Hi,

I’m in! First time for me. I will try to use HTML5 (canvas) and Javascript. I have never really made games before, I have no idea of what I will be able to come up with. We’ll see…

Thanks go to Gaeel for introducing me to all this.

Hi,

First of all please excuse my English, that might not be perfect.

This competition was my first Ludum Dare, and my first entry was also (more or less) my first game (unless you want to count this Minesweeper in). I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and I’m positive I want to take part in a future Ludum Dare competition.

Even though I don’t have much to say, I wanted to make a short “post-mortem,” in order to share my modest experience and some thoughts that might be useful to some. If you want to understand better what I’ll be talking about, play the game here (and please rate and comment, if you want!).

What went right, or wrong, or not (yes, I’ve decided to merge the two since I couldn’t split some ideas into these two categories):

• The idea came to my mind rather quickly. (Some people around me couldn’t believe I had this “dirty” idea; or they thought it was related with a girl, which is false, believe me.)
• I worked efficiently the first day and I had a functional prototype early enough. However I didn’t work very much the second day, but that was because of French elections and friends visiting me.
• I managed to create a rather good-looking sperm animation! Actually I spent a lot of time trying to make a beautiful regular 4-frames animation, the last two frames being symetrical to the first two, and I ended up realizing that the symetry was a bad idea: the animation was anything but “natural”, the symetry was visible and didn’t look well at all. I finally decided to draw the 4 frames by hand, without any kind of “regularity”, and it was a success (in my opinion).
• I appreciated working with HTML5’s Canvas and JavaScript. It was a first try for me (even though I knew JavaScript and HTML fairly well before) and turned out to be surprisingly pleasant to use (I think I like prototype-based programming). I will probably reuse this technology in the future, even though manipulating audio at the moment is difficult with HTML (but Web Audio API is coming…).
• I failed at improving vertical controls (acceleration). Your “character” goes up or down too fast, and it sort of sticks to the top and bottom edges of the screen. Very annoying at first.
• I failed at recording other sounds and music. I tried some ideas and was close to a good result, but didn’t have enough time to record and include it into the game.
• The last two hours of the competition were awfully rushed and that was not necessarily a good point. But at the same time, the emergency of the situation made me sometimes find good and intelligent solutions to my problems. I liked that.
• As a conclusion: Even though I sort of failed by not using my time very well, this competition showed me that I can produce a (sort of) game in 48 hours. Ok, that didn’t sound very original. Actually I want to say that this Ludum Dare may have made me more confident in regards to motivation. I tend to procrastinate a lot, and I came to the conclusion that I should from time to time impose to myself short delays (like, say, 48 hours?) to accomplish some kind of task or project.

I hope this wasn’t too boring. Thanks for reading!

Sprace, Niavlys' LD23 entry

Did I offer you to play the game and rate it? Many thanks if you already have!

Tags: ld23, postmortem

I’ve not written a single line of code since half a year now, but I will try to make a game and we’ll see what I’ll be able to do.

This will be my second Ludum Dare: I made the game Sprace during LD23 and I intend to do something incredibly better this time.

• I will use plain HTML5/JS/jQuery, without any game engine, as I haven’t really taken time to learn something else. Maybe I will try and use the audio and gamepad APIs, but those will probably work only with Chrome.
• GIMP will be my graphics editor, and Audacity will be my audio editor. Text editor will probably be SciTE or gedit.
• Depending on how much time I will dedicate to the sound and music, and depending on my inspiration, I may use a guitar (and/or a harmonica?) with a Zoom H2 recorder. As well as anything I will find there if I need it.

I wish a very good luck to everyone! (including me)

I’m in for my third Ludum Dare. After two web entries, this time I will try using LÖVE (Lua). As usual, GIMP and my Zoom H2 will help me. I’m short of time, so I’ll stop trying to find something original here. Good luck to everyone!

PS: I’m participating from Montpellier, France, with 25 other people!

Here’s my progress so far:

It doesn’t look like much, but there is an almost scrolling terrain and almost working collisions! It’s a bit new to me, so it took me quite a lot of time, but I’m progressing.

Almost 24h gone and I’m still struggling with tile-based collision problems. In the meantime, I’ve tried to do some assets:

The background feels nice (it will have to be altered somehow during… the 10-second interval), even though it was the easiest to create. The robot and tiles could be greatly improved.

But for now, I’ll be trying to fix once and for all this collision system.

I should be procrastinating participating for this Ludum Dare, the fourth for me. My aim this time is to find a simple idea, even if it isn’t innovative, and therefore have more time to build onto the prototype and polish. I’ll be in all likelihood using Löve2D, GIMP, Audacity, etc.

Good luck to you all!

Niavlys.

I’m in for my… fifth Ludum Dare, I believe. I’ll be participating from my home, with my brother (in the same room, but on separate projects). Using Löve2D, and probably Gimp and Audacity for the assets. If I have enough time (and inspiration!), I might use some of my instruments to create some music, but I’m not there yet.

See you later!

Niavlys