Hey Folks! We (Phil and I) will be at GDC this year, and want to know if you will be too.

https://docs.google.com/dG1lQmlXNkZ5X3BHalVmT3JZaVhGQWc6MQ

We’re looking to gauge interest in doing something “LD”. Fill out that survey and let us know!

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.edge-online.com/features/friday-game-run

This is so incredibly cool for me, especially since this was only my second ludum dare!

Afortunadamente para mí, nunca he tenido que preocuparse de ese problema. Soy un profesional equipo certificado y han sido la construcción y reparación de computadoras por más de 15 años. Cuando quiero un equipo más rápido no me voy a comprar un equipo nuevo y costoso. He aprendido a romper el ciclo de compra de equipo nuevo mediante la mejora de mi equipo. Al actualizar el ordenador en lugar de comprar nuevos, sólo tengo que hacerme una computadora más rápida, a una fracción del costo. Artículo recomendado por computer usati

Gracias a las nuevas tecnologías, el robot en el vacío puede sentir las cosas, como objetos y paredes, y la suciedad y los escombros. Los sensores le permite olfatear las partes más sucias del piso o la alfombra, y no sólo va a la cabeza derecho a ello, el limpiador se detendrá cuando se lleva a cabo. Eso es correcto, el equipo sabe que cuando el piso esté limpio. Y conseguir esto, no va a ir fuera de la sala o fuera de la casa. Artículo recomendado por robot aspirador

Ludum Dare 22:

While Isolated Assault was huge success in my eyes considering it was my first Ludum Dare game, and by the scores it received, I’m struggling to come up with a Post-Compo version. You see, I’m just not feeling the motivation to work on it. Every time I sit down, I just feel, “Wow, this is old.” It’s like one of those projects I just gave up because I had no motivation for it.

That’s how it went with Dunnet (My most worked on game), and with my First Person Shooter (My first professional game), and with all those projects I started but never got around to.

Currently my Unity Project Folder looks like this:

Where “Abandoned” have been worked on for a while. I could always go back to the “Abandoned,” but I haven’t, and why should I?

My Problem:

I need a due date on projects.

Some people can never get work done knowing there’s time management involved. For me, it’s the other way. Knowing that there’s no time to procrastinate, and that there’s a reward for finished, I can get a lot of good things done.

I also have problems focusing on one idea and getting it implemented quickly. All of focused ideas I have are too complicated even for top-notch game companies.

Therefore, Ludum Dare was perfect for me–it gave a theme for the game and a deadline. I now know my best work will probably come from future LDs.

Will there ever be an Isolated Assault 2?

Not now. And probably not from me. Anyone familiar with Unity (That means you, reader!) can take my Isolated Assault Source files, and add some new levels, as long as I receive credit.

I have no motivation whatsoever to make an Isolated Assault 2. All my ideas were expressed in the first one. You are a guy. That fights cubes. That wears glasses. The only thing added to this game would be gloss.

Will you participate in LD 23?

Of course! Ludum Dare is the best way to manage time and get good games squeezed out!

Will you stop asking yourself random questions?

Never!!!!

Now I ask you, do I stick with deadlines for making games, or do I learn to get around them?

Do I use Ludum Dare to create all my of my work?

For some reason, I need some sort of reward/time limit for everything I make, because that’s just how I work.

Either way, I’ll obviously still be doing LDs, and I can’t wait for LD23!

Hey guys, just thought i’d toss this out here for anyone interested.  Finished a first “stable” release of my new sprite editor, It’s QT4 and written to be cross-platform but at the moment only downloads for linux are up, as I’ve yet to figure out how to use the mingw cross compiler with QT.  Tailored for my engine’s format but the toolset can also easily export to png spritesheets.

Short version of the features (full list on download page)

• Onion skinning to help with animating
• customizable palletes w/ full save/load/rip from image support
• more color picking tools than you’ll ever know what to do with
• fully integrated with system clipboard so you can freely select, copy,cut, paste, etc..with other image editors
• large undo/redo bufers, specific to each frame
• live animation preview
• fast control scheme (mouse + command keys, or hotkeys control every action, all hotkeys are listed in the edit menu)
• customizable UI, all toolbars can be reshaped, floated,  pushed behind tabs, hidden….etc

Still got a lot of bugs to work out, and missing features, but it’s at least stable and capable of image editing at this point. You can download it and try it here http://www.midnightfragfest.com/sprite-editor/

Edit: Windows download is now available, but somewhat untested, I would appreciate any feedback on how it runs.

I like hard games, I tried to make Coracao Branco nearly impossible to win without hints on purpose, but I wanted it to be winnable just using hints. Anyway, here is a hint through at the top, and an actual walk through at the bottom.

Hints:

Puzzle 1:

1.  This is the title screen. No tricks here, just do as it says.

Puzzle 2:

1.  The game has started, and this acts as a sort of tutorial.
2. The heart is the one speaking.
3. Even after you changed mitso to something else, clicked on him, and waited until he is gone, you still need to do something to advance.
4. Try using the standard controls in video games to advance.

Puzzle 3:

1. This is the first real puzzle. You need a very specific answer now, not a general thing like not mitso. Capitalization and spelling is important.
2. Notice the g. Its important, but not for this particular puzzle. This puzzle is a lot simpler than that.
3. He asked you a question. You should respond.
4. Generally, use the same conventions found within that puzzle.
5. Here the answer is found within the body of the text.

Puzzle 4:

1. Coracao Branco does not lie.
2. Really, the answer is obvious.
3. There is nothing subjective here.
4. Sometimes you want to take things as literally as possible, other times he is speaking extremely figuratively.

Puzzle 5:

1. There is no clear question or puzzle here, but this time its a game of guess who.
2. Google is a friend while solving theses. Here there is a reference you need to look up.
3. Its a reference to a book.
4. This book is so famous that references to this book have their name.
5. There is only name in the full version of this reference, and that is the answer.

Puzzle 6:

1. I goofed here. The answer is “gronk”, but I meant to but something else. Continue reading the clues and you may found out what that was.
2. I also meant to add the phrase “different book”, but I forgot to do that as well.
3. This word is closely associated with the book in a meme like way, and it does in fact start with the same first letter as the last answer.
4. It is no longer a name.

Puzzle 7:

1. Everyone spells it wrong. Its impossible not to.
2. If you don’t spell this wrong, you will spell spell it wrong.
3. There is only one word like this.
4. This puzzle is very similar to an earlier one.

Puzzle 8:

1. You cannot open Coracao Branco alone.
2. You can do it, but you need help.
3. The point of this game is to open up the heart.
4. This might technically be the one time Coracao Branco is lying, but since you are looking through the walkthrough
5. This person is known by many names, but you do not want to enter in his true name.
6. Some of my puzzles are a bit egocentric.
7. The proper name is the one associated with Ludum Dare.

Puzzle 9:

1. All the words have something in common. You need to complete the set.
2. He is really just saying the same thing over and over again.
3. This puzzle is easier if you are multilingual.
4. Several words could theoretically complete the set, but only one is correct.
5. To find the correct word, look at the title of the game. Its not English, is it?

Puzzle 10:

1. Several puzzles like this want you to look at previous answers. This is one of them.
2. Usually these puzzles want you to look at the previous puzzle, though that is not always the case.
3. Puzzle answers can be interpreted different ways depending on the context.
4. Here you need to interpret it as it would be in the main language of the game.
5. You could interpret the previous answer as a well known acronym.
6. Here you want the actual conventions, not the puzzle’s conventions.
7. This is the first answer that is multiple words.

Puzzle 11:

1. I did not make this riddle up, its slightly famous.
2. One word, lowercase

Puzzle 12:

1. We is plural.
2. Depending on how you look at the nature of Coracao Branco, it may only refer to one person.
3. The answer is on the title page.
4. English Latin refers to the 26  letters of the English Alphabet.
5. To convert just split ash and drop accents.

Puzzle 13:

1. Solving this puzzle requires knowledge of two languages that are not English.
2. The question is in the same language as the answer, but not the source of the answer.
3. This language is Japanese.
4. You have entered an answer in the same language as the source of this answer before.
5. Remember to use the same spelling and grammar conventions as in the question.

Puzzle 14:

1. This isn’t an existentialist or religious question.
2. This time you are part of the we, but that may not be true. At the very least it is true for Corcao Branco.
3. Here refers to the game itself.
4. It’s two words.
5. It’s the same reason there are puppies to be slain and blocks to be turned to gold.

Puzzle 15:

1. Math time!
2. You need a basic knowledge of calculus to solve this.
3. x is not the variable.
4. There is a reason the S is capitalized, it has to do with the notion being used.

Puzzle 16:

1. Puzzle 2 is not the start.
2. The less you do for this puzzle, the easier is.
3. The answer is two words.

Puzzle 17:

1. You must now do the opposite as you did in the past.
2. For the past you need to go way back, but not quite to the start.
3. Its a nonsense word.

Puzzle 18:

1. If you weren’t paying attention you might need to restart the game.
2. If you memory is bad, write stuff down.
3. This is the first time the red is a clue, but it always was important.
4. Solving the puzzle is as simple as concatenating a string.
5. Spaces are to be ignored. The answer is one word.
6. The answers are often nonsense, but it is always clear exactly how that nonsense word is supposed to be structured.

Puzzle 19:

1. He hasn’t actually gone anywhere, but you still need to find him.
2. Its pretty much impossible to solve this puzzle without looking outside of the swf file.
3. Google isn’t your only friend.
4. Where do you find people?
5. Someone better not create a fan page for this game.
6. You need to get on Facebook to find the answer.
7. Info is informative.
8. Nonsense words on official pages are usually the correct answer.
9. Copy/Paste is useful.

Puzzle 20:

1. You aren’t done yet! You now need to dispel Coracao Branco.
2. There is two ways to go about solving this.
3. Do you prefer ponies or vampires?
4. If you like ponies, complete the name.
5. If you vampires, what do they do in the sun?
6. Remember that capitalization is important.

Puzzle 21 :

1. It’s another translation puzzle.
2. Coracao Branco is in Portuguese.
3. Though he speaks in English.
4. This is gonna sound like a stereotypical Native American name.

Puzzle 22:

1. Complete the name.
2. Its not Hans Christian Andersen, though some would argue that they are more in common than just their first name.
3. Some theorize that he had the condition which now bears his name.
4. Some say that he gave purposely biased reports to save children from his Nazi overlords.
5. His American counterpart is Kanner.
6. If you pronounce it correctly it does not sound like a donkey sandwich.

Puzzle 23:

1. This is text.
2. Once again you need to look outside of the game.
3. (-4, 0) is coordinates. If you don’t have them you might get lost forever.
4. You are even more likely to get lost forever if you did not have the handle, signup
5. Coracao Branco will make it rather obvious that you have found the answer if you find it.
6. Use the URL http://www.yourworldoftext.com/signup

Puzzle 24:

1. I made this riddle up, though its based on a well known murder riddle.
2. Technically it neither creates nor destroys itself, nature does that.
3. A liquid will remain once its gone.
4. Its only found where its cold.
5. One word, lowercase

Puzzle 25:

1. The answer is the answer to the riddle being referenced.
2. Once again, one word, lowercase
3. Three letters

Puzzle 26:

1. Yes, this is a riddle.
2. There is a definite question, but it lacks a question mark.
3. There is a reason for that.
4. Conventions are exttremely important for this one.
5. If you aren’t ready, you cannot continue. You need to be nice and assertive.
6. Its only one short word, but its also a bit more.

Puzzle 27:

1. There has been a drastic game play change, but its not over yet. Just one more riddle.
2. Well, you could look through the source code, but that wasn’t the code being referenced.
3.  It actually probably easier to solve this puzzle using the actual code than by looking at the source.
4. This code is popular in video games.
5. You are now in birds eye view, and another axis has been opened up.
6. You enter the next screen the same way you entered all the others.
7. Think of the original Legend of Zelda, and of Contra.

Puzzle 28:

1. This is the final puzzle.
2.  Figuring out how to solve this puzzle is the easy part, you need a lot of gaming skill to win this game, and it hard. Like, really hard.
3. You cannot die. Coracao Branco can.
4. This boss battle is backwards.
5. Make him disappear the same way you did every other time, only this time you need to do it a lot.
6. You will know when you have won the game. You can still move around, but that’s it.
7. If you slip up the boss fight will reset.
8. You cannot defeat the small hearts in the same way that you can defeat the larger heart.
9. Don’t sue me if your hand cramps.

Walkthorugh:

1. Click on the heart in the center of the screen.

2. Click on the purple text, type something.  Then click on the heart. Once it disappears walk out the right side of the screen by holding down the right arrow.

3.  Type in the word “ok”, without quotes, into the purple text box. Then click on the heart and proceed as you would have done for the previous puzzle. For puzzles 4- 18, and 20-27 I will only post the word need to answer. For example, the answer here would be”ok.

4. obvious

5. Gershom

6. gronk

7. wrong

8. Ganondox

9. eu

10. European Union

11. egg

12. Gaeoedoae

13. shiro

14. Ludum Dare

15. sino

16. type here

17. mitso

18. golstam

19. First replace the word with Talfos. Then click where the heart was in the other puzzles, and wait for it to reappear.

20. Sparkle

21. White Heart

22. Asperger

23. Dilfrak

24. icicle

25. man

26. YES!!

28. Hold the arrows to go in the same direction, go out the top of the screen twice, then the bottom twice, the left side once, the right side once, the left side again, and the right side again.

29. Click him 500 times to destroy him, run in the little hearts to destroy them, if one of them his him his health will reset.

Over all, the development of this game went a lot quicker than my December entry. I had a partner and we knew pretty early on that we wanted a game that used the uncanny valley and time to create fear. Our design called for the people on each floor to slowly turn into … something else, while a darkness creeped around you, even starting to turn the player. A puzzle game with a time limit.

We used ImpactJS, JavaScript, Canvas, HTML5 to develop this game. I used it in December and really like the engine. It takes care of the details involved in a game engine while still giving me the source and power to bend it to my will. We ended up not changing anything with the engine it’s self and just focused on creating entities.

What went right:

The entity system worked really well with my partner. We split up the entities we thought we needed and we each developed them independently in our own little test level.

ImpactJS has a great level editor that let us quickly build some prototype levels. We realized that we wouldn’t have time to create the changing co-workers or even the dark cloud taking over the tower. We reduced the game to just a puzzle platformer.

What went wrong:

I over abstracted and complicated the puzzle logic. During the planning stage the idea was to create an itemGoal entity that could be configured to activate when the player has specific items in the inventory. It could block the player’s way or even give the player new inventory items. Sounds simple enough. But then we needed an entity that allows the player to only move though it in one direction (so you can jump up though an object and stand on the top.) So we made the itemGoal inherit from the oneWay entity so it could use that behaviour. But as we developed the actual level, setting up the configuration for each itemGoal was troublesome. Items started to become inconsistent, like filing cabinets that you can stand on in one level but not in the next level.

It would have been better to create specific entities for each item instead of a generic itemGoal. We ended up needing to do this anyway for some items like the door, grate, and fire. I’m sure there is some logic that could be in a base like checking the player’s inventory, but all that configuration only got in the way.

Overall

I think the game turned out pretty well. It’s better than my December entry and the programming only took about 12 hours. Creating the levels took another 12 hours but that includes creating the art. I think the game has promise so I’m going to refactor it and continue development.

So when does the submission period for mini LD #31 officially end? I’m close to being finished, but still have some work to do… and I also need to figure out how I will get the game unto the internet. It will hopefully be my first time putting a game up on the internet. Excitement!

The public alpha release of my cross-platform pixel editor Pickle is now available for download.

The app features animation preview, seamless tile preview, and terrain preview—all live updating as you edit.

I’m trying to get feedback from the game dev community to help make it better. So if you have a few minutes to try it out and let me know what you think I’d really appreciate it. It would be great to have a more full-featured version complete for people to use in the next LD.

Download Pickle at PickleEditor.com 

Follow @pickleEditor for updates

My foray into Flixel development is going pretty OK so far, I think! Admittedly, I have been pretty busy this weekend and not very focused when I did have time to code, but I successfully completed a Hello World, EZPlatformer, and a simple shmup. Although I haven’t gotten into all that “win state” and “score counting” nonsense yet. Figured I’d just jump into making a fully-featured FPS with 256 player online or something.

The shmup. Sadly it looks like I lost the files for the platformer (and no one cares about hello world screenshots).

Not really, obviously. I’m going to try to make a sort of sort-of unique “tower” defense game; basically, you drop stuff on the bad guys from orbit. Simple, but that’s how first games should be right? Not to mention simple games can be pretty popular. I hope to update tonight w/ the basics (control of your attacks, but not enemies, a good UI, or win/loss. etc.)!

PS – also, /compo/ has been updating really erratically, and I can’t connect to the IRC either. Anyone else getting that?

I did very little to this program yesterday, but I will try and finish it tonight.

The level loader is done, and the levels are described with text files that can easily be edited. I aim to do levels similar to the famous LaserTank game:

- Levels are made by the player community.
- Levels are loaded/played sequentially.
- Potentially thousands of levels gives endless gameplay.
- You have infinite lives. If you fail a level, you always get to play it again.
- Any level can be skipped, so you can put your frustrations behind you.

To do:

– Collecting keys.
– Collisions with monsters.
– Conveyer belt logic.
– Collapsing platforms actually collapse.
– Sounds

Phew… Just submitted it with a whole 15 minutes left. If you have a free moment, please check it out.

Using long words make me feel smart

I’ll admit, the game itself varies a bit from the theme… It’s more “dealing with fear”, as opposed to “creating fear for the player”. But, I guess it still counts as “Fear”, right?

All-in-all, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I mean, it’s completely different to what I’d planned to make, it doesn’t have any sounds, and it’s really short… but hey, I guess you can’t have everything.

So, i participated and finished my entry “In the middle of the road”

Here is a mini post-mortem:

What went right

Graphics: the pixel art is a great choice for people who can`t draw well. I had no problems making pixel art, and it was funny.

Planning: all the gameplay was written on two small lists of paper beforehand. I just did what I planned.

What went wrong

Sound effects: I don`t know any other way of making sound effects I want but using sfxr/bfxr. That`s why there were a little of them.

Gameplay: thought the idea seemed original, the gameplay spoiled it. All the item interacting was just some part of a game.

I also made a timelapse, but I will post it later.

Hello there!

This is my “Mini entry” for Mini LD #31. It’s called “height” and tries to deal with fear in an unusual way (but I will deal with that in a post mortem).

This is my entry link or you can play it directly on my website.

Forgot to post an “Im Done” message yesterday when I submitted, so erm, Im done! also I just updated it with some firefox specific fixes.

Play it! Me and my friend are pretty proud of ourselves. The game idea was ambitious and we had tons of outside work to get done.

Incase you haven played “Obscuro”, go now!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-31/?action=preview&uid=4843

It is an explorational game where you can switch time periods.

I now have a respect for people who work on making scarygames without going crazy xD.

PS. Do Mini-LD not get ratings anymore?? :O Just wondering

I last mentioned that The Love Letter will be released after judging ends…

And yes, judging has ended (and we got voted the best in Theme for the jam, thank you!) and The Love Letter is not released. But our original pronouncement still stands – the game has a release date, and that release date will take place *after* – and not before – judging ends.

And it’s the perfect release date.

What else could it be but… Valentine’s Day! February 14th!

We’re so close. We were working all weekend, and we’ve got all the major features in – at this point, we’re just iterating on polish and playtesting feedback. I’m excited!

Source code is looking good too. I’ve factored out two new Flixel plugins from the code for this project, and I can hardly wait to get them on GitHub. FlxScript and FlxTilemapPlus, coming up!

Release for the full game code will probably be a week or two after the game release, just to give us a bit of a head start on the inevitable flood of copies and clones that will soon follow…

Well, I’ve had 5 hours additional sleep now after submitting my entry earlier this morning, so I better post this up now .

This is Catch 2122 (direct download for Windows), an action-packed zombie shooter with a twist.  It took exactly 48 hours.  Me and CWolf synchronised our start times for each of our entries and for me (living in Melbourne, Oz) this was at 6:00am on Saturday 21st and my system clock was reading 6:00am on Monday 23rd when I made my final save/commit.  I started out live streaming my progress at my justin.tv page but midway through my connection became seriously unstable and I couldn’t continue.  In hindsight I wish I had taken a time-lapse video but I didn’t have the tools set up.

Couple of people asked me why it’s called Catch 2122.  Well, the game does have a bit of an unexpected twist midway through, which is where the fear factor should come from (blasting zombies isn’t scary now is it?) but I don’t think people who have play-tested the game got far enough to experience it.  This twist is a bit of a Catch 22 scenario, but I couldn’t call it that, too over-used.  So it became Catch 2122, referring to the dates the game was developed on (21st – 22nd January).  I like to think it fits.

This is the first time I’ve done proper game dev competition.  It was a lot of fun, but also frustrating because, as I progressed, I knew the game would not be completed by the end of the 48 hours.  So tasks got prioritised and a lot of things got left out like the blood splatters, shooting animation + muzzle flash and zombie sound effects (Sorry Zeis, you made some awesome zombie sound effects for me, I could have sworn you were actually undead).  There was also a mouse-to-world alignment issue that I spent far too much time trying to correct and in the end had to fudge, it’s not perfect but had to do.

In the end, I am proud with what I’ve come up with in such a short amount of time.  It was good to have a proper challenge to stretch the skills as far as they go and I surprised myself in some areas (a pretty good story scripting engine kind of evolved from nowhere within the game code, it’s how I did all the triggered sequences).  I know I made excessive use of pre-made content, but this was a solo effort and I am certainly no artist.  The content is freely available and I will be posting up a credits list soon (another task that got chopped from the game).

Anyway, last of all goes out my thanks to everyone who supported me; my girlfriend who encouraged me to continue and put up with my uselessness over these 48 hours while making sure I still ate and generally stayed alive; and my friends from IRC (shout out to all of #deadworld @ irc.globalgamers.net) who all provided encouragement and ideas while watching the live stream.  However, a super special awesomesauce thanks goes out to Christopher Baklid (aka Inveracity), the Scottish sounding Dane who volunteered up his insane musical talent and created the background music tracks for not only Catch 2122 but also CWolf’s Dark Choices.  You sir, are a legend!

Right, I think I’m going to take a break from the computer for a bit so I can regain control over my faculties.

“It’s been emotional.”

It’s been around a month now, but now I want to take Enola to a new level, and make a full game out of the concept. The game I made for the 48 hour competition was purely an exploration game, but for the full game I want to implement other stuff, including puzzles and death traps. I’m crowdfunding the making of that game, so if you want to help, you can visit the campaign page at www.indiegogo.com/Enola and donate. Also, please share the link with everyone you know.

I actually added new stuff to the game I made for ludum dare, so you see what other mechanics I want to implement in the full game. It has a puzzle, a trap, and 2 endings, including the “good” ending. Since the contest was over a month ago, and I made this as a way to present a small prototype, I did use a couple of premade models for this build. For this same reason, I’m not switching the download link on the contest entry page (I will simply post a link on that page to this blog post).

A lot of people found Enola a very mysterious and even somewhat unnerving/scary game. The full version would be a “horror/adventure” game, but not the kind of horror found in games with monsters, zombies, and such, but rather horror related to the human nature. Enola will focus on a different kind of horror.