Finished up our jam entry, playable here through java web start:

http://wgta.ws/webstart/launch.jnlp

Enjoy!

So here’s my quick LD maze of towers trailer.  If you think it looks interesting, don’t hesitate to give it a try:  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=rate&uid=2359

(Warning: It is quite difficult. I didn’t have enough time to play test, or include enough power ups. However, play with it for a bit, and tell me what you think after looking past the insane difficulty )

LD48 Entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=rate&uid=2297

Play the flash game here: http://www.mcfunkypants.com/2010/snowboggan/

Snowboggan! is a 3d flash game.  I’ve always wanted to write a toboggan simulator, where you can speed down a snowy hill on a sled, dodging trees and smashing into snowmen.  This weekend’s game jams finally gave me the chance.  Check it out!  I would love to read your comments and warmly encourage you to let me know what you think.

Use the arrow keys to go left and right, and try to take out as many snowmen as you can!

In this game, you are immortal.  It was created for fun, and no matter what happens you can always climb back to the op of the hill and start again.  There is a hint of danger, however: if you smash into a tree or hit the “thin ice” signs, you might get flipped over!  If you do get flipped over, simply hit the “Click to restart” button on the top left.

The objective of the game is to discover gravity, prove that snowmen are not at allimmortal, and avoid the thin ice while gravity is constantly drawing you to the bottom of the hill.  These words are bolded because those were the secret “theme” words for the game jams I participated in.

This game was programmed using FlashDevelop for a pure as3 project, compiled using Flex, and the engines are away3d for graphics, jiglib for physics and Flint for particle effects.  All sounds were created by me using a microphone.  The guitar and snow sounds were done with my hands and mouth, and the sliding snow sound was the microphone rubbing up against my winter jacket.  It was an absolute blast to program and I learned a lot.  Thanks for playing.  Enjoy!

Here are screenshots of the game in action:

I finished something for the jam! I wasn’t able to get much of what I intended in there, but I managed to get an animated character in and the basic gameplay is definitely what I had in mind.

EDIT: Windows port added \o/

[ MY JAM ENTRY | SOURCES / LINUX | WINDOWS]

Now is Beer & Pizza time ! Whoohou good job everyone

Also, please read my entry presentation to know more
(I’ll post here if I can figure out how to make the game work on Mac and Windows)

First things first, I finally got the timelapse to upload!

Discoverer – 48H Timelapse

Now onto the post mortem.

What Worked

1. The Idea
   The idea was simple enough.What I’ve found from working on other projects, is that I tend to get carried away with the idea, and never actually work on the game itself. So for the LD I forced myself to set out the idea, and then not to alter the idea too much (Slight variations were okay though!)
2. Enemies as Turrets
   Having the enemies as turrets turned out to be better in the end (In my opinion anyway ). Rather than have crummy AI that wouldn’t have been able to follow the player properly, the turret concept got better the more I went with it, and started to explore ways in using the concept more (Teleporting turrets anyone? ).
3. Simple Graphics
   I know that I’m not a good graphics artist, and that to pull off anything fancy, I have to take time. Having said that, I think that I’ve done a good job of it’s looks, even if it was a bit “quick and dirty”.

What Didn’t Work (As Expected)

1. Map Generation
   The map generation was quite appalling in the end. I had envisioned that the generator would build structures and challenges that got more complex as the player went though the game. But in the end I ran out of time, and it never really progressed. When I do a “remake” of this project after the comp, map generation is definitely on the list of things to fix.

What Never Made It In

Challenges... never quite made it in...

1. Weapons / Treasure Chests
   I had also planned that the player would get more powerful weapons as they progressed through the game, but in the end, it was left out as the mechanic wasn’t in place, which meant that having it in there would have broken the style of gameplay that I was going for.Again, this is one of the things that I hope to fix when I look at it again.
2. Challenges
   Something else that I had hoped to have working in the final version of the game, but it never did make it in. If they were in, they would have been like the boss levels, except that they wouldn’t have been required to progress through the game.
3. The Final Boss
   The final boss, also, never made it. It The idea was that after you had gotten the 4 keys from each of the arms, you would then fight a final boss before finishing the game. Ah well, maybe in 2.0

And that’s that done. Now to downgrade the required framework from 4.0 to 3.5 (Or even 3.0!)

Update: Have uploaded another copy of the game that targets C#2.0 instead of C#4.0 (Source code included, slight alterations to some files, optional paramaters aren’t supported by C#2.0 ), the download link for it can be found on the submission page.

Here is the timelapse video for Chaotic Spread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szSGSoBTBcE

Our jam game is complete! Give it a try. It runs on Windows. The source is there to run it on other platforms. Sorry, I didn’t have time or energy left to make it work on mac/linux

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=3068

Needs More Lasers productions is:

Jesse – programming

Shane – graphics

Kevin – music

Hope you guys enjoy it!

I’m done for the night. It’s not ‘finished’ as such, but it’s more or less presentable. I’ll expand on this later.

My LD19 contribution: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=1884

I think this is the best game I’ve made from my past Ludum Dare submissions, but it’s still lacking in gameplay and content.

For next time, I really need to finish off an engine beforehand, rather than make everything from scratch within the 48 hour period!

I’ve finished uploading my timelapse. Phew, that took some time!

Ludum Dare #19 – LegacyCrono Timelapse

Also, check out the Post-Compo review of PRIOR to see where the game has gone since LD19 <3

PRIOR
You know nothing

GAME LINK

This was my first Ludum Dare, and to be honest, it really kicked my ass. I’ve done a 48-hour game challenge before but not solo and nothing on the scale that I worked towards in LD 19. That being said, it was an awesome experience and I am truly proud of the product that I ended up creating.

PRIOR: Screenshot: Maintainance Room

PRIOR is a 2D platformer built in Adobe Flash, in which you find out the answers to all the questions in your head – who am I, where am I, why am I here, what’s going on – etc. Throughout the game you must piece together the history of what happened by reading scraps of paper, and learning from certain events. There are three endings to it, and about 15-30 minutes of gameplay per ending.

Now, on review of PRIOR’s final build and the development thereof…

WHAT WORKED

KNOW YOUR SCOPE. I would like to clarify what I mean by that. Obviously it’s important to keep your project’s scope manageable, but note I did not say “keep a small scope”. I knew that my scope was very large and ambitious, especially for only 48 short hours. However, it was clearly defined, and I had an excellent workflow established early on, which helped me deliver.

KNOW YOUR SKILLS. I am not an artist, by any means. I have a basic understanding of how to create visual assets using Flash, and a ‘very’ basic understanding of Photoshop. Knowing these limitations, I decided on a stylized and abstract visual theme, rather than beautiful and proficient art. I could achieve this. Also, I knew my core skills were in level design and programming, which is what I focused on. Honestly, almost all the art was done after 4:30 PM on the final day.

I could go on about all the little things that helped make this game, but those were easily the two most important things I kept in mind. I didn’t worry about character art or animation – the player is just a little block and animation is limited to his eye and a slight stretching as he falls. I didn’t even really focus on the story – that came out of sheer dumb luck. I had vague ideas of what I wanted the story of this game to be, and from the beginning I knew “The player will know nothing off-hand, and will have to DISCOVER everything that’s going on.” But the story as it is just grew as I developed, and happened to grow into a self-contained, full story that not only spans between several different lives, years, and nations in the game world, but fits together perfectly.

(Yes, there IS a zero-sum, written-out & perfectly explainable story to this game. However, you must figure it out for yourself in-game!)

WHAT NEEDED WORK

KNOW WHAT YOU NEED. I made the mistake of trying to implement features that were both non-mandatory to the game as a whole, but I didn’t even know properly how to program. For example, my game had a CONTINUE option, which let you continue from the last room you were in. It would’ve been very useful, but wasn’t necessary for my project given the time constraint. I nearly went over-time trying to implement that feature, then eventually just removed it. (Really: my last submission was at 5:59.)

PLAN OUT YOUR STYLE/ATMOSPHERE. PRIOR was always supposed to be a creepy, mysterious game, and it is. However, if I had planned out what exactly I wanted to ultimately deliver, I wouldn’t have lost 45 precious minutes trying to find and implement sound effects. And it could’ve been much worse – I have a pretty big sound library available, and finding the sounds was no problem. I could’ve lost upwards of 2 hours if I had to search for those sounds online. In the end I decided to have just music, and the game seems much better for it. I wish I’d realized that sooner!

In the end, most of this seems like it could’ve been avoided with more planning, and pre-production time is not very abundant in a Ludum Dare. That said, I’ll keep these things in mind on my next project, and maybe you will too

Check out PRIOR’s Ludum Dare game page

-Nick Yonge

We’re finishing up now. It’s a 2d sidescroller / puzzle game. Should be posted pretty soon. Not sure if I’ll have running mac/linux executables… not having much luck with py2exe today.

- Needs More Lasers productions

I really enjoyed this weekend guys. Here’s to LD number 20!!!

So, I’ve added Lunarium to the Jam.

http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1292881137

Please allow some time to load, swf cabin hates preloaders. The instructions are in the game. The goal is to get 42 points. You may also quit at anytime. So, I guess I can make a game in 72 hours, just not 48. Yet.

I wasn’t home much during the weekend due to concerts, and the time I was at home I didn’t manage to do anything for LD, other than thinking about what to make. I wasn’t happy with the theme at all, it’s way too broad (like most of the themes recently). In fact, half of my previous LD entries could fit the theme discovery in some way.

So I have painstakingly assembled a timelapse for my game. I didn’t have any video editing tools besides Chronolapse and Camtasia, so it was kind of annoying, but I’m happy with the result.

Click here to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeFOvKJqIDQ

Update! Better version of the timelapse:

I have a new wallpaper!

All 285 Jam and Compo Games!

Here’s a zip containing various size wallpapers and the Python script that generates them (requires PIL) : DOWNLOAD.

It’s been a heck of an experience this LD. Starting planning on making 2 games, ending up abandoning one half-way through, then making a game for the jam.

Wow.

I’ve got my jam game “complete”. By “complete”, I mean that the player has all of the basic movements that I wanted, and most of the very basic features are there.

The game lacks… Well, polish. I may well have had time for it, but I didn’t have the stamina.

I’m proud, though. I actually have something to submit that resembles a game. That’s not nothing. That’s something.

Please, play and comment here.

Here’s a screenie:

…using advanced graphite reconstruction technology I was able to re-create it, exactly as it happened.

Don’t have much to say in the way of a post-mortem. I hated the theme, but liked what I did with it. The coding went remarkably smoothly and I was pretty much done by the end of Saturday. Which was just as well, as I had to work on Sunday.