Hey Ludum Dare! A couple of friends and I are preparing to make a game for #19 after being inspired by Notch’s Metagun from the last compo. We’ll be using Java and probably either plain AWT or SWT to code it. We’ve been friends for several years, and have always done programming stuff as a hobby.

I just want to ask, does anyone have any tips as far as project management goes? This is our first attempt at a Ludum Dare compo, and we only have one head particularly familiar with game design.

I made a post a few days ago saying that some friends and I would be participating in the Jam. We’ve come to the consensus that we’re not quite prepared to delve in to a group endeavor yet and would like to have some practice outside of a competition before doing something like this. As a result, I will be competing in LD48 instead! Here’s a list of the tools I may or may not use:

• Sun Java SE 6
• Slick 2D Game Library
• sfxr (who doesn’t use this?)
• Paint.NET
• Famitracker
• foobar2000 to keep the creative juices flowing

I have to say thanks to Notch for making Metagun, because I learned about Ludum Dare through it and a bit about Applets and AWT. I hope I can finish my game for my first try at this, and I’ll see y’all in a bit!

The mouse pad is temporary, I don't care about football.

Since everyone appears to be doing so, I’m gonna take a photo of my workspace too!

We are now 2 hours in to LD #19, and I am heavily tapping away at the framework for my game. The theme has presented some ambiguity which I am thankful for, because it means I can incorporate a lot of different ideas and still fit the theme.

I’ve isolated myself from all my normal connections with people on the Internet, which means I am quite a rather lonely fellow right now! Guess I’ll be making good friends with y’all on IRC over the next few days.

I should have a screenshot of something working within the next few working hours (likely tomorrow).

4 hours of work. Most of which not visible in a still.

That’s that for the first four hours of the compo for me. Now it’s time to go to bed.

Tasks completed today:

• State-based game framework (using Slick’s base)
• Entity handling
• Rudimentary collision handling (using Slick geometry intersect())
• A way to lose! Slamming into walls with too much velocity causes you to take damage. Hitting 0 gives you a game over.

My current idea for the game is about solving puzzles and exploring by using strings of text found on discovered artifacts, collecting various power-ups along the way. You view your character from a bird’s-eye view, applying force with the WASD keys to fly about the screens of the game world. Simple enemies will pose a threat to you, as you (maybe?) don’t have any weapons to defend yourself.

In any case, good night Ludum Dare! I shall be awake within 8 hours, ready to eat some scrambled eggs and drink some OJ!

Good mornin’ Ludum Dare. I see many of you made a lot more progress over the course of the night; looks like I’d better get crackin’.

I was planning on scrambling some eggs, but there aren’t enough eggs in the house, so I’m just sipping a cup of OJ until I decide on something else to eat. The OJ is almost empty, too. I repeat, the OJ is almost empty.

A list of things I would like to get done today:

• Thruster particles (meaning, entity destruction and creation calls from other entities too)
• Sound effects
• Screen switching at the edges
• A scrolling background for the world (perhaps stars?)
• Some enemies
• Some pickups

I’ll probably end up doing them in a completely random order, too.

but I’m going to use it to describe the current build I just put up. Click here to play it. Now that I’ve wasted an hour trying to get that applet to work…

Now with stars and "LatchMobs"!

Alright! Now that I am confident that my framework will be usable to create a full-fledged game, I’m down to content creation. There’s one last step to the game that I need to implement and that’s changing between screens. That means, it’s almost time to start making mobs, obstacles, pickups and The Artifacts™!

Because I was having trouble reading image data from graphics contexts in Slick, I decided to go with an even more hacky map format: a text file of sequential numbers representing entities. A separate entity that lives for the duration of a single frame builds the level up from a text file with exactly 300 integers (placed however desired). The darker dots in the background are actually a scenic space thing that scrolls as you change between screens… or, will eventually do that but doesn’t quite do so yet. I’m not going to worry about entity priorities unless it seriously needs to be done, and it could be easily set up anyway.

I was too lazy to program the collision between bullet and player, and I forgot to set up the HUD object that displays how much life your character has… whatever that thing is supposed to be. Now it’s lunch time, and on to these tasks:

• Screen switching
• Pickups
• A nice-looking HUD
• More mobs
• More gimmicky obstacles
• Possibly a better sprite for the player.

You can play this demo at the usual URL.

Seriously, this is the most baffling mystery I’ve come across using AWT…

Here’s Editor and here’s LevelCanvas. The problem is that when I click on the LevelCanvas component, it’s supposed to repaint, but it only does the first time – then you have to iconify and bring up the window again to be able to click it again. The paint() and update() methods for the LevelCanvas are, in fact, being called every single time, but nothing is actually updated on the window itself.

Help?

And that’s it for the second day of LD #19. TIL Ludum Dare isn’t pronounced “loo-dumb deh-urr.” Anyway, I have a rudimentary map editor and a bunch of obstacles complete, and the last things to do are:

• Set up the story progression (discovery)
• Finish the game world!
• Make some music

Tomorrow is a day for content generation, which will most likely be very easy to do provided my tools don’t bug out on me like they did an hour ago, forcing me to restart my computer and interrupt my timelapse! Ehm. Anyway, I’ve uploaded a new build of the game, which can be played at the usual URL. I’m gonna come up with a name and a story tomorrow. Night everyone.

I forgot to make my starting post for today. Oh well. I got up a bit later than I wanted to but I should be able to get the game finished within the next 5 hours, given I don’t run in to any major bugs, then I can crack down on minor bugs in the last 3 hours.

I came up with a clever little secret that I’m going to implement once the final version goes live later today. It’ll involve something outside of the game, after you’ve completed all of the objectives in-game. I’m only hoping it won’t be easily visible from the timelapse once I finish that…

Anyway, the end is drawing near and I have a big game world to finish. Seey’all in a bit.

I’ve programmed a quick world map generator which will allow me to see what I’ve created at a glance! I must say, it’s pretty spiffy, considering it builds an image out of numbers from a text file, and I’m a noob programmer. I haven’t done much actual design yet, that’s the next step!

I was freaking out, because I had a really big bug to squish right at the 3 hours left mark. It took me over an hour to fix it, then I rushed really quickly to finish the game world and license the source code.

But here at last, it is finished! Have a take at it! And here’s a timelapse video.

I’ve bumped up the version on the play page to force everyone to re-download the game. If you played one of the beta versions and tried to play the final version, you might have had the issue of it not downloading the updated jars. This should fix that.

Go play it now if you were trying to before!

It’s unfortunate that I didn’t get to compete this time around. I was really looking forward to LD20, considering it’s a milestone number for the event. Oh well.

I had AP exams to study for, a couple projects to finish and some plans with friends that prevented me from competing. I’m sad I didn’t get to exploit the newfound power of my Ubuntu installation.

Best of luck to those who competed, and may the best game win!

Tags: motivation

It is now playable here. I lost my original domain, so I have to re-upload the play pages to my games. This was the first one to receive that treatment.

Once again, I’ll be here for the December LD48. I enjoyed it so much last year, but scheduling conflicts prevented me from competing in the April and August competitions.

I’ll be using Java and either Slick, LibGDX or jMonkeyEngine. GDX is a much more robust library for 2D games to me than Slick, although it is harder to use, but I have been wanting to try my hand at a 3D game for some time. My only worry is that, since I’m so fresh with 3D design, I won’t be able to finish it in time, and my lack of asset creation skills would probably get in the way. I’m even worse at 3D modelling than I am at sprite making.

For asset creation, I will use bfxr for sound effects, Photoshop CS5 for images, Blender for models (if needed) and PXTone or FamiTracker for music (if I even get around to that). Last year, I only managed to make fanfare music for pickups in FamiTracker, but I also spent a hell of a lot of time on bug fixing that could have been done much better had I used a better collision technique.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing all the cool entries this upcoming compo!

I will not be making a 3D game this time around. I simply don’t have the time to learn the basics while doing the compo, so I’ll just be making another 2D game. By basics, I mean all the 3D math and stuff needed.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t use jMonkeyEngine for 2D though. Its integration with external libraries on the scene graph is phenomenal and I’d like to find a way to utilize, say, Bullet nodes/controllers in a 2D environment. Plus, I find wrangling with LibGDX to be un-fun and rewriting boilerplate code for Slick again is not in my sights. I spent way too much time on simple crap like entity management on the Discovery game from LD19.

I’m guessing using jMonkeyEngine for 2D stuff the hacky way would be switching the camera to Orthographic view and just using objects with lots of volume in the Z axis, since I am terrible with physics.

In addition, there are a few new tools I may use:

• Tile Studio
• The Games Factory/Multimedia Fusion (total last resort, if I’m just not feeling up to speed)
• PXTone definitely, though I mentioned FamiTracker earlier I absolutely loath tracker interfaces and PXTone is like a really, really simple FL Studio to me.

There was some talk between my friends and I about doing the Jam instead, but one of them may be having travel conflicts that’ll prevent them from participating. Oh well. Dare it is.

Tags: 2D, im in, java, music, tools

Pinkie Pie is ready for the competition.

So, I’m cleaning my desk and room, getting my tools in order and preparing for the big weekend, when some of my friends walk up to my door bearing gifts of the pony kind. Pinkie Pie is now a member of the team, along with her remarkably-similar-to-the-Water-Medallion snowflake thing. (Does this make me ineligible for the Dare?)

Workspace shot after the jump.

This feels very unusual for me, having a clean desk. This only happens once every year, right before Christmas. I promise that I don’t watch American Football. I said the same thing last year and I still haven’t gotten a mouse pad to replace it.

One final conclusive list of tools:

• Eclipse for Java
• Sun Java SE 7
• jMonkeyEngine 3 (one of the nightlies, probably 12/15/2011), using an orthographic camera mode to use it for 2D stuff
• bfxr for sound effects
• PXTone for music (shoutout to Pixel @amaya_pixel for being awesome)
• TileStudio for sprites, tiles, and levels
• Notepad++ for everything else
• iTunes for Internet radio (and dnbradio.com deserves a mention here)

Tags: pinkie pie, preparations, rogue rappy

and they’re all talking at once.

Tags: holy crap