I’ve decided to blog about my progress with my game “Cherry”.

Today, I added missiles and particle effects for the ship’s boosters and the missiles.

Here’s a screenie:

Aren't particle effects pretty?

Anyone who’d like to try it can pick up a copy here.

(Note: Currently, you need Löve to play. Once I’ve got something I’m comfortable calling a game, I’ll start posting downloads that include the engine)

I’ve recently begun learning Lua and playing with the LOVE game engine.

I’m making a space shooter, and I have a screenshot of what I’ve got so far:

MiniLD #19 will take place the second weekend in June, more specifically June 12 to 13.

I’m planning to post the rules the next weekend (technically, the MiniLD rules says to post them by the 1st, but well, the first rule modification is that I’ll post them around the 5th).

Update, June 5: MiniLD #19 Rules have been posted.

I’ve spent a little time creating some template code for the next LD event, after failing at LD #17. I wanted to share this, in case any other Linux devs can benefit.

My template doesn’t do much, which is sort of the point given the nature of Ludum Dare. I wanted to gather up some basic functionality that I consider to be fair to use, and probably already available to many other LD’ers using existing game engines like OGRE, etc. Using this I hope to be able to get a quicker start during the events.

I’m using Linux, C++, CMake, SFML, GLee, OpenGL, and OpenAL. Here are the features I’m going for:

• Get a window up on the screen. Admittedly, this isn’t too hard thanks to SFML.
• Load music / sound files from disk, and play them.
• Load UV texture-mapped 3D objects exported from Blender (http://blender.org/) and display them using OpenGL VBOs. The Blender export script I’ve created is included.
• Render bitmapped fonts using image files loaded from disk.
• Build either a Linux or Windows executable by changing a CMake flag (I have a mingw32 cross compilation set up, installed).

You can download my template here: ld48_template.tar.gz

If you can use this, or have time to build the sample app and give me some feedback, that would be awesome. Thanks!

-Windsor

P.S. I just read PoV’s post about packaging Linux applications. I’ll have to put some of those techniques to use in the next version of my template.

Towlr and friends were last seen on Destructoid.

http://www.destructoid.com/monday-mind-teasers-towlr-170815.phtml

Several minds were destroyed that day.

So I’ll keep this brief (it’s 2 am…), but I released an update to Island Hopping with online leaderboards and a few more features a bit under a week ago with the help of some friends. So we put it up on Mod DB (here’s the page) and got a surprisingly large reaction… I was just looking at the leaderboard stats:

• 135,000 Runs recorded (!!!)
• 13,629,036,774 total points earned
• 796 Hours worth of runs (that’s 33 DAYS, and I released it 6 days ago….)
• 1112 unique usernames (and there are about 31,000 runs by “Anonymous”…)

For 48 hours of work, plus a couple weeks’ on and off tinkering, I’m absolutely amazed…

More Ludum Dare game sightings, this time in Retro Gamer.

One of the reasons why the UK rocks. A gaming rag dedicated to retro/classic gaming.

Ludum Dare 16‘s Humor winner, “Fuck Oregon, lets go find El Dorado” by Crackerblocks.

I'd recognize that green triangle anywhere

Thanks go out to doohan for the photos.

PC Gamer (US) recently did a feature titled “50 games to play at work”.

Because you should be playing games, not working

And on that list, #32 is Notch‘s “Breaking the Tower” from Ludum Dare 12.

Pixels in print

Congratz Notch!

Also, thanks to MrPhil for sending me the photos.

If you see a Ludum Dare entry on a major news site or gaming magazine, let me (PoV) know! Thanks!

Earlier today, I googled my game Jump Pirate (hoping somewhat optimistically that had been reviewed as some other entries were) and I found a page for it on Softpedia with 56 downloads. This surprised me, as I had never before heard of Softpedia and I certainly hadn’t submitted anything to them. Yet there it was, under my name no less.

Further investigation showed that no less than 18 games I had placed on the YoYo Games website had been promoted on Softpedia, all without my knowledge or consent. I’m not sure how many other LD participants are concerned, but dock’s Turtle Ferry was also available for download.

Some of you may consider this a good thing – as you are right to, since Softpedia is a popular website and your game will be downloaded more if they feature it. I personally consider that they are benefiting from my work without my consent. I don’t mind YoYo Games advertising on my game’s page, since they maintain the tools I use to create games and the forums I use to discuss them, but anyone else is a no-no.

(Personally, I am on shaky ground with some of my earlier games, since I included a license agreement that specifically granted the player the right to distribute the game. Now that that clause has actually been invoked, I’m considering removing it. My own stupid fault though.)

Anyway, what do you think about this whole tangled issue? And are your games available anywhere without your consent?

My game got 15th place on 204 entries. “Yay”, mesays.

And 4th in Innovation, Community and Theme.

So close to a medal! Thank you so much for your votes, and comments.

About the comments, they are very very positive, and this is extremmely rewarding. You all point out very clear downsides, that I am going to list here.

You big enthousiasm gave me the will to rewrite the game. Take your comments in account, try to make it better. More optimised, more fun, more functionnal, more beautiful. It might become my first full fledged game. And that would be nice.

Controls are awkward

True. As I wrote, I designed them with a gamepad in mind, and that was probably a bad idea. First because everyone doesn’t have a gamepad, and second because as it’s been pointed out, mouse controls would be a lot better.

Also, there are far too many controls. Moving, rotating, zooming camera is already 8 buttons. Could be reduced by suppressing the “strafe” left and right controls and probably still be functionnal. Given the height of the hills, we certainly need camera rotation, to reach “behind” them.

In the same vein, the “beacon” and “boat” shortcuts might be removed. They allow for faster play, but are confusing at first.

However, mouse controls were a lot harder to implement (I’m still not sure how to do the inverse transformation to get from screen to heightfield cell), so I went for buttons.

Solution: go for mouse control, as in classic RTS. Mouse to select buildings, mouse buttons to bring up menus, mouse at the edge of the screen to scroll. Mouse wheel to zoom. Maybe mouse in the top corners to rotate?

With of course keyboard equivalents for the poor chaps who still one one button mouses… Wink wink nudge nudge. And good old RTS keyboard shortcuts.

Gameplay is a bit confusing

Some of you mentionned this, and the fact that 3 pages of manual is too long. I can understand that, especially when you have 204 games to grade. Guilty as charged. When I decided to make a strategy game — with different types of buildings, each with its specificities — the game became inherently complex. And not “casual” anymore like many of the LD entries. That’s a choice that probably rebuked many players, and a risk to take. On the other hand, the only remaining ones were the most perseverent, and they seemed to find the game worth the effort. And graded well. Thanks again!

Solution: as suggested, inside help could be useful, as well as tooltips, maybe even tutorials. And pictures in the external manual.

Polish

Shading is a bit off at night time, menus sometimes disappear under water, aiming precision is not great, beacon rings should be visible at all times, colors didn’t get unanimity, etc.

Obviously, in a limited time competition, some polish gets left out. Especially since the technical part was quite challenging to me. All that would be corrected/improved in a post compo version. Notably, I would like to:

• replace my lousy 3D icons by 2D, maybe have a HUD à la Warcraft, or just a bring-up menu.
• use 2D sprites as well for the dezoomed view, instead of OpenGL square dots.
• more eye candy. My lightnings are a bit lame, the uniform water is not that nice. could use a sky in zoomed views. Maybe more gimmicks on the land so that it doesn’t look so empty.
• sound effects.
• longer music, maybe different themes.
• different environments, colors themes, etc.

More gameplay

No one commented on that, but I was thinking about it in my postmortem. Although many of you found the game enjoyable as it is, my intention was in fact to make it multiplayer.

• cooperative mode. 2+ players share the same ressources (max number of stuff) on the same map, and try to save as many people possible, together. Allows for more micromanagment and interesting strategic interaction.
• competitive mode. 2+ players share the map and people, but have their own ressources/buildings. In the end, the winner is the one who saved the biggest number of people.
• versus mode. 2+ players play on totally independent games but with an identical starting point. Other players can be displayed as “shadows”. There is no interaction at all between players, the point is to see how many people is saved by each player, given the same map.

Now I’m not sure a solo campain would be interesting. There are few types of buildings, one type of guys, and the point of the game is to control them indirectly. There wouldn’t be heros, or real stories behind.

Of course, there could a be a series of tutorials, introducing the buildings one by one. Or I could radically change the whole thing and add lots of unit/building types, and make it a full fledged RTS with military and bloodbaths and whatnot. But that wouldn’t really uphold the original concept.

I could, later, make a wargame out of this, in a sequel. But for now I’d just like to remake *this* game, since you seemed to like it so much.

Technical notes

I’m not really sure what i mean by “rewrite”. Of course, the LD code is pretty much unusable. Globals everywhere, fake OOP with ugly shortcuts, last minute patches that became core functions, etc. Also, it’s written entirely in Lua, and performance is probably not excellent. That means I should probably move the computation intensive parts to C (or a C based language such as Objective-C that I happen to know): heightfield generation and altitude interpolation, drawing calls, etc.

Sadly I don’t really know where to put the limit, and I haven’t really experimented yet with C-Lua communication and design. For now my library is mainly a wrapper that makes low-level functions available to Lua, and everything from low-level to logic is in Lua.

Might be an interesting challenge. Might also be one of these things I get sucked into and in which I roam around for ages in technical desperation.

The good things

You mentionned awesome, fun, damn cool, interesting, great visual style, atmosphere, “perfect” music, great feeling of doom.

Mission accomplished. Thank you a billion times.

Stay tuned for a possible remake, and see you during the next LD!

gonna be ma avitar if it works:D

IT WORKS !!!!!!!!

i feel like crying

so this is the worlds bets avitar

i need to know how to change your avitar!!!!
respond please

ya im on the sight YAY but wating for ludum dare 18

a little late on entering this, but whatever.

WARNING: UNPOLISHED GAME AHEAD

instructions: (because they’re not ingame)

-arrow keys to move the cow-copter
-pick up all the stranded cows then return to the launch pad in all 8 levels!

thanks to ShockedFrog for making a bunch of sprites, though i didnt use many of them, basically only had 4 hours to make this so not that many game-play elements

edit: see the same thing posted again but with download link at

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-18/?action=preview&uid=1548

Now, since this is a Mini-LD, feel free to finish. Just do so!

Submit here

Here you go, fellows! Enjoy, and make sure you turn on your speakers, cuz you cannot win without them.

Thanks for the art, Airbasher. Having just one guy as the extent of my art assets added an interesting constraint.

Submission page here.

PLAY IN YOUR BROWSER HERE.

I’m not entirely sure how I got here, it’s playable (WASD movement, space to shoot, esc to quit) but that’s about all I can say. I’m going to bed.

http://www.shockedfrog.com/misc/tlofch.zip

Didnt get to put down that much time into the game, the result reflects that fact.

But atleast i finished something:

http://www.strangechair.se/LDM18/bin/

Because of a bug, the game can  behave strangely on slow connections.

I have completed 18 propositions which my miniature Ludum dares. I call it Flying Cow’s Risk And Missile. It is about a cow’s competition and a missile’s airplane. You must hit the missile to destroy them by the airplane, so that the innocent person has not been injured. The cow in English is not very good, please forgive him. Now goes! Your country is in need of you!

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mz0wnnwnkmj

Yayzors!

http://www.filefront.com/16456429/MLD17.exe