I’ve decided to make my views on the subject of games as art known.

The text referred to in the title appears after the rant. It is a self-descriptive piece, and very ranty, but I personally think that it’s a perspective that needs to be addressed.

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Well,…actually I tried to build a nice game with the codebase I created on miniLD. Well,…haha! I started with a tank-training scenario and in that I “just” wanted to build a method that let then tank-”tube” lookAt a certain point. My engine somehow cannot handle this if the tube is child of a node that already has a rotation,…Well,..I failed in this. So I really was killed by math. I tried and thought and thought and tried…a bit too confuse I have to admit…so my weekend-project stuck right at the beginning. But if you want to start the tank-training you can give it a try here:

http://thomas.trocha.com/games/tank/tank.html

At the moment the game violates the color-constraint…I will change this at the end. Here a screenshot:

Have a nice week,…

Here’s my game. Late on my goal of about two hours ago, but a lot of that time was spent finalizing stuff (embedding fonts, testing on other computers, uploading the right version…) and it’s ready now, I think, to share.

Here’s a link to the webpage to play it.

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Hey,

So this year at GDC we’re having an official Ludum Dare get together!

Where: Metreon food court
When: Wednesday, March 10, at 5:30

I should be pretty easy to spot.

So, show up, get some food, and we’ll have a good time!

See you there!
-Phil

P.S. If you are speaking or presenting or showing your game off in IGF, or whatever, be sure to leave a comment with times and locations so the rest of us LDers don’t miss the awesomeness of whatever you are doing

PoV P.S. If you’re working on something cool, bring it along. It might make a good conversation starter. Also, if I remember correctly, the Metreon has a pretty nice sized Arcade too. And if you can’t make it to San Fran, check out the comments for something you might be able to catch that I’m up to.

I started late, last night at 7pm, and I’m going to work until 7pm Saturday.  So now I’ve had just over 15 hours of possible work time. Of course, I’ve used very little of that–how much I’m not sure.

I have done something at least. My goals will have to be a little scaled back, but I do have a working framework for the majority of the action part of gameplay.

Before I go into what I want this game to be, here’s a link to the current version and a screenshot.

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So here’s a screenshot of my miniLD-16 inspired project. This is mostly just my hexplanet demo with a new tileset drawn from the miniLD palette. I don’t really like the stripey pattern (unexplored land), I need to do something about that.

Hex Moon

Most of the work here isn’t visible in the screenshot — I ported the hex demo to OpenGL ES, using proper VBO’s and shaders instead of the immediate mode crap it was doing before. This screenshot isn’t running on the iPhone, but it could be. This is running on linux using the PVR SDK in OGLES emulation mode. I’m finding it to be a quite nice SDK, btw, if you’re doing any iPhone graphics stuff and you’re not using it, you’re missing out.

This will probably be my last screenshot of this as a mini-LD entry, and I might not get a chance to work on it much in the next few months as I’m trying to ship a completely different iPhone project but I do hope to get back to this one, I think it will be a lot of fun and worth finishing.

So yay, I finally got the tutorials to work properly. As promised (and I don’t feel late at all…) the game is released!

No AI, so the solo mode is deactivated. The rest should be fine.

Get it on the submission page (Windows and GNU/Linux).

I hope the Windows version works. I crosscompiled from Linux, and although it ran in Wine, it was super slow.

I don’t have new screenshots, except tutorial text, so I’ll put back old ones. Because, heh, a “final” log entry should have screenies…

Here’s the readme:

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This miniLD was like more or less all of the last competitions before. I work and work on writing frameworks for the specific game leaving not enough time to do something cool gameplay with it. So I decided to invest an additional weekend so that I finally can say:”Yes it is some kind of game!” So stay tuned and buy some fuel for the upcoming Tank-Missions

Ah, as the competition is over, I decided to add one green color to the colormap and I will really think about kicking the input-constraint or just adding additional gamepad-support. Maybe I will use a MiniLD and a Normal-Mode. Similar to the old “Turbo”-Button of my very first PC (8086) where you could lower the speed from 10MhZ to 4.8MhZ . Unbelivable 10 (TEN) MhZ…. seems to be some years ago

Here a very first possible new tank…(blender render)

It’s neither well coded nor robust, but circle versus circle and circle versus line collision response are now working well enough to continue prototyping. I’m going to put a bit more time into getting the physics working, then I should be ready to begin testing a few puzzle ideas.

I thought I’d finish tonight, but sleeping 4 hours last night really doesn’t help. I’m off to bed, and hopefully I’ll finish tomorrow… For once I’m gonna try to really polish this game. I think it might turn out good.

So I think the gameplay is done. The game is fully playable in versus mode (two players on one keyboard). I have texts and scripts ready for the tutorials (which will probably prove very necessary for a rhythm game), but I still need to plug them in. And I have the intention of thinking about making an AI. Or let’s modestly say a computer opponent, because I’m frankly doubting my abilities to make anything clever enough to make the game interesting against it.

I'm not sure about this title, by the way...

In a post-LD version (as if the deadline wasn’t two days ago already…), I’d like to think about networking. I know it’s not always easy to find someone to play around the same computer. On the other hand it’s a lot more fun…

Anyhoo. I really need to sleep.

Well, I doubt I’ll have anything like a game done within the allotted 48 hours, but here’s a playable test:

http://vacuumflowers.com/temp/miniLD16

And here’s a screen shot:

I’m having a big gameplay direction crisis. I’m wondering if I’m not making the game too complex, and on the other hand I think making it simpler would make it a lot less interesting.

Plus the “musical ear” aspect. Should I expect players to be able to reproduce reasonably complex rythms, and how many different ones? This is hard

Plus I suck at art. Boo hoo.

Note the split screen...

So the lil guys now have opponents to fight. Note that arrows and spikes don’t do damage yet, but that will come…

I’m not dead! Just very late, but it’s a mini so I guess it’s not that bad.

EDIT: also, i’m very high on caffeine. oO’

I spent all day thinking of a name and Horse Racing is my best idea.

I’m a little late, but had a late start, and I’ve been constantly distracted by the Olympics this weekend. That’s where the idea came from, watching speed skating.

It’s kind of silly. Just bet on which horse you think will win. 1,2,3,4.

I wish could have used more of those lovely blues. The sound and music is the best part in my semi-sane sleep deprived opinion.

link to download page:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-16/?action=preview&uid=505

Thanks for playing. It’s been great fun making this

Late

I gave up on my original idea and didn’t think I was going to do a mini-ld game this time, but then suddenly within a couple hours of the deadline I decided to whip together something bad but playable.

PLAY ONLINE

On a happier note, I did make four games this weekend!  The other three were for Klik of the Month Klub.  over here.

Edit:  Timelapse!

It’s done!
It’s a bit further then my last attempt, I hope it’s interesting!

Controls, use the numbers to select a car, press the same number a second time, after a brief delay, to drop the object. Try to fill all the cars!

http://www.ericmcquiggan.com/Gameuploads/ludumdare/LDMini16.swf

Are tribal fights between Rolo and Bloco too hard for you?
Bored with constantly losing?
Can’t seem to pick your own side?

It’s time you unveiled a COMBO!!!

Shredder combo – keep pressing one button repeadetly!

Find more combos, enjoy the magical world of Rolo Bloco, and crush your enemy!

Remeber – Rolo Bloco means ‘endless fun’ in Bloco language!

Well, finished my mini-miniLD game, which i made in about 3 hours… it’s so rushed, it doesn’t even have a name! i spent way to much time on initial graphics, and in the end didn’t have enough for stuff like menu graphics, which ended up being quite simplistic, I like how it came out though, especially the character’s walk cycle. And…. i just realized you can’t win the game… well i guess that’s something i need to fix… anyways, screenshot!

Yay for Jpegs!

oh, and a link to the other page thingy for this:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-16/?action=preview&uid=1548

so yeah! fun weekend

It’s pretty basic and I didn’t get to half the stuff I wanted to, but here’s the two player versus space shooter, PEWPEW.

Controls:

Player 1 -
1: move down
2: move up
3: shoot

Player 2 -
0: move down
9: move up
8: shoot

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/139336/PewPew.zip

Windows exe. Unzip, open game.exe, shoot friends.

My entry for Mini-LD 16: Constraints.  I’d appreciate any comments you might have, as well as what scores you end up getting.

Click on the image above to play.