http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTAPrg4CArM

I’ve decided to try to make my first video game this week, and I’ve given myself the restriction of five days to complete this project. The usual thing to do is to have 48 hours like the Ludum Dare, but since this is my first game I don’t want to rush or lose any sleep over it. The goal is to make a short 2d platformer about a boy who falls into a well, and has to try to find his way out. The reasoning behind the well is so that the game takes place in a cave setting, meaning less art will be needed. Due to my lack of creativity, the game is named “The Well”. The engine will be done in from scratch in Java, as that’s what I have the most experience with. I tried to learn to use some libraries like Slick2d, but it took too much time, so I’ve decided to just stick to what I know.

First day progress

Today, I’ve managed to get some of the foundation code set up. So far, the game loads a map and tilesheet (text files) and places a character for the player. So far, the player can move around, and collide with the walls of the level while the camera follows him around. I’ve decided to have three layers, a background layer, a collision layer, and a foreground layer. The reason there are three separate layers is to make the map editing more flexible, as there doesn’t need to be code for each type of tile possible. Another benefit of having separate layers is that each tile doesn’t have to be completely square. The collision layer and the foreground layer can have transparency without leaving holes in the level.

Testing level

So far in terms of art, I am just using placeholder black and white tiles to show the background and the walls, but these will be replaced with proper tiles once I am done with them. I’ve also drawn a main character, but it is still a rough draft. For this project, the coding will probably be done first, with the art, music and level design done after all the main mechanics are in place.

The biggest challenge today was trying to structure my code. I spent so much time worrying about how object oriented the code is, and trying to make the engine really flexible. I realise now that it was premature optimisation that really isn’t needed for such a small project, so from now I am going to try to code quicker and just get as much content as I can done. Tomorrow I want to try to get done the coding for animations, some tight movement for the character, and a menu and options interface.

I’ll be making a blog post and video each day showing my progress and explaining a bit of my thought process behind my decisions. Overall, I think this project will be really helpful in terms of learning as I’ll have to use so many skills in such a condensed time frame. I am mainly a programmer, so naturally the coding is the most important part of the project to me, however making the entire game myself will force me to broaden my creativity. I’ll have to do all the drawing and music myself, and since I have very little experience in this I could really learn a lot from it. Another thing is that I am a terrible writer, I have always been terrible at English, so forcing myself to make these blog posts will hopefully help me work on that.

Check out my website for updates: http://custardgames.com/

Tags: 2d platformer, day 1, devlog, dominic mortlock, java, mortl8324, part 1, the well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eP3_gPoB70&feature=youtu.be

Progress! It is actually starting to come together to form a real game now on day 3. The main features added today were checkpoints, death, water, and some new art. Firstly I just wanted to mention that I now have somebody working with me on the project. Someone who read one of my posts about the game messaged me and asked if he could help me with the graphics. Since I am terrible at it, I’ve let him take over the sprite design front.

Falling into the well

Now that I have art to use instead of my black and white placeholder images, the level actually looks like a proper level now. Not only does it look like a real game, but it is starting to have an objective to it. I added in blocks that can kill you now, so these will be things like spikes or lava, and if you touch them you are killed. Luckily, I also implemented checkpoints, so after dying you get respawned at your last selected checkpoint. The checkpoints come in the form of candles. If you walk up to a candle and press x, your character will light it and it will activate that checkpoint. The last thing I added was water, just because it was easy and added some variety to the level. When your character is in water, he is basically just slowed down, so he doesn’t move as fast or jump as high.

Checkpoint candles on the right

Today felt really productive because of all the foundation code I had set up in the previous day. It is now easy for me to add all kinds of new blocks with their own functions to the game. I’ve also managed to get this system integrated with the map editor I am using so that none of the levels have to be hard coded, but can all come from file. This results in much more flexible development, and allows the artist to test his art without needing to edit the source code at all.

In order to let the artist and testers play the game, I had to export the game in a runnable jar. This proved to be more difficult than I initially thought because of the way files are handled. The way a jar gets images and files is different to the way I was using before which took me ages to figure out, but now I know better for future projects.

A challenge I had today is that I spent ages trying to figure out a bug I am having with my character’s jumping. For some reason there is a combination of keys you can press you give your character a larger jump than usual. This is something I will have to fix tomorrow as I haven’t entirely ironed out this problem. Tomorrow, I want to work on a menu interface and/or implementing sounds into the game.

For updates and other posts, check my website: http://custardgames.com/

Tags: day 3, mortl8324, part 3, the well

So originally I planned to make a 2d platformer, since the only other game I have ever made was a 2d platformer (The Well) and the experience gained from it would be useful. The environment and character would be made using either black and white squares or coloured ones. I started working on it, decided to browse the compo page and saw a hundred other people with the same idea! I decided to scrap that idea to work on something more original. I decided to make a mini stock game where you buy and sell shares to try to make money. After planning it out, I realised it would probably come out pretty boring. Finally…

I have started making a 2d side-scrolling game where you have to navigate a rocket through an asteroid field. I hope the art style and the simple gameplay qualify me for the theme, and the picture below shows my day 1 progress. I don’t have as much time to work on this as some other people as I live on the other side of the world and have to book into camp tonight. I really hope I complete my first LD entry and hope it turns out well. Thanks for the inspiration to ACTUALLY make a game instead of half completing a dozen!

 

 

I will also be making some posts about the game on my website once I finish it, so check it out! http://www.custardgames.com

Tags: custardgames, dominic, dominic mortlock, mortlock, video game

Click here to play and rate!

Click here to check out my website

My first Ludum Dare entry, and the second game I’ve ever made! I’ve decided to go for a game with very simple mechanics, but is difficult as hell to win. While most people chose to go for a minimalistic art style, I’ve decided to keep the controls (only up/w and down/s) and actual gameplay minimalistic instead. It seems extremely impossible initially, but after awhile you get the hang of it.

Gameplay:
You control a spaceship that you move up and down to avoid getting hit by asteroids. Minimalistic yes? You have 5 seconds of small numbers of asteroids, then 60 seconds of full on walls of asteroids before another 5 seconds of calm if you make it that far. If you make it through all that, you can beat the game in a mere 70 seconds. Trust me, it isn’t easy. I swore profusely while testing the game.

Story:
You are the first test rocket to escape earth’s gravitational field! Unfortunately, the snarky people who made the rocket never made any way for you to turn the thrusters off, forcing you to have to dodge your way through an asteroid field.

Code:
I wrote the game from scratch in Java, using knowledge from my previous game to help me. I followed similar code for things like the game loop, the sound loading and playing, and the resource management. Coding was done quite fast as I already knew how I should structure the engine, and I hard coded a lot of things to make the progress faster. I though this was a great decision in the end to avoid over optimisation as it really helped me pump out the code quicker and leave me more time for the other things.

Difficulties:
The most trouble I had in this project was deciding what game to make, then actually starting it. Once I actually made some progress and knew where I was going with it, I flew through it quickly. I am really proud that I managed to make it in the designated 48 hours.

Click here to play and rate!

Click here to check out my website

Tags: asteroids, asteroids (the side-scroller), dominic, first ld, mortl8324, mortlock

This is my first Ludum Dare that I’ve ever entered, and it’s been an amazing experience. I came out of it with a finished game, and some really supportive comments that have inspired me to make even more!

The voting period is nearly at a close, so I’d just like to invite everyone to a last chance at rating my game “ASTEROIDS! (the side-scroller)“! I would really appreciate it if you have a few minutes to kill. 😀

Other than that, see you all next LD48!

Click here to watch my VLOG!

Wanna try the game? Click here!

The results are in!

I am actually pretty happy with my results, coming in 416th place amongst a community of very talented individuals. Considering this is my first Ludum Dare, and the second game I’ve made, I think I did not bad at all. This, along with the comments I got on my game have definitely inspired me to make more games, and I will definitely try to take part next Ludum Dare.

Ratings

Coolness 62% #100 Humor 3.40 #310 Fun 3.26 #416 Overall 3.30 #443 Graphics 3.19 #455 Mood 3.00 #537 Audio 2.74 #790 Theme 3.30 #1169 Innovation 2.17

My strongest category was humour. I am pleased with this because I did put in quite a bit of effort in writing the dialogue, and including funny easter eggs. Second was fun, which I am again very pleased with. Because my game is an action-arcade type game, it should focus on the game mechanics and being fun to play. I went with the decision of making the game short, but very difficult to play. I personally prefer this decision, but I’d bet that if I made it easier with more progression, I think I could have scored quite a lot higher in fun and overall. How well I did in graphics surprised me since it was just some quick programmer art thrown together. Innovation did extremely poor, but that is understandable since I didn’t really put any groundbreaking mechanics or anything into the game.

Something I am really disappointed with was how badly I did for theme. I personally thought that it followed the theme really well with minimalistic controls and gameplay. I guess people had more of an expectation for minimalistic graphics though, so I will definitely think about the theme more next time.

Overall, I am very pleased, and will use the experienced gained to try to do better next LD!

Wanna try the game? Click here!

I took part in the last LD, and I had an absolute blast. I came in #416 overall, considering it was my first time taking part (and my second game ever), I was VERY pleased with the results! Check it out – http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=9841

I’m excited to try and get a better ranking this time. In hopes of having more time and being more prepared, I am taking two days off work (the Friday before and the Monday after) since I live in Singapore, and the competition timings conflict with my job and sleep patterns.

I’ll be writing the game from scratch in Java. I hope to get the programming done quick, and focus more on adding additional polish and content in. Good luck everyone!

Ludum Dare 27 starts in 6 hours, so I’ve decided to do some preparations. I cleaned up my work area and get ready for some game development, but more importantly, this obligatory workspace post.

This is where the magic happens. Out of all that expensive hardware, I value my keyboard the highest. I absolutely love having a mechanical keyboard, the sound, the touch, everything!

It’s been a few months since my last game, which was LD26 ASTEROIDS! (the side-scroller). I’ve learnt a lot from that experience, and I hope to improve using that knowledge. 48 hours is not a lot of time, and I want to have as much of it as possible developing the game. I live in Singapore, so the competition ends for me on Monday morning 9 am. I decided to take the day off from work so that I can be developing to the last minute, and also cleared any plans for the weekend.

From the last Ludum Dare, I learnt that mental stamina is absolutely vital. I cannot sustain developing for 48 hours straight, and I need to look after myself to keep my brain juices flowing efficiently. This means getting a decent amount of sleep, not overdoing on the caffeinated beverages, not just eating a shit load junk food, as well as getting some exercise to keep blood flowing. Hopefully the weather will be sunny, so I can spend time by my pool thinking and getting some sun.

Looking back at my last entry, I realised that if I want to score higher on theme, I should interpret the theme more literally to get the votes. Different people have different opinions on the interpretations, but it would be safer to follow the general consensus on the matter. Currently, the most likely theme seems to be “10 seconds”, but people are often surprised at what theme actually gets picked in the end. If it were picked, I think most people would go with a variety of mini games lasting 10 seconds each along the lines of McPixel and those kinds of games. I personally have no idea what kind of game I would make if that theme comes up, but that is half the fun!

I hope to do a lot better this time. My goal is to get the coding done quickly so I can focus more on adding some content and polish to the game. I will hopefully do a timelapse style video showing the progress, but if I don’t manage, I will definitely be documenting the development on my website (http://custardgames.com).

 

Please tell me you do this too so I don’t feel that guilty :/

Finally, a working copy. Nothing fancy so far. A little bit behind schedule. I was hoping to be near the end of programming by this time because I really wanted to focus a lot more on polish and content, but the project was a lot more ambitious than I thought. I also spent way too much time making pretty reusable code when I should have been hard coding it the whole time. Oh well, at least it is pretty easy to add in functions from here on.

Download it here

It is a few days after the competition now, so I’ve had some time to rest and reflect about my performance over the weekend. Although I am not entirely happy with the outcome of my game, I am very proud that I managed to string together a functioning game with an actual goal. I would have loved to have more time to implement all the features I wanted, but I guess every LDer runs into that issue.

Play the game | Ludum Dare

I managed to render my ridiculous timelapse video after having a lot of trouble. The biggest lesson I have learnt this weekend is not to record a time-lapse in fraps because 10 hours of footage is about 500 GB of data. Sadly, this meant I only managed to record about half of my work over the weekend, but it is symbolic enough none the less. I’ve compressed about 12 hours of footage into a few minutes, but I had to render multiple times so it really screwed up the video quality. Oh well, I have learnt from my mistake. In the future, I will use fraps to automatically take a screenshot every 10 seconds or so, and instead use the image files to compile the time-lapse.

Click here to watch the video

What went wrong:

Time

I spent way too long fussing over how neat and reusable my code was, that in the end I was very short on time. I managed to program all these brilliant tools for making maps, characters, and weapons, but because of the lack in time, I couldn’t make the assets to actually use the tools. I ended up with only a few building variations, 3 characters, and 2 weapons. It really doesn’t take long to add variety to the game because of all the infrastructure I coded, but because I didn’t have time to make any art assets for them, the tools proved to be useless. I really should have just hard coded everything. That way I would have been able to focus more on the art, and actually make some sound effects and music. Next time, I will definitely try to manage my time better.

Theme

The theme was actually another reason I ran out of time. I decided to do a more ambitious project in hopes of using the theme in a more interesting and unique way. I originally planned for you to play as the good personality, trying to keep your other personality out of trouble by hiding weapons from him, or taking pills to try to suppress the amount of control he has over you. Unfortunately, I realised I was running short on time and had to change the rules so that you play the psychopathic personality that is obsessed with murder. In the end, the theme felt very tacked on, and not an essential part of the game even though the whole game was planned around it.

Art

Because of the lack in time, I really skimped out on the art. I didn’t have time to texture the buildings, floor and doors. And I had to design the characters as just emoticons so that it would be faster to make. I really want to focus on this more next time.

Music and sound

As I said before,  I didn’t have any time to make the music or sound due to the lack in time. To be honest, even if I did have a few hours, I’m not entirely certain I would have been able to make any. I have absolutely no experience in any sound software, and was very unprepared.

Mental stamina

On the first day, I should have gone to sleep much earlier. I spent a good amount of the day doing proper work, but I started to slow down near the end. I started day dreaming, getting distracted and making bad decisions due to being tired and having worked on the game for so long. I would have been much more productive if I went to bed a few hours earlier and woke a few hours earlier the next day.

What went right:

Code

I personally felt that I had done some very solid coding. The game is relatively bug free, works as intended, and has some very reusable classes. I spent too much time on coding properly, but that did mean it came out quite nicely. I might pull out some of the stuff made in here to keep for later as some basecode.

Blog posts

I think constantly forcing myself to step away from the coding to write a development log about my progress really helped me. It gave me a good break, and allowed me to take a step back and evaluate the choices I was making. This helped me slow down, think more about what I was going to do without just rushing into a decision that would have turned out badly.

Testing

I managed to get a few people to play the game and give me feedback. This helped me find a game breaking bug that I could not replicate on my own computer, but I managed to fix that. I got a lot of great suggestions, and I wish I had time to actually use them, but I didn’t even have enough time to fill in my own stuff.

General

In general, I thought development went well. I spent a total of about 25 hours of pure development (taking out breaks, etc), which is quite a lot in 48 hours. I also felt quite productive in that time, even though I might not have been producing the right things.

Conclusion:

Overall, while I wish the game could have come out so much better with all the features that I planned, I am still very pleased that I managed to make a functioning game. I think it can actually be quite fun once you understand all the rules and controls. The competition has definitely given me a kick of inspiration to continue with game development once again, so I hope to use this to be a bit more productive. My next project will likely be the October challenge, where you have to try to make at least $1 by making a game. I think completing a challenge like that will be absolutely crucial to moving up a level in terms of game development.

Hey guys, I had a great Ludum Dare. I really enjoyed making my game, as well as playing others. I just thought I’d make a final post to see if anyone might want to try my game out.

Have you ever wondered what Santa does to the people on his naughty list? Apparently he sends elves to kill them! Defend yourself from the waves of elves, but remember, you only get one arrow!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=9841

Almost 24 hours in, and I have most of it running! I managed to get some decent feeling platformer physics, a way to change worlds, and lighting.

Next, I need to decide on character art, and design some levels with puzzles in them. Things are going well so far, but I think the level design is what will make or break the game. Good luck everyone!

Here’s the first video showing off the work I started on a new project nicknamed Sudokil. The game revolves around having to use the command line interface to type commands into the game. Through the CLI, you are able to navigate a file system full of scripts and entities using UNIX like commands. Using the scripts, you can control various entities, devices and machines like robots, doors, cameras and computers.

At the moment, I have made the base game engine in Java using a few libraries including libGDX, Artemis Entity System Framework, libgdx-utils, and Apache Commons CLI. I use a few complex design patterns like the entity component system or the service locator. The engine constructs the map, entities and filesystem based off a number of JSON files I feed into it, meaning that I don’t need to touch code to edit the map and entities on it. At the moment, I have to construct these JSON files by hand though, so my next steps in development will include making a level editor and improving the command line interface (features like auto complete when typing, and actual entity/variables editing)

I made a bunch of GIFs showing off some of the features so far. (Click to enlarge)

Controlling a robot using scripts

Controlling the camera using scripts

ALL THE USER INTERFACES

ALL THE ROBOTS

If you want to read more about this devlog, I wrote a longer post on my website: http://www.custardgames.com/sudokil-devlog-1/

Woooh. Finally done. Very tired, but will rate some games before I head to bed. I actually managed to finish the game with a reasonable degree of polish and gameplay. That’s a win in my book.

 

 

The driving can take some getting used to, but the drifting is so satisfying once you know how to use it along with the power ups to manoeuvre. I would love to have put in more power ups like rockets or saw blades, but a rule of Ludum Dare is to run out of time.

 

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=9841

 

Hey LD friends. Just received some concept art of possible character designs in my new game.

Going to be announcing more about the game soon once I experiment and prototype the gameplay a bit more (it’s pretty unique).

Follow me on twitter if you think you might like updates! @locknic

 

 

Doing some super rough brainstorming. Kinda have a fun and cheeky idea of making some simple business sim game about running a game jam site. Won’t be anything too complex, but I am horrible at making UI so this could be really hard for me. Definitely gonna have a rough time coding with my broken hand, plus with finals next week, but I am determined to try at the very least. I am not really sure I can finish this game, but I think this time I want to try something harder instead of going for a 2 button action/rhythm based game and go for something a little more challenging.

Good luck everybody!

Hi everyone, hope you all had a great Ludum Dare. Good luck to the jammers that are still working hard!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$20503

I made a little game called Prestige about collecting resources, building, and getting prestige in this small world. The game is a turn based two player game (though there is a really dumb AI in case you don't have a 2nd player) where you decide what action to take. You can gather resources at different locations, trade resources, or build on your turn. The goal of the game is to have more prestige than your opponent at the end of the 30 days.

The game is really inspired by board games like Settlers of Catan or Agricola, I just love resource gathering and building improvements.