Ok,…one week ago we were all still coding and developing like hell and it is again amazing what cool stuff was created. Big respect to everyone.

I as always viloated the “keep it simple”-rule and switched from a too complicated RTS approach to a not less complicated Third-Person-Shooter… That’s me, and even I know I decided to change my behavior for the next time, I’m sure I will fail again (until the complicated project works out)

Nevertheless I want to present you a little introductional video I created with blender and windows video maker. Actually I have absolutley no experience in that so expect not too much(click the image)

EDIT:

I also created my timelapse video now. Have a look here:

http://thomas.trocha.com/games/ld17/ld17.html

A few days have passed, so its time for me to write a postmortem before I forget everything I did with Invasive.

First: Thanks to everyone who played my game!

This is long, and possibly of little interest so I’ll hide it behind a read-more tag.
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Well i certainly had a lot of fun last weekend, The theme was so-so, obviously created many similar games (i believe someone posted a list of all the games who’s names started with “island”, but i digress). I personally really liked the theme, if only because if it had been something else i would have never created the game i did. Now if you’ll bear with me, i’d like to share my thoughts about the voting:

It always seems like we get these generic themes (caverns, exploration, islands) and not many people are ever overly happy with them… so how do they win? Here’s my oppinion; other themes such as “continuous motion” are more personal; more likely to get a direct YES or NO. Themes like “islands” are much more open to lots of different genres and mechanics. When you’re going through the list of themes, you’re likely to be “continuous motion? what am i going to do with that? NO, PAG? awesome! YES, Islands? hmm… meh NONE”. and since it doesnt really have that much going against it since it’s so open, it’s mostly going to get a few YESs and mostly NONEs. Other themes will get lower because they already allow the voter to think about their game, most likely resulting in a lack of ideas for a game and a NO.

Now that that’s over with, how about i respond to some comments on my game?

Diet Chugg says …

It would be cool to have a speed adjuster that would allow me to speed up night and day even faster. asides for that I can’t think of anything else to add. Well made game fun to be able to collect power-ups and build your own world.

I understand that you’re wishing that days were longer and nights shorter, unfortunately an adjuster would make things much too easy and imbalance everything!

Mstrp2ez says …

Fun game, i never understood how the underlying system for when you got what tool/weapon tought. The day/night cycle could be a bit shorter aswell. Really liked the intro!

I’ll make sure to shorten the cycles when i mess around with the game some more, as that’s two people now who comment on it, i never really had time for an actual description of how you get items.

Endurion says …

Very interesting idea but somehow it was very hard for me to get into it. I didn’t understand when I earned a new tool (do you need to gather different tiles?)

Also, I have no idea how to fight back actually. I didn’t get the sword and don’t know what to collect for that. A bit more details in the intro would’ve helped a lot.

Yes, each item has different requirements for tiles, another thing on the to-do list: explain items more. Holding SHIFT brings out your sword, there’s a description of each item by mousing over them saying s0, but i realize i never told anyone that

philomory says …

A clever little game with cute graphics and an amusing intro. Unfortunately, whenever nighttime rolled around and the screen got dark, performance for me dropped precipitously and the CPU spiked, which basically meant that when night approached I had to find a safe spot to stand and not move at all until morning. Which somewhat diminished my enjoyment, but overall it was still a good game. Rather difficult, but eventually you get the hang of it.

Yeah, hopefully i’ll be able to do some optimization of the darkness tiles when i go over the game again, i noticed it lagged quite a bit while programming it but due to the time constraint was forced to leave it be if i wanted to actually have an ending to the game.

localcoder says …

I liked collecting different materials and making things.

When I got to a pirate lair, I killed everyone and nothing happened – I didn’t know what to do from there.

Also, when I got the sword I didn’t know how to use it. I assumed I had to click on the pirates. It was only later that I noticed the tooltip that said to use shift.

Apart from that, I thought this was great. Especially the little lantern.

Yes! somebody commented on the lantern once you’ve cleared the pirate cave you’re supposed to go to another island and clear the pirate cave there too. Sorry i didn’t put that in the instructions <_<

Tozy says …

It was hard for me to figure out how to play at first. A tutorial would be great.

Hopefully I’ll be able to input an actual tutorial of sorts, the intro explanations were all i could do within the 48 hours!

So yeah! as you may have noticed, i’ve commented on an updated version of the game. i’m basically taking away everything except graphics and the engine, new story, stuffs, stuffs, and more stuffs that i can’t think of right now. but it should be fun!

Alright, I think it’s time for some post-compo thoughts.

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Since some people were having a lot of problems with the first version of my game, I’ve decided to release a new version fixing a few things (mainly the huge background bug with some graphics cards..) the only things changed are problems, there was NO more content added (which would be against the rules, if I remember correctly) and I got permission from an admin in IRC to make sure it was okay to do this.

Check it out here!
The Layabouts “Island Escape” Mini-Site

IndieReview looked at a few Ludum Dare 17 entries this week over at their website:

• Deep Under An Island
• A Fishing Adventure
• Artillery Isles
• The Adventures of Archie Pegalo

If you have time, stop by and drop a comment!

I have big dreams for this game. I haven’t released a commercial game yet, and none of my freeware games have been particularly popular (though well received by those who have played them)

I have a nice big list of features to add to make it a more complete game (including different island sizes, volcanoes on some of these islands, acheivements which reward optional bonuses, a campaign mode, more than 2 teams, larger battlefields… the list goes on, but all of them seem feasible enough.)

But the current and most daunting challenge of them all? Organizing, commenting, properly indenting, optimizing, and generally cleaning up just short of 2,000 line of code. Fuuuun.

How’s everyone else faring with cleaning up the code for their post-comp games?

Post-mortem, being something we may analyze after its untimely passing, strikes me as being the wrong approach. I would like to present a short living analysis; an ante-mortem, if you will.

yippppp yip yip yip yip yip yip

Building You are me now was wonderful, mostly because it had closure, but I do not consider it complete. The central idea, using the Islands metaphor as a physical mechanic, falls short of my initial thoughts when considering the theme when it was announced. While walking around Tel Aviv’s Neve Tsedek neighborhood, I chanced upon some graffiti that seemed to fit the idea of making islands stop being islands. (Continued…)

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Ok, so I did not finish my first LD on time Monday morning. Mainly because lack of gameplay and content, but also the collision detection. Also I didn’t know you could submit versions for other platforms afterwards. No worries though, I’ll know that next time.

I fixed the collision yesterday, I just had to work on those algorithms I had in mind at first. So here it is for Windows and Linux.

Run LUDUMDARE17.bat/-.sh respectively.

Short postmortem
I wasted to much time on the game engine, clearly. The concept was initially to walk around the islands (planets if you want). I was sure I could manage to get that working, I had the math right on paper, but I have missed some variables of course and had to give that up later on. Unfortunately the concept was a bit too vague, and I was sure it would pop up more stuff in my head once I was done with the major coding parts. Never got there in time though.

Of course some things went right, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have made this post. I learned how much more efficient I became by just having a TODO on paper instead of a in text file on the computer. Much more satisfying to physically cross something off. My framework needed some minor tweaks but it was working very well during development. Implementing the key and hatch went smooth, and the overall code structure is okay. And most satisfying Monday morning was being able to do the test maps very quickly in GIMP, when I was tired (of coding).

Too bad it didn’t get more game in it though. I’m eager to participate in the next LD, I can barely wait.

Hungry Hungry Castaways Postmortem

Summary of the Weekend:

On Friday night I had no idea of something to make based on islands so I decided to sleep it over. I didn’t have much when I woke up either, so around 1 pm on Saturday (15 hours in) I decided to make a simple match-3 puzzle game about collecting food to survive while deserted on an island. I decided on a selection mechanic of dragging the mouse to select the group of pieces to be cleared and collected. On and off I spent the rest of the day working on getting the game up and running, i.e. setting up the game board, creating random pieces, having pieces drop down after being cleared, etc. Then I started coding hardcore from around 6-12 pm. On Sunday I worked on scoring and the “delivery” of pieces, where after collecting a certain amount, new pieces would be dropped on the board. I hit a wall when I spent hours trying to get the game to run on other computer (which was the main cause of my failure to submit last December for LD16). I finally got through DLL hell to spend 30 minutes on some polish and visual aspects, submitting the game 3 minutes before the deadline. Over the course of the weekend I probably spent only around 12 hours of coding (plus 2-3 hours for figuring out how to distribute).

What Went Wrong:

- I did not to any pre-competition planning. I just jumped in there on Saturday without a thought. Getting the game to work on other computers was a pain, and I should’ve learned from last time not to wait until last minute to do that.

- Also related to a lack of planning, I wanted to add audio to the game, but I have never used the audio library for SDL nor have I recorded any sounds for games before. I once again should’ve handled this during the week prior to the competition.

- The scoring system was very arbitrary, and I didn’t put much thought into it. I made the minimum score for round completion too high and should’ve done some play-testing with my siblings or my friends. Also,I should have put more time and thought into a reason why when people die on the island or get weaker, you don’t need less points to continue.

- A few other things like ability to pause the game and a display of the score that is needed to finish the round would have been good additions that I never put in.

What Went Right:

- I really liked the core gameplay mechanic (drag to select) for selecting pieces, and thanks to the feedback I’ve gotten so far from fellow developers who judged my game here at Ludum Dare, and a few friends who have played the game, I have found out that other people do as well.

- I finished! This was my first time submitting to Ludum Dare (second time competing), and I’m glad I was able to get it done and enter it in the competition.

Overall I think the game came out really well. I may do a post-compo version to add a few things and fix the scoring system, and will definitely explore the drag-to-select mechanic more (hopefully sometime soon). I’d also like to thank everyone who judged my game so far (and anyone who does so over the next week and a half).

(If you haven’t played the game, here is the entry page)

Things that went well:

• The fact that I managed to finish a pretty decent game in a day.
• My first ludum without C++. This time it was gamemaker, and given the time I had I couldnt have made a playable without it. That said, I miss C++, and there are things that would be different if I used it

Things that didn’t

• I have to ban vlc, and stop watching full metal alchemist and other tv-series during development. The game would probably have been slightly better if I didn’t.
• Avoid celebrating the birthdays of family and friends, they keep you back

Feedback response:

Given that I can’t respond to the feedback/comments in the voting system, and it kinda relates to the postmortem, I figured that I would respond to some here as well…

“Would of loved to see some music in the game.” Agreed I’m investigating that at the moment, as sfxr does the sounds I think musagi is a good bet for the music. To bad my music, so far, has given it’s listeners headaches

“it might be easier to use WASD” As far as I know arrowkeys are the only universal system. wasd works on qwerty keywords, but are a pain on azerty. It would be best to default to wasd, and let the user choose it’s settings, or have two settings. Time however stopped that path. If anyone have any better alternatives/quick paths I’m all ears

“cute graphics” – just have to say.. wow! someone likes my programmer art *happy*

Ugly terrible sky, and stupidly placed ruffians, but I'm happy with the grass.

Guess what you can get your hands on? A post-competition alpha, that’s what! It’s finally got some content in it, and that kinda makes everything more enjoyable, or at least eye pleasing.

Any thoughts on jump height and water appearance would be much appreciated. Readme contains some notes and a changelog for those curious about such things, though it’s pretty brief.

Points for anyone who guesses which .zip is which.

Comments, criticism, etc would be lovely.

I’ve fixed some bugs with my entry.  So far it seems people only noticed the clicking bug (caused by the code I use to start the game in fullscreen at your native resolution, with black bars if your monitor’s not 16:10 – it was working before the compo, then I stupidly broke it during).  Other bugs fixed include the text rendering as black boxes on OSX, and it crashing straight away on my intel graphics netbook.

I consider these game breaking, and have updated my entry’s links accordingly.  If you want to see the original versions, here they are:

Windows – OSX – Linux/source code

Also, thanks for the comments guys   I pretty much agree – visually it’s my strongest LD entry to date, but gameplay-wise it’s just too random, with no real opportunity for the player to turn it to their advantage.

What do you say to that, Jim?

On Saturday (compo Saturday), Ludum Dare 17 got a not as the headline “Indie Game Links” article on IndieGames.com.

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/04/indie_game_links_its_a_dare_go.html

Historically, IndieGames.com tends to post a few select entries from the LD competitions, so lets start making a list.

(Terry’s pre-LD game again… Stop being so famous you!)
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/04/freeware_game_pick_sumouse_ter.html

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2010/04/freeware_game_pick_brave_islan.html

ByteJacker is totally awesome. This week they’ve been digging through Ludum Dare 17′s epic 200+ submissions for their favorites. Keep an eye on their front page for the latest. I’ll try to keep this post updated with links as they post them.

(Terry’s pre-LD game)
http://www.bytejacker.com/blog/terry-cavanaghs-new-game-almost-broke-my-mouse

http://www.bytejacker.com/blog/ludum-dare-17-brave-island-diver
http://www.bytejacker.com/blog/ludum-dare-17-radio-silence
http://www.bytejacker.com/blog/ludum-dare-17-island-rescue
http://www.bytejacker.com/blog/ludum-dare-17-island-hopping *NEW*

I’m supposed to be working, but Sol_HSA’s thread got pretty big pretty fast. This is probably a good time to get an official word out there, to avoid future uncertainty, and to catch up those that missed it.

We had a pretty intense discussion some months back about how we were going to manage Ludum Dare’s growth. Ludum Dare today is a far bigger than any of us imagined it would become, and it wants to keep getting bigger and bigger.

On the one side, it wants to be more and more inclusive. We’ve relaxed the rules to include pretty-much every piece of gaming making middleware available today (even Unreal 3, our old example of what’s “not allowed”). The previous problem of enabling anyone to create sound effects quickly was practically solved by the introduction of sfxr. Aside from allowing outside content, the only thing we haven’t given the thumbs up to was teams (well, other than a slight rules page oversight this compo).

On the other side, we have what’s probably best described as classic Ludum Dare. A strict set of rules, everything from scratch, full source, the cliche “real men write their own compilers with soldiering irons” angle (not to disrespect the ladies, but we are the pig-headed kings of extremes ).

Unfortunately it’s not a simple matter of taking one side and growing that way. Or maybe it is, but that’d be like shooting ourselves in the foot. As things become more open, rules start to fade, keeping things fair becomes more and more difficult. We also have our legacy to consider, and we know from experience rules and restrictions keep things focused and produce results. After all, we are the 48 hour competition.

So what’s our solution?

The new Ludum Dare we hope to create in the coming months is something I like to call “The Ludum Dare Competition and Jam“. As expected we’re combining the two camps, but the tricky part was coming up with what we think is the best way to do that.

The Ludum Dare Competition is the same Ludum Dare you all know and love. It’s a competition. We tighten up the rules a bit, specifically, changing them in to eligibility requirements. Solo, include source, all content created in 48 hours, etc. Not much different than what you’re used to, but the emphasis here will be keeping things fair and realistic.

The Ludum Dare (Online) Jam is the new open Ludum Dare. Bring in a friend, keep your source to yourself, take an extra day (but just 1). Ludum Dare is a serious game making event, synonymous with the idea of prototyping a game in a weekend. We exist to be your reason to create something. And if you participated, we want everyone to know. Unlike the competition, there is no voting in the Jam.

So like always, you tune in Friday night for the theme (timezone respected), and you make a game. If you end up breaking the rules (competition eligibility), oh well, you can still submit it for the Jam. If you’re running late but still wanted to make something, again, you can still submit it to the Jam. Or if you regularly work with a friend or team, make it a Ludum Dare weekend! Crunch a playable prototype during the weekend, share it with us via the Jam, and submit it to the App Store a week later.

You could even take steps to create separate Competition and Jam versions of your game. For example, someone that’s both a coder and an artist could submit an eligible version of their game without sound and music, and a Jam version with help from their sound designer friend.

In a nutshell, that’s what we’re thinking the new Ludum Dare should be. Share your thoughts in the comments.

I just wanna say a BIG thank you to everyone who has critiqued my entry for this Ludum Dare.
The comments have been very inspiring, and has motivated me to continue working on the mechanic.

Some points in response to some of the comments:

• Making use of the mouse is actually to keep the right hand occupied, because its really easy if both hands are available to press keys on the keyboard.
• Only 3 ports can be selected at once because that is the maximum keys on most keyboards that can be sensed.
• The representation of trading seems to be too confusing for many people, I’ll change that while keeping the core keyboard twister mechanic.
• And er… sorry about the lack of levels.  I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore at 6am.
• EDIT: Someone asked for the sourcecode of the game, here’s the .gmk file:

  http://xmashed.com/games/keytrader_source.rar

Thank you all for your suggestions and feedback.

With Gratitude,
XM

#1 yes I will be voting on games, but I also took a day off from work to LD, so I HAD to catch up on that

#2 thanks for anyone for playing my to big idea, all was going super awesome fast, then I hit a logic sequence bug that sucked 6 hours out of my day and the schedule went down the crapper! so at best i shoehorned in the very basic game mechanic and submitted it.

This game however is actually something I want to sit down and make right, and why not, I already have a “keyboard barf concept game” that (except for the last few hours) is reasonably openly scripted, even  if its cluttered and redundant

BUGS! yes I know, sorry

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