This has to be the 3rd time I planned on entering the Ludum Dare, and it was going really well!
Then everything ballsed up and I realized how difficult my concept actually was and what it would require.

It turns out I know very little about vector calculus.

Well good luck to you all still competing and I’ll be here again next time!

I’m out!

I finally did it, I made a mostly playable game in 48hrs.
Congrats to everyone else who finished!

You should go play and rate it!
It’s like a small roguelike: you start it up, you die, you do it all over again.

But yes, a random dungeon crawler the doesn’t end until it consumes all of your ram (or something like that)
It doesn’t give you any intro or help so I posted it on the preview page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=7411
Beware: it is bug riddled and I haven’t been able to test it on other machines but it’s entertaining, I assure you.

Cool eh? Now play it.

Once again, go here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=7411
Only for PC (sorry 50% of people)

I’m pretty happy with how the game went for a few reasons.
This is actually the 3rd or 4th time I’ve participated, but only my first entry because I always seemed to give up on whatever I was making due to unforeseen problems, aiming for something beyond my ability or simply quitting  from laziness. Not this time and for my efforts:

It’s a thing

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=7411

Most people that played it seemed to enjoy it and there were only a few bugs, nothing too game breaking.

What went bad

• I chose technology that was not compatible on a few computers because it gave a minimal performance boost.
• I spent most of my time beautifying the dungeon wall rendering and ended up with heaps of textures.
• A few features were added in the last few hours in a desperate attempt to make it feel finished, but the lack of thought and rushed implementation was noticeable.
• The footstep noises need to be more varied and quieter because the f*ck me off when I hear them.

What went well

• I actually finished the game to a playable state.
• The programmer art isn’t horrendous (I hope).
• Most of the sounds work well and add to the game.
• The dungeon generation isn’t the best but it does its job.

What I would do differently

• I would actually make a warm-up mini-game because I took longer than I should just trialling techniques.
• I should spend at least an hour making a menu screen with help.
• Get some friends to playtest at various intervals for quality assurance.

Although there were many features I didn’t get to implement that I really wanted, I am still happy with it.

It would mean a lot if you’d give her a whirl!

Tags: post-mortem

I think I had a good concept and made really good progress, for the first day that is.
The progress made today though, is almost naught. Of about 9 hours spent working on the game, I have reverted things and fiddled so much that the game is pretty much as it was this morning

So I’ll pull an all nighter trying to pull my shit together, if that doesn’t work, I’ll just enter the jam. I’m not giving up on this baby!

Here’s a screenie:

It’s not actually called BoneTesting, I’m just lazy!

I spent all my time on writing everything from scratch, because of the headstrong idiot I am.
I think my day yesterday went like:

• Write basic line renderer so I could see bones (this started as a test to see if I could write a skeleton animation thing at all)
• Make a rigged hand model (I love you MakeHuman for the arm x0x0)
• Write lighting system
• Implement BulletPhysics for movement and collision

While today went like this:

• Fiddle with shit
• Think of how great this product could be
• Rewrite the lighting
• Unimplement BulletPhysics
• Create a dungeon generator that almost did what I wanted (too specific maybe)
• Make a level, then delete it in anger x 3
• Reimplement BulletPhysics
• Fiddle with lighting
• Stare at my code like its the matrix

Good use of my day huh?
Well I’m about to re-unimplement BulletPhysics and this time it will work!
Look out for my game if I actually do something with it!

Well, I failed. Not entirely, just in the main aim of making a game in 48 hours. Don’t really think I’ll finish in time for the jam either.

I didn’t get a lot done this round, even though it is the most time I’ve put into a ludum dare.

What did I do wrong?

• I got caught up in little details that didn’t really matter, it wasn’t polish so much as being pedantic.
• I wrote the lighting, physics (not really, just movement + collision and everything was axis aligned) and loaders from scratch. I think this was the main cause of bullet point 1
• About half of the techniques I used were new concepts or more complicated than familiar concepts. I spent too much time thinking things through and building it into a test, then implementing it properly. The reason I used unfamiliar techniques was because they are nicer in the long run.

Anyway, I’ll probably keep working on my ideas for it (damn you ambition) over a few days/weeks and it may flourish.

Here’s a snippet of the beginning: (in terrible quality on some dodgy looking site) http://videobam.com/aezuN

Well, I still learnt a ton and better luck next time I guess!

So, I might be able to participate, for a few hours.

My family is having a holiday and I was invited so I will have from the start time until the morning of the 26th.
I guess it’s going to be a pretty damn small game, but I will try nonetheless.

IDE: Visual Studio 2012Language/Libraries: C++ and OpenGL (and SFML for human interfacing)
Graphics: Photoshop CS5.1
Sound (if I get that far): BFXR and/or Bosca Ceoil

So I’m at the 7 hour mark and haven’t really accomplished much.
I regret not preparing, I thought “I’ll be sweet just whip up my engine as I go.”

Not as quick as I thought, so I’ve been desperately trying  churn out basic engine features from scratch.

Here’s a current screenshot:

A bunch of ships

Nice…

Well, I won’t be finishing the compo again.

I got caught up with a feature that I actually removed because it was unreliable (read: it sucked and was broken),
the problem being I spent hours on it, 6 I think.

So I haven’t left myself enough time for coding a few key features including buccaneering AI battles.

This is what it looks like anyway:

Still boating around

I’m off to bed, I probably won’t finish it for the jam but hey, you never know.

Well folks, it only took me 24 hours to come up with a notentirelyshit idea, aaaannd I’m going to be out for another 8 or so hours.

So I’ll either churn this motherf***er out in ~12hrs or I’ll just downgrade into the jam for fun.

Wish me luck