For various reasons I don’t want to get into, I wasn’t able to take part in the October Challenge, nor the previous mini-LD, but I finally have the time, motivation and inspiration, so I’m joining the party only two months late.

My target platform is XBLIG; for the purposes of the challenge, if I have successfully submitted a title that works like I want it to by the end of the month, I’ll consider it a win, since I don’t really know how long the review process takes and there’s probably a monthly or quarterly lag between first sale and first pocketable dollar.

As for the game itself? No idea yet.

Well, as it turned out, I didn’t get anywhere near 48 hours; more like 8… Even so, I now have a slightly updated retro sound fx engine (PC speaker emulator, originally), and the OpenGL based graphics engine can load and render tiles, maps and sprites. Not quite what I intended (a playable game), but still OK considering that I’m messing with old C code and only got a fraction of the time I planned for.

I’ll probably spend a few more hours on it now, getting the game logic in too, before I go back to working on Kobo II.

Still not quite sure where to go with Project Spitfire from then on. Stick with the 320×240 256 color retro style graphics, or upgrade to current standards? Or maybe make it even more retro…? Or something completely different, way out there? Keep the fast scrolling (60 pixels/second in the original 320×232), or step down to a more traditional scrolling speed? (This has massive impact on level design and attack waves, obviously – which is why I’m leaning towards the fast scrolling, rather than doing what “everybody else” has been doing for a few decades now.) More of the current 8-bit era fixed attack waves, or add smarter enemies?

Well, a few more hours, and I can start to actually try things out and see where I want to take it – which was the whole point of picking this up in the first place! So, although Real Life(TM) got in the way again, making the deadline impossible to meet, I still got another project off the ground, and in the process, I cleaned up some old code that might show up in other projects later. For example, the graphics engine uses some code from Kobo Deluxe and the OpenGL binding from Kobo II, and might replace the messy code (and glSDL) in Kobo Deluxe later on.

Thanks for the motivation and inspiration!

David

Well, time management didn’t go as well expected. What can I say?

Anyway, I didn’t have enough time to finish the tank and robot system. My code is poorly designed, but oh well. What I did finish though is citizens moving around and an energy meter. (you can only shoot for a certain amount of time) Oh, and a score system.

Hey, at least I did better than last time.

Conquer The World

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-22/?action=preview&uid=2287 – My entry

Back to day job, it was a great week-end with you guys (and girl)!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-22/?action=preview&uid=2837

And a lil’ screenlapse

Sadly today was filled with a minor medial emergency and sitting around in the hospital.  The great news is that my wife is fine, the bad news is that I definitely will not finish my mini-LD on time.

When you think about it, the most important thing turned out well.  And the game, while important to me, suddenly meant nothing whatsoever when a loved one needed medical attention.  Really puts perspective on things, how your priorities can instantly shift and what was super important one day becomes a mere triviality when real life comes down on you like a ton of bricks.

That said, I had some really encouraging progress yesterday using away3d and jiglib in FlashDevelop for a truly 3d flash game with nice 3d physics.  I learned a lot about flash and 3d, which I needed to do for a client project anyways.  The game prototype needs 3 or 4 more days put into it to become something worth playing.  Maybe next time.  See you all next LD48 in a few weeks!

Okay, submitted.

Play it HERE if you want.

It includes only 4 levels and no music… I also wanted to add much more. But then again – 48 hours is the limit.

I’ve decided that I need to prove that I’m not just spewing hot air, I’ve got a screenshot of my… Ship on a screen that moves around and points to the mouse cursor…

Here:

This took about three or four hours, but that's all.. I.. spent... &%$#.

Okay, so now I need just the music and… LOTS of puzzling levels.

Gotta love sfxr and his child, as3sfxr.

Also – the ladders:

This !!! is !!! LADDER!!!!! *kicks*

By the way, there IS gonna be a time lapse, although not a complete one… That annoying software I use to record it crashed trice, so I’ve lost more than an hour (a PRECIOUS hour) of memo… making of … video.

I had to take a break for family reasons which took me most of the day, but maybe I can still do something tonight

I had to take a couple hours to figure out windows deployment, basically: do not use windows 7 (py2exe doesn’t seem to work there), and be aware that pygame doesn’t run in a KVM virtual machine (while C SDL does!).

So I’m building in a wxp vm, testing in a woe7 pm. Result: the sounds is much slower / less chunks at the same time under windows, ruining my rapid-gun-fire effect. woe is win…

Anyway, I have RAILGUN!

Rail Gun !

with a sound effect that I’m proud of (sfxr tuning).

Now I have to make an actual level… fast!

This time around, I’ve run out of time. My folks are holding a late Thanksgiving party today. (They were out on vacation on Thanksgiving proper)

My family are very noisy people, and I’m unlikely to be able to get much done today. I certainly won’t be able to finish.

Tomorrow, I have my C++ class which comes with about 3 hours of bus time and a 3 hour class.

I’m throwing in the towel. I will pick up work on Protean Arrow this coming Tuesday. If submissions are still up, I’ll submit something. Either way,  I’ll be putting the occasional “release” up on SwfCabin until I’ve got it finished. (Once it’s finished, I’ll put it up on Kongregate)

Um… So I guess I am one of the few people here who actually HAVE something fully playable

Anyway – I’ve changed the title from Code Runner (running on code) to Code: Runner (yeah, you’re the runner). Such a big CHANGE isn’t it?

Screenshots + TODO after the BREAK.

(more…)

Well, I haven’t been able to spend all that many hours on it, and yesterday, I just couldn’t focus if my life depended on it! No idea what that was about… So, I’m still basically nowhere.

At this point, I’m not really expecting much, but nevertheless, I’ll spend the few remaining hours on it, and see if I can get something together. If nothing else, writing some code and actually taking a few steps in the right direction might take the edge of the intense frustration I’m feeling right now.

Good morning! Hope it isn’t too cold for you all to get some LD action!

So here’s my progress report:

Remade the game using flashpunk! All levels are playable, so 90% of today’s work will be cosmetic, adding more levels and prettying things up

I’m pretty happy with my progress so far, as even if I stop now I will have done what I set out to do, and anything more for me is a bonus.

You can see the current progress here:

http://benn-gaming.co.uk/minild.html

Benn

All right, I’ve been lurking in the shadows for long enuf, it’s time to reveal myself. I’ve wanted to do an LD for a while now, but work/commitments/laziness/what-have-you have all conspired to keep me out. No longer! I have informed the world to leave me alone for this all important weekend in 19 days and some change (i live in japan so it actually starts around noon for me, but that’s neither here nor there…) and will be sequestering myself in what the family refers to as the Gundam Room. Half of my workspace has a half-complete VF-25 kit on it (diversifying…) but that should be cleared off in time. Dunno if i’m going to do the time-lapse thing yet; seems like a fun idea tho’. I’ve been goofing around with AS3 and Flixel lately so i think that’ll be my framework, and I might use Box2D if i have a good enuf handle on it by then. We’ll see.
Since this’ll be my first attempt at this particular feat of masochism, I’ve decided to get my feet wet with this weekends MiniLD. I don’t have any previous LD games to dust off, so I’m going to “finish” a game that only made it into the planning stages. Yay!
I’m going to use my idea for the Mini that had your worst fear as a theme, plus the colab with a non-designer. Before my son was born, i used to read him Mo Willems’ book, Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus. Awesome book btw. So there’s the colab, with my boy. The fear comes in that now if i see a pigeon near a bus, i make sure that the swine doesn’t get anywhere near the driver’s seat.

I’m starting kinda late, so who knows if this’ll get done, but from what I’ve seen that’s all part of the experience. So far, i have a whole swarm of pigeons flying in the general direction of the bus.
The idea is, the pigeons try to get to the bus to drive it away, you try and stop them by whacking them with the mouse. You can also periodically distract them by throwing a hot dog on the screen, since according to Mo, pigeons love hot dogs. Fortunately, since pigeons aren’t particularly intelligent creatures, my AI requirements won’t be too taxing. Planning!

I havent been on this site in a while and for some reason i thought to check whats goin on here at the ludum dare and it turns out i checked at the right time, i will be in this ludum dare compo. I will finish a game for sure in game maker pro. also i will attempt creating a flash game with the flash punk library.

Ok, I’ve gotten things done! Feels good.

The character now moves correctly and can shoot laser beams. (Thanks to HyrdroKirby in #pygame and cafesofie in #ludumdare)
I’ve also given the clouds a thicker border to make them look *nicer*
Here’s what it looks like:

Laser beams!

Too bad it only gets a terrible 16-26FPS.
I’ll have to optimize it somehow. The code is extremely rubbish at the moment.
Next up: citizens and tanks.

I’m not really doing the mini-LD, but I am working on a new version of one of my LD games, Cave Miner from LD 15 (Caverns). I’ve already spent several weeks working on it and here is what it looks like now:

Most notably, I’ve added a lighting/shadow system. I also changed the gold into crystals and added some statistics at the top. It also has some sounds now (using sfxr).

There is still a lot to do: power ups, enemies, level exit, health system, light battery system, doors, keys, switches, teleport, elevators, more decoration and probably something with little bombs and destroyable blocks. And then of course a lot more levels, music, a title screen, menus, high scores, etc.

I’m probably not going to finish on time. I’m simply not going to be able to. I’ve spent too much of today dicking around playing games and my family’s having a party tomorrow. So, I’m unlikely to finish the Mini-LD.

I’m really sad about that. I’m wishing that I’d managed my time better. *sigh*

I’ll do what I can with it tomorrow, and I’ll try to have something to submit. I’m really sorry, folks. I really am.

I’m thinking that I can hold myself to Protean Arrow after the Mini-LD. I think it really has potential, and I’m really looking forward to pursuing it. That would make this the first LD-ish event where I have picked an idea toward the beginning (Mind you that I “officially” began yesterday afternoon, making Protean Arrow the idea I began working with) and stuck with that idea. A curse has been lifted! Right, anyways…

With that, I’m going to call it a day, and come back in force (as best I can) tomorrow. I’ll have an eye to the future.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

So I’ll be making a sequel/remake in 3D of my first Ludum Dare game ‘Ramuh-Shmoo‘ (here’s a link to the playable version on my site if you like)

it’s super ugly but the key things are almost all working, so I can get to prettying it and then making some actual levels (yeah, those are my priorities, screw you practical people, you’re no fun! )

Much like 3 years ago, the biggest challenge was figuring out how to make the cables, but this time I wanted the cables to be 3D, have collision, and be grabable and fixable at either, both or neither ends, which I got working for the first time ever

anyway, I think this should be fun, to compare how I take a similar project with one weekend 3 years apart