Now I don’t have to go outside again for a while.  Which is good because it is really stinking hot out there.

Tags: food, foodphoto

Codexus, Docky, and Sophie Houlden are cool and I want to be just like them.

…I originally typed that to mock myself for copying them, but then I realized it is also actually the truth

An visual history of my Ludum Dare adventures thus far:

Tags: because the bandwagon is awesome, jumping on the bandwagon, montage

Who wants a wallpaper made out of thumbnails from all the LD games?

This here python script (and png for the LD logo) will generate them in various sizes for you.

example output:

Once all the jam entries roll in, I’ll run it and make a post with wallpapers in various sizes for download.

It also dumps a non-resized-for-wallpaper grid.png and an xml file containing each game’s author, game id, title, etc. that maybe someday I will have a good use for.  You can quickly customize it or update for future LDs by changing the variables at the top of the file.

It requires this Python module which you may have to download and install.

EDIT:  whoops, I had a stupid bug in the part that was supposed to center the thumbnails within their grid cells and instead right-aligned ’em.  It’s fixed if you download now.

Tags: grid, python, screenshot, tool

As promised, wallpapers of screenshots from all the LD18 games:

• 1024 x 768
• 1152 x 864
• 1280 x 768
• 1280 x 800
• 1280 x 960
• 1280 x 1024
• 1366 x 768
• 1440 x 900
• 1600 x 900
• 1600 x 1200
• 1680 x 1050
• 1920 x 1080
• 1620 x 1200

(Want the Python script that generates these?  See this.)

Tags: grid, wallpaper

Here’s the pre-compo framework/library declaration.

Framework: Stego, the as3 framework I’ve cobbled together over the course of these events.  I may go with Unity instead if for some reason I feel like going three dee once the theme is decided.

IDE: FlashDevelop.

Graphics: A copy of Photoshop CS 1 which as far as you know was obtained completely legitimately.

Music: Yet again I’ll be trying using WarioWare DIY for music.  This hasn’t worked out so well in the past, but I don’t have any better ideas.

Sound Effects: I bet you can guess this one.

Timelapse: I will be using Keeyai’s Chronolapse, unless my laptop has problems with it again.

Will be listening to: Some combination of my DragonForce station on Pandora and my 8bitcollective favorites.

Sauce Control: Mercurial, pushed to Bit Bucket.

Twitter: @ExciteMike

Interweb pagesite: http://excitemike.com/

Strategy: I have a couple of super-simple game ideas that I’d really like to try out, so odds are I’ll be shoehorning the theme into one of those.  The main issues I’ve had in previous LDs were doing crazy graphical things that take a long time to make/tweak or doing something that breaks the assumptions of my collision response code (switching to tile-based, how sliding along a surface is handled, or resting contact).  I will just make sure to do pretty standard sprite stuff for graphics, and collision-wise I think I have a much more elegant solution now where I can use hitboxes (matched to sprite animations with this tool) to detect and handle the sorts of things that needed special handling in previous games.  If I need to come up with ideas for levels, this should help me come up with something fast.

To make this post more exciting, here is a random Star Trek image:

Needing sleep pretty hard over here, but so far things are looking much better than they usually do at 5 hours in.

Doesn't look like much, I know.

The slightly-unusual control scheme is working and (I think) kind of fun, I can now load up levels made in Tiled, Collision handling seems solid (for once), the little guy’s animations change to reflect important state changes… I’m feeling good about this Ludum Dare!

Everything I wanted to get in feature-wise is in!  Now to get some audio in there.

I’m really happy with how this came out!  You can play the current version (and eventually the final version) at http://excitemike.com/1958_BNL.  Yes, the name of the game is odd.  Perhaps you can discover its significance.

Oh boy I feeling the lack of sleep/breaks right now.

The Ludum Dare website doesn’t give you a great way to get notified of comments on your game. So I hacked together a bookmarklet to generate that RSS feed.

I’m having trouble keeping WordPress from mangling things, so go over here to get it.

I have a new wallpaper!

All 285 Jam and Compo Games!

Here’s a zip containing various size wallpapers and the Python script that generates them (requires PIL) : DOWNLOAD.

(click the picture)

Roughly 285 people came up with a game idea and made it happen in just one weekend!  That’s a pretty awesome thing!

Dear Sir or Madam, should you be daring enough to risk your health and sanity in electronic challenges and should you be resourceful enough to find another soul similarly inclined and should you have a taste for electronic game programs of the bizarrer varieties and, God help you, should you be willing and able to overlook the abysmal quality of such a diversion, then please direct your browsedevice to the pagesite found at the address http://excitemike.com/Pushy_Elephant of Internet.  The brave souls who venture there will find themselves transformed through the magic of Flash into nature’s grandest creatures, the elephants! Thus transformed, these titans will struggle against one another in combat most deadly.

Are you prepared to risk the Bouncing Scorpion of Alexander the Great and King Solomon’s Cursed Wandering Fruit to win honor and glory in The Worst Game I Have Made in Some Time?

The competition entry page can be found here.

Getting ready for Ludum Dare!

I’ll be using AS3, like I’ve done for previous Ludum Dares. Unless somehow I get an idea that would be better in 3d, in which case I will go with Unity.

Music: Coding theme song. Level design theme song. Gaps filled by Pandora.com.

Food: It has become part of my Ludum Dare ritual to go nuts buying snacks before LD weekend.

Framework: Stego, the as3 framework that’s been grown out of the reusable parts of previous compos.

IDE: FlashDevelop.

Graphics: I’ll be doing pixelly sprite stuff in a copy of Photoshop CS 1 which as far as you know was obtained completely legitimately. I’d like to start doing more vector-based stuff, but I figure for LD I’d better stick with what I’m used to.

Music: I will probably mess around with GreaseMonkey’s music generator like I did for LD19. I’ve also used Wario Ware DIY and Wolfram Tones in the past and those kind of worked, so if for some reason I’m not liking what I’m getting out of one tool, I’ll switch to another.

Sound Effects: SFXR and/or BFXR.

Timelapse: Keeyai’s Chronolapse. It’s worked great so far.

Sauce Control: Mercurial, pushed to a repo on Bit Bucket.

Twitter: @ExciteMike

Interweb pagesite: http://excitemike.com/ Has my games and stuff.

Plan: At present, I am leaning toward doing something extremely simple, even for an LD game, but then have lots and lots of levels. I’d also love to make something multiplayer, but I don’t think people tend to have friends nearby when they go to play or rate LD games. Hmm, that sounds kind of sad when I say it that way. Point is, while multiplayer is often super fun, fewer people will be able to enjoy my game if it needs two willing people in the same room.

Tags: declaration, food, foodphoto, framework

I put together wallpapers from the screenshots of all the Ludum Dare #20 games!

352 games!!!

This .zip has wallpapers in various sizes and the Python script that generates them (requires PIL).

DOWNLOAD (all the games!)

DOWNLOAD (compo games only)

Tags: wallpaper

(yeah I’ve posted this before, but it’s a handy thing many people will have missed the first time around)

While you can subscribe to an RSS feed of comments on a blog entry, the LD website doesn’t have anything like that for comments on your game. So I made a bookmarklet that uses some Yahoo Pipes magic to make one!

Screenshot of me checking my game's comments in Google Reader!

WordPress wants to mangle it so I can’t give it to you directly in this blog post, but you can get it and see instructions for using it over here.

It is a bit fragile in that it is looking for particular bits of html, so if the site changes a little it will probably break horribly, but so far so good!

GET IT HERE

Tags: rss

LD 21 is almost here already! Time for the pre-compo declarations:

Framework: I have an AS3 framework (Stego) that has grown out of doing events like these. I will most likely use that once again, but Unity is always tempting. If I had any confidence in my ability to generate 3d assets, that’s probably what I would use.

Music: GreaseMonkey’s music generator worked pretty nicely when I used it in LD19, so odds are I will be using that again.

Sound Effects: BFXR.

Timelapse: Keeyai’s Chronolapse.

Two games in one weekend!?: This Ludum Dare coincides with Klik of the Month Klub #50! So I will try taking a break in the middle of Ludum Dare to make a separate game in only 2 hours! Or… well, I’m contemplating doing something crazy and trying to make a bunch of two-hour games over LD’s 48 hours and bundling them up as one entry! Probably too crazy. Then again, I did make 10 games in one weekend for the last Pirate Kart, so maybe not? We’ll see what kind of ideas I get once the theme is announced.

Strange image for no reason:

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2011 at 4:19 pm and is filed under LD #21. 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.

Remember that back in LD #18 we did a bunch of posts collecting screenshots of our past LD games? That was cool, and I have a handful of games to add to it, so here’s a new one!

14 LD games so far! (if you count the minilds)

I had lots of fun making those! And it’s nearly time to start the next one!

Tags: montage

Level Transitions!

Robots!

Splodeys! (that look crappy in stills but I like how it looks in motion)

Death!

It just got to a point where it is fully playable (minus the “you win” screen), but it has only one level, only one type of enemy and no audio. Working on all that now!

Tags: progress update

I made desktop wallpapers out of all 510 compo games submitted (as of when I ran the script a few minutes ago) for Ludum Dare #21!

Ludum Dare is getting popular! It's getting hard make out the games in these wallpapers! :)

Here’s a zip file containing the wallpapers in various sizes and the Python script that generates them (requires PIL).

DOWNLOAD

I’ll be back in around 11 hours to add the jam games!

Update: The list of all games has been split into multiple pages, so the script no longer works.

Tags: wallpaper

Here are updated versions of the wallpapers I made earlier, now including the jam games!

This is getting ridiculous! :D

DOWNLOAD

Tags: wallpaper

(this is a repeat post of one I did for the last LD, but we have so many new people that it is probably worthwhile to post it up again)

While you can subscribe to an RSS feed of comments on a blog entry, the LD website doesn’t have anything like that for comments on your game. So I made a bookmarklet that uses some Yahoo Pipes magic to make one!

WordPress wants to mangle it so I can’t give it to you directly in this blog post, but you can get it and see instructions for using it over here.

It is a bit fragile in that it is looking for particular bits of html, so if the site changes a little it will probably break horribly, but so far so good!

GET IT HERE