got the main core going

got the idea for the intro (the real funny part of the game)

discovered that I have really no artist capabilities

got some beers with friends + GF

got to play pool with friends + GF

remembered that I’m f…ing late

ok, maybe I’ll be more lucy/productive nexttime

well at least I have a lot of games to try and judge

Here’s the timelapse for my LD entry this time around. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6TqFZE7Y14

The webcam flickers a bit due to issues with OpenCV but it’s mostly not noticable. It doesn’t include about the first two hours of drawing during which it didn’t work and I didn’t realise and it doesn’t include writing music/sound as I still haven’t been bothered to get it running in Windows yet. (I use Propellerhead’s Reason for audio)

Sadly there was a tiny bug in the final version of my game – the line “state = STATE_LEVEL;” was missing, so no pause screen would be shown between levels (although the code for layout and mechanics of that screen was already in there, as can be seen in the source).

I have fixed this and uploaded a new version to my site as both zip and webstart:

• Webstart
• ZIP file

Sorry about that!

I didn’t get a chance to post any comments in my entry post, so I thought I’d do that now.

It’s a sort of typing practice game.

The object of the game is to type the phrases that appear on the screen, scrolling from right to left.  As you type, you get points on an increasing scale.  One point for the first character, two for the second, three for the third, and so on.  The longer the streak, the more points you’ll earn.  However, if you hit the wrong key, you’ll lose your streak and start back over at one point.

That’s not all.  A little bit after you start the game, a SuperShred shredding device will start to make it’s way from left to right, waiting to eat the phrases you’re typing.  If at any point the untyped part of the phrase hits the wall, the game is over.  Every mistyped key will increase the speed of the SuperShred, bringing closer the inevitable conclusion.

You can get a minor reprieve, if you successfully type ten phrases.  It will reset the shredder back to the default speed.  You cannot get back your lost working room though, so you would do best to get to that tenth phrase as soon as possible if you make any mistakes.

The game was written in Java and requires the Java 1.6 runtime.  Let me know if you have any problems getting it to run.

EtherGrind Timelapse

Music is “Do You Know Squarepusher” by Squarepusher.
Annotations so you know what the heck is going on.

Heart and Hope! timelapse video (1’06”)

Not very exciting, but I did make two games during that time, so there’s that.

edit: Forgot to mention that I used keeyai’s handy Chronolapse.

So yeah, got my first comment on the game and I thought I would respond to it (and all future comments). This game is not fun and didn’t get at all where I wanted it to because I literally only had 8 hours to spend on it. I made the sound effects in 20 minutes (so I guess they suck too) and was unable to test them out to see how I liked them (sound effects are usually really important to me in my games). The levels are definitely designed like a 3-year-old did it and I absolutely did not succeed in making a fun difficulty curve. I also was not at all able to make the ship control very good… in fact losing both of your wings doesn’t even seem to do much in that department. Plus the static from losing your antennae is way crappy.

But, I still had a bit of fun rushing to make this and I still think it’s a pretty cool concept. It’s also a bit pretty and maybe you can play it and ruminate over how it has the potential to be a fun game.

Either way, thanks for playing!

Wow, and that was Ludum Dare 14.

A humongous turn out this year, with a whopping 121 entries for the deadline. Easily a new record for us. A great way to kick off year 7 of the competition.

As usual, voting will last for 2 weeks. Hit the “View Final Ludum Dare 14 Entries” link at the top of the page to view and vote for entries. Only people that submitted an entry will have the option of voting. If we get enough demand on the last few days of voting, we may consider pushing the date back a few more.

If there’s anyone that was maybe unable to upload or link their entry properly, respond to this post or contact the administration inside the IRC chat room, and we’ll give you hand.

The next major competition will be in August this year. Subscribe to the mailing list, or follow our twitter to stay informed.

Looking for more? In the off months we also do monthly challenges called the “Mini LD”, where Ludum Dare veterans give you a theme to try making something from. They occur usually on the first weekend of every month, but do stop by to double check. See the Wiki for more information.

Congratulations, and thanks everyone for making Ludum Dare 14 a huge success.

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

Until the embed code works, here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmcCyGY5IGg

It’s not very exciting, so I made it short.

My game can now be played online here:

http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/ld/SaveTheSheep/

I’ll probably also add a post-compo version with Mochi highscores.

This is how the game works: you are the yellow circle and you must save the sheep from getting caught by the lava. You can move around with the arrow keys (or wasd) and push blocks and kick sheep. The sheep need to go to the dark green zone all the way at the right. You’ll need to divert the lava to have enough time to get the sheep in safety. To do that, make walls to hold the lava for a while. The darker blocks will decay first, so you know where the lava will be coming out next. Be sure to use at least one of those. If you don’t, all blocks will break simultanously and you won’t have a chance!

All sounds and music were recorded during the competition. The background music is from an orchestra rehearsal yesterday (I’m not completely sure if that’s allowed).

Update: For anyone who isn’t judging for the compo, you should get the patched version here with better performance and fixed collision edges.

Windows If you get a “This application has failed to start …” error, you need to install vcredist_x86.exe.
Mac
Python source (python2.6 + pyglet)

Instructions:

Update: Visual instructions here.

Aliens have invaded and are exterminating the humans! Their massive deathbeam is tearing across the world, destroying everything human. It’s up to you to save them.

You are the white dot, and you have a jet pack. Use left-arrow and right-arrow to walk, spacebar to jump.

Grab the other colored pixels and take them to the rescue teleporters to send them to safety. The more people you deliver in one teleport, the more points you get. Some humans are worth more than others!

Getting hit by the beam will kill you and other humans. Your suit protects you against the turret fire, but the civilians aren’t so lucky.

play it here

• to start playing, click into the game window, then use then left, right, space, escape keys.
• to jump higher, you have to wait. just rest on a platform till the blue bar on top charched up enough.
• the levels are badly randomized, and not properly tuned yet. so if you got stuck: choosing menu > new game might help.
• there’s no end.

(playable, but not finished (yet))

source (mirror)
(needs FlashDevelop / Flex 3 SDK )

If you know what Löve is, and have it installed already, just grab arcticum.love and run it.

If you don’t know what Löve is*, then take the all included ready to roll super dooper binaries for you favorite OS:

• Linux Ubuntu/Debian: arcticum-linux.tar.bz2
• Windows: arcticum-win.zip
• Mac OS X: arcticum-mac.zip

Each package contains instructions on how to run the game, and the following Readme. Enjoy!

EDIT:

• Known bug. When you win (ie get the fourth item), the game crashes (instead of going back to menu). But don’t worry. You still won! =)
• Game resolution is 1024×600. It might show up weirdly (strech for instance) on 4:3 screens. Press F on title screen to switch to window mode, much nicer.
• The sources of the game are in the .love file, which is really a renamed zip.

(more…)

Dinner last night was Chinese.

Clockwise from upper left: cold dish platter (chicken, roast pork, char siew and jellyfish), diced duck in lettuce wrap, roast chicken, tofu mock-meat with veggies, dessert (hard to explain unless you live in Asia), fried shrimp in wasabi sauce, steamed fish, and noodles in the centre. Not pictured: Peking duck and one other dish which I forget – probably veggies of some description, if memory serves.

Hooray for crappy photography skills and almost-as-crappy cellphone camera.

Actually, this was my grandmother’s birthday. Dinner took 4 hours, which kind of put a ding in my development time. Food was good if somewhat “innovative” (roast chicken on top of fruit salad?).

Well, on to the post-mortem.

What I did right:

- I was using very familiar tools.

- Tools were mostly in place before development began.

- I deliberately left out 3D skeletal animation from my toolset. Integrating it would have tempted me to make animated 3D characters, which would have killed the project due to the time required.

- Character sketches at the start gave me a very clear direction.

- Chose to hard-code my level rather than making a more open framework.

- Froze development half an hour before the end of the compo, to avoid running out of time.

What I did wrong:

- Not enough practice with composing music. The first song took 2 and a half hours. The second was half-done in about half an hour. In the end I scrapped music because I couldn’t finish the boss fight theme in time.

- Didn’t build my toolset with quick development in mind. Some features which would have been useful were left out, like sprite animation and object state-management.

- Included toolset features, like lighting, which pushed the game’s specs to a point where some people couldn’t run it.

- Edit: Made the game too hard. I forgot that most people are not shmupfans.

- Attended the birthday dinner. I kid, I kid – making Grandma happy is usually a good thing, and I got a nice meal out of it too.

You play on the side of the advancing wall of doom, which is trying to engulf all. The lousy civilization which is getting in you way has set up barriers, though, in an attempt to hinder the darkness! Your job is to destroy these defences so that the cloud can continue its conquest. (Edit: I posted a bit more info about the process at my blog)

Download:

• Windows executable
• 32-bit Linux executable
• .love source (rename to .zip if you want to extract it)

[edit: This is not my entry into the competition! This was posted after the deadline. See Heart for my actual entry.]

I also made another game yesterday, in two hours, during the Klik of the Month. It’s called ‘Hope!’, and since I also followed the Ludum Dare theme with it, why not share it with you, guys.

Download Hope! (Windows)

Play online: http://www.draknek.org/games/robo-jimmy.html

Edit: much belated source code: http://www.draknek.org/games/robo-jimmy-48hrs.zip

If I’d had time to make levels at the end, I think this could have been a decent game…

Sorry it’s about 20 minutes late, I had a last minute problem with my release build. It’s still really incomplete, so it’s not like I’m going to win anything anyways. 

Here it is.. in all it’s horrible incompleteness. 

Glacier Final

The idea is to save the mammoths from the oncoming glacier by placing ice blocks (tetris pieces) ..

i’ll put up a post-compo version with docs and stuff later.. phew… dinner time

It’s completely horrible and it’s not actually possible to beat it, but at least I got something made! I finished it before the deadline, as the members of #ludumdare (or their chat logs) will attest. Left and right to move, up to swap left and right (I probably should have left that one out), down to go into reverse.

Download for Windows

Edit: It’s a lot easier if you use F5 to save and F6 to load! It’s possible to make it to the tip of the black/grey line, but not to get onto the second set of dots. But you can win if you press O!

Clarification edit: The dark grey lines are the floor and the light grey background is an infinite void hole. As long as some part of you is touching the dark grey, you won’t fall into the hole. Unfortunately, I made the level in the very last two minutes of the compo, so I didn’t have time to test it; the result is that the level is impossible, and most of it is extremely hard. If you want to find some enjoyment in the game, try getting onto the first dot; that’s actually a reasonable challenge. As it is, this game mostly functions as a demo of the controls.