All done, and I’m pretty satisfied with the final product.  I managed to make a game that fits the theme, but without throwing enemies at other enemies, taking control of enemies, etc.  I think the way I used the theme is unique, so I’m pleased with that.

Would have loved to put more bad guys in, etc., but for the 20-some hours I spent on it, I feel good about it.  It’s a Flash game, so click the picture and have a go!

Hey there, with running and rushing around, I’ve managed to get an entry into Ludum Dare 18. It’s not much, but I hope people enjoy it. The focus of the game is to survive for as long as possible, fighting off enemy monsters and stealing their powers from them on death. It’s a bit quirky at points, but I hope still fun.

It’s been a blast working in this contest, I wish everyone else the best of luck, and hope folks appreciate the work everyone’s put out around here.

Here’s the link to ARCANE;

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=1913

Okay, this was such a learning experience. I was able to make it in on time, with 15 minutes or so of grace time. I had to put in a somewhat inferior game that you cannot win, but ah well, it’s mostly functional. You’re a lolcat, and you must placate zombies! Use left/right or a/d to move, and spacebar to placate. Play it here!

Also, here’s my source. Here be dragons. Beware.

I’m planning on doing a post-mortem analyzing what I did, what I’ve learned, and what I’m going to do next time. You will want to read it because I’m so gosh-darned witty. Right? RIGHT? Good!

Bye for now, and I look forward to playing everyone’s games and rating them (fairly)!

First of all I had to google disguise to figure out how to spell it right so if nothing else I learned that from this compo…

Ace Disguise Master takes a interesting approach to being an enemy to defeat enemies using enemies power. If that doesn’t count as enemies as weapons I’m out of ideas…

anyways screen shot:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=1517

The rest I will be using a  insert more tag as to not take up all of the main page with my random stuff (more…)

Finished my game finally, I’d tell you more, but I’ve already covered it over here: (where you can also play it! exciting!)

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

So my entry is complete as of about half an hour ago or so: result can be found at http://paul.sztajer.org/?p=56.

I got pretty much all the features that I wanted into this game, but the lack of playtesting possibly hurt it a bit. Trigonometry haunted me (as it always does in any programming venture I ever seem to take on), and there was a rough patch of simply awful bugs, but generally it all went really smoothly (particularly considering it was the first time I’d really done map editing, pixel drawing, a platformer… the list goes on).

Definitely looking forward to doing this again, and thanks to the organisers for putting this together.

Ouch!  My brain hurts.  Posted my game 4 minutes before the deadline.

Did 30hrs plus hours on it, but didn’t get my front in or multiple levels.   I hope you have fun playing it.

Well, I added everything I needed to the game and looked at the clock.  Just under half an hour left.
I spent the next thirty minutes doing the fastest game development I have ever done, because I figured I might as well throw in more enemies. Anyway, now that everything is done, go take a look at my entry!

This was lots of fun. Hopefully I’ll have time to enter the next Ludum Dare. But in the meantime, this one still isn’t over. Good luck everyone, and to those entering the Jam, hope the next day is free of bugs!

Robocop and brainstorming

enemies as weapons

wielding enemies as melee weapons

taking enemies’ abilities

throwing enemies as weapons

enemy = that which actively opposes you

weapon = tool by which to destroy stuff

~

enemies as weapons…

obvious: Character uses enemies as weapons

what if enemies use each other as weapons?

or the other way around: your weapons become your enemies.

weapons turning against you

enemies as ammunition

11:00 – 12:00

Better brainstorming & Basic engine. Level or random level plans.

okay, so:

platformer along the bottom of the screen, and a bit of a shmup in the bigger picture.

every enemy you destroy can be used as ammunition (?) or maybe launches up on its own.

what i do

enemies as weapons…

Every enemy is a walking SOLID with a BUTTON located somewhere on it.

To defeat an enemy, PRESS ITS BUTTON.

You have no attacks: some enemies / obstacles can only

be defeated by utilizing other enemies’ buttons.

The final boss will be a flying space ship that you need to shoot at with button enemies.

When the button is pressed, a robot’s life-force is totally extinguished

and put into powering the attack that follows.

Some enemies will blow up after a certain amount of time,

and others will fire lasers,

etc.

Not all will be attacks per se; some will be shields or other things.

YOU can be injured but can use explosions to your advantage maybe?

edit – or levers!

in any case, you’ve got:

enemies with bad parts that hurt, trigger parts that cause effect & death,

and while they do move they’re also solid and push you around and you can ride them around.

They will not walk through one another.

Compiling first working build:

CHARACTER can move and jump.

COLLISIONS implemented properly.

this adorable guy is ready to jump around like mad!

Levels: VERTICAL, oh so vertical.

12:00 —> 7:30

i feel asleep

7:30 – 8:15

Work work work

Okay not really that much working.

Puzzled away at animating stuff.

kinda awkward-looking.

8:15 – 11:11

Breakfast, Relaxation, and Lunch.

plans?

11:11

…

11:35

Clothing!

~ WELCOME TO SATURDAY, SECOND HALF ~

3:00 – 4:00

Back from wedding! Large gap.

Working on Foe/Wpn archetype and relationship.

4:00

Missioner Rd.

Mishner, Mischner, etc etc etc

Not done yet! Adding the first enemy.

4:00 – 9:30

Party down

9:30 – 10:30

Drive back.

Design reconsideration:

Knock enemies up/down by popping and stomping.

Any enemy put into this state (it may take a few hits?) will be put into a ‘bullet’

state where they bounce until landing safely somewhere.

Player’s abilities are…

11:00 – 11:30

Returned home. Back to work.

Checking some website crap.

11:30 – 12:30

ACTUALLY back to work!

Got some good work done; back at home! I’m off of laptop and back onto my desktop.

Foe.as object is now better, as their reactions have been simplified.

Player has two options -

1. Pop enemies up from below. If they’re weak enough, this will result in their destruction

and subsequent conversion into projectiles which must hit the enemy boss ship up above

if they are to be useful in any way.

2. Stomp enemies from above. This will weaken enemies, bounce the player, and almost NEVER

kills enemies. It will never result in a straight up projectile.

Enemy boss ship has a few attacks, but…

One attack drops EGGS (maybe several at once or maybe the attack just happens a lot).

An EGG can be launched right back at the enemy ship with good timing, although it is

a pretty weak shot.

It explodes after a very short time, and an enemy bursts out.

~ WELCOME TO THE MORNING ~

2:00 – 2:30

Time to sleep.

There is a SPACE INVADER BOSS at the top of the screen, dropping eggs as its moves.

Currently the screen gets saturated and oversaturated with eggs and then basic enemies (Stampies)

Next steps:

1. Make enemies fire projectiles upon death

2. Make another enemy that deactivates when stomped on

3. MODERATE # OF ENEMIES ON-SCREEN using MOST or ALL of the below…

a) dropping fewer eggs when more enemies are on-screen

b) making enemies occasionally kill themselves

c) making enemies ‘eat’ eggs if there are too many of them? (too many enemies)

REMEMBER: LUDUM DARE!

2:30 – 10:15

Sleeping!

10:15 – 11:15

Resume work after waking

32, 29, 26, 24, 22, 20, 18, 16,

14, 12, 11, 10,  9,  8,  7,  6

Invader drops eggs. Enemies will ‘hurt’ you.

Eggs are intangible now.

YAY it’s all dandy

12:00

Log not being very loggy.

Currently player cannot die,

but otherwise basic game is complete!

BOSSMAN drops eggs which explode into fresh enemies (only one type).

You (PLAYER) can jump on heads of enemies to bounce, or slide under and pop up to kill them and turn them into air projectiles.

These projectiles knock the BOSS back one superlarge pixel, dealing one damage.

I may introduce some kind of health system for each pixel of knockback.

Next step: NEW ENEMIES.

and honestly that’s about it! I’m almost done <3

~ HELLO 24-HOUR CLOCK ~

13:00

Have finished adding ‘Red’, the jumpy bastard of a counterpart to the player, ‘Blu’

(not really tf2 related >_>)

13:20 – 13:30

Eating food.

13:30

Back to work. Brainstorming new enemies & considering new music

larger enemies …

Enemy that grows up eventually after hatching

13:37

What else?

Need more enemy designs, especially for more difficult sections.

Ranged attacker enemy

Music making failing; movie in the same room = no chance for success

16:00

Wow! It’s been a while!

… and then I went six hours without writing anything else.

This time was spent adding the pointy-headed crown bastard of an enemy, tweaking stuff,

eating homemade pizza for dinner,

uh… making a title screen, win screen, lose screen, and then desperately scratching around in the dirt for a NAME for this game.

‘Undermine’.

Enjoy!

I submitted my game to the form with 5 minutes to spare! Phew…

Play it  here in your browser!

My game page here on the Ludum Dare blog.

It’s finally done… You can download it from the competition page, or from here.

Should work in most Windows machines, although I only tested it with Windows 7 (64-bit)… But all the code is pretty straightforward, and I’m using old libraries (FMod, for example)…

It might require DirectX 9.0 (Feb. Update), you can get it at Microsoft.

It may also require the Visual Studio redistributables, which you can the 2005 here or the 2008 here. I’ve done the game in VS 2005, but sometimes the 2005 redist don’t work for some reason, so that’s why there are two links…

Hope you like it, any comments are appreciated!

Tools used:

Code: Visual Studio 2005
APIs: DirectX 9 (Feb), FMod, Win32
Graphics: Photoshop CS4 (mostly traced from Oryx’s pack for the TIGSource Assemblee compo), 3d Studio Max 2010 (for title screen)
Sound: WolframTones (very awesome, only had 20 mins or so to play with it), Midi Converter Free (online free midi to mp3 converter)
Blogging: Zoundry Raven, Internet Explorer
Reading LD: Omea Reader
Listening music: Winamp

I have lots of ideas on how to make the game better, from gameplay logic (less random enemy selection, which would lead to more tactical gameplay) to additions to the gameplay mechanics (more spells, more direct control over the game itself, more unit types)…

Some of them I might add tomorrow at the Jam, if I feel like it (but I doubt it… Spent more time than I though on the competition… after all, I was just going to participate on the Jam!)…

Anyway, I’ll write a postmortem tomorrow (and look forward to reading yours, and playing your games and whatnot!)… At the time of this writing, already 142 Compo entries, and 3 for the Jam… Less than LD17, but more than LD16… And this number might swell afterwards…

So good job everyone, I had a terrific time, think that for the first time I did a game that doesn’t completely suck and looks acceptable…

Catch you all later!

Ok, I think my entry is good enough to submit and there’s probably not enough time to make any last minute changes so here it is, the final version of “Killer Knife-Robots from Knife Planet K” (Windows version).

The game is fully playable and there is a high score as an attempt to add some replay value. Instructions and controls are in the Readme.txt file in the zip.

The development process went quite smoothly and there were no major bugs. I did make a whole bunch of little mistakes (especially at the end) but I was able to resolve them quickly. Also my collision detection code  was really slow, but I was able to speed it up by doing bound-box checking before doing the actual checks (which involved a lot of floating-point maths).

I’m quite pleased with my second Ludum Dare entry and look forward to doing another one! Right now I’m hyped up on sugar and caffeine (my sleep substitute) so I’ll probably go for a bike ride or something. See you all next time!

Got the game finished, complete with enemies that actually shoot. Check it out. I didn’t have quite as much time as I would’ve liked to tune the difficulty curve, but it seems to be close enough to what it ought to be.

Join [your name here] on his quest to find his grandfather’s glasses! Battle evil rats/bunnies and turn them into equipment! Discover which items are useless, and which ones actually do something.

This is a puzzle-platformer about experimenting, exploring, and perhaps some trial-and-error dying like oldschool games.

What are you waiting for? Play it now!

Competition Entry
Windows & Source

Uses Allegro 4.4.

Source included, no basecode used.

:V unappreciative duck does not appreciate enemies. Eat them up and spit them back out in projectile form!

This is my first ever entry to Ludum Dare! HypnoFruit is a tower defense game, where your use captured creeps as towers. To use a creep as a tower you must first defeat it, then feed it enough hypnofruit.

I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to, so the graphics are horrible, and there are only 2 barely tested levels. I did manage to get a few sound effects in before I ran out of time. Overall, I had a pretty good experience, without any serious setbacks.

entry page

I made a timelapse of my development cycle.

Watch it here (I guess we cant embed youtube)/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vESFsrNpJaI

My game Dr. Stein’s Super Weapons VS Giant Robots is finished (sort of).

Lessons learned:

• Drawing sprites is hard
• Less is more
• Take breaks

Play here

Good night everyone

It’s hard to give up after working so hard, but there’s no way to get a working game in 5 minutes from what I have. The Javascript A* I nabbed off the web performs way too slowly (it does a linear search through the arrays storing open and closed nodes). If I just put a moderate blockade in place so the enemies have to path about 5 extra steps out of their way, the A* implementation takes somewhere from 1-2 seconds in firefox. Chrome is better at about .5 seconds, but still not playable. With that big a delay, the enemies overshoot their target tiles and have to backup, creating a nice conga line. Even if I managed to have a decent A*, I still didn’t get zombie infection implemented, so there still isn’t any gameplay.

I may try to get in on the jam, but with work tomorrow that only gives me a couple extra hours.

Looks like I’ll be submitting my entry for the jam and not the competition this time.

But everyone can try out what I would have submitted to the competition! Jump to this link and play the prototype for Cannon Hack.