I just gave my two weeks notice at my day job. From now on it’s just me, computer science research, and game development. All day. All the time!

I’m going indie…!

[edit]Here’s a post on my blog with more about that…[/edit]

Most of the time I don’t participate in LD’s because I’m usually busy on the weekend.  So I thought why don’t I have my own LD compo.  So I asked some of you how much time you spend on average… so it’s pretty common to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-35 hours of actual dev time.  (Dev time can include planning time).  So I thought how much time can I spare per day, and the answer comes back to me, 2 hours.  Okay so then I ask myself how long, and then answer comes right back to me, 3 weeks.  Actually this was through careful deliberation.  I figure about 30 hours is a good roundabout figure and something I could actually manage if I were to participate in an actual LD.  Of course this presumes using up most of my available time, and 2 good 8 hour sleeps.  I was thinking about also trying on weekends (but this was when I was going to do 2 weeks).  So here’s the plan:

I will go through each LD theme and build one game in about the same time as it takes to do an actual LD compo by spending 3 weeks per game, and 2 hours per night starting around 9:30 pm – 11:30 pm pacific time.  I will not be doing mini-ld’s at this time.  I will more or less follow the rules of LD.  By essentially making everything from scratch, except I will probably use a premade helper library.  I’ve decided I would do these games in flash so I can immediately put them onto IndieFlux in the games section.  Originally I wanted to use the lua-based LOVE engine but instead realized that flash may make it more readily accessible to people.  I’m thinking of actually porting it to LOVE later but we’ll see how this goes first.

And… that’s… it…

Thanks for your advice thus-far (those who I’ve talked to in #ludumdare).  I’m going to start tomorrow (Monday, March 21st, 2011) with the beta ld which was 24 hours, and thus I will do one week (about 10 hours, hope I can make something by then).  (Indirect interaction).  So see you then!

Keith

I just published my second game, The Captain. It was created in four days for GPCv4, with the themes Sunshine and Burden.

I thought I would share it here, since it is essentially a direct evolution of my previous game, Bisected Essence II.  Thanks!

In another effort of “Tell them all about to keep me from quitting” I want to tell you all about my current game project: Fur and Steel.

For those who are curious and/or enjoy reading other peoples’ game ideas, a description of the game, as well as my goals for it for today come after the break.

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Dear Sir or Madam, should you be daring enough to risk your health and sanity in electronic challenges and should you be resourceful enough to find another soul similarly inclined and should you have a taste for electronic game programs of the bizarrer varieties and, God help you, should you be willing and able to overlook the abysmal quality of such a diversion, then please direct your browsedevice to the pagesite found at the address http://excitemike.com/Pushy_Elephant of Internet.  The brave souls who venture there will find themselves transformed through the magic of Flash into nature’s grandest creatures, the elephants! Thus transformed, these titans will struggle against one another in combat most deadly.

Are you prepared to risk the Bouncing Scorpion of Alexander the Great and King Solomon’s Cursed Wandering Fruit to win honor and glory in The Worst Game I Have Made in Some Time?

The competition entry page can be found here.

It’ll take you about a minute to play, maaaaybe two if you want both endings.

http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/adventure/de-mo/4764/

And I put up the mp3, download it folks.

http://gamejolt.com/freeware/games/de-mo/soundtracks/download/4764/

I’ve uploaded a timelapse video as well as the Project files for my MiniLD 25 entry: Hero Test onto my blog:

www.stevegargolinski.com/hero-test-a-48-hour-game/

I’ve created some Ludum Dare word puzzles using the following site: Click!

LUDUM + DARE = SUPER

Read more to find out the solution!

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I would like to know if anyone could tell me about how many hours they actually spend working on their LD entries. It’s not feasible to spend a full 48 hours (although I wouldn’t doubt some have tried) — So we’re looking at at least one night of sleep which is 8 hours approximately — that leaves at the most 40 hours of work time — but you’re probably spending 32-36 hours.

I am going to catch up by doing a game for each of the past LD themes on my own time. I am deciding how many hours total to spend, and it shouldn’t be more or less than a typical LD’er spends on his or her game. I don’t want to do any more than 2 hours a night, and I might not get to weekends. So I’m basically going by the week. If I don’t do weekends it’s 10 hours a week — so at least 2 weeks for a total of 20 hours (although I believe the average LD’er probably spends more time than 20 hours) If I do weekends too it’s aproximately 14 hours a week for a total of 28 hours.

In any case please comment!

I made a couple of small corrections. One spelling error in the instructions page, and one small mistake in the code. I didn’t even have to code a word, as the mistake was simply in the order of a few lines of code.

Once again, here is a link:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/mrudoy/blind

POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO POTATO is now approved and awaiting someone to buy it on Flash Game Licence!

I’m pretty much surprised, since I entered ‘potato’ as my ‘desired price’, also, I put potato in every input box there.

buy it here!

I use Game Maker 8.0 Pro for anyone who ever, ever, ever asks in the future.

Aim for the high score!

Here‘s my first ever entry into anything ever.  I thought this theme was a perfect note to begin on.

WASD/Mouse

Esc to free your cursor.

It’s terrible, so please play. It’s played upside down.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-25/?action=preview&uid=3767

… yup, it is PANTS.

BUT… It is still a game. And can even be used as a prank on people (if you find someone gullable enough to fall for it

But anyway, here it is (and it is a “it”, because I have not named it):

Download it HERE – CLICK THIS TEXT NOW

Enjoy(or not, isn’t that the idea of a rubbish game )

Michael

Atomic Pixel Games

Mbrockwell

MiniLD page here.

Well…

I wanted to make the worst game of my life…

but it isn´t.

I failed!

But I think it has a pretty funny childish aesthetics, a bizarre selection of 13 opponents and 2 extra modes to make more funny to reach the end screen!

So I hope you enjoy playing it  as much as I have enjoyed developing it!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-25/?action=preview&uid=3749

Thanks!

Eterniality is a simple procedurally generated Bullet Hell shoot-’em-up.

You can play it now: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-25/?action=preview&uid=3093

Hey guys, I finished by entry for MiniLD 25. It’s called Hero Test and you can play it here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-25/?action=preview&uid=3786

It’s very heavily inspired from Portal and also Metal Gear Solid. I’ll be adding a screencast and source code within the next few days. I hope you enjoy it!

After one and a half full days of work, I’m finally finished.

The game is a shooter without video. You must rely entirely on the direction sounds come from to shoot. It isn’t actually a bad game, so I will justify the theme.

1) it is violent and will hurt your ears if you don’t turn your volume down.

2) it is a shooter so by definition I consider it a bad game.

3) it has no graphics (bad graphics… nah. How about NO graphics?)

here it is in all its glory:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/mrudoy/blind

PS: please comment. I would love to know what you think.