This is my battle station for the next couple days. Yes, it is a bed.

Tags: deskphoto

… and I have some basic engine components working…

Here’s a screeny of what I gots so far

Added movement and shading… now need enemies, boss(es?), talking engine, menus, shooting, HUD, and actually having to do with the theme…

but I’ve gotten progress made.

I’ve decided that my game will focus on vengeance. The ghosty guy you see, that guy was forever alone in his life, shunned by society, and now he’s out for blood.

and since I just woke up then had to do chores and eat, not much got done from the last time I posted.

I got particles worked in, and a grave marker for the player, along with smoother movement.

It’s going pretty well here… still needs a bunch of varnish, a menu, a few more enemy types, sound, and music.
Here’s a screeny:

And here’s a working build, could you give me feedback?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40870733/theghostwhowantstobealone.exe (Windows only, I’m afraid)

Well, I got my menus in, and now GM is deciding to bug up significantly, creating runtime errors whenever I exit my game… Ah, well… I’m sure I can find someone to compile for me.

Well, I feel that I have been decently productive over the last two days…

Since my last post, I fixed the runtime error, got all menus fixed, added boss fights to the game, cleaned up the HUD so it looks decent, and recreated a Touhou bullet pattern, making it more intense at the same time :).

Take a good guess which pattern:

Anyway, off to sleeps. Good night, all.

Well, my game has victory and game over screens now

All I need now are a couple hastily drawn pictures, music, and sound!

Well, I have my shmup done! It’s about a ghost who wants to be alone so he can rest in peace.

It’s over here if you want to play it: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=2976

Here’s a timelapse video of me making it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Z0gd7cpig

Well, here goes…

Building:
Okay… This went rather smoothly. I chose to use GameMaker, which I am highly familiar with, rather than PyGame or XNA (as I am still learning these), or a lower-level environment (o_o). I went in stages. I first built a mockup, then basic movement, then enemies and victory/defeat conditions, then a frontend, then sound, music, effects, and art, then I tweaked it and eliminated as many bugs as possible (thankfully few). I was able to run a lightweight timelapse program as well. Actually, now that I think about it, all 6 programs I used are built to be easy and quick to use: GameMaker, Paint Tool SAI (Paint for tablets), SFXR (you can use multiple sounds from this at the same time for better sounds; I did this in both my LD20 entry and this entry), Chronolapse, the Autotracker-C script (for music), and Schism Tracker (a .it compatible music synth program, perfect for replacing the beeps with instruments) Everything was smooth, I even got sufficient sleep and submitted my game to several sites and into the compo an hour before the 48-hour deadline.

Then, votes and comments meandered in… Universally, the game was fun and intense and the music and graphics were considered good. However, there was one very common complaint (EVERY comment, including my own, mentions it). This complaint is the very high and often sudden difficulty of the game (odd for LD especially). What makes this especially ironic is that during playtesting, the difficulty was even higher…

Contrary to public belief, the game is possible to beat, just extremely difficult.

All in all, the Ludum Dare (my 3rd, along with 19 and 29) went pretty well. Once my computer is fixed (which is why my Coolness is 0), I can address the complaints and create a gameplay video to entice more players (not that this will affect the competition)

Thank you for your time, for your votes, and your patience!

–Fenyx

Let’s see… this will be my 4th LD… 😀

As always, because I know nothing, I’m going to be using GameMaker 8.1 for programming. I will be using SFXR and Schism Tracker for sound and music. I will be using Paint Tool SAI and Paint.NET for graphics, and the game will likely be 2D because that’s just easier to program, especially with GameMaker.

I hope that this time my game is actually fun…

Doesn’t really look like much, but I have my concept and my engine down.

See, instead of a tiny world, you are a tiny girl. That’s the plan here. You get down into the tiny places, and this level I’m planning on having a flower as a boss. 😛 It’s a side-view shmup engine with the direction switching of DeathSmiles, the camera moves around the room and the objects stay in view and treat it as a different room entirely.

Sleepers for me, and for you, you get a new screeny

and an executable file
I put some placeholder sound and music in and slightly improved the background and the sprites.

Well, I have a boss, a new enemy, slightly better graphics, a title screen, a bomb, and particles everywhere. Also, I still have sounds for everything like a baws. Also, high scores are now saved.
New executable is available here.

Here’s my lunch.

Here’s my game

I added several things, and spiffied up the graphics a bit.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=2976

Here’s my game! 😀

This makes my 4th competition entry! 😀

That’s a timelapse up there! 😀

First of all, the post-compo post… I now give a gigantic THANK YOU! to all of those who played and enjoyed my game! I loved seeing the feedback, both positive and negative! And yes, a very heavy update is in the works!

Anyway, onto the post-mortem post… It seems that I wasted quite a bit of time playing the game instead of working on it… This seems to be a common problem of mine… I didn’t work on graphics that much, other than the bullet which is shot by the enemies… Sound was simple, but complete… I should have had more layered sound effects (like my LD21 entry), but I didn’t… All of this links back to my initial problem. I just turn out too lazy at the wrong times… My choice to use GameMaker 8.1 was not a bad one, despite the LITE logo appearing in-game, I was able to use something that I knew the ins-and-outs of, so it was easy to translate ideas to code.

Now, the post-judging post… My overall score was 3.04 (#392 of 1402). This seems to be an average score, but it’s actually my best overall yet! As always, I have one score that is much higher than the others, and this time, it was fun, with a score of 3.46 (#113 of 1402). This is the highest score I’ve gotten for anything except Community in LD19 (which really doesn’t count too much). As far as the bad goes, the scores I got under 2.5 (average) in were Humor, Innovation, and Coolness. I wasn’t trying to be funny, and I got lazy with judging… The low Innovation score is something that I seriously need to work on for the next LD. I did a shoot-’em-up because they’re easy and quick to program and have some relevance… However, I wasn’t very innovative at all; the only slightly unique thing I did was allow the player to switch directions, which pretty much carried the entire game… Had it not been for that, I would not have scored as highly in Fun, judging by the comments. I should have done more as far as thinking outside of the box.

Anyway, thank you all for the playing, the competition, and the fun! I hope to see every single one of you in the next Ludum Dare!

The Ludum Dare 24 falls on the 25-26, correct? If so, I am in it! It falls *right* ahead of when I move in to college (23rd) and *right* before my first class (27th). This should allow me time.

Anyway, this will be my fifth Ludum Dare, so I should try to bring something special to the table… but I don’t exactly know what I would bring… -_- I know! I’ll make an RPG, no matter the theme! That will be my restriction! Also, I will refuse to touch AutoTracker scripts, unless I have no music with less than an hour remaining. This way, I must actually make my music!

Anyway… obligatory equipment post…
Language: GML (IDE: GameMaker 8.1 Standard)
Graphics editing: Paint.NET, Paint Tool SAI, Anim8or
Sound editing: Schism Tracker, SFXR, Audacity, winLAME
OS: Windows 7

Next time, I’ll try to use PyGame and make the game cross-platform. However, Windows will remain my development OS for a while even if I do use a cross-platform language because SAI refuses to work outside of Windows, even when I have Linux Bamboo drivers (I do not own a Mac).

It turns out that I’m not going to have time to do anything for LD this weekend, so count me out…