Argh… finally done, just in time for the jam submission. It’s even playable, although it has almost nothing I originally wanted…

If anyone wants some brain damage, here you go:

THE SURFACE OF SANITY

I’m in, unless snowman wins. As almost always – using Unity3D, my mouth and my killer drawing skills to make another “game” that makes your eyes bleed.

And I’m in (just in case someone’s interested and I think it’s in the rules to say so…)

ONE RUM

ONE RUM is finished! (sort of). Time to get drunk for real.

Uh... was getting ready to get a long sleep before the start and now I see LD starts in 2 hours, not it 14. Well.. no rest for the wicked. Time to close work project in unreal and open new one in Unity for the ludum dare. It's been two years since my last LD, I hope I still remember how to fast prototype :D

Well, starts wasn't bad. Killed few ideas, found one I liked, got some sleep, started working on it... And I probably made a mistake when I decided to try unity's isometric tile tools. They look nice but it took damn lot of time to get something working...

So it's time for a break. Got to anyway. My meat supplier just drove in with an ostrich, one week early, so I gotta switch from hacking unity to hacking meat. Maybe I should record some sound samples of my cleaver whacking the meat... :D

Well, I burned a lot of time on trying to make unity isometric tilemap working, but now I have something resembling a game - even with basic start and end screen. Considering the basic type of game I'm making I might have done much more if I tried to do it in RPGmaker :) (But I guess it would take me even more time to learn how to use it). But I have dungeons, enemies, working turn-based combat, all I have to do is add a bit of content. Too bad I won't be able to make everything on time, but I need some shutdown time now... I'm already considering moving to jam for another day

Well... I got pretty much all of the code, enough programmers art, but I still need to finish level scripts and balance the game a bit, also there's no audio... There's not much point in submitting the game as it is for the compo, so I'm going for the jam and finish it in remaining hour...

I took it easy this time (after more than 2 years since last LD), so I needed to move to the jam. I might have made more if I crunched and didn't sleep full time, but I'm rather happy with the result anyway. It's a bit grindy, so I'm thinking about adding a cheat mode... and maybe make better postcompo version, but that's for tommorow.

I've never made a J-RPG style game so I've tried it this time... And I also tried new unity version (since I got stuck professionally at 5.4) and new tileset tools. Which was, I think, a mistake, since I wasted most of the first day on getting it to work and making some basic sprites. I should have used vector graphics with textures for levels, I'd save time I think...

My original idea was "start with literaly nothing" and build yourself a body, skeleton first, then push enough flesh on it to make zombie, and then... I was pretty sure I won't be able to do that, but I tried anyway and to my surprise I even got to skeleton building, although very simple :). I finished the game just few minutes before the time limit and I'm a bit sorry I didn't shaved few hours from sleeping so I could add few more possible endings I wanted. Maybe for the post-compo version if I decide to go for it. I should at least add starting special skills that I never got to... although it would be easy now as I already have code for it.

Submission entry

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/new-start-at-n-o-t-h-i-n-g-ltd

I've decided to burn almost two more days to finish my j-rpg like entry to a state I wanted it for compo... so now there are sounds, music (first I made in almost 20 years), combat skills, 9 (technically 11 + death) different endings...

I'm rather happy with the result. If you've already played my game - please try the enhanced version. If you didn't - please play the original first.

So I've decided to spend few more hours on my entry and I've added save and load (which makes getting most of the achievements rather easy).

And now I have to decide if I'll use it as a prototype for a bigger game or if should pick something else from my pile of ideas and older prototypes :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/new-start-at-n-o-t-h-i-n-g-ltd

Not enough sleep on friday, too much sleep on saturday... I guess it's jam time again...

Not enough sleep on friday, too much sleep on saturday… I guess it’s jam time again…

So... another compo that ended up moved to jam... this time I was actually pretty close to finish it on time, but due to the sleep mismanagement I've ended up about two hours after the compo deadline.... So I spent few hours ironing some details and balancing and playing. Although the result has almost nothing in common with the concept I wanted to try (well except being hexmap based), I'm pretty happy with it, even with current limited features and dumb (nonexistent) AI. On the other hand, with good AI it would be probably too hard to play anyway. Playing on small map can take just 5-10 minutes, while bigger can eat up to an hour of slightly mindless logical conquering. I gotta make mobile version, it looks like a usable time waster. Give it a try!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/madscape

Sigh... I seriously underestimated time I'll need to cut the voiceovers to files... Still about half of hour voice to process, no way I can make it in time, damn... So... So long, compo, hello Jam, here I go again...

After some feedback from friends I added a tiny change, toggle to pause the text and voice after each sentence instead playing it continuously until player has to choose. My friend told me that given missing part of the story or setting his kitchen on fire, he chose the kitchen. So, this is essentially a kitchen saving bug fix.

If you're in a mood for a voiced slightly interactive short story about man who got strange superpowers after being bit by a cop, and have some 40 minutes to spare - here it is.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/werecops-archives-case-of-deeper-excrement/

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/werecops-archives-case-of-deeper-excrement

Max Caliber was a rather normal and boring man until one day he was bit by a policeman... and next full moon, strange urges overcome poor Max and changed him to a servant of Lady Justice who protects innocent and fights against crime. Now as Lieutenant in Special Affairs team with codename "Werecop" he's the one to call when the crime get's too weird and dark forces are threatening the peace, because only he, with his super abilities of supernaturaly strong sense of duty, incredible sense of empathy, ferocity of wild beast, genius-level mind and sixth sense that seems like madness to ordinary people, but helps him see what others would miss...

There's a webgl build, windows build and youtube video recording one playthrough 35 minutes long, full of my raspy voice and Max's madness. It's a short voiced interactive story, although the interaction is rather limited - sadly, proper branching and more interaction was first thing that had to go out and I had to keep the story cut to the bone to make it in time (which I didn't anyway by few hours and had to post it in the Jam). So - if you've got half an hour to spare, the case report waits for you!

I always thought that as a last resort I can always make an interactive fiction for Ludum Dare. Never did. This time I was pretty much sure I'll try it, depending on the theme. The story was born from a question of my girlfriend when I was brainstorming about Deep and Deeper - "Well, what else can be deep?" I answered in a raspy batman-like voice of Lt. Caliber (that made my throat hurt for another day) "The shit I was in was so deep that the stones I was walking on was shit compresssed by the pressure to diamonds." Which became an opening line of a parody to supernatural detectives. Well... it started as a parody anyway, but during the first scene it became something bit different and I'm very hapy with the resulting story. I'm less happy with all the times where I misspoke or mispronounced something (which I mostly noticed only now when I was making a recording to youtube), but I was finished with the story and some limited interaction few hours before the end of the compo - and I underestimated how much time it will take to record resulting 40-45 minutes of audio in several different voices and especially cutting it to correct pieces, so there was no time to do a proper record of every line. Too bad. I also originally wanted to add some outrageously bad pictures drawn with crayons (as is hinted in the story at the end), but that plan went quickly out of the window. I'm now thinking that just the text and voice works better anyway.

So... if you've read all the text above... could you spare some time to read / listen to the text in the actual game? :) I could use some rates. I also finally have some time to do some rating of my own - if you've got an interesting / weird game, drop a link in the comments:)

Ah well... this time I have actually nice idea for a game and for the theme, but considering I have some ostrich butchering for tonight planned and I have to finish preparation of the presentation of a "real" game project for the wednesday, I'm not sure I'll be able to do more then some sketches... :/

Considering that I had only few hours so far for work, it goes rather well.. Just need to add few things and record voiceovers....

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/keptin-de-core-is-unstable

Heh, finished with few minutes to spare in better shape that I hoped for :) Can you keep the ship running? (You probably can, because the difficulty is tuned down too much now...)