Sorry about that. The actual download link is http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/972220/secret_knitter_LD14_Wall.tgz

That’s what happens when you wait til deadline minus 30 minutes to figure out where to upload. Thanks to a commenter on the “How to submit” entry, I was able to sign up for a dropbox account, upload my game and submit a post with a link — all  before the deadline!

Um…did I mention that the link was incorrect? I didn’t have time to actually read the documentation on how to post a public link; just shot from the hip.

You don’t have to bother with  this entry, if you don’t want. The artwork is minimalistic (I’m still stuck on the Minimal theme — man, you should’ve seen the game I produced for that one; although way over the time limit), gameplay is hardly there — you can play one level, but it always lets you win.

I will make fixes, artwork, packages (of the fixed game for windows, mac). But all of this, later.

I’ll post a post-mortem, and food pictures (Large chai, raspberry coffee cake from Allann Bros cafe — Free Plug — do I get free coffee now? Aw, nuts!)

Mostly, I just wanted my profile to show that I finished _something_ for a change.

Most importantly, I had fun.

The comments I received so far made me realise that people were having difficulty running the program as I was using Python 2.6 and didn’t provide an executable.

So, without further ado, here’s a Windows executable. (http://tinyurl.com/dg6xr5)

Thanks to everyone who commented.

— Rod

Made some changes based on suggestions from voters.

• Fullscreen mode can be activated with tab key, window can also be maximized.
• Menu now controlled with arrow keys and selected item chosen with enter instead of using the mouse.
• Minor bug fixes.

I suppose the thing I’m most happy with is that it the first compo I’ve entered which wasn’t a massive crunch to get in on the deadline.  I was enjoying a nice cup of tea by 10:30pm.  Heres are some fun development facts:

- The game took about 12 hours.

- I used Photoshop and Logic Pro.

- I wrote it in BlitzMax with lashings of OpenGL.  

- It formed by ripping apart the level editor for my iPhone game, which also uses the same orthogonal perspective.

- The graphics were based on another game concept I’ve currently shelved, a Rez-at-light-speed interactive music game called ‘Tempo’.  

- I don’t like the bounce sound either.  Wish I’d spent more time on it.

- I have loads of ideas to expand on it, from springs that fire you down corridors to one-way floors, switches and doors, powerups that enable you to open up new paths, crushers and electric fences you have to jump.  

- I’m keen to try it on the iPhone, where the tilt determines the angle of your next bounce.

- I’m especially keen on trying a two-four player mode, which could be both co-operative and competitive (both bounce on two switches to open one door, but the first through gets the best loot!)

Anyway, thanks for having me Ludum Dare.  I’m sure I’ll enter again sometime.  And post food pics / timelapse shots which I had no idea about until after I’d finished!

I forgot to include the source code in the original release, so here it is.

I made some small post version fixes, namely correct viewing angles when entering/exiting portals.

And now portals no longer have a push effect, so velocity out is the same as transfered in.

Being post fixes this version cant be judged on, due to the fixes effecting gameplay slightly.

You can grab it here:

PORTWALL LD.zip

This is a more recent build of my Ludum Dare 14 entry. It includes several bug fixes, a significant improvement in the AI, and a new enemy type. The visual effects have also been toned down to the point where it should be almost possible to tell what’s going on.

I think at this point the most significant issues with the game are the unreliable level generation, lack of optimization, and the steep learning curve.

Play the game

Or, to put it more succintly, port. For the questionable joy of those of you wishing to combine your passion for dropshadows, love of BSD, and desire to vote on LD entries: you need wait no longer! I have assembled an OS X port of Put the Ball in the Bucket. Proof:

A confession: I don’t really use the ‘unlikely purple nebulae’ background; I just turned it on for Zomg Running On A Mac appeal. This is exactly identical to the contest windows version, so feel free to use it for judging.

Of course, if you prefer your operating system to hail from Washington State or Finland, rather than California, you can still get the Windows or Linux (i.e. python+pygame sources) versions.

Since I want to learn to write good blog posts, I would appreciate any feedback about which parts of the following post you found interesting. I tried to make it not dull. Hopefully you’ll learn a couple of new game design tricks or something. And if you’re not a programmer, just ignore any code, you won’t miss much.

The wiki mentioned that I should keep a log of some sort as I develop my game. I decided to write short entries in a txt file, then thought I would post it all when I was done. Now that my game is finished, I thought it would be a good idea to expand this short log into a full commentary-type thing of my Ludum Dare 14 experience. I will describe the development of DoomDrive in detail in the hopes that someone will find this interesting. Maybe this will make up for not doing a timelapse. Note: In this post, all times are EST and entries from the original log.txt file are italicized.

SF’s devlog

The first real language I learned was C++, I started learning it at age 11 when my older brother gave me a book about it. I didn’t know anything about compilers then so I couldn’t even write a program until much later, but I absorbed the information with great interest anyway. I love C++ for its speed and the amount of control it gives me over my code. When choosing graphics and sound libraries to start learning I did a few comparisons and settled on OpenGL with GLFW helper tools, and OpenAL. I haven’t had too much trouble with these (though my OpenAL knowledge is limited) and they’re what I know best so they’re what I used to make DoomDrive.

Saturday morning (18apr09)

2:40 – Forgot about LD for the past couple days, remembered it just now.
The contest began at 23:00 on Friday, so it was 3:40 in. I had decided to start developing a game (unrelated to any contests) a week before. It was to be my very first serious game (a space shooter, heavily inspired by the rather obscure Hell Fighter). I’d done enough half-projects experimenting with the aspects of game design – code structure, physics, graphics, art, sound, game theory, etc – that I knew I had a good grip on making games… I just hadn’t done it yet (other than a GameMaker game I made at 14, and of course Tetris). My problem was I never felt like doing anything. (more…)

Here’s my timelapse for LD14:

I used Chronolapse, which is a great tool and is very easy to use.

Here’s the timelapse video for Crush

Fellow LDers,

I can barely draw a circle, let alone cool monster or robot sprites. I’d like my next LD entry to involve real artwork, rather than just letters and geometric shapes. I don’t expect to ever see my creations hanging on a wall in a museum. But if I need a trash can in my game, I’d like to be able to spend a couple hours in a paint app and end up with something that looks like a trash can, rather than a gray rectangle with vertical lines.

Do any of you know of books or websites whose specific goal is to teach geek coders how to draw simple iconic artwork? If so, I’d appreciate your recommendation.

By the way, if you believe this is an unattainable goal (“it’s a gift — either you have it or you don’t”), or that I’m asking the wrong question, I’d still appreciate hearing what you have to say. I know that people who don’t have the “gift” of computer programming are nonetheless competent professional software developers after being taught how to program, so I hope the same is true with art.

Please help me learn how to learn (or maybe just fake) artistic competence!

Thanks to Cymos who ported my game to windows and are hosting it.

Windows and linux version (in the same download && with source code) can be downloaded from:

http://files.filefront.com/13631588

or

http://www.cymonsgames.com/pages/aworafed/FourEyes_ld14_aworafed_rc2.zip (and you can check out rest of Cymos site while there)

Yet another mutant  mine game.

There’s nothing different from a normal one, except the boundaries keep getting shrinked during playing, and you can detonate the mine.

(I’d love to tweak it some more,  but I really have to get a sleep…)

Engine: BlitzMax (http://www.blitzbasic.com)

Tools: Photoshop,   DrPetter’s sfxr

Downloads:

Windows binary: http://www.indie-g.com/extremine.zip

Source & Resource: http://www.indie-g.com/extreminesrc.zip

Sorry for not giving explaination.

The gameplay is actually quite different from old minegame. In fact, you don’t have to find out all mines.
What you do in this game is:

1.  left Click to open tile. If it’s a mine, it explodes and hurt your HP.

2.  right Click to MARK/UnMark known mines. You can also Drag with Right Mouse Button to mark tiles continously.
Marker number is limited. When you mark some tile, your marker number decreases. When you unmark, it will recover.

3.  leftClick/midClick on the tile around which there are right number of marks.    This action will open all the 8 tiles around.  At this point:
* The right marked mine will explode without hurting you.
* The wrong marked mine will explode and hurt you.
*If there is no wrong mark, your marker number will get recovered plus some bonus.

4.  When all mines get cleared or marked, you win.

5.  When there’s no empty tile remaining, you lose.

6.  When HP is 0, you lose.  (For 5 times wrong explosion)

7. Mines which is in shrinked tile will try to move inside. But if it’s marked it will explode (marker will not recover).

Good luck, Good morning, and Good night to everyone.
Happy LDing.

Ok, there are soo many entries. Here is my pledge: I will try to rate,at minimum, as many games as I get ratings. So right now I’ve been rated twice and I’ve rated 3 games. There’s no way I’m going to get to everything but I think this way I won’t feel guilty about being a vote drain. Of course my game only runs on *nix so that limits how many ratings I can get anyways.

…that the real Advancing Wall of Doom would be the 121 entries to attempt to rate and leave feedback on in 2 weeks!

As I was thinking about how to schedule this into the next two weeks I thought up some rough stats based on how past compo playing/rating has gone:

• You should play and rate 8.6 games per day of the two weeks if you want to hit the deadline.
• If you assume an  average handling time per game of 3 minutes you are looking at 6 hours of just getting the games to the point where you are playing them.
• If you assume an average playing time per game of 2 minutes you are looking at 4 hours of total play time to get through all the entries.
• Given the average handling and playing times above you could earmark about 45 minutes of LD time per day for two weeks to finish on time.

Phew.. well, I better get cracking.  I must admit I haven’t had much of a chance to play more than a few so far.  The rating and feedback is so important though.  I know I really appreciate the time people put into playing and leaving thoughts on my game so I try and do the same.

Great compo everyone!  I can’t wait to see what everyone created…

Youtube is kinda being strange with it, but here it is anyway

here‘s a version of tombed with two little changes: the blur is gone and the Z key and spacebar can be used instead of shift.

In my game I had some problems with gosu’s rendering of tiled graphics. jlnr was so kind as to quickly fix some bugs, so here is my updated LD14 entry:

Download: Evacuation v1.01 (Windows binary + Ruby source code)

Bugfixes include:

• background and road tiling
• bunkers no longer getting placed under houses so villagers can’t enter
• sound glitch when game is won

Bummer, too late for the binaries torrent

Time for timelapse http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLFC40lIRA4&fmt=22

and some statistics. This graph shows the frequency of programs I used during the compo: