Can anyone recommend 3 or 4 downloadable compo games that I shouldn’t miss?

I’ve only tried Flash and Unity games so far but would love to try the best of the best of the native executables.

For those of you wondering what I have in store for Dodge and Collect! or what my original intentions were for this game, take a seat because I’ll explain now.

Originally, you where going to have a level select menu that looked like a planet map, with your station station/HQ hovering above an Earth like planet. You would then click on a planet and you would travel there and start the mission, which was to dodge asteroids, space junk and even alien ships to collect the artifact, when you did so it would be sent back to your HQ, and was used to upgrade its systems, so you would be able to fly further (Basically unlock more levels) each level would vary in difficultly, and some levels would not have artifacts, but fake ones that did nothing. Planets you where unable to reach would not appear (Or be gray ) in till your station’s sensors could reach that far. Without all of the HUD or display options, it could have looked something like this.

As for the story? Your piloted a prototype ship called C.O.W 142 its is an intelligent space ship that connects with the station, relaying information and sending objects back to the station, which it self is sentient. The hope was while you, the best pilot in the space force, was testing out the ship, they would be able to find a planet suitable for colonization, but having to do it on a bunch they asked you to scavenge the galaxy for parts to improve your station and the likes.

Something I thought of after the contest began and would like to add is a side scrolling part, where you would go down to the planet and possibly rid of aliens or something, allowing it to be colonized. Once it was colonized your station would be moved to space above that planet, allowing a change in the planet map to take place, and more planets unlocked.

Well, I will continue and hopefully work up to something like this, need to smooth out some of the glitches in the game currently, then I will start the planet map, wish me luck!

The competition has passed and voting is underway, and I can think clearly again. This 19th Ludum Dare was my first competition of its kind, and I must say I enjoyed it very much.

Timelapse on Youtube (didn’t get it to embed, somehow)

My thoughts are after the break.

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Hello again.

Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? My friend Kieran and I, under the name Surprised Man, entered the Game Jam and produced The Wager, a game all about exploring a randomly generated map of islands and returning to dock with information about what you find on them to sell onto prospective colonists. We’re really pleased with what we put together for the 72 hours and plan on getting a lot more content into the game that we just didn’t have time to include in this release. I mean, who wouldn’t be pleased with a game with an island name generator that gives such names as:

I hope you like our game, we worked very hard on it, enjoyed the whole process and look forward to adding more loot, unique encounters and other such things in the near future!

Every person has his own personality according to which it do likes and dislikes the things

so what is your favorite game that you want to play

poker

chess

football

etc

Here is my timelapse:

I was going to add a titlescreen and a gameplayvideo at the end but crappy software stopped me(i should probably go and buy/download premiere as that is the only video software that I’ve used that didn’t suck). I also used youtube audioswap to add some music so that it doesn’t feel like your computer hangs at  hanged when nothing happens.

So I guess my post mortem is don’t look or try to sort your funny pictures collection during ludum dare

For those who are interested:

Jack’s Ludum Dare 19 Post-Mortem

Yeah, you gotta click that.

Hi all,

As a first part of my postmortem I just wanted to tell you about a language we used with two of my friends (ben & deepnight) during the competition : haXe.

The language itself is easy to learn and has many powerful features that make it a strong one. (link to doc)

It features a very complete API and multiplaftorm target. with the same language, using the same API, you can generate swf files, javascript code, C++ code, PHP code, C# and java coming soon.

Extending the language is pretty easy, so you can use your favorites game API (sdl for instance). And you can target specific platforms like android or iphone. Which means that with a single codebase you can quite make a game works on several platform…

So all the javascript I created has been generated with haxe. And the flash games of my friends too. We’ve been using the language for a few years now at motion-twin and it has enabled us to code fast, easy and switch platform whenever we wanted.

Of course, you can use the language on windows, linux or MacOSX (intel), the generated content will be the same.

So to finish this first post-mortem, I can tell you that having a strong typed language helped  me create my javascript project without worrying  too much. No js nightmare debugging at all !

Last but not least, it’free  and open source That was my fifty cent to rapid development (not a commercial, just my tribute to one of my favorites language, that’s all )

I’ve just fixed a rather peculiar bug that I didn’t catch as my main dev machine is 64bit Linux, and my Windows build laptop was running 64bit Windows too… seems that my timers are a bit iffy as under both 32bit Linux and Windows, the game runs at double the speed! Well, technically, it’s the 64bit versions which are running at half speed, but as I wasn’t aware, I tuned the game for this speed.

Seems that being lazy and depending on SDL_gfx’s FPSManager wasn’t wise.. I’m assuming it relies on the size of an int since SDL_Timers are unsigned ints – which is obviously different across 64bit and 32bit architectures. Though it’s my own fault for not testing in the first place!
Granted, it was done in seven hours, and I guess these can be considered “ports” to 32bit platforms as the only change was a modifier to the infection countdown to double it’s response time.

The original one has now been marked for 64bit platforms, and a 32bit version uploaded on the Germies entry page, here.

Speaking of those seven hours, here’s the postmortem after the jump.
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Here is my timelapse video. Unfortunately run out of time to figure out how to edit it and append the gameplay video.
Maybe I will work it out for next time.
Video here

I was pretty happy with how things went over the weekend, however I did do a number of bugfixes in the days since then (a game-breaking lightbeam glitch, added ‘up’ as jump, changed the position of a couple of blocks to remove some shortcuts, and changed the circumstances under which a particular help message would appear), and I had just thrown them up in the same place. I felt VERY BAD about that today, so I went and managed to find a copy of the sunday night version and put that up as a download as well, with the web one marked as a ‘bugfix’ version.

So, if you want the true, authentic, 48 hour experience, then go to that one

Following on from my first post mortem… I’ve uploaded pictures of the notes that I took throughout the comp.

Well, had some time to think over what I did right and wrong for my first participation in LD, or any game making sprint for that matter.

The good :

• I ended up with something playable. Sure, it lacks a lot of stuff, but considering I had to pretty much give up on more than half of the 48 hours thanks to “life”, it’s still a good thing.
• I managed to learn pyGame. I had sort of glanced over the docs before, but getting down to programming with it really is the best way to truly learn how to use it.
• I didn’t spend a single second fixing ‘code’ problems. That’s thanks to Python, but anyway the only bugs I had were logical ones, and not some weird case of the code behaving in strange ways. That was refreshing.
• I had loads of fun, which I see as an important point, that means I’d do it again.

The bad :

• I tackled problems in the wrong order. I spent a huge amount of time trying to fix my lighting system, and still didn’t get it right on time for the submission deadline. As I was making a platformer, I should have concentrated on getting a platformer first, and then add the light stuff.
• In relation to the previous point, I spent way too much time on a single problem. And by not changing and working on something else, I kept trying to push in the wrong direction. Case in point : on monday, I fixed my lighting problems in about 20 minutes, because my mind was clear and I could see the solution I’d missed (hint : I was trying to determine what areas were lit, I ended up computing the shaded parts instead…).
• I didn’t allocate time for packaging. I figured that Python and pyGame being cross-platform, it would work out, but I should have spent some time to properly package for MacOSX users and Windows users. I’m going to fix that as soon as I have some time, though.

So there you go, all in all I’m proud of myself, and I’ll be sure to continue working on the game. I think it has some potential, even if it’s very crude and barebones at the moment. I’ll post updates on my blog, so go there if you’re interested.

Thanks to those who provided feedback, it’s really helpful! And stay tuned for proper exe and app executables in the next few days (busy packing as I’m going to Canada on friday, but I’ll find some time…).

Hi everybody,

I thought I’d share some of my experiences from LD19 creating “Caves of Darkness”, what went wrong, what went right and so on…

What went right:

1. Design – for the first time ever, I thought of a game idea, and implemented all the necessary game mechanics! Here is an early sketch from the morning of the competition:

Those of you who played the game (And if you didn’t – please do it now! ) will note that the game and the sketch are pretty close, something I consider a success.

2. Graphics – I think the graphic style of the game went very well, I worked quite a bit on the lighting effects as they are a major part of the gameplay mechanics, and I think the result is decent!

3. Sound – although the music is not exactly as I wanted it to be (I wanted it to be a bit darker, and mellower) – I think it is not bad after all, and suits the game well.

4. Levels – another first for me – my code base actually supports adding new levels easily, loading them and the game elements from file. This is a HUGE step forward for me, as I really think this makes this thing a GAME and not just a sketch.

What went wrong:

1. Controls – a common problem I have on all of my LD entries – controls are a bit twitchy. Fine tuning the parameters is hard, and because it is based on a simple “physics” engine, it makes it even harder. I think this should be the main thing to rewrite towards next LD competition (or in general, for that matter).

2. Game Elements – this is probably because of lack of time, but I really wanted to have more gameplay elements – moving platforms, collapsing floors and more – maybe for the next LD I will be able to make those happen, now that the code-base is growing.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the result, and I had lots of fun participating.

So thanks, and if you haven’t played my game already - go, now! and vote!

Thanks,
Daniel

First of all, I want to quickly note that I’ve made another minor revision to the post comp version of Mothership, details can be had at my website blacktriangles.com.

As to the title of the post, I wanted to quickly jot down a second post mortem for my project, this one perhaps giving better insight into what’s really important about what happened during LD19 and why I believe my submission was a failure.

The consensus in feedback has overwhelmingly contained the sentiment that “your project had a lot of potential, it’s too bad you ran out of time.” At first I was inclined to agree with them: the failure I met was with an inability to scope my project to meet the timeline, an inability to execute on the plan, and too many features without enough polish.

I realized the truth, however, after reading a blog post I made a week before ludum dare ever started. I was talking about a platformer I was working on:

If it isn’t fun to jump and run around in a platformer you’ve already failed – regardless of the bells and whistles you tack on.

I reread that today and realized that I had failed with Mothership long before I ran out of time. Even if I were given a week, or a month, or a year, in the mindset I had while developing the game I would not have been able to compete with any other LD submission. Not only did I fail to nurture the fun in my game – I completely failed to identify it to begin with.

I am friends with a very talented designer who worked at Bungie back in the Myth days and while describing to him an idea I had for a game he asked me a simple question that stopped me cold.

“What verbs describe your game?” The question made no sense to me, he elaborated, “What do players do, list out the verbs.” They… move? They fight? They explore… I went on for several minutes before he stopped me again: “Pick one, make it fun. That’s the best way to make a game.”

The reason I thought of making Mothership in the first place was because the original verb for the game in my head was “exploration”. The fun wasn’t in collecting the materials, or even repairing the mothership, it certainly wasn’t supposed to be a crappy FPS. It was supposed to be about landing on an alien planet and seeing something new each time you played the game.

If stepping off the mothership onto the planet didn’t make you feel excited, if you weren’t anxious to see what was around the corner, or felt a sense of discovery – I have failed. I admit, that’s a tall order for two days! No wonder I didn’t pull it off!

Luckily, failure in games is really just an excuse to start a new iterative phase. Each milestone is a starting point as well as a finish line. I have already outlined a few items that I believe will help bring out the fun in my original idea. Wish me luck, and thanks for your feedback, without your insight I would never have gotten this far, nor understood how far I still have to go.

Happy voting and commenting everyone.
Have a great holiday season and I hope to see a bunch of you at GDC in February.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrLjvmn8lEw

This is a time lapse of me and my friend participating in the jam. We got 4 perspectives, a video of each person as well as their screens. Enjoy!

Thanks to information provided by bernardfrancois (thank you!), I have released my Unity game competiton entry on Kongregate.

It is kinda like Marble Madness played mostly on ledges in the darkness.

You can try it here:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Dogstar669/in-the-darkness-i-shall-fall

*** I have fixed the problem with the jerkiness in the web edition. Please don’t review for this compo on the version submitted to Kongregate as I have published some fixes and tweeks to levels on there. The windows version is the one to review.

http://kennymalac.wordpress.com/category/game-dev/

I’m going to be finishing my unfinished game as a personal project. If you want to follow my progress, please finish the link above.