First Ludum Dare for me, looking forward to it.

I’ll probably do a simple 2d game written in C++ with awesome programmer art done in Paint.NET  

Nearly 6 hours in (for me)

Got a very basic version of the game up and running, grab it here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/73441159/NomNomPlanet_v1.zip

You have to stop the evil aliens eating your world before it gets too tiny to fit your house on.

NomNomPlanet is coming along nicely, I’ve now got multiple enemy types, different weapons plus upgrades for them.  Basic audio support is in along with a title screen, result screen and restart button.

Just need some kind of scoring mechanic and lots of polish and I’ll be there.

Try it out: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/73441159/NomNomPlanet_v3.zip

Nom Nom Planet is all done, which is good since I’ve pretty much run out of time I can spend on this.

Entry is here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=6492

Since my last post I’ve added two more enemy types, some music, more gibs and improved a few of the images.

Second LD for me, I’m in.

Been going for about 7 hours now.  Progress is slow but steady, not really much sign of the theme in the game yet but that’s coming!

Aiming for a platformer where stuff gets spawned whenever you touch the ground, that stuff then evolves rapidly.  Sometimes this will be needed to progress – i.e. evolves into a flying platform, other times it will end up being an enemy and will come kill you.

Getting there, lots and lots to do still though.  Still need to do the main evolution based mechanic :-S  Without that it’s just a fairly plain platformer!

On the plus side I have got a basic level editor working at have made 5 levels with it.

Yay for title screens!

Programmer art FTW.

Nearing the end.  We have some new features:

– More enemy states

– Musics

– More levels

– New art (not much better than old art but what do you expect from a programmer?)

Must … have … more … levels …

Well, here we are.  End of another awesome LD.

Got about half the ideas implemented!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=6492

Haven’t done a full project with box2d before so that was a new experience, found almost straight away that it doesn’t lend itself too well to platformers basically due to the controls.  Physics libraries tend to like input being done in the form of applying forces or impulses but while that works very well for things like racing games, it doesn’t feel good when trying to make a fast platformer which needs really tight controls.  I ended up having to hack around it by managing the player velocity in my own code and just telling box2d what to do – essentially using box2d for the collisions.

This is the second project I’ve done using allegro5, the previous one being my entry for LD#23!  Still liking it – very easy to get stuff up and running, I extended my use of it this time to drawing arbitrary polygons so I could see the physics proxies, admittedly this was only for debug but it let me test the mechanics without needing to draw lots of complicated art.

Art style is very similar to my previous games, basically because I’m terrible at drawing!  I think I need to get a graphics tablet and some better software before the next competition – mouse drawing in Paint.Net can only get you so far!

What went well

Well I got a game submitted, that’s got to count for something!  I’m fairly pleased with the gameplay, controls are mostly nice (see “what went badly”).  Basic forms of all the mechanics were done by the end.

Making an editor was a great idea, it’s built into the game executable (although only accessible when in a debug build).  Being able to switch between modifying the level and playing it with one button gives you a huge amount of scope for experimentation and polish.

What went badly

Realised most of the way through that I hadn’t implemented the core evolution based mechanic yet!  Next time I need to think more up-front about the theme and get that core gameplay in as the first thing I do!

There are a few problems still in the game, mainly around the controls – the player doesn’t like steps – no matter how short they are you just hit them.  Also it’s not possible to wall jump off walls that overhang, even if it’s only by 1 pixel on a wall that’s 250 pixels high!  This coupled with the arbitrary polygon based levels mean’t that I had to tweak the levels more than I perhaps should have needed to in order to make sure that there weren’t any places where this bug hit.

Summary

Went pretty well!  I’m happy with the result.  I had a lot of ideas for extending the evolution stuff to drastically change the level as you were going through it but I didn’t have anywhere near the amount of time that would be required to do that.

Oh and obligatory game link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=6492

OK, my third LD.  This time I’m being a bit silly and going for WebGL which is going to involve a combination of OpenGL (which I haven’t used in about 7 years) and javascript (which I’ve never used before).

This is going to go well …

Minimalism eh?  I got nothing…

Ahem, sorry about that.  Anyway, terrible puns aside, I actually have a bit of an idea forming involving a puzzle platformer and lots of levers.

Or perhaps not!  In case anyone is wondering, you can climb green stuff (think of it is a mesh on the wall or something, internally it’s called a ladder but it doesn’t really behave like one!), brown bits are platforms and the blue box is the player.

Yay – level editor is working, it’s probably one of the worst level editors ever made but it beats hand-writing xml in vi!

Realised part way through doing this that I needed somewhere to upload the finished game to (since I’m using WebGL I need to host it properly not just stick a zip file on dropbox) so I’ve now sorted that out too!

Linky:

http://arkazon.atspace.co.uk/run_me.html

WASD/Arrow keys to move, space to activate levers (otherwise known as “big red boxes”).  Activate all the levers on a level to progress.  Each lever removes something from the level hence making it more minimalistic.

Now I need to add some more things to make it into a proper puzzle game (not exactly tricky at the moment!).

Oh yes, I also ate some bacon … but I forgot to take a photo of it.

I have several new features including pushable boxes, bridges that start off vertical then fall down when you touch them and the ability to fall in the case where the ground gets removed from underneath you.  Here’s a nice screenshot that doesn’t really prove anything other than that I’m still using dodgy debug graphics!

Also, I now have beer – specifically an Old Tom in a goblet.  

Now I need to work out how to make some nice tricky puzzles, clearly more beer and a curry will aid this endeavour.

Edit: forgot to include a link to the playable “game”:

http://arkazon.atspace.co.uk/run_me.html

Starting to get some textures done.

Given my amazing art skills, I’m not sure they really help the game but at least it’s a little bit more obvious what’s going on!

Player still looks like a wooden box but that’s mainly because I haven’t worked out what he/she should look like (last time I entered LD I made “the adventures of box man”, guess this is the more literal version :-))

“The Quest for Minimalism” is complete (well, as complete as I’m going to make it since the call of the wine is getting ever stronger).

Little puzzle platformer consisting of 20 levels and a sack of potatoes that does nothing for the gameplay except make the character into a nice square box shape!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=6492

Missed the last few but for once this is a weekend I’m actually around for so I’m in for my 4th LD.

Following on a fairly silly tradition I’ll be using tools I have no idea what to do with and a language I’m not particularly familiar with.  This time I’m going with Unity (the new 2d stuff + scripting in C#), considering my unity experience so far is about 30 minutes long and I haven’t used C# properly in about 8 years I’m confident this will go well!

Not really a fan of this theme – it’s the first one LD I’ve joined in that I’ve struggled for any ideas.

Anyway, I’ve ended up starting this:

If you have no idea what’s going on then don’t worry, nor do I.