I’ve waited for the theme, brainstormed a little and then went to sleep (LD started at 3 am of my local time) with hope that my crazy mind will show me inspiration in my dreams. My mind decided to stay in gutter and I dreamed about two-headed readhead which isn’t exactly fitting to the theme… unless she was really tiny and you could carry her in your pocket….

Anyway, going to fill myself with coffee, put together some ideas and then start putting it to something playable (sadly most of the good ideas I have I probably won’t be able to do in time, sigh…)

Alright, I have basics of what I wanted to do written, going to do an FPV adventure. I’ve planned 4 chapters originally, but it will end as one but polished, because there’s no way I’d be able to do more, especially considering that I want different posibilities to solve two main problems in the first chapter (you’ll be rated in the end based on your decisions, I already can see some people screaming 😉

Time to fire up tablet (I’ll probably post some WIP images if they’ll look good enough, this time I’m trying to do something looking a bit more like art then random scratches)

Once again I’ve found out how much I suck when I try to draw something on the tablet, so I’ll stick with the “art” I’m using always (should have stayed at sketching with pencil and scanning it in computer… it’s faster and looks much better).

Anyway, first scene is finished, now seven more and code it all together….
(And hope I won’t get kicked up for “adult” take on both LD and the theme…

Some teaser art….

I’ve removed two scenes from the game, but it seems I won’t be able to finish as much as I hoped… (again).

So probably no sounds and animations, server saving statistics wasn’t even a hope…

Still pretty good, but could have been better :/

Not as bad as I feared, not as good as I hoped. Good anyway Postmortem will follow….

I’ll do the flash version later, since currently it’s buggy :/

Time to get some sleeeeeeepz….

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=5242

Am I the only one with Ludum Dare post pages locked and no new posts showing?

So, the time has come to write some post mortem (in not so hidden hope that my game will have a chance to mess with heads of more poor victims).

Introducing Tiny Inspiration, adventure game about LD programmer who searches for inspiration in his dreams and finds himself tiny, on his own table. As you can see from the thumbnail, it’s a bit (cough, cough) adult theme. Although no actual porn takes place, sex is what is this about. It was my intention to mess up a bit with people’s head and since most of the people in LD are guys (sorry for you, girls, but unless I’m seriously mistaken, there’s not much of you here… anyway if you drop me a comment declaring yourself a girl and demanding woman themed game next time, I’ll consider it).

Even before LD started I was thinking about maybe making and adventure game (doing two commercial right now so I got them stuck in my head now…). When the theme was announced (3 am of my time), I scratched my head and went to sleep, hoping for some inspiration. About the only dream I remember was really weird one with two headed redhead…

Next morning (actually, more like noon) I went for brunch with my GF and started brainstorming. Soon enough I’ve scratched all other ideas (sperm racing game, battle bugs clone, Tron like shooter) and focused on the adventure. From the start I knew I wanted to have some sex hints there and that I want as many possibilities to finish the game as possible. With that came idea of giving player achievements and then that I should really try to rattle player’s bones.

Originally I wanted to have three episodes with three screens each. First on the table, than among the bugs, and in the end having player to find love among amoebas and bacterias. Quickly found out that my ideas are just spilling too fast so I concentrated on the table.  I started making design notes and quickly sketching screens.

I originally planned 8 game screens, one intro, one outro and one noninteractive in the middle. I had some ideas for more, but even than I was pretty sure it would be tight run against the time. Sketching was fast, each sketch took me about five minutes, so I was full of optimism!

Then I fired up photoshop and picked tablet… and found out that I just really really suck. I have no problems with pencil, I’m even able to produce quite nice drawings, but tablet… horrible. Took me a too long time to finish first screen and then I started to cut corners so I can make it in time. I grossly underestimated how long it will take me just to redraw finished scanned sketch and add some colors

So I had to put out intro that was supposed to be a bit interactive, with player killing bad ideas (like sex, go to sleep) and promoting ideas like RPG, adventure etc. In the end Yoda was suppossed to show up (probably in a blond wig :D) and tell player INSPIRATION YOU’LL NOT FIND, IT WILL FIND YOU!

Outro was also cut out, with protagonist girlfriend waking him up and asking him why he’s sleeping on her dollhouse instead of making that stupid game. (And if player shaved himself in the game, she would have asked “and why have you shaven your beard, honey?”).

And one of the game screen went out of the window too (Ken trying to enroll in french legion to show Barbie that he’s man, fluffy dog doll, which could have been converted into dog disguise for more achievements, some other stuff).

So in the end, 8 screens, one of them almost without any interaction, few dozen active items, 11 achievements, and two goals, with 4 possible ways to reach it for each.

While doing all the art and exporting it out from photoshop I fired up Unity. I decided to use it again because a) I’m quite confident I can force it to do anything I want, although sometimes painfully for both of us, b) it gives me possibility to do web / flash version (I’m still mostly untouched by html5 and flash, so it’s the only way I can make web games now), c) abusing full fledged 3d engine for a simple 2d “art” is amusing

Putting items into screens, doing some basic scripts took me almost no time at all. About the only problem I had was stupid unity gui (last time fixes while trying to get flash version working introduced so stupid bugs in the inventory that I had to do quick bug elimination after compo) and flash export ignoring anonymous functions (had to rewrite them, luckily I had no time to implement some better dialogues anyway).

I ended up with playable game about ten minutes before the end of the compo…. So  ideas about some sounds, music (at least from autotracker) and having some interactive dialogues just went out the window :/

But I’m happy with the result anyway

Procrastitracker stats (rounded):

12 hours photoshop

2 hours text editor (where I had my “game design document”, seems too much)

4 hours Unity (creating screens, testing)

7 hours Monodevelop (writing scripts, debugging)

add about two hours for sketches / initial brainstorming on the paper, about hour for smoke breaks (that I use when I’m stuck and need to think out something through).

Overall about 28 hours of real work… seems I wasted a lot of time by sleeping and eating and getting inspiration (ahem…). But that’s the stats here.

Anyway, I had real fun making it and even more fun listening to comments of some of my friends (Too bad I hadn’t implemented some server upload of stats). So I’ve mostly succeeded in my goals.

If you hadn’t played my game yet and you’re willing to risk it even after reading through this… go ahead!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=5242

I’m in, but since my annual LAN  party collides with LD, I guess my submission will be more or less symbolic. Or maybe I’ll force other players to help me and do JAM 😉

Going to use Unity since I don’t have any other dev tool on my lanparty playbook.

Unless something bad happens, I’m in….

Going to use Unity (almost sure about it, but depending on the theme / idea I might use something else like c# + OpenTK or maybe even html5.

And I DEMAND MOAR POTATOS!

Once again I have to denounce the theme and express my dislike for it :/ every LD game is minimalist by nature… I have no wish to experiment with some minimalist game play like one button game… and art would be minimalistic anyway…. so I’ll probably just do something and more or less ignore the theme

First prototype done (I really should prepare some framework for LD so I won’t have to start from the scratch next time).

Controls are mouse, WASD for movement, R + F up and down, Q and E for roll, X fires the missile.

Not much done yet, but I feel good about it anyway….

Unity plugin required:

Screaming Cubes

Sooo… time to get some shutdown time. Still a lot to do, even for the minimalistic version, but if anyone’s bored, take a look on a day 1 build.

Not much to do yet, just three annoying enemy ships and some terrain (which can be destroyed with crater missiles, press 2 to select them).

I originally though about making it in space, and maybe I will in the end, but for now the unity terrain and some minimalistic blocky textures….

SCREAMING CUBES, day 1 build

And so I am done… Web and windows version uploaded, sources uploaded, game seems to be working… I’m happy and I’ll go sleep

Hopefully no stupid bugs (I’m sure there are some, but hopefully not very annoying)… game balance is a bit of a joke, but everything seems to be working…

Key features:

Scifi flight sim with shooting and mining and upgrading

Destroyable terrain

Quite a lot of work for two days, I guess this is my most “finished” entry ever. There are few things that remained in the wishlist, like enemy battleship and upgrades for player’s ship, but maybe I’ll do a postcompo version… maybe not. I’m so sleepy I don’t even know who I am.

My entry

Since I hit a 100 rated games, I’ve decided to check my scoring and pick some of the best I’ve yet found, in no particular order:

Potato Dungeon by _Rilem – JAM

Very good platformer (although I wasn’t able to get past the horse).

Square Space by Berkano – 48H

2d shooter combined with mining and building.

Steve Can’t Zen by DaanVaanYperen – 48H

Excellent and funny action game. I laughed (which was very rare while rating).

Syntesthesis by TheFuntastic – 48H

Great concept for musical puzzle game, too bad there’s just few levels and no free play.

Mustache Armies by TurboDindon – JAM

Great platform action game, both idea and visuals are incredible (I’d probably mark this as THE best game I’ve found in one hundred tested.

I’ve finally compiled together a post-compo, 1.1 version of my space simulator Screaming Cubes (incidentally just in time to maybe get some rates for the original version too).

Version 1.1 is vastly improved (after all, it’s several more days worth of work, not just two days), while still (of course) buggy, bit unbalanced and rather bare-bones prototype of a much bigger game then small tidy polished proper LD entry, but I prefer it that way anyway… I’ve decided to take SC as my official hobby project (I needed one anyway after all those years) and I have a lot of plans what to do with it… but right now I need to know – are there other possible players? I like my game a lot, but you could say it’s a custom made for a guy who spent hours and hours flying x-wing and Tie-fighter and elite and privateer and X Beyond and others and who always wanted a game like this but made in his own way, with a lot more freedom…

So calling for all space pilots! Let your voices be heard and force me to do another update!

Web version, Kongregate hosted
Web + Windows version on dropbox

Rate page

There’s no sound, but I’ve at least put some annotations to explain what’s going on.

Gameplay video

Finished, uploaded for most of platforms, quite happy with the result especially considering the bad flu I was fighting with and theme I didn’t like (But this time I more or less kept with it). This is probably the first time when I attempted (because of the flu) something small and so it’s a bit more polished then my usual entries.

Presenting CARDOCALYPSE, a bit weird card solitaire of sorts. Only one card can remain on the playfield in the end! (Now I shall present myself to the bed…)

Once again, I’m in. Going to use unity3d (99% probability, but I might use something else if I’ll have some interesting idea based on the theme…)

Due to the time I wasted yesterday desperately trying to find a way to fit a LD game in a motto “Beyond the surface of sanity dark madness lurks…” and then time wasted with learning blender so I can have at least some simple 3d objects (should have stayed with 2d…) I’m nowhere near to finish Random generator more or less works, but all you can you is shoot the walls and lamps and wander around until you find an exit that leads to another (randomly generated) level…

Unless I can magically stop the time and add at least some stuff I want to have there, I’ll probably go for the jam and use another day to finish the game…