Alright, So I decided around 3:00am last night to go with a different idea. Since that happens to be the case I am playing catch up, rather nicely though I think. Here’s a gif to highlight my progress!

After submitting my game with nobody other than myself testing it was apparent that the difficulty was a bit much. So I decided to do a little bit of fine tuning for those that want a less frustrating time. You can play this updated version here: http://mactinitegames.com/ludum-dare-30-interplanetary/

And if you could, play and rate my game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=26320

Please rate my game based on the compo version and not the new one I posted on my site. Thank you!

Tags: update

Alright, so the week of the Dare is here and I’m in!

I’ve participated in the past 4 Dares so this will be my 5th!

Last time I made this little game:

Click to play the game on my website!

This time around, I’m excited to try and make something completely different.

I will be using Unity alongside Visual Studio 2013 for the programming side. For 2d stuff I will be using Photoshop and Pickle Editor, and for the 3D junk I’ll be using Blender. For sound, I’m not to sure what I’ll use. We’ll see.

Anyways, I’ll be trying to stream the whole thing to my twitch.tv channel, so check it out if you get the chance, I’m happy to have a chat. 😀

Well, Good luck and have a successful Ludum Dare all!

Tags: im in, ld31, ldjam

Well I haven’t gotten much done other than some art and my main character, but I’ve got an idea and I’m going with it!

I’m sure a lot of you have figured this out, but you can get the embed to work perfectly in your submit page if you modify your export page to take up the whole page. It makes it embed really nicely. If you’re not very good with html and javascript I found a nice little tutorial to help you do that.

http://unitycoder.com/blog/2013/03/31/webplayer-100-width-height/

if you get it working right it will look like this: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=26320

My entry is all done and ready to go. Go ahead and check out 9(!) levels of puzzly goodness! This is my first puzzle game so it was definitely new to me, I only wish I had more time to design the levels. Anyways click the picture or here to check it out!

First off, if you’ve yet to play my game and would like to you can do that here http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=26320

Alright, now into the post-mortem!

Why did I make this game?

Well, you see, it was simple really. I wanted to learn how to design some puzzles and had never done anything like it before so I thought to myself, “Awh heck, why not”? More realistically, a top down game (3/4 perspective) seemed like one I could fit onto one screen (with some trickery of course!). Anyways, I think I made a good choice, but I also think my lack of puzzle design shows in the amazing catalog of 9 levels.

The Tools

To make this game I used a pretty standard set of tools; Unity was my engine of choice, along with Blender for the 3D jazz and I used cgMusic and LMMS to generate and prettify me some tunes. I also used Photoshop to do the textures and the (minimal) GUI. I’ve been using this suite of tools for awhile now, since before my first Ludum Dare game for the most part and I’m pretty familiar with them so I can generate a lot of junk in 48 Hours, which is good for this kind of thing, but I am learning other tools as I progress through my education and life.

The Trickery

Earlier I mentioned some trickery; I used some visual trickery in Unity to fit my game into the theme. This trickery was that I would Tween every object on and back off of the screen between switching scenes, which personally I though was a pretty nifty trick and with iTween it was really easy to make it look “cute”. Now making the objects all fall onto the screen is the easy part, the hard part is taking them all off of the screen at the same time. While it may not actually be that hard, My method served another purpose as well. When all of my objects drop onto the scene they also “Check In” with a level manager and then I have cached references to all the objects in my scene! Pretty awesome I think.

My Problems

LEVEL DESIGN LEVEL DESIGN LEVEL DESIGN.

Level design is hard.

I was able to make 9 levels, of varying difficulty and they do have an order and I tried to teach the player how to play the game through the gameplay rather than a tutorial. I’m not sure how I did, but I think in some regards I did okay. It’d be helpful if you let me know what you think!

What I did right

(I think)

The aesthetic. I think that I designed the different parts of my game in a way that is suited to my abilities and pleasing to the eyes. Some things could have been better of course but I think it fits my “cute” aesthetics. Also on a related note, I recently adopted a black kitten and he’s constantly getting into things he shouldn’t so I felt I should model my protagonist after him, heck they even share names! Here is Orion the (real) cat!

Rawr!

Conclusion

• Always try something new to you
• Always be learning
• Draw inspiration from life
• Use cute cats.

And with that I think I’ll go back to rating games!

Once again, if you want to try out my game it is here : http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=26320

I think I’m gonna whip together a pong clone this Saturday. I want to focus on squeezing as much juice out of this as I can. Without having to focus on programming I can focus on the art and animations which I need to improve in as well. Awesome!

I didn’t want to do this too early so I’m doing it now.

I’m In!

I’m going to be experimenting with a different workflow as far as asset creation goes. I have been experimenting with rendering 3D models as sprites like they did back in the days of Donkey Kong Country. With my limited knowledge in pixeling sprites I think this will help my art improve if I end up going for a 2D game. Anyways these are the tools I’m using:

• Unity 5
• Photoshop/Gimp
• Blender
• LMMS
• Audacity
• Maybe BFXR or SFXR.
• and maybe CGMusic or one of those incredibly awesome music generator sites.

That’s pretty much it, and with the latest update to unity I haven’t really been using any plugins however I do have one I will use if the need arises and that’s Rotorz Tile System

Anyways, what are you guys doing? How have you been?

Tags: im in, ld32

Fellow Unity Devs, and those in similar situations, the latest chrome update disables NPAPI plugins by default making Unity Web Players not show up. I’m sure most of you already know this and know how to fix it, but some of you may not notice until you start deploying over the weekend. So if you use chrome and want to be able to Play/Rate Unity Webplayer games you’ll have to turn NPAPI support back on.

You can enable them by navigating to chrome://flags/ and enabling NPAPI (Ctrl-F and search for NPAPI) 

This setting is set to disabled by default in the latest update as google is phasing out the dated API in favor of newer methods (HTML5 and their native client stuff among others).

If you don’t want to be bothered by it I suggest trying out Unity’s WebGL build that’s currently in beta.

Good luck all!

Tags: chrome, ludum dare 32, NPAPI, PSA, unity

I tried my darndest, but I just don’t have the time. I spent too much time trying to get silly things to work that I lost sight of where I should be. This is the first time I haven’t been able to make it. Hopefully it’s the last one that feels this bad. Good luck everyone else! Keep on pushing!

Last time around I failed and couldn’t come up with a good plan in time to execute it. Which was a shame because I felt like I was so prepared.

One thing I didn’t do was a good I’m in post, so that was definitely the cause 😉

Well, it was actually my lack of preparation with the tools I was using and I had ran into problems that I couldn’t solve in a weekend.. So like a good programmer I have learned from my mistakes and have taken on projects to keep myself familiar with my workflow. Here are some things I’ve done since the last Ludum Dare:

View post on imgur.com

Procedural Dungeon Generation and platforming.

View post on imgur.com

Auto Tiling and arbitrary Resource Management.

Anyways here we go!

I’m In!

I’m going to be using Unity 5, paired with Visual Studio.

I will also be using Blender and Photoshop to get those awesome (read: poorly made) graphics.

For the music side of things I will be using Audacity + LMMS + CGMusic or something like that.

This time around I have spent a lot of time learning my new tools available to me in Unity5. Well some of it at least. I will be taking advantage of the Event System, GUI and 2D stuff along with a few workarounds that I have learned to make things work right and fast. I also have gotten a sort of workflow down with doing rendered sprites from Blender.

This time around should be fun and will hopefully be less of a failure.

This time ’round I decided I would do something I hadn’t had a chance to build. I was going to build a City-builder strategy game… This turned out to be a poor idea for a game Jam, but I did learn a lot and had a ton of fun.

Anyways this is what I built:

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-33/?action=preview&uid=26320

Many of you won’t get past the first minute in the game as it is a careful balance just to get off the ground. With more time I would have tried to find a solution for this. Without knowing the intricacies of how the game works I don’t think it is possible to intuitively figure it out. Not without experimentation and lots of failure. This is not a good thing for a Ludum Dare (or any small game), as the judging by the community demands more bite-sized, straight forward games.

While making the game I got to the point where I wasn’t sure how I would turn this into an actual game, but not wanting a repeat of last time, I pushed on. Hoping for fun gameplay to emerge, and maybe it could be fun if the initial uptake wasn’t so tough.

The best part about this game was the time I had making it. I learned a lot, and had a lot of fun seeing the resident population come to life (and also die). Anyways for those of you that play my game and won’t see the endslate, here it is:

A bit morbid, maybe, but there is an obvious allegory there, and perhaps one not so obvious.

Anyways, thanks for reading and good luck to you Jammers!

Just here to say, “I’m in!”.

This will be my 6th Ludum Dare and I am excited for it.

I will be using:

• Unity
• Visual Studio
• Gimp/Photoshop
• LMMS/Audacity
• BFXR/SFXR
• cgMusic (or something similar if I feel the need)

I’m running on a fresh install of windows so hopefully I’m not missing any programs. Oh also I’ll be swapping out this mechanical keyboard with something less fatigue inducing.

This year I hope to improve two things: Better UX in my games that make them intuitive, and better looking art more geared towards my strengths.

What are you hoping to improve this year?

Good luck and have fun!

Hello everyone!

I hope playing and rating games is going well! I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about my game and the new things I tried out that happened to work out for me. Anyways, here we go!

This go ’round I got the idea for my game pretty early on. I wanted to make a game where I could focus more on design, and good look and feel. A metroidvania felt perfect for that goal. I listened to a lot of GDC design talks leading up to ludum dare so I could be prepared with a proper toolbelt for level design. From the talks I listened to, 3 things stood out to me as important:

1. Iterative Design
2. Visual and Audio Juice
3. Taking inspiration

First off I will talk about Number 3 very quickly. In my game I obviously “take inspiration” from Castlevania. The level design and the look and feel lean towards that, but also games like Limbo and Risk of Rain. There are a lot of original ideas here, it is amazing how lots of new ideas are experimented with here, but personally, I see no shame in emulating the design practices a game that you love. At any rate, nothing really controversial here, moving on.

Next I will talk about Visual and Audio juice. I watched the GDC talk “Game Feel: Why your Death Animation Sucks” and it showed some really cool effects I wanted to use. (note: chromatic aberration) So that was clearly something that inspired the way I made my death animation, and when you get hurt. Along those same lines it’s a similar effect when you transform. It was important to me that the player feel the effect of the transformation without having to elongate the animation, and also to draw attention away from my poorly done animation, so that’s why you get the scream and the chromatic aberration. Now the cool screen effects were only one part of it, the particle effects were another thing that added to the weight the sprites had, it was very easy to set this up with Unity and it’s animation system, hooking a public method into a keyframe is vastly powerful for visual effects

.

Lastly iterative design, the last tool on my toolbelt. Coming in to Ludum Dare I had this pipe dream that I’d be done with the mechanics by Saturday so I could spend all Sunday polishing and tweaking the level design. This didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, which meant that I didn’t have a chance to really use this tool much. The level design did change a bit from my initial vision after playtesting it myself, but it definitely could have used a few more passes.

Even with the worlds tiniest toolbelt, I was still not able to avoid complications. Unity provided plenty of those for me, and the CharacterController2D by Prime31 that I adore didn’t initially act as expected. So after some tweaks I got it working for my player, but I really spent too much time with little sleep trying to tweak things like the jump that detracted away from implementing more important things, like enemies, and the boss. I kept running into little issues like this. Knockback proved difficult to implement at 3am, as did enemy wolf dashing, but still I got it to a functional state. With all these tiny features taking hours to implement, it left me with a little less than an hour to design and program the boss. Fortunately I was able to copy code from the other enemies and just change it to fit with my idea for the boss. Even with all these problems, I was happy I ended up with a complete game, however tiny it is.

Not to say I ended up with a perfect game either. There were lots of bugs and tweaks I couldn’t squash or fix. There was always a problem with the sprite flashing of enemies when you hit them, knockback was still inconsistent, human combat was awkward, the boss fight wasn’t clear, and the wolf enemies dash made them seem to come out of nowhere. I also had some design problems that I just couldn’t get to; for example getting a platforming section directly after getting the wolf form was no good as the wolf form was meant for speed and damage, not platforming. But even with the hundreds of glaring problems, I ended up with something I  put a lot of work into, and I feel like I can be proud of it.

So with that, I will leave you guys with this:

No matter how many problems you or others see in the game you made, be proud of it. You did the game developers equivalent of a 100 meter sprint, and you crossed the finish line in time. Take the problems you see and the feedback you get here to make a better game next time. I hope to see you back here in August. 

You can play/rate my game here: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=26320 

P.S. I uploaded a post-compo version of my game with controller support, improved enemies, and a sort of checkpoint system.

I’m in.

I will be using Unity + Gimp + BFXR + LMMS.

Might try some VR Stuff, who knows what could happen in this wacky world.

Personally, I think the whole Ludum Shake-Up is a bit weird. I would have had liked to have voting, but I’d rather not risk losing this site to get it. Ludum Dare means a lot to me, and I want it to continue being what it is. I understand cheating is an issue, and I like fairness as much as the next guy. So I will suck it up and do what Ludum Dare stands for. Which is to make a game and give it to the world. Have fun everyone!

Tags: im in, LD36

Decided not to save this for the new website (HYPE), but…. I’m in.

I’ll be using Unity, Blender, and Gimp. Also some tracker for music.

Seriously though. New website hype.

Hey everyone. :wave: We have finally been given a voice. This is feeling like a true Ludum Dare :joystick: now; So it's time to say we are in! This time I am working with a few teammates to create a game in 48 hours :stopwatch:. We will be using these tools (or ones similar to them): - Unity :videogame: - Blender :sunglasses: - Photoshop :spaceinvader: - LMMS :musicalkeyboard: - BFXR :sound: - Github :cat: :heavyplus_sign: :octopus:

I am excited to see what everyone makes and to see what the theme will be. :sweat_smile: Good luck everyone, and have fun! :tada::tada::thumbsup:

:bomb: A game for the groups of 2-4 of you that have 2-4 Xbox controllers to use on your Windows PC. :bomb:

Hey all, now that Ludum Dare has finished and we move towards checking out each other's games I wanted to take the time to use the new sites blogging feature and post up some screens of the game we made! It was a long weekend and we almost didn't make it! Now that it is in a playable state I want to hear what others think about it, so if you have 2-4 people and have 2-4 xbox controllers (or equivalent) and a Windows PC, please check it out, maybe leave a comment, or don't it's up to you. :smile:

It's a game about launching your friends into space with bombs :bomb: :bomb:!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/not-enough-space