So, I may submit a game this time. Maybe.

And if I do, it will be the best game you ever played. Of the games I have made. Unless you have played any of my other games.

Language: Python (Cx_Frozen, baby!)

Libraries: Pygame and my own, really crappy, utility set thing: http://pastebin.com/y2MKNBBW

IDE: PyScripter

Image editing thingamajig: Paint.net

Sound: umm… Humming? I can lay down a pretty phat beat by beatboxing….

TL;DR version: another unoteworthy guy.

I Really have a decent change of being in for real this time. Maybe.

I may well use the following tools:

Language: Python with Pygame and my currently unfinished library for making grids on surfaces. I will use Cx_freeze for compilation.

Image editing: Paint.net

Sound: BFXR and possibly some other thing for ambient music.

IDE: Either IDLE or Eclipse with PyDev depending on my mood. I switch between them frequently.

I have a warmup game up if you want to play it.

I have a mothership(you), I have terrified people that you can lazor. OK for 2 hours in.

My entry for this LD has reached a stage at which it can be called a “game”. Thus, I have decided to allow downloadage to those wishing to become early adopters: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1szlg18euygdqwn/Invasion.rar

My entry is officially with goat, but you’ll be hard pressed to find it.

Well, people. I have finished my entry.

It has a hidden goat.

Read more about it here.

A short while ago, I created a game in 48 hours. You probably already  knew that if you are reading this. It can be found here. You don’t have to play it before reading this as there is no story to spoil. It’s more of an arcade-y thing. Though it will help you understand what I’m talking about.

If you instead hate me enough to make me explain the game to you, read this paragraph. It is a game in which you play as the alien mothership invading earth while lasering the crap out of whatever stands in your path. Including soldiers, helicopters, tanks, stealth planes and some defenceless people just for fun.

The Good

•  It’s pretty fun to play, not an amazing experience but definitely enjoyable, being that it, like many of this compo’s entries, appeals to the human desire to kill stuff. And fun is the only thing you can really judge a game by.
• The music is thematic and I rather like it. There are two songs in the game, both created in “Garage band”, a menu song and a song for the actual game part. I tried to make the former sound sort of otherworldly and alienesque , which I feel I succeeded in. The latter I had felt should sound like a song reminiscent of those played while knights rode in to battle, something like this.  Though, in the end, mine was simpler and more of a reverie of a more brutish brawl. Still combat-like though.
• I survived my first time. Well, not strictly speaking my first time, I had a go in LD 23 but gave up rather early, and I had an “I’m in” in LD 24 but didn’t even really try that time. So I”m counting this as my first time.
• I had my idea early and stuck with it. I just heard the words “The theme is “you are the villain”” and instantly went to an alien invasion. I didn’t have all the stuff worked out by any stretch of the imagination, but the feature creep worked in my favour and I ended up with enough stuff for a full game.

The Bad

• There are bugs, the first was on relating to my use of a non-ascii character (♫) in the game, which seemed to disagree with some people’s versions of python. I fixed that but others have reported different bugs in which the game crashes, which I can not seem to explain. (As of 16/04/13 this has been fixed for a while)
• Worst aesthetic in the compo. No question. I’m working on my pixel artistry skills and have gotten better. I knew before I started that visuals would be a problem as I have never been good at anything artistic, so I tried to minimise time spent on graphics. If I tried to make them decent I would’ve spent far too much time on it.
• Some common complaints in comments are that the ship is too large to dodge bullets, that the enemies move too fast and that the upgrade buttons are too far from the main controls, all of which I agree are mistakes on my part that I will try to learn from in future.

Other stuff

• The game’s name, “Invasion!”, had no real thought put in to it. It’s not clever or anthing, but it works.
• The game doesn’t do anything special with the theme. I would’ve loved to do something like in the book of “I am Legend” where you are only revealed to be the bad guy at the very end.
• My original inspiration for the game, as you will have probably figured out, was “Space Invaders”, but as the competition went on I tried to move away from that and more towards the stereotypical alien invasion scene.

Hello people of the blagosphere, I have this website on to which I shall probably put my games what I make, and probably some thoughts on game design and coding should I have any of note. I started it about a year ago but it quickly failed as my co-conspirator walked away. But yet, here I am, back to put some more games up there.

As for the quality of these games: Expect very little. I’m not really putting myself under any obligation to make games here, so it will just be whatever ideas capture my fancy. Also the art will be forever bad unless I can find someone to do it for me, which is unlikely since pretty much everything I post on there will be free and open source. No cash incentive, you see.

With that said, thanks for listening to my nigh-incoherent rambling.

Tags: game, gamedev, games, gaming, indie, pygame, python, website

It’s a lot later than most, and nobody requested it, but here it is anyway. I already wrote some stuff about it so just read it over here: http://www.lethalware.co.uk/2013/02/invasion-revamp-released.html

This is my “I’m in” post for the Compo.

I will either use Unity or Pygame for this, depending on whether I decide to make a 2D or 3D game. Bear this in mind when reading my tool list.

Language: Python / C#

Art: Paint.NET, possibly Blender.

Audio: Garageband, BFXR.

I’m going to attempt to follow Quill18‘s stream while I code. I seemed to manage last time, so hopefully I won’t get too distracted.

Should I go the Python route, I will use some self-written libraries for Grids and a Game class. You are, of course, free to use these yourself if you wish.

I am streaming my warmup game creation here: http://www.twitch.tv/xgeovanni

I won’t talk much, but it might be interesting.

Well, my stream is over. I did okay, managing to get a simple text-based game engine written in python, which you can see here. I’m going to put a simple story to this off-screen and call it a visual novel without the visuals.

The stream itself was a very low-key affair, with only two or three viewers at a time. If I try something like this again, have you any advice on how to get more viewership?

EDIT: I’ve just realised that, after about 4 minutes, the stream went entirely black. At least, that’s what appears to happen in the record on twitch. Has anyone any idea what could have caused that?

I made another warmup thing, so as to make sure that I’m adequately refreshed in the way of graphics programming as well as general Pythoneering. You can find it here.

I don’t know what to make. I spent some time trying the idea of a maze game, but that really isn’t going anywhere. Help me, people.

I just realised that I’ve written all my code thus far while confusing Φ and Σ.

I have released my entry, which you can see here. I have been asked twice to implement click-and-hold shooting. Would it be alright if I were to add this now?

Bitch, I might be.

If I end up using Python, I’ll probably use some of these libraries wot I wrote. They’re all open source so use them if you want, but I doubt anyone will given the fact that there’s no documentation or anything. I do urge anyone reading this to take a little look at what I have and see whether it’s alright, or I’m pushing it.

Alright, I’m at a point where I can procedurally a star system in which gravitational interactions are calculated and carried out. I call it “10 Parsecs”.

What you may notice from this description is that it’s not a game yet, but a simulation. I need to fit a game in to this thing or I have nothing.

This is why I turn to you, comrades. I was thinking about something like “Elite” for the BBC Micro, but I’m lukewarm about this idea at best. Please share with me your ideas on where to go from here.

Here’s a picture:

Well, I have a build for day 1 here.

Also, look at the elegance:

Here it is: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=11296

I started  with a quirky take on the theme. 16 hours in I had a kinda cool star system procedural generator / simulator. By the end of day one I have a ship which could explore these systems. By 36 hours I had pirates which would swarm around you and gun you down. By the end, I’ve shoehorned in a boring win condition and left no time for testing and tweaking, and no music to liven up this dull experience. Go me.
Also, Unity crashed 30 minutes from the end (I didn’t think the whole thing would crash because of an infinite loop in a script). Thankfully, the nature of my game is such that I was able to restore it quickly, but God knows what monstrous bugs this quick-fix has added.

But the shader for the ships is kinda sexy, so there’s that.