags: screenshot
It’s been three times in a row that I spent all my time to polishing first, and I have no gameplay at the end.
While I admit that the visuals are not bad, nothing can compare to the fact that there is no game. So I’m a failure as a Game Developer.
I think there’s a lot of things to learn from for next time.
