Hi everyone! LD25 is going to be the first compo I’ll be participating in for real (I was more of an observer during previous jams) – as such I’ll do my best to think up, code, complete the game, and then send it into the welcoming arms of the Internet. Also, this will be a learning experience so I’ve picked my tools accordingly:

Language: C++

IDE: VS2012

Library: SFML 2.0

Audio: No idea yet, but probably SFXR/BFXR

Graphics: Photoshop or PyxelEdit (depends on whether it’ll be pixel-art or not)

We’re two hours in, and I can finally move that ship around. Yes, I’m well aware of the fact that it doesn’t look much like a ship right now, but that’ll (hopefully) change before the Compo ends.

Right now there’s not much else to showcase. I’m not so sure about the idea yet, as of now it’s something in the lines of “you are an alien spaceship-kamikaze that is avoiding Earth’s defenses to try and deliver a bomb to the surface of the planet, so that it can kill everyone“. Not very innovative, but should mask the fact that it’ll be just a horizontal (or maybe vertical, haven’t decided yet) shooter.

Off we go to work.

EDIT: Silly WordPress, doing silly things to my screenshots. Oh, and one more thing: I’m doing a timelapse of my progress, so it’ll probably be uploaded on YT after the jam… if anyone wants to see it or anything . 3.

Man, it’s somewhat discouraging to see all those finished/more polished games posted one by one. But, here goes, my ugly, ugly prototype.  I’ve managed to implement collisions between round hitboxes, a not-yet-working depth gauge, and a really rough-the-edges enemy generator. The latter one is my priority for now, I have to get it working ASAP.

Also, the game idea has been finally clarified: you’re a mad scientist in a kamikaze-bomb-submarine, trying to get to the bottom of Mariana Trench (around 11km below sea level) and detonate there. This should damage the core of the Earth, resulting in the end of the world. Seems logical, since you’re evil and stuff. There’s an ugly screenshot after the break, too:

It’s all coming along now. There’s enemy generation, the collision works as intended, and the UI is working. The idea might not be ambitious, the game might not be incredibly fun to play, but through sheer determination I’m planning to finish it in time. And, in the process, I’ve learned quite a bit. So it’s good. A to-do list and a screencap are waiting below the break:

Stuff left to do:

• splash screen (press start),
• game over condition (the HP gauge and decrementation are already in place)
• winning condition
• enemy generation tweaking
• sprites, animation
• some basic sounds from BFXR

Wow, I can’t believe it myself. Just 24h ago there was this ugly screen of boxes on a black background, and now it kind of looks like a proper game! You can grab it here.

In the morning I’ll write a proper post-mortem, right after getting some long-awaited sleep (the crunch euphoria starts to wear off at this moment).

Alright, here goes:

What I did well:

• going with a really simple idea. I managed to barely finish it 30 minutes before the deadline, and I devoted enough time into polishing it.
• stocking my fridge full of food before the compo. Saved me time that would be lost during grocery trips.
• (mostly) choosing tools that I’ve been kind-of familiar with. I’ve dabbled a bit in SFML 2 before, I’m doing all of my other C++ work in VS2012, and I’m able to work efficiently in Photoshop, so I didn’t need to learn much. The only exception is in the BGM category – this was my first time creating music at all (except some prior experience with Audacity and voice recording), and I decided to go with Soundation. An hour of playing around resulted in a four seconds long loop, that – to my surprise – was actually praised in the comments. Yay for that.
• choosing an idea working for the most probable themes. This one could’ve been easily adapted to “Outer Space” (you are an alien, trying to deliver a bomb to the Earth) or “End of the World” (you’re a… actually, there wouldn’t have been any changes!). So that’s good.

(more after the break)

What I did wrong:

• little experience with creating games.  This was actually my very first self-coded and self-released game, so I had to quickly adapt to a lot of new concepts, which has also resulted in:
• messy code. I know it’s Ludum Dare and probably more than a half of submitted projects is a mess when it comes to code, but mine is like a Jenga tower that looked fine until the 36h mark, and after that the earthquake hit, causing the blocks to fly everywhere (actually, this would’ve been a pretty good metaphore if I used Code::Blocks for programming).
• procrastination. Even though I was coding hard, there were those moments of staring at walls, trying to figure out what to do. I need to work on my concentration.
• using C++. I like the language, and it’s the one I’m most fluent in, but Web is the way to go when it comes to Ludum Dare. Next time I’ll try using Unity or Flash.

What could’ve been changed if I had more time:

• mine explosion animation.
• an intro to the game (skippable, of course) that showed your submarine being lowered into the water, as the villain (you) was explaining his grand scheme.
• a satisfactory outro (and not something that was mashed up in Photoshop in five minutes right before the deadline).
• other enemies (I was on throwing in some torpedoes, or horizontal lasers for more variety)
• better enemy randomization (a matter of tweaking).
• making sure that you can’t get blocked by a wall of enemies – you should’ve been able to pass every enemy in every scenario.
• voice acting (a villain shouting “NOOOOOOOO-” during the game over screen; I was actually close to doing that).

I’m back for my second take on Ludum Dare. Last time I managed to deliver a simple-yet-satisfying game, even though there were many problems with exporting SFML games – that’s why during LD26 I’ll be using HTML5/JS to make a browser-based game.

Language: HTML5/JS

IDE: VS2012

Framework: Phaser  / Ludus (depending on the game)

Audio: SFXR/BFXR for SFX, ??? for BGM

Graphics: Photoshop or PyxelEdit

Phaser didn’t work out (no tilemap collisions = no go); Ludus also wasn’t able to satisfy me, so after 8 hours of fighting against JS I switched to Unity and SketchUp. This is also the very first time I’m ever working in Unity, and damn, this thing’s a beaut. Got a small screen, too:

We totes potatin’.

Tags: potato

Not sure what kind of game I’ll be making, but it’ll come eventually. So far the theme behind it will be “choosing one or the other next-gen console”. (I guess)

Tools:

• Unity (2D or 3D, most likely the former)
• Photoshop CC
• Chirp or SFXR
• tea

Phew, another awesome Ludum Dare has ended, I slept for a bit, and means that I can finally catch my breath & write a few words about “what went right/wrong”. If you haven’t played my entry – What The Sock – yet, I strongly recommend doing that since I’ll be referring to certain parts of the game throughout the post (just click on the images, these are also a tutorial for the game):

What went right:

• Working in a semi-familiar environment: this one’s a no brainer, but having ~8 months of prior experience with Unity and several years of practice in Photoshop helped me immensely. It was the first time I’ve played around with Unity2D though, so while I encountered some issues along the way (especially ones related to the 2D physics) I also learned some stuff – which is always good.
• Unity editor: seriously, it makes a lot of tweaking around much easier.
• Simple idea for the game: even though it took me some time before I got to the prototyping/tweaking stage, the concept was simple enough that I was able to deliver most of the planned content. I had to cut one mechanic and a bunch of assets, but the final result is satisfying, IMO.
• The soundtrack took me 15 minutes to create and implement: I kid you not, Soundation Studio is really great for that. You can’t make A-class music with it, but it’s a good-enough tool for compos.
• Unity animation curves were much better than expected: I used them for my intro/outro and a couple of other things

What went wrong:

• Unity2D is not yet ready for primetime: while great folks at Unity have delivered a bunch of great 2D tools that make creating two-dimensional games waaaay easier than before, they’ve also failed to implement some of the more no-brainer features found in other software. For example, there’s no easy way of doing tiled graphics or infinitely stretching 2D backgrounds in Unity – the easiest way to do that is applying a Repeat Texture on a 3D Quad, but this comes with a bunch of other problems. Another thing is the aforementioned 2D physics implementation – it’s not easy to work with, and a couple of things (like OnTriggerExit2D, which would’ve saved my ass a couple of times) doesn’t work at all.
• Too much time lost on fixing assets: alright, this is entirely my fault. I was semi-obsessed with delivering good animation (especially the walk cycle, which looks kinda crappy) and spent a lot of time on fixing that – when instead I could’ve created some new assets like different background buildings, or, I don’t know, hydrants to stand behind.
• Too much time lost on coming up with a game idea: Ludum Dare started at 3AM (CET), I woke up at 7AM, but it was 2PM before I really started working on the game. I had a couple of ideas, but it took me a lot of time before I had an “Aha!” moment. I need to somehow make this process fasterin the upcoming LD’s
• Unity Mecanim state machines are not so okay: seriously, it would be easier to switch animations from code if it wasn’t bugging me about having to change animation types to “Legacy”.

TL;DR:

• simple jam game = (quite possibly) better jam game
• don’t learn your tools during the compo! (although I did that with Greyspace and it turned out okay)
• make sure to include music in your game!
• gif-based tutorials are the best thing

Stuff to do before the next LD:

• learning how to do better pixel art and animations
• learning to “how do I music”
• ???
• finding peoples for a jam (maybe?)

Tags: LD28, postmortem, spierek, what the sock

Look at these Speedos. LOOK AT THEM.

Being a pop star is a tough job - you can't even have some fun out in town without fans trying to swarm you.

We're currently wrapping up a game where you play as the yet-unnamed rising pop idol who needs to get to the next gig in a city full of your fans who will do anything for that perfect selfie with their favorite singer.

3 hours until the finish line - we've managed to improve our fan crowding behavior and they're trying to swarm the player if he is not vigilant enough!

Phew! After long three days of slapping ourselves with keyboards and mice we managed to produce a game:

Lil' Justin's Fame Escape

Lil' Justin's Fame Escape is an arcade'y game in which you play as a teen pop idol that needs to avoid stares of his bloodthirsty fans and safely get to the concert venue without being distracted!

Hey, in case you've seen our teen-idol-meets-Metal-Gear mashup but thought to yourself "man, it's 2017 and nobody's got time for downloading files", we've got just the thing for you. Introducing:

Lil' Justin's Fame Escape WebGL edition!

Now you can run away from your bloodthirsty fans from the comfort of your web browser! (oh yeah!) And if those words are not enough to sway your heart, here's a small sample of what our game has to offer:

We're making a strategy/bullet hell mashup in which players take turns setting up buildings on a map, after which they both hop into their jets and try to destroy as many of their opponents' buildings as possible.

Hi!

We've just managed to finish our game which combines base-building strategy with intense bullet-hell shooting-em-upping against another human being, so feel free to give it a spin!

PLAY DOODLE & DESTROY

In the middle of frantic late-night uploading a couple of bugs sneaked into our submission, but we've managed to iron them out and our local multiplayer strategy x bullet hell mashup is ready to be enjoyed! Try out the convenient web-browser version or download the Windows version for extra-crisp graphics!

PLAY DOODLE & DESTROY

Our single-player Mafia/Werewolf-like game - Silvercliff Killings - is out now!

Try to figure out the suspects behind a series of killings happening in a middle-of-nowhere town. Gather clues from citizens, figure out who’s telling the truth and who’s not, and select who should be sacrificed every night.

Play Silvercliff Killings