Well, that’s the big news today. Popular Middleware Technology provider Unity Technologies has announced that it’s flagship product “Unity” is now free.

http://unity3d.com/unity/download/

You still have to pay for the iPhone and Console versions, but the PC/Mac and Web version is free for Indies (According to their license agreement, that’s people/companies earning less that $100k from the games they make).

As usual, we’ll continue to encourage Unity developers to join us for our 48 hour game making fests here at Ludum Dare.

Or hey, if you’re looking for a reason to try unity out, the upcoming December compo sounds nice.

Ludum Dare 16′s date we’ll have for you in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

started on some graphics late last night. a tiny thing, so hopefully will have it finished before long

MiniLD 13 is almost at an end, but you still have a few days left to decide to make an awesome educational game.

This may be of interest to LD-ers, if there’s any of you that don’t already visit TIGSource

Assemblee is a two-part game-making competition!  Each part has its own rules.

1. In the first part, artists and musicians will have a month to create as many art and music assets as they wish.  These assets will be voted on at the end of the month based on the quantity, quality, and variety of the assets provided.

2. In the second part, designers and programmers will have a month to take the assets created in part one and make games with them (assets used need not be limited to one person or team).  The programmers cannot make any changes to the assets unless it’s done during runtime.  The best game will be voted on in the normal fashion.

Full info here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8751.0

Sounds like this one could be a lot of fun!

My clock officially started Saturday at 9:48 A.M. PST. Unfortunately as I’ve approached bed-time on Sunday, I’m not yet “Done”.

But I’m going to submit my Work-In-Progress anyways. The first 2 levels (of 4) are available. I should be able to complete the others tomorrow evening.

Literacy Damacy is a game about the importance of education. The player must traverse through four stages of literacy. Within each stage the player will be able to “absorb” tasks or objects they can comprehend at their literacy level. Some objects will help the player improve their literacy level while others will be out of their reach.

Play Literacy Damacy (WIP) Here

UPDATE: I’ve completed Literacy Damacy to the level I was planning (12 hrs after the end of my 48hr deadline). The above link will still take you to the latest build. The 48hr compo build is saved and available here. The difference between the two is only 2 work hours.

So, I finished Excavatorrr today. There’s now even an online highscoreboard included!

Download from here

Hey,

So November 7th is the weekend whereby you must have your swimsuit calendar picture taken by.  The week following that we’ll be doing some photoshopping of pictures to get them overlayed on game screenshots and other stuff.  So it’s time to get ripped people!  Remember this is for the LD!  I plan on having the calendar available for sale a few days before U.S. Thanksgiving day, so it is ready in time for Christmas shopping season.

-Phil

48 hours later, Dragon Genetics is finished. Dragon Genetics teaches the principles of genetic inheritence including dominant/recessive genes, epistasis, and  sex-linked genes. It uses a browser-like window to explain concepts and the player can click on links to get more information on a word. The player gets a set of missions to breed specific dragons by choosing the parents.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/?action=preview&uid=1128

The game was written in C++ with Ogre and CEGUI. I found the new version of CEGUI nice since it’s able to embed widgets in strings which is what I used to make the information browser. For content I used Photoshop and Blender. Most of the gui graphics are a CEGUI default. Also this is my second Ludum Dare (First Mini) and also the second time Photoshop has refused to work correctly during a Ludum Dare. I think it may have been a memory issue this time though since it stopped crashing on startup after I closed the visual studio with CEGUI source and an extra blender window I had open…

Finished!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/?action=preview&uid=1168

It’s a pretty simple game, with minimal graphics, and math questions as the primary feature. Making an “educational” game is really weird.

I tried to keep the content difficulty pretty low so as to make sure most age groups are able to do it.

My first time working with flash, turned out alright. (Though there are those things that don’t work as I expect and drive me crazy until I figure them out)..

No sound; just numbers.

Oh, man. Has anybody else noticed that we’ve had a truly excellent run of MiniLD themes lately? I’m in, and on time too — I started thinking seriously about things this morning, but didn’t make a post until now. I’ve got something on the order of seven million ideas for this one, ranging from the totally reasonable to the downright Vista-esque, but instead of actually fitting the theme properly I’m going to engage in a little quick-and-sly reinterpretation. It may not be educational, but it will be for education! I present a ludicrously rough version of PopCat!, a collaborative offline-multiplayer wordgame:

A bit of backstory (warning — academic-speak to follow): I’m working on my PhD in cognitive science, and my research revolves around something called categorization — the process by which people recognize objects and group them into logical categories. I’m trying to build a computational model of this using only words, but there just isn’t any data to be found. So far I’ve been getting folks on Mechanical Turk to fill in dumb little surveys, but maybe, just maybe, I can make the task fun enough (and competitive!) that people will produce my data for free. Maybe.

/end academic speak

Anyway, the game is something like Scattergories played in reverse; you’re given a bunch of words and have to come up with a category for each one. There’s a timer, so you have to think fast, and you get points for each category proportional to how many other people came up with the same category. The idea is to make it something of a mind game — do more people thing “tomato” is a fruit or a vegetable? Which is worth more?

The game is in Flash and Flixel (well, B-Flixel specifically), while the data server is in PHP. Joy.

Deciding on an idea for an educational game was a tough one, but when I was complaining on GameJolt, KniteBlargh came along and gave me the greatest idea; ‘why not show your dislike of the theme by having facts as the enemy?’

GENIUS!

Straight away me and my good friend GhostDev91 got to work on this, a de-educational SHMUP!

Control your ship with the arrow keys and spacebar to destroy incoming facts into Jack(C)’s head! The facts are all written in a handy txt file along with the game, so feel free to append and edit this file as you will! INFINITE REPLAYABILITY!! (ok not quite)

After the round you will be given a grade depending on your score. If you are unfortunate to go down to -1000 points during your run, however, you will automatically be given the A* grade.

Coding – GhostDev91
Graphics, Music and a teeny weeny bit of coding – JMickle
Concept – KniteBlargh

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/?action=preview&uid=1328

Contact:  jaymickle at gmail.com

2009…

200 years ago Charles Darwin was born, 150 years ago he published “The Origin of Species”.

400 years ago Galileo was the first to gaze into the heavens with a telescope.

To help commemorate these important birthdays for Science, your task will be to write a game that’s not only fun, but also educational. Bonus points for teaching us about astronomy or biology (or astrobiology ).

Collaboration with non-programmer scientist friends is allowed and encouraged.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is no fixed deadline this time; post a message just before you start and then post your game at the latest 48 hours after your announcement post. However since much of the fun of Ludum Dare is hacking along side others, I propose next weekend (9-12 October) as the preferred period.

Finally, since one of the really cool things with the real LDs that we (or I at least) miss during the minis is feedback, as compo host I’ll commit to reviewing all the games posted. (Unless there are a bazillion entries in which case I’ll review the first 20 or so.)

Unfortunately I lost my home internet connection so I’m not online as much as I’d like, but feel free to contact me either in a comment or by email (nils dot fagerburg at gmail) if you need any clarification.

Happy hacking!

- – -

Submit Entries Here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/

View Entries Here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/?action=preview

Ludum Dare entrants are really on a roll this year.

The latest in the continuing legacy is Seth “mrfun” Robinson’s Mind Wall from Ludum Dare 14. Mind Wall is on it’s way to China for the inaugural Independent Games Festival China competition.

IGF China Info: http://www.gdcchina.com/events/igf.html
Finalists List: http://www.gdcchina.com/events/igffinalists.html

Download Mind Wall: http://www.codedojo.com/?p=104

Mind Wall was created for the 14th Ludum Dare’s theme Advancing Wall of Doom, and took place in April of this year. Seth has since improved on his Ludum Dare entry, and even ported the game iPhone!

One of our favorite Mind Wall moments has to be this youtube video recorded by a player. His girlfriend captured this tense and tender moment as he conquered the unforgiving beast that is the Mind Wall.

So hey, Ludum Dare. Not bad ‘eh? First it was Phil and I at the IGF Mobile in March, Lexaloffle at the TGS Sense of Wonder Night last week, and now mrfun at IGF China. Not to mention our record breaking 123 and 144 entries the past 2 compos. A fantastic year for us all.

Lets keep that going!

The Independent Games Festival and Independent Games Festival Mobile are now accepting entries for 2010. We’d love to see more of you keeping this little streak of ours going. Both competitions require an entry fee, and for you to provide your own travel if you make it. But if you ask any finalist, they’ll tell you that attending is totally worth it.

Independent Games Festival (Due November 1st, $100): http://www.igf.com/
Independent Games Festival Mobile (Due December 1st, $50): http://www.igfmobile.com/

I’ll be there at GDC next year (perhaps with Phil). Not that meeting me in person is all that monumental an event, but hey. If we get enough of an LD crew out there, we’ll totally have to do something.

Keep up the great work everyone!

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)