I’m in… for the Jam. With my partner mini-troll. We’ll probably be using Scratch, paper, pens, flat-bed scanner, The GIMP, and (if we can figure out how to get audio input with any quality at all) a very old Casio keyboard. Still to get new blog set up – twitter is @papaminitroll

Spotlight Search: A game for the Ludum Dare 21 Jam by MiniTroll (age 9 ½) and PapaTroll (age 39 ¾) and made in short bursts over one day using Scratch & a Casiotone MT-70 keyboard. Scripting by PapaTroll and MiniTroll, art by MiniTroll, sound by MiniTroll.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/moomintroll/1988546

Developer diaries below!

MiniTroll’s Diary
When we were making the game we each had ideas. It was my idea for the game and the name and how to get the timing right so the characters come in on time. I also drew the door and helped with the sound effects. Papa Troll helped by explaining and doing the hard bits. The hardest bit was making the levels come on automatically. I made the level backgrounds I call them 1) sky 2) candy floss 3) volcano.  It feels great to have made a game again! (To play them go to scratch program and share and search moomintroll)
PapaTroll’s Diary
This was our first ever Ludum Dare game. I had promised to make a game with Mini Troll during the summer, but we somehow never found the time – so this was a good chance to make good my promise! Mama Troll and Teeny Troll were off to visit Troll Family for the day, giving us a chance to get some development time without interruptions.
We had a leisurely start to the morning. Discussed the theme, Escape. Straight away MiniTroll suggested a game where the player is escaping from prison and has to avoid the search lights. We had some discussion about top-down vs side on platform style gaming, MiniTroll initially preferring the latter. I thought the former would be simpler, and that is what we decided to go with. Basic outline of player, maze, exit and two spotlights came together very quickly.
Development was generally in short bursts of 30 minutes to an hour, interrupted by going to the library, stopping for reading breaks or for snacks. MiniTroll had ideas for the title screen, but we decided to start with a playable level instead… MiniTroll enjoyed drawing the background and maze. We looked at some of the Scratch examples for inspiration – the PacMan example showed how to test for collision between one colour on a sprite against background colours. We used this approach to test when the player’s feet are touching a wall. MiniTroll found it challenging to work out the logic for testing collisions without sticking on the walls when trying to the turn round – so we took a screen break.
After the break, we fixed up the wall collision scripts and posted our first playable! http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/moomintroll/1987783
Worked through for another couple of hours – focussing on adding the title screen, a second level, and the logic for managing game state (the only part I did without MiniTroll). Before dinner we had our second playable ready: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/moomintroll/1987940
During dinner, the second level was re-designed on paper, and implemented after dinner when MiniTroll worked solo for a while. MiniTroll also added buttons to the title screen and an instructions screen at this point. I helped fix up the scripts for these, then MiniTroll decided to add a third level. This was pretty easy, and we had our ‘final’ game uploaded pretty quickly: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/moomintroll/1988135
Then MiniTroll pointed out that we had forgotten to add sound! Disaster! Somehow it had been left off the to-do list. A quick jaunt to Sainsbury to get batteries for the Casiotone, a hunt around the study for cables to connect the line out to the laptop, and we were in business! A siren-like blare for when the player is caught and a triumphant ta-da!!! for successful escape were soon added. It was our intention to add music too – but MiniTroll’s repertoire isn’t very extensive at the moment – tunes she knows either being not too suited for the game or still in copyright . So we have no music – but perhaps next time!
MiniTroll went to bed and I slumped in front of the television. The Bourne Identity was on ITV (again!). It is one of those films I can always watch one more time… Then I remembered that I hadn’t uploaded the last version of Spotlight Search. A very minor script fix, and game uploaded. Off to bed, happy to have completed our Jam entry in one day.

Shocking to still not know if we are in or not – but a busy weekend at Troll household ahead, and really not sure if we’ll be able to carve out any time for Jamming

Also to decide whether to run with Scratch again to allow MiniTroll to handle some of the coding, or whether I should handle the coding instead (in C++), and let the junior team member(s) focus on art and sound design…

Keen to take part, fingers crossed!

Oh crikey. I’ve missed a year and a half worth of Ludum’s. Life and all that. I’ll see about Jamming with MiniTroll again. And maybe rope in TinyTroll to help with art-ing.

Need to decide what to use for development – currently no idea at all. Just installed Construct 2 which is nice – and would make the game playable the interwebs. Which would be nice. Or GameMaker. Or even Scratch again. But this might be the time to give it another go… Ludum Dare, we’ve missed you <3

Run For Your Life

A second LD Jam game from PapaTroll and MiniTroll, only 18 months since the last one. Minimalism was not a top choice for either of us, but we decided to go for a very basic game with one button game play. This is a basic cave-runner game – use the mouse button to float up, release to sink down. Avoid the rocks and don’t touch the edges of the screen.

All art by MiniTroll, scripting by both of us. Perhaps soon MiniTroll will manage one of these without me. We only had a few hours to work on this, and there were a few distractions along the way, so happy that we managed to complete this. You can play the game and download all the scripts here: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/moomintroll/3298137

I already submitted the jam game that I did with mini-troll, but as I had a few hours before the deadline, I thought I would have a go making a game with Construct 2.

This is my first game with Construct 2, and I guess I was learning as I went. So the scripting is even more hacky than it should be.

a game made in construct 2

Anyway, Things is a minimal text based HTML5 rogue-like – but with very poor game balancing (well, I started this with less than 7 hours left on the Game Jam clock). You’ll probably either die quickly or simply smash everything in your path. You can kill things, pick up things and use things. You can play the game here. It worked for me on Chrome and IE. Hope you enjoy it…

Edit: even though this game qualifies for the competition, I think I can only submit one game. And its too late and confusing to create another account, so this is just a freebie