…and I’m scared.

This will be my first LD so I’m not really sure what to expect. I’m a little worried that I won’t be able to finish anything in 48 hours. My games at The Pencil Farm have always taken much longer than that to complete.

But it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

I’ll be making a Flash game (AS3) using Photoshop for graphics and GarageBand for audio.

I’m exited!

Initially I wasn’t too thrilled about the theme, but I think I came up with an idea that I like.

While brainstorming, I kept coming back to the idea of a tiny micro-organism swimming though a vast ocean. There is tons of life around it, but the scale of everything is so tremendous that it could just swim and swim and never find anything else.

I rejected this idea a few times because I thought it would feel too similar to flOw. I think I’ve come up with a unique take on it though.

You’ll play the game as a little amoeba creature, all alone in the enormous ocean. You have to collect food. Once you collect a certain amount of food you have enough energy to spawn a new creature. The type of creature that is created depends on the types of food you eat.

I really want to make this feel open-ended and exploratory, but again I fear that it will end up feeling like a flOw rip-off, so we’ll see how it goes. I might end up adding a time limit or enemies or something else that will end the game.

Progress has been pretty good so far. 4.5 hours in and I’ve prototyped the basic logic and movement. Tomorrow I will try to refine the gameplay ideas and start working on some art and sounds hopefully.

Here’s some ugly placeholder art:

See you in the morning!

I made some really good progress today, but I’m definitely starting to feel the burn now. So tired…

Today I mostly worked on art and refining the game feel.

There is a player version here: Spawn Prototype.

I feel pretty good about most things, though I’m still unsure about the open-endedness of it. I would like to add some more interesting graphics in the background so it will feel more like exploring. Not sure if I will have time for that though. I still have to draw all of my little Spawn critters. I think having a nice variety of those will make it more fun to swim around and see what you can create.

I’m also thinking about auto-saving progress to a cookie, so whenever you come back to the game you pick up where you left off. Then you are more likely to get to see all the variety of creatures.

… with 5 hours to spare.

I’m a little surprised that I finished. And I’m actually really happy with how my game turned out. It could be better of course, but it’s not bad for 48 hours.

I’ll post some more thoughts later (and my time-lapse video), but for now I need to get away from this damn computer.

Play Spawn

PLAY SPAWN

I didn’t keep very good notes while I was developing this weekend, so I’m going to try to just list out approximately what happened when before I forget too much. I’m referring to my time-lapse video to help me with the exact times.

Friday

4:00 pm – Took a short nap and then bought some groceries so I would be well rested and fed for the upcoming competition.

6:00 pm – Theme is announced! ‘Alone’.
Initially I am not too crazy about the theme. It seems a too broad. I imagine everyone just making standard platformers and dungeon crawlers and saying ‘the main character is alone’. I suppose that would happen with any theme.

6:00 – 6:45 pm – Brainstorming and sketching ideas.
Some idea fragments:

• the last leaf clinging to a tree at the start of winter
• the last chick left all alone in the nest
• a lone amoeba swimming through a vast ocean
• piloting a ship through empty space
• a dandelion spore

6:45 pm – Open Flash and TextMate and start prototyping the basic movement and gameplay

7:45 pm – Briefly consider using Flixel. Decide not to due to my unfamiliarity with it.

10:00 pm – With a rough prototype complete, I stop coding and write a quick blog post.
I spend about 30–45 minutes sketching character designs in my sketchbook.

11:00 pm Sleep!
Saturday

5:30 am – I woke up on Saturday feeling refreshed and was glad that my game concept and prototype still seemed viable after sleeping on it.

6:30 am After breakfast I immediately started working on the designs for my main amoeba character (in Illustrator).
After about an hour I had a basic design that worked so I brought it into Flash and started animating.

8:30 am – Design title screen

9:00 am – Change Nutrients from being Flash Sprites to bitmap objects that get blitted onto the background, hoping to improve performance.

10:00 am – Added the collected nutrients to the amoeba’s belly.
The game becomes pretty playable at this point. From here on I think I wasted a lot of time just playing my game.

10:30 am – Sound effects (sfxr & Sound Studio)

11:00 am – Added spawning animation.

1:30 pm – Added ‘New Species’ label

2:30 pm – Added some placeholder new creature graphics

3:00 pm – Added the menu for showing all the creatures you’ve spawned.

7:00 pm – Added background bubble graphics

8:00 pm – Remade title screen as multiple graphics instead of just one.

I was starting to feel really burned out at this point, so I wrote a quick blog post and thought I would go to bed. Instead, I spent another hour or so working on some background music (GarageBand).

Sunday

6:30 am – On Sunday I woke up feeling terrible. I was tired and my whole body was aching. I was not looking forward to spending another day in front of the computer, but I knew I only had a few more (big) things to finish.

7:00 am – The major thing remaining was to draw the graphics for all of my spawn creatures, so I got started on that first thing.
It took most of the morning.

10:45 am – Added different probabilities for which nutrients show up based on where you are in the ocean.
I took a few big missteps before I got this right.

12:00 pm – Fearing poor performance on older computers, I decided to change the game’s framerate from 60 to 30. Most of the movement in the game is framerate independent, but my amoeba animation had to be adjusted.

1:00 pm – Posted my finished game with 5 hours to spare! Woo hoo!

Here’s my time-lapse of making Spawn this weekend. Total capture time was about 21 hours. Condensed to 9 minutes.

I forgot to put up my big clock for the first hour or so. I started recording at 6:45.

View the Spawn Timelapse

Tags: timelapse

The public alpha release of my cross-platform pixel editor Pickle is now available for download.

The app features animation preview, seamless tile preview, and terrain preview—all live updating as you edit.

I’m trying to get feedback from the game dev community to help make it better. So if you have a few minutes to try it out and let me know what you think I’d really appreciate it. It would be great to have a more full-featured version complete for people to use in the next LD.

Download Pickle at PickleEditor.com 

Follow @pickleEditor for updates

Tags: pixel art, tools

(This is my last post about Pickle, I promise.)

Just wanted to let everyone know that Pickle 1.0 has been released!
Thanks to everyone who tried the alpha and helped with suggestions and feedback.

Try it out: www.pickleEditor.com

And be sure to let me know if you use it make anything cool.

Follow @pickleEditor for updates.

Tags: graphics, pixel art, tools

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2012 at 1:33 pm and is filed under MiniLD #31. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

It’s still early here, but I think I might have to be done for the night. It took me way longer that it should have to figure out this tiny bit of code. So tired…

But, I think I have a good idea to start on first thing in the morning:

In my game tiny people will parachute into the screen riding on dandelion spores. You create gusts of wind with your mouse to help guide them to… um… safety? Well, I still have some parts to figure out, but I think I can make it work.

Done. So tired…

Once again I’m surprised and pleased that I was able to make a pretty decent game in under 48 hours. And once again I am exhausted. I will hopefully post more here later.

For now:

PLAY ZEPHYR

Here’s my time-lapse video of the making of Zephyr:

Play Zephyr

Tags: timelapse

I’ve only rated 30 games (so many Windows-only games this time…) but here are my 3 favorites so far:

(Tiny) Worlds of Illusion

I love the idea of incorporating optical illusions into the gameplay. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

pixTown

Unique puzzle mechanic here, with smooth interaction and complementary sound effects.

Tinysasters

Another neat gameplay concept I haven’t seen before. The superb artwork is icing on the cake.

Tradesies?

Want me to rate your game? Drop the link in the comments and I’ll check it out (web or Mac versions only, sorry).

Please rate my game in exchange:

Zephyr

Great work everyone. Thanks for all the games!

Wow, I really struggled to come up with an idea for this one. The last two came me to pretty quickly, but I almost thought I was going to have to sit this one out. Luckily I think I’ve hit on something that could be fun:

My game will be about plant evolution.
You’ll control a plant bud that keeps growing and growing. You’ll be trying to collect little… um… things that will make your plant, like, evolve. Somehow.

Ok, I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but I threw together a prototype of the movement and it feels pretty good to me so far.

Try it out:

Evolution Prototype Day 1

My gameplay is pretty close to being done at this point, but I’m realizing I have a ton of graphics and animation to get done tomorrow. Also, I haven’t even started on audio yet.

Oh well, here’s a screenshot:

Whew! This was the closest I’ve come to not finishing (45 minutes to spare).

I wish I had more time to work on the audio. I shouldn’t have left that till the last minute. Oh well.
I think I wasted too much time just playing my game. I suppose it’s a good sign that the game is fun enough to distract me from working on it…

Take a look and let me know what you think:

PLAY SPROUT

My current high score for my game ‘Sprout’ is 1054 feet.

Can you beat it?

PLAY SPROUT

Here’s my timelapse of the creation of my game Sprout:

If you skip to the halfway mark when I start creating the art it gets a lot more interesting.

If it looks interesting to you:

PLAY SPROUT HERE

Tags: timelapse

‘m’ is a maze game.

You have to navigate the maze blindly using only the arrow keys.

I’ll write more about this later.

Play m

Here’s my screencap timelapse movie for my game ‘m’:

It’s not as interesting as my previous ones due to the lack of graphics in my game. Watching the timelapse of the graphic creation is usually my favorite part.

Play ‘m’ and let me know what you think.

Tags: timelapse