After regaining some energy after that cool but exhausting weekend I finally realized that quite a lot of people don’t read the text of the tutorial and therefore don’t get all options how to play the level. We all have to vote for about 250 games so there is no time for a tutorial….and to be honest I would skip it as well! Nevertheless that prevents people from knowing that you can change planet- and orbit-size as well which is actually the most important part…

To make it a bit clearer I just made my very first screencast… ;D so have a look

How to survive Level 2

There is a timelapse.  Me making my game.  On the youtubes.  Go Look.    Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5G1jvTWfZ4

Ok, so few thoughts after the LD:

What did I plan to do:
I wanted to do a small demoscene like game with networking support

What did I do:
I did completely different. I made a 3D FPP game. I made it about furballs, I’m not sure why, maybe because that was easy. Also, I guess the furry thingies look rather well

What went well:
I managed to create engine that can display voxely 3D graphics using OpenGL lines and points that uses 2D bitmaps.

What went wrong:
Due to extensive engine programming, my level design is pretty RAD. But I hope eye-candy can make up for it.

Technology whitepaper:
Ok, so my engine uses 2D bitmaps to generate 3D voxels. It uses 3 functions for it, that can take 1,2, or 3 images. It adds some randomness to the voxels, and can multiply their number (e.g. 2 voxels per pixel). The other part of the engine, creates land out of two bitmaps, grass colour map and grass heightmap. It then generate grass blades with corresponding colour / height according to a map. There is also a third map, which contains positions of entities. Single pixels along it describe placement of different objects on game level ground. Furballs, however, are generated programatically. Oh, there’s also the ground quad. The ground quad is drawn on the fly sing grass colour map, and applies a checkerboard effect to it. It is done so that ground colour can dynamically change, as opposed to grass colour. The following images illostrate this all:

Overall, I’m satisfied with what I managed to do, and I hope you will have fun playing it.

There should be a time-lapse here too, but it’s still uploading. I’ll post it in 30 minutes or so.

PS: added timelapse:
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
DO NOT WATCH UNTIL YOU PLAYED THE GAME!!!!
Timelapse

I’ve just put up a new version of my copy-and-kill top down shoot-em-up Scanno Domini. It’s a game where you encounter randomly generated enemy robots, scan them to unlock their parts, then kill them and take all their guns, shields and engines for yourself. Play it here. If you’re a judge, rate it here.

The feedback has been amazing so far – this is the first game I’ve ever finished, so it’s been a genuine surprise to hear of people enjoying it. Whether you’re judging or not, I’d love to know what you thought of it if you tried it out – leave me a comment here or at my blog (doesn’t require registration).

This version fixes a few significant bugs I didn’t have time to test during the compo – the competition version will stay as it is, of course, I’m just putting this up for anyone who wants to have fun with it. The key changes are:

• Choice of resolutions – anything up to 1920×1200. The game will remember your choice and not ask you again.
• Fixed a crash relating to being able to fire while dead. Duhhh.
• Fixed a bug preventing enemies from sensing when you shoot or touch them – they now turn to try and find you.
• Fixed a lot of erratic behaviour with the scanner – it’ll now scan all the new tech the bot has in one go.
• Fixed a problem with bot behaviour that made The Ominous Event extremely hard to recover from – they’ll wander off on their own once you’re down now.
• Fixed a bug causing some bots to spawn ‘blind’, with no vision cone. It was kind of cute, but causing problems down the line.

Lots of folks in the LD community have non-qwerty keyboards, and it can be difficult for them to play some games due to some keys being far apart in one layout that were decided on a layout where they are next to each other.

I myself do what I can to use keys that are placed similarly on most keyboards.

The question I have is: Which keys are more “safe” to use in control schemes? Meaning, which keys tend to be in around the same place in most layouts?

I’d appreciate a general sense of this, as I really don’t know. I live in the US, where non-qwerty keyboards are very rare, so I really don’t have a sense of this.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

The time-lapse movie for Scarab Amazing is available now on YouTube:

I’ve just released a post-compo version of Q-Bers which includes the following:

-Puzzles after level 16 are not quite as difficult

-Cubes are a bit larger

-I’ve fiddled with one of the puzzle pictures and made it a bit easier, although not quite as pretty, to solve if you get it in full rotation mode.

Try it here, or checkout my original competition version here.

Yep, its real!

Iv posted a timelapse, a post mortem, a final submission and i am now finishing the games levels and style as i was aiming to.

Here is a picture of the first part of the game, the actual explanation of what is happening.

Intro animation sequence (scary lighting!)

And the first pass look of the first level (id say ill do one more pass after this for polish) :

Game first level

So, watch this space. I am adding the other 6 levels i cropped and the boss level.

I’ve just uploaded Scarab Amazing to Kongregate:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/bernardfrancois/scarab-amazing

Within less than half an hour, it was played 97 times.

Is this the first Ludum Dare made with Unity that appears on Kongregate, or do I have to change the title of my post?

I beg every developer here to think global !

Please, WASD keys are not funny on a non qwerty keyboard ! There’s a number of games I cannot rate because I cannot play to them because of the WASD choice.

I quite don’t understand why you won’t use arrow keys instead ?

Thank you all for your understanding !

Figured I’d toss my rocking little time lapse up.

Click here for the youtube vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY55gj7rGhQ (can we embed here)?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY55gj7rGhQ

If I didn’t play around so much with the editing I might have had more time for a jam entry, oh well had a blast with it.

Post-Compo build and Post-mortem to follow!

Is there a way to know what people are rating my games, and is it against the rules to change the background music of my game?

It’s been an educational LD for me.

Here are a few of the things that I learned:

• I can’t stand developing more bland action games
• I am okay with developing something that is not difficult to play, even if it doesn’t have any sort of combat
• I spend loads of time on making sprites for enemies. Comparing the time I’ve spent spriting characters for Evening to the time I spent spriting characters for Little Ninja really highlights that for me
• It is more important to have a game than a thing with sound. That’s a tough one for me, but it is something that I have to learn.
• I should come here with some codebase prepared. It wouldn’t be much, but it would let me get to making the actual game much faster.
• It can still be LD if I’m in the jam, it’s just a more laid-back LD. I got it in my head not long before LD that the jam just somehow wasn’t LD (Whatever that actually meant), and denied myself a laid-back, social experience. Next time, the jam’s the plan, and the compo’s an optimistic outcome.
• It’s okay to only have one playable character, and it’s a huge time-saver. Even though I seem fixated on having spear/distaff in my games, it’s not needed for everything.
• I understand now that I have a fascination with female leads in my games. That’s not something for me to “conquer”, but something for me to simply break from now and then.

I also gained a few other things over the weekend.

Yesterday I received a DSi-XL as an “early Christmas present”. “Christmas present” meaning “thing that my mum bought for me with the money I was receiving from my relatives for Christmas”. We aren’t really big on holidays in my family, so the practical idea of just getting the thing when she already had the money and was shopping anyway, then just give it to me when we got it because having it and waiting for it is the sort of holiday tradition my parent aren’t huge on.

The DSi-XL, for those who don’t know (And I’m sure there are those) is a DSi (DS with front and back cameras that can download software from the “DSi Shop”) with very big screens. It also comes with Flipnote Studio. And on top of that, a big pen-style stylus (In addition to the normal DSi stylus)

I will probably be using Flipnote Studio to make mockups of things from here on, and I will probably start posting those mockups once I get good at making them.

I also gained a tiny bit of understanding in what Jonathan Blow calls “exploration design”. When designing Evening, I originally intended for it to be a screen-by-screen platforming challenge, but changed my mind while playing with features during early testing. Not that folks here would have seen that, as I’m sure you can guess.

Finally, I have a game idea that’s unlike things that I have done before. I really do. I’m excited about it. Something that’s actually semi-original for a change.

The post-mortem for Evening comes after the break.

(more…)

Die, snowman, die! [PLAY]

You fiend! Little Johnny spent an hour making that snowman!

Here is my timelapse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6LQBMw-wZE

Hey guys I made a timelapse!

I’m currently adding more areas, after which I’ll start implementing monsters and traps specific to those areas. I also implemented some monster ‘types’ or ‘elements’, as indicated by the fire skeleton up there!

I’ve spent a lot of time doing game development, but I almost never release stuff. Always base code, game logic, and abandon. So going in I had a bit of a fear of not finishing LD.

Looking at it now, I can safely say LD has been the single most educational thing I’ve done in my entire life as far as game development goes.

Its so easy to fall into the trap of scope creep, or to say “Oh, I can’t work on this yet! I don’t have graphics from the artist!”. But when time is tight and you ARE the artist, it’s easier to start looking at solutions instead of problems; and it’s that line of thinking that keeps you moving.

I’m really looking forward to the next LD. In the mean time, maybe I’ll actually finish some of my other projects for a change of pace.

Obligatory timelapse:

Well, Ludum dare 19 is over and the game is over. The final name is Discover the name (never changed it to discover the way).

I started the game with not too much time for the compo and I released a unpolished and unbalanced version but I already read some good comments for the game. For the jam, with a friend, we improved it a bit, because we felt the game worth the time, so people could play a better game.

In the end, there are three versions of the game, the competition version, the jam version and the latest stable development version. If we think the game has to be continued, the last one is the version that will be modified.

I have also added a timelapse video for the game (had to remove the gameplay video from the game page because I lack of links in the form).

Remember, you could also go to our blog to see more games and stuff.

Now, a mini postmortem:

What went wrong:

• Game idea came on sunday, miss one day of development, cant force imagination
• Competition version is not balanced it right
• Level editor is hidden and not explained
• Few levels

What went right:

• Made a level editor provided an easy way to make a lot of levels, but… (last point on previous list)
• Movement feels right, a bit to sensitive, but based on a right idea
• Webstart platform, really really like to have an online available to all version from the beginning, to test, get feedback, etc.

Well, I cant think more pros and cons.

Enjoy the game.

Can’t wait for Ludum Dare 20 now! I’ve played around 10 games so far but I want to play them all thoroughly enough to rate them, some awesome ones around. I’ve reduced the size of my entry by compressing a wav file to an ogg (From 150Mb to 20Mb). Just make it easier to download and play. Here’s a link to my entry and my blog too.

I’ve decided to make  a timelapse video too to see what it was like during development! Pretty cool.

Also i made a little qwerky video:

Thanks very much!

Kyle.