I really enjoyed making Autoflotilla for Ludum Dare 19. It’s quite different from anything I’ve ever made before, but the project appeals to me very strongly. I’ve decided to release a post-competition version. What I would like to do is give it a bit more polish and develop the game’s atmosphere. I want to avoid making it more complicated or making it feel cluttered, however, so I’ll try to use a light touch when making additions.

A friend of mine will be contributing some ambient sound to the game.

Other additions will include:

• a curved, rather than flat seascape
• some light regional variations- for instance islands in one area might be shaped differently
• a few visual extras, such as flying creatures
• a few unique landmarks
• looping edges (Asteroids-style toroidal)

I decided to put a timelapse together this time! And even better, you can play your favourite music alongside it, by which I mean I didn’t edit it. I’ll figure out how next time, I suppose. So here’s the Spacebrick Timelapse

It turns out I played a lot of Blight of the Immortals, especially early on.

On to the game – Spacebrick (which you can play and vote for HERE)

I really enjoyed making this game and got feedback at quite a few points – meaning I heard “It’s hard to control” or “I don’t know what to do” quite a bit. Eventually I ditched any sort of realistic physics. It’s curious to note that I actually went for realistic physics at any point when making a game about a rocket powered brick in space.

I’m actually not too happy with the music. I managed to take a few hours out to write and record some piano music, but in the rush I didn’t really make something that fitted the game. The first part seemed to fit the “space” part well enough, but later I was just playing whatever I came up with and it didn’t work so well.

The graphics did turn out pretty nicely, especially the recoloured planets. You may be less impressed with any skill you thought may have been in the enemy graphics if you saw in the timelapse that I quickly made a fighter, smoothed it, clicked “auto-unwrap” and scribbled something on the texture, whereas my last game was a purple mess, this looks quite nice

Oh and it turns out the upgrade curve is 100% broken.

I may not have coded a win condition, but I can safely say this is winning the game.

Anyway, I had a great time this Ludum Dare, especially chatting with other devs in the IRC channel. See you all next time!

For people who like this kind of thing, I tried to keep it light-hearted.  It’s got a stellar cast, a decent script, and a happy ending.

Enjoy!

With each Ludum Dare, I am progressively more blown away by what people can do in a couple days.  There are so many cool game concepts.  I’m really fried for the first couple days after the compo, so I don’t get on and rate games right away, but just from the little perusing I’ve done, there are a lot of amazing entries.  I’ll be back to rate and comment once I can see straight.

I’ve always wanted to make a game using the “groundhog’s day” concept, similar to Majora’s Mask, Level Up!, and Pikmin to some extent. I have a love-hate relationship with time-pressure games, but it’s so rewarding to finally understand what’s going on in the game’s world and figure out how to manipulate it.

I had a lot of fun making this one. It doesn’t necessarily have the greatest gameplay, but it’s really the story and level design that counts in this type of game. Since the theme was discovery, I decided to make it purely about information seeking- each time you try, you should learn something new that’ll help you the next time. I tried something different this time and planned out the entire game beforehand, complete with a map and a rough description of the natural progression of the game. I felt that this really helped, since I had time to come up with a ton of ideas, and then once I started coding I just followed what I had already laid out.

This was my 3rd 48hr design competition, and I still fell into the trap of planning more than I could ever finish in that time. I had hoped to get this done after the first 24 hrs so I could have more time to study for my finals, but after the first day it was apparent that it wasn’t going to happen. I actually didn’t even have a working build until an hour before submission.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have someone else play your game after the first day, or whenever it’s playable. For me, it was a sort of sanity check- it really helped to have a fresh set of ideas tell me what was broken, and what just didn’t make sense.

Play it here!

Also, check out my Timelapse!

Lastly word about my game in till post comp, at which time I’ll start updating it with versions I’m working on, I finally got the timelapse up, I made the mistake of lapsing each day in a different file, so I lost quality when windows movie maker put them together

Click Here!

Abarrane - A game about self-discovery

It’s now 26hrs post LD #19 compo end. The dust has settled, my brain has had a chance to wind down. It’s time for a post-mortem.

>Play Abarrane

>Watch the Time Lapse of Development

The Theme & My Idea

Ludum Dare 19′s theme was “Discovery”. I wasn’t a fan of it considering a year ago the theme was “Exploration”. But the bonus is it did give everyone a lot of creative leg room. On my ride back home after derby practice on Friday night I started brainstorming ideas. I settled on focusing on “self-discovery”, doing something a bit surreal, and having levels based around Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The idea would be that the player would battle through each of their stages of needs only to reach self enlightenment.

The game would play as a side-scroller / RPG hybrid. This gameplay concept is something I’ve wanted to prototype for Granville for months now.

I knew immediately that my idea was ambitious. I’ve never made a platformer with levels before nor have I ever coded an RPG battle system.

(more…)

(click the picture)

Roughly 285 people came up with a game idea and made it happen in just one weekend!  That’s a pretty awesome thing!

Looks like I missed the jam deadline… Here’s the latest version of my game: download.

Controls:

- Left click to move

- Right click to pan the screen

- Space bar to center the screen on your character

This was my first Ludum Dare and it was super fun!! Next time I’ll finish in time

INSERT “A WINNER IS YOU” IMAGE HERE

In all seriousness, crafting a game is hard.  It’s harder when you’re constrained by time and theme.

To all my fellow successful Dare-ers, I salute you.  For those that didn’t make it, you’ve got the intervening months to lick your wounds and prepare for the next one!

Now, to the best part of it: hours and hours of freshly-baked gaming goodness!

Ok, got off my bum and did a OSX compile. So try Looney Ladders today!

Windows – OSX

Has some big graphical bugs in it, but at least it is playable.

I am so impressed by the people that managed to make actual games during this compo, it gives me something to look forward to for next time.

Soundman Stepper windows version

Both the Compo and the Jam have finally ended. Thank you everyone for joining us this December for our 19th event. By the time the clocks hit zero, we had 285 entries!! **

243 Compo, 42 Jam! Wow! New records across the board!

Since the holidays are coming up, we’ve decided to make judging last for 3 weeks instead of the usual two. Everyone has been randomly assigned 20 games, so please make an effort to play as many of those as you can. The list will grow over time, revealing more games to play.

Our next major event (Ludum Dare 20) will be in April 2011. Stay tuned to the mailing list for details.

Also! Game Developers Conference attendees, stay tuned! Like last year, we’re looking to arrange a meetup. Details will be here on the website, but I’ll be sure to ping the mailing list once things are more concrete.

Thanks again everyone for coming out, and we hope you have a safe and Happy Holidays.

* * *

PS: ** InaVegt, please check your game and post a comment. For some reason it’s flagged as disabled (an LD website bug?). Let me know where it should be (Compo/Jam) and I can fix it.

If you enjoy puzzle games, give “Cannot Ludum Dare 19″ a play.  There are nine different gems that each handicap the player in different ways.  First learn what the gems prevent you from doing, and then puzzle through how you can carry that gem to the next door.  I especially like the orange gems near the middle of the board, and the aqua gems that follow.

Feel free to comment below on which gems you can say that you like, and which you “cannot”.

What a great holiday gift all of these games will make over the next week.  Thanks again, to everyone who’s participated.  If anyone’s interested in my other games, you can find info at http:sugarpillstudios.com.

We may not have any music. We may not have any sound effects. We may not have a very complete “game” in the sense of the word. But we only had 72 hours. And I think we probably worked only during 30-40% of the time. So we’re pretty proud of this one.

Not bad for a weekend. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m building an arcade machine with my friends.

Check it out: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=1936

Link to final build: http://www.certainlogicstudios.com/projects/nano-something/final

Now with more Green

Yesterday I was totally giving up because I couldn’t figure out the any kind of reasonable gameplay, and the whole game idea seemed like a bad choice and time was running out for the compo, which was the original goal. Failure seemed unavoidable. Then today when I got out of school there was still about 10 hours of time left for the Jam and I decided that I will just make the simplest gameplay idea I can think of… After 8 hours of solid coding, 10 minutes before the deadline I finally submitted the finished version.

I am happy that I reached my goal of Gettin’ Something Done even though it wasn’t 48 but 72 hours. The game turned out OK as well. Now I may rest.

Hi everyone!

My friend (Blitzgren) and I participated together on a jam game.  It’s his 2nd LD, my first.  Overall, we’re pretty happy with the results, despite not finishing everything we wanted.  We did learn a lot though about how we would improve for next time so we can release a more complete game.

I’m working on getting the web files hosted, but in the meantime, you can download the game to play on your machine.  Please try it out and let us know what you liked/disliked so we can improve!  Hope everyone had a good LD, see you in 4 months!

[Edit:] Here’s the web link! http://cgamesplay.com/bin/josh/!

~JMichalc

How I managed it, I have no idea.. but in the past ten hours or so, I managed to build a game from scratch, with just SDL, a C compiler and my trusty GIMP by my side… that’s the art package of course

I also literally hammered some buttons of SFXR in the dying hour and got some rather disturbing sounds from it, so they went in as well.

WARNING! You're about to fail!

Doesn’t look particularly spectacular, but there is a game in there somewhere!

The theme link is so tangible it’s unreal though.. as most of the scoring is a bit hidden for you to discover.. I was going to have the infections just appear and have them the “discoveries” but that made it much more stupidly difficult than it is!

So go cultivate some germs, and earn massive points
Link to Germies comments and download page

Source is included.. it’s a one file jobby of close to 900 lines of “C” .. it’s nasty.. enjoy!

Congrats to all the participants, Compo and Jam alike
Here’s to the next one! where I might be better prepared ( hah! )

Still missing bosses, but at least I have additional enemies and weapons.

This is our first jam entry. In the search of ancient treasure you will travel deep to the bottom of the ocean. Use your voice to operate a submarine. U can say rrr or simply blow into the mic:

http://bandymas.byethost13.com/jttbots/

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=3214

written with AS3.