So now I have little guys. They execute the orders given with the different rythms. As of now, they can march forward, retreat, cover with shields, and attack. Arrows fly, spike guys charge. Of course there’s nothing to attack, but that is just detail.

Screenshots don’t really give a good idea, without the movement or the sound. But my video capture was awful, so no joy.

And sleep, for now.

For my first Ludum Dare activities, I come to `Contstraints’.  I decided to make the control scheme restriction mirror something in the real world where it makes sense to control with numbers.  Such as flame throwers.  What’s a better use of a flame thrower than carrying you aloft in a wicker basket?  Nothing, that’s what.  So now we have Pyloon, the Python Ballooning Sim.  Most of the code is working, and the art is about how good I can make it (this was actually the hardest constraint — using seven discrete colors!), so I will now focus on trying to put together music and sound.  This will be hard as I do not have a mic.

Current look below More: (more…)

No pictures, because nothing visually has changed, but I’ve got a playable demo of sorts now, so there’s that. I spent a few minutes with a microphone recording some (terrible quality) sounds and playing with windows sound recorder to get the effects, as they were, correct.

Current version of the game is here: http://thedaian.dreamhosters.com/miniLD16-midway.rar

Controls are: 1 and 2 move you left and right, respectively, and 3 will give you a burst of speed in the up/down directions. Escape will close the game. Eat the smaller squares by getting on top of them (the collision code is a bit off right now, so you mostly have to get on top of the upper left corner of another square to eat it). The screen is divided into sections, and each section will either let you move up or down. You can generally tell the direction based on the movements of other squares.

A few things that need to be added
-a proper win condition. (once you get big enough, there’s some graphics problems)
-particle effects or something to indicate where the barriers between up/down are
-a limit to your boost, recharging with time (that’s the plan for the red bar on the side)

Game is written in C++/SDL, and is feasibly playable on everything, but was compiled on a Windows XP machine.

This is like the fourth prototype I’ve worked on so far.  Things are going slowly today for me as I have been scattered between a few ideas while I hoped for one to spark my excitement.  I think I’ve finally got an idea I’m psyched about enough that I’m doing a bare bones playable version of.  Hoping the scope is right for the time remaining.  We shall see.

I’ve don’t written any code yet. I’ve only made some artworks. My game will probably

be a simple plateformer in the halloween theme and  will look like this:

Concept art for mini-ld 16

Rythm patterns recognition works! It was a lot easier than I had expected. See in screenshot:

• Patterns are described as string, for instance “1121″, where numbers from 1 to 4 mean drums 1 to 4 (and also keys 1 to 4)
• The actual rythm is given by a list of numbers, given in beats. {0,1,2,3} means that the four notes of this pattern are played on  each beat. {0, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3} is a tad more funky
• If no notes are played in the two beats following the last note, it times out and the pattern is reseted.
• After each new note, we check if the current sequence matches a pattern, and then we check that the recorded times are close enough to the wanted times. If yes, the action is launched.

Note that this implies that no pattern can be the prefix of another one, and that no note in a pattern can be equal or longer than two beats.

Pom pom pom TADA pom!

I don’t have a lot of time free this weekend, so I’m doing a split Saturday + Monday 48 hour block.

I’m thinking of prototyping a game I’ve wanted to develop for a while. The basic idea is that there are a number of attractive / repulsive balls in an environment. Each surface in the environment, as well as each ball, has a polarity (somewhat like gravity, or electrostatic charge). Like states repell, opposite states attract. A ball’s polarity can be flipped by pressing a corresponding key. We can’t move the balls directly, but by altering their polarity we can push or pull them using nearby objects.

Here’s my initial screen shot

I’m just not feeling this for some reason. The theme rocks, especially the limited palette and fixed window size — but I’ve completely lost interest in the thing I’m building.

The title reflects my soul-crushing lack of creativity this weekend...

The game is in as3, and is, if you like, quite playable.

Slowly an idea jelled for me.  It’s a sort of tactical battle game.  Here’s my concept drawing.  The only resource is time, as the better fighters take longer to generate.  The interesting part comes from the planning required because you have a build queue/factory of four guys, but can only place them in the order that they generate.  Naturally the strong guys take a lot longer to build.

With the limited controls, I figured, why not make a simple little “eat smaller things, avoid bigger things” game, so I’ve been working on that. The idea is that you can only move left/right, and up/down is controlled by where on the screen you are. Here’s a screenshot.

thedaian's miniLD16

This should be good. First attempt at anything. But I might have some ideas? I’m not even sure yet but I made this, so that’s a start.

I’m thinking some kind of basic space shooter with 8 (might be a bit too many) slots for available lasers with upgrade capabilities or something. Sort of making this up as I go, so should be interesting to say the least.

I’m writing my first mini LD game! It’s going to be a simple game where you guess what object is being drawn on the screen. It’s designed for two players (on the same computer), but a single-player mode will be available as well. The code for the game is almost finished:

I just need to draw a lot more awful images!

This ought to give you some idea of the direction I’m taking with this competition. It’s going to be a 2D puzzle platform game (my specialty ), with minimalist graphics (partly due to the comeptition restrictions, but mostly because I only know how to do pixel art).

I’ve figured out the story, though I’m not going to give it away here for fear of spoiling it. I’m mildly irritated by the restriction on screen size, since my game is set on a 32×32 grid – hence the black border around the image to pad it out.

The engine is up and running; I only need the level design now. Obviously that is the part that will take the most time.

I’ve decided on my concept. Pentominoes in < 4k.

I’ve got my seven 1×1 images done, and am going to start on my code in a little while.

I’m beginning to see the merits of tiny code. I’m liking the challenge of it.

I’m going to be working in hour-long periods with breaks in-between. I’m not sure if I’ll do it all today, or if I’ll even use the entire 6 hours or if I’ll use 7 or 8. Part of the fun.

I’ve got the colors from the image matched pretty well, I think, and, well, I’m ready to go.

Also: If anyone here knows how to get an RGB (As opposed to RGBA) image out of Inkscape, I’d appreciate some instruction on the matter. )

Here’s hoping…

—MrDude

I’ve ponding the constraints, but haven’t had that “I know” moment yet. At this point the input constraints seem the most limiting to me.

So I’ll apparently be ripping off Patapon, a rythm game on PSP with cool vector-like graphics. Of course it’s gonna be nowhere near that fancy, and I actually never played Patapon. We’ll see.

I think I have enough graphics to start with, and I’ll try to get some coding done.

So I had the unfortunate happening of passing out an hour after the constraints were announced, and I didn’t wake up until about 30 minutes ago.  In any case, I think that was a good thing because as soon as I woke up, my mind was fresh with ideas given the constraints of this MiniLD (yay!).

My biggest hurdle so far was coming up with a fun game idea that could use the input constraints well.  I thought it’d be fun to use the number keys at the top of the keyboard and situate your hands with one finger on each key (as if you had your hands on home row, just shifted up two rows).  Then each finger pretty much is a single trigger or button, and so the challenge then became what can I do with 8 push buttons? And that’s when ideas started coming.

I should note here that I also wanted to avoid mapping four of the keys to the directional motions left/down/up/right (which I’m sure you vi/vim users out there would’ve loved ).  So with that in mind, I started discarding a lot of ideas and typical gameplay mechanics.  And then as I was staring at my VCR, it kind of hit me: it would be cool to make a game the used some sort of tape transport control scheme would be cool, you know, have a rewind, fast forward, play/pause, and a “record” button.

So from there, this idea formed: you’re a runner.  I don’t know what kind of runner, maybe the world’s fastest runner, who knows?  But you’re a runner who runs at a constant speed but can also affect the time and space of things around you.  Your main time controls are:

• Slow down – Everything around you moves at a reduced speed.
• Play/Pause – Actually stop everything around you from moving.
• Record snapshot – Remember the player’s current location and other physics state (velocity, direction, etc).
• Speed up – Everything around you moves at a faster speed.

Of course, manipulating the time-space continuum is a tiring feat!  So for that reason you have kind of a “time stamina” you have to manage, and if you don’t have enough energy, mashing your transport controls aren’t going to do a thing.

As for your other hand, it’ll be used to activate various “abilities” your player learns in the form of pickups/powerups.  I have four slots to play with, and I’m thinking of reserving one to always be jump.  I might continue running (no pun intended) with the track runner theme and have other pickups be like a pole from a pole vault (so you can make it over higher obstacles) or a shot put (use as a projectile weapon).

Enough rambling. I need breakfast.

Here it goes, my first LD of any kind. I don’t have any concept art but the game is a cross of Tetris and some game that I don’t know its name. I am 1 hour into the project and it is going well. It will be done fast, only polishing remains tomorrow.

The constrains are a nice idea and I will stick to them. I took myself some time to get an idea for that input scheme. I want to see my voice as SFX in game, that will be fun.

Well back to work. I hope I make it.

Not sure if I will go ahead and make this yet … but here’s a mockup on one idea:

I’ll take the opportunity to give myself a crash course in Flixel to make this, methinks. Now for sleep.

so here’s the concept:

sure it looks like dinorun but I dont care, the control constraints seemed to scream ‘running game’ at me and I wanted to do a dinosaur game anyway so thats what Ima do.

the actual game will be in 3D though, and unlike run or balt, you’ll be able to go both right, AND left! I know going left in video games is like dark voodoo but whatevs, ima do it!