You can see my entry here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=rate&uid=57

I’ll do an updated version later on this week, fix some things that need fixing and add a few features that are missing. Maybe I’ll build a fullscale (?) flash game based on this, and sell it for iPhone. Then move to bermuda.

POSTMORTEM – What went right:
- Rule system for the crew was/is awesome.
- Flixel is great! Perfect for a compo like this, although I didn’t use too much of it…
- I thought for awhile about the theme, and made a short design document with my ideas which was a great help.
- It’s like, -40′C in my city which is really, really cold and was helpful in finding inspiration for exploring the icy north.

What went wrong:
- As usual I didn’t give myself enough time to polish it up at the end. I spent some time on features that were cut or I didn’t finish, but it could have benefited a lot from just a bit more playing.
- Developing on Windows wasn’t quite what I am used to. But I got quite used to FlashDevelop. I’d like to move this over to Eclipse/Linux but figuring out how to build the AS3 stuff is just a bit tricky.

This was fun, thanks guys!

Wow.  So after 2 years of not using openGL…. I think I fail at this programming thing.  I guess I’ll leave the videogame programming to my talented husband (JonnyD)….  Can we have a team (real) LD sometime? Please? PLEASE?  Then maybe I could actually be part of one and feel accomplished .

Anyway, This is as far as I got…  There’s no game to this.  Just a scene with mis-aligned textures and crappy graphics (MS Paint style).  I’m glad I didn’t put much time into this.

I fell asleep while I was compiling this and almost slept through the submission deadline lol, anyway, both timelapse and game or on the interwebs now, I’m going back to sleep

Ludum Dare 16 has ended.

The final count is 121 entries, which is 2 less than last April (our usual #1 compo). So wow, LD has really grown this year.

Entry voting is on. As usual, only people that submitted a game are allowed to vote. Click the link at the top of the page to start.

Voting will last for 3 weeks, as the majority polled want some more time for the holidays (and our HUGE turn outs).

Post Compo Porting

You’re allowed to port your game after the deadline. Use this link to you edit your entry page and add a url.

If you need help porting your game to Windows, leave a comment in this post, and we’ll try to hook you up. Be sure you’ve to provided full source, and details such as what libraries are required.

Ludum Dare at GDC

Hey developers! Phil and I will be at the Game Developers Conference again in March. Stop by the site before or during the Conference to see if we have anything going on.

Stay Informed

Ludum Dare has an e-mail mailing list. You can sign up here:

http://www.gamecompo.com/mailing-list/

Ludum Dare is also on Twitter. twitter.com/ludumdare

Suggestions

If you have any suggestions for the compo, post them in the comments here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/08/30/suggestion-post/

Closing

Thanks everyone for coming out and making this our biggest December yet! Be sure to come back in April for Ludum Dare 17.

Can’t wait that long? Stop by monthly for MiniLD competitions, hosted by members of the community! Check here to see who’s next.

I’d like to throw a special thanks out to Phil for taking the lead this compo, getting things started while I crunched away on my crazy little project. Thanks Phil.

And to everyone, have a safe and Happy Holidays!

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

PS: Don’t forget to vote!

OK, so I submitted the game with 3 minutes to spare, and I’m no longer a Ludum Dare newbie. But why do i feel so… BLAH? I need to get away from the computer for a while, I think…

My game didn’t end up where I wanted it to, but that’s OK. I still managed to create a great foundation that I can continue to build upon. The game has serious potential, I think. It needs more refinement, content, and story, of course… but isn’t that the case with all games? I wanted to make at least ONE song for the game, but I just didn’t have enough time. I don’t even have any sound effects yet. I had music constantly playing during the development of Soulspark, so I never really noticed until I played my ‘final’ version. It’s terribly quiet, so please… if you play my game… put some music on.

Since the theme is all about EXPLORING, Soulspark is a laid-back, no-action kind of experience. No enemies and no weapons. Just you and the world. OH, and your constantly depleting battery power that you have to recharge. Think Wall-E meets Fallout… then throw it head first into Metroid… and suck out all of the action. Does it make a fun game? Maybe not at this point… but like I said… the potential is there.

Soulspark game page

So crunch time is OVER, which means it’s time to EAT!

The greatest food photos of Ludum Dare 16 AFTER THE BREAK:

(more…)

Hey, it’s a game! And I happened to decide to call it Echolon for no real good reason.

This game was made in around 8 hours today after ditching most of the work I did for another game yesterday. The theme of exploration was so broad I had a few ideas that are probably worth pursuing. What I originally was going with was a game focused on indirect control of a navigator that explores, but I ended up ditching that for something a little simpler.

Echolon plays a little like Asteroids where you’re exploring a really large room that that only gets illuminated when your bullets (made of light!) collide with walls. Shots have the ability to bounce off walls. There are enemy turrets scattered throughout the level that will shoot at you (natch). Destroy all the turrets to win!

Originally the game was going to be series of rooms and there was some vague idea of a limited upgrade system. Additionally I wanted other abilities and weapon types that would help illuminate the map in more meaningful ways. I didn’t have the time for that, but I sorta like the idea and may pursue that further.

Tools/engine used were Flixel, sfxr, Audacity, Photoshop, and FlashDevelop. I’ll have a timelapse video and a larger post-mortem up later.

Play the game here guys and gals. Thanks!

Well, my game isn’t half of what I’d planned, but it’s at least playable, just one level. Jimmy was going to be a mouse, but I didn’t have time to draw his sprites so now he’s that yellow thing. As you explore the level you will find power-ups that will help you get further. There was no time for sound unfortunately.

I had never used Flixel before and I’m glad to have tried it out. I did spend a lot of the time learning it, so I could probably have done a lot better if I had studied it before the LD started. This was also the first time I used as3 instead of haXe and I must say I do prefer the haXe language.

Anyway, I’ll probably use Flixel again next time, and then I won’t have to learn it first, so I might actually finish a complete game…

You can play the game here:

• Play Jimmy’s Adventure

My timelapse is here!

YouTube
Timelapse dead link now

Wowzers, that was quite the ride! I’m proud of what I was able to do. Even though it’s not much of a game, but its kinda fun.

Play it HERE:  http://www.ericmcquiggan.com/Gameuploads/ludumdare/LudumDare48.swf

Controls Below

(more…)

This weekend was awesome! But also exhausting. I already thought, that i will not be able to finish anything — mainly because my plan somehow ended by a game playable just by 3 handed people, able to walk and interact with the game with keyboard and use the third hand for triggering sound effects and other things with mouse. But thankfully I just dropped almost all of this ideas away and worked last 12 hours almost solely on design and graphics. And i was still able to post my game just 3 minutes before deadline, so maybe i should have done it sooner…

Some random thoughts:

I’m sure that i’ve written the ugliest code in my life — i see almost only hard-coded text, switch statements (which i don’t like at all) and misuse of the language…

It was first time, i have tried to do some animation and it looks really unnatural, but i’m still relatively satisfied with it — next time it will be better. But first i have to find better sprite editor — paint.net isn’t really build to work with animations and dos-like allegro sprite editor is also not THE ideal program for me…

Besides animation, i also never tried to compose some music or create sound effects. I was looking toward it, but i didn’t manage to have time to do sfx, so this is my goal for next compo — create game that is not mute

Preparation! I spent most of the time to learn to work with allmost everything i used. But it will be better next time…

I was happy to take part in this competition, and ‘m looking forward to play some of games created here… see you next time again

The game is here

The submission page is at http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview&uid=412.

Windows & Source | Registration | High Scores

It’s some sort of MMO thingy. Arrow keys to move, space to minimap, esc to quit, mouse for other stuff
Because of the disjoint nature of the game, someone else might have claimed a hill before you get there. You’ll know this has happened because when you get there, you won’t hear the trumpety noise.

= Tools =
Language: C++
Libraries: Allegro, Libcurl, and my Allegro classes (included)
IDE: Code::Blocks
Sound: Sfx
Music: Stockboy to compose and Audacity to record
Graphics: The GIMP, Paint
Datafile: Allegro Grabber utility

Contact me in IRC if you can do an OS/X or Linux port for me.

realistically. I did not have as much time as I hoped to actually work on my project.

Shoot for the stars

Here’s the link for more info. Kind of simple and fun 3 levels in total.

Thing is done. Last few hours were intense. I haven’t played the whole game yet, so it may be totally off here or there. Let me know of any major trip ups, if you decide to give it a try.

Game is about navigating a maze while running along the ceiling. Or something. Play it.

Grab some tiny pixel font here.

Finished Northern Spy (Exploration, LD 16)

I have a vague sense of foreboding.

Given another couple hours I could’ve finished it up, but at the moment it’s not ready… I slept late this morning, and I also missed the first 6 hours because of a party… It was my first LD though, and I intend to do it again. So, lesson learned.

My game was going to be called “Electromigration”, it procedurally creates the level as you go, it’s an fps and the goal is/was going to be to keep exploring and finding randomly placed upgrades while fighting off enemies. I had the level generation working perfectly, and enemies and shooting are all there. But I still need to make the game generate enemies and upgrades in the level (at the moment all you can do is walk around the endless level and spawn enemies via the console).

It looks sorta VR-y, with colorful grids (as the player explores, the areas that have been walked through fade from red to green, so you can see where you’ve already been).

I probably should have prepared better, I used a custom engine, but all I had finished in the engine (which was meant for another project, and had been started a week before LD started) was part of the lua scripting setup and the basics of the graphics engine (I used Ogre) setup, so I wound up writing a lot of needless low-level stuff… on the positive, I really did a lot in a short time (that was a couple thousand lines of C++…) and an ingame lua-based scripting console was amazing for debugging/testing.

Here’s a couple screenshots; I might keep working for a few hours just to get it done…

Yesterday i have gived up, but when i awake today, suddenly i decided to continue work. And i was awarded! I made real great progress today, and impelement most features i have planned. Even i made some sounds with sfxr (dont planned sound in the start!).

So, to my game.

You own a space ship and decide to enter nearby asteroid field to explore it! You have prepared planetary landing module to land on asteroids and search for resources to upgrade you ship. What you will find? Rich mineral asteroids? Or space pirates?

Game can crash on ATI cards, sadly.

Tools used:
-Delphi 2007
-3ds Max 2008
-Photoshop CS3
-SFXR

Libraries:
-My own STLEngine2
-GLScene
-ODE
-FMod, free for non-commercial use
-Graphics23

Sweet, I managed to complete my first Ludum Dare! I was thinking of learning Push Button Engine for it, but after going through a couple of tutorials I decided I’d go for straight-up Actionscript instead. PBE has some neat features, but I need more time to get my head around its component-based programming model.

Anyway, SEEK*TOR is a game where you’re trying to locate the enemy by firing search flares from turrets. You have limited flares, and turrets have a limited range, so you need to carefully choose where you aim. It’s in Flash.

SEEK*TOR Voting page

Incidentally, I’m annoyed with Audacity because it added an initial silence to all the mp3 files I encoded with it. So all the sounds come in late. Also, I just realized that I forgot to have the background music loop…

Finished game just in time. Probably has a ton of bugs I had no time to test. But I think focusing on graphics was fun and actually a little inspiring. Next time maybe I can balance the graphics and gameplay a little better. I spent way too long in Photoshop cleaning up graphics this time. Oh well, it was quite fun!  At least because I used BlitzMax, there are PC and Mac versions of the game.

download here: http://www.bitjets.com/massacre.zip

So I didn’t get an actual game submitted this time, but I put in all the effort I could. Slept 3 hours since Friday morning, only break I took was to go to the store.. I like the concept and design for my game and am going to pursue it. Even if I rip the flash code to hell and back, I successfully prototyped an ‘infinitely’ (based on optimized server resources) persistent universe streaming through a flash client with mmo style multiplayer.

Play Live

I also am psuedo calculating the total gravity wells of all nearby planets and using it as propulsion. I’m pretty sure it’s not physically accurate, but didn’t have time to total up the force vectors of 100′s of fake planetary bodies myself. So it makes you move, worsk for me. I’m sure a little tweaking would make it more fun being able to fly around navigating by slingshotting around big planets.

For my first flash game ever it’s not too bad. If I go for a rewrite I might drop Flixel completely. Writing the crappy text input because Flixel completely seperated any event handlers from the game logic.. yea, shitttyyy. FlxSprite has no sprite elements, that was another fun one. What’s the point of using a graphics library, when you have to write pixel by pixel to the buffer to get around it..
On the other hand, there are several ways I could have used Flixels structure better. It seems really designed around using the tilemap class, which I didn’t touch.

I have a partial timelapse I’ll upload soon. I’m pretty sure it was responsible for the two blue screens of death I had this weekend though

After quite a rush in the end I got “Lost in Exploration” finished. Or let’s say that what I had time for is finished.

Actually most of the time I created a platformer-egnine based on jMonkeyEngine. That took lot’s of time and when I started using it (with the help of blender). In the end it was a real good job when I compare the result to my first LD (one year ago).

The first scene:

The whole scene how it looks in the  my blender-”editor”:

Have a look here (hope the webstart works for everyone):

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview&uid=479

So,..still the sourcecode to pack…

It was really much fun again…

Stuff used for creating this pice of software:

eclipse,java,jMonkeyEngine,blender,reaper,drpetter’s supersound-generator