…which is the title for the post.  Here is an early test video, all the major physics and engine components are finished:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt7GadCPCu4

I’ve teamed up with my friend Matt, who put in some code for sound and menus.  Still on track for the Jam deadline, but much more work left to do!

I have finished something, but unfortunately there is not much gameplay to speak of.

I’ve spent too much time on the technical aspect of the game and there was no time to implement proper gameplay.

Next time I shall finally prepare some basecode in advance .

Link

Poor Ball

Yeah, I did it! That’s my second Ludum Dare, and it’s really awesome!
Go check my entry featuring Ball, a little girl, a little ball, and fight for her future!

After having done the audio, I created a nice title screen!

Giving up, but thought I’d let you all see my progress:

Click to test the Music and Rainbow effect etc.

Best of luck with your own entries!

Escape from the frame is, well, unfinished.  The four levels I have all work reasonably, but they’re not to the quality I would like them to be.  Perhaps that’s the status of a 48-hour compo, but I see others whose games I would be satisfied with…  At least I did build something playable.  That’s the main goal of this, no?

Get Escape from the Frame at: http://www.cavein.org/~chris/code/escape or from the links in my entry page (which go to the same places)

For Escape from the Frame, I started out with too large of a goal.  I wanted a mini-game mash-up, but the games ended up more frustrating and less fun.  I also ran out of good health Saturday even/night, so some of my brainstorming/developing time got lost.

Things I’ve learned from this compo:  start simple, but not too simple.  Gravity is a harsh mistress.  Spend more time on gameplay, less time on achieving stable orbit for the actors.  The trip to the brewpub was a godsend, and should be repeated next time.  Sleep just enough, not too little, not too much.  You can’t draw, vitae.  You can’t music, vitae.  Try using generators for such things better.  Generic tools can combine in wonderful ways.  MacBook Pro is a fun machine to tool around on, and will probably serve as a main box soon.  And much much more…

I’m not much of a writer, but I ought to make a post about this. My first Ludum Dare ended in success. So, check out Escape or Die, my first game.

Peace.

I finished, it’s called ‘Bloppo: the great escape’. It’s a cute game, I think, but I’ve broken a bit my promise of not making a platformer. See for yourself.

Also, this time the BGMs are better and I recorded guitar tracks instead of leaving all the work to the computer.

So that. I’m done. Good luck everybody!

Unfortunately, this 48-hour game compo has been more of an 8-hour game compo for me, due to being out of town, packing to move out of here, etc. etc. etc.

But I’ve managed to get something going by limiting myself to a simple click-driven game with basic shape drawing and SFXR for sounds. I had planned on being more ambitious, drawing some artwork, and recording audio — but I didn’t have the time and motivation between everything else…

BUT I shall battle onward! Three hours to add a little polish and more gameplay variation. Excited to see what everyone else has come up with!

so for my first entry in a Ludum Dare I feel quite accomplished my game isn’t the best and a bit rough around the edges. It was really fun and I’m happy it comes to an end. I didn’t plan to much an had a fun weekend and I finished a game:-) .And here’s a screen shoot;

Somehow, i still don’t know how. ( i think eclipse did it) All my images where deleted. i tried to recover them using an recovery tool, but it didn’t work
luckily i posted something for screenshot Saturday, so i could reconstruct the images easily… still it costed one hour precious time.

So it happened. It was in the hat. We have less than 4h and I have only a story, some basic movement, test tiles and a sprite what isn’t animates right. No question I can’t finish this and more over I’ll not give out such a shame to anyone.

But as I wrote in the only post I made before this. It’s the first time I try to make a game for the NDS. And the first time I worked with tiles not just on the NDS.

Btw I made a lot of code:

• - tileset loader (and learned tiles well)
• - sprite loader
• - sprite move handler (hardcoded, so it needs some generalization)
• - sprite animator (it works, just I use it wrong somehow)

The next LD will be a lot easier with all this already done and learned. I’ll finish it surely for Function and will put it on my website RBWorld with some programming  tutorial if requested.

It’s 0:30 am. I’m tired. I think I just watch notch how he finish his dungeon crawler before sleep.

Here is what I’ve got in one little screenshot:

Ok, I’m not really giving up. I’m at the point where I’m happy with the game and I know theres gameplay that I could edge out of it. However, due to growing frustration with it, I need to take a break longer than both the game proper and the jam have provided. I’ll definately be in for the next jam, and I’ll be sure to continue working on this game once my brain cools down.

Just a note about the level editor. I don’t have the paitence to add the planned ShipComponent adding functionality at this time, so if you for some reason feel crazy enough to create a level, use the existing level as an example. You’ll need to manually append a underscore and the locations of the components for it to work. Infact, at this point, you can pretty much mess with the game to any extent, since its all really just a framework manipulating the assets, allowing them to be interchangable.

Yay for modability I guess!

So my game, Vector Dash is done ! I kept a diary over the past few days of what I was working on. Along with the time lapse which can be found on my page, it might give some insight into what was going through my head.

1 day 21 hours 3 minutes left

I decided to go with an asteroids style game. You are trapped in an alien planet or ship or something and you have to navigate your way out
without touching the walls (or else you die). Also I will probably put in some things to shoot.

So far I have a small red triangle that moves vaguely asteroids ship like. Next up is the 2d camera system so my game isn’t confined to the screen.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/8017/55861069.png

1 day 19 hours left

The 2d camera system is implemented, the player is now constrained to a textured level. Level texture tiling is not in place. Will decide later whether I want to do this or not, i’m not too sure. I am going to try and catch some z’s now and think about how I am going to implement the basic level format.

1 day 11 hours 14 minutes left

Just woke up. About to start work on the maze that the player is trapped within. Must get the core gameplay done within the next 12-16 hours or i’m dead.

1 day 10 hours 4 minutes left

Got level tile mapping in place and loading a layout of tiles from a bitmap produced in paint. Now for collisions

1 day 4 hours 10 minutes left

Lots done since last entry. Achieved :-

+ Title screen
+ Restart after shipwreck
+ Multiple Levels
+ Game End Screen
+ Collisions
+ Basic shooting

Will begin work on other game elements now, like the enemys

22 hours 32 minutes left

More achieved in the last six hours

+Particles
+Explosions
+Enemys
+Graphic improvement
+Global diffuse color
+Sound effects

Still lots to do. The next task is to fix the most annoying bug. The dodgy player / wall collision.

18 hours 54 minutes left

+ COLLISION BUG FIXED (WAHEY !)
+ Improved Title screen
+ Player / Turret collisions

I’m going to bed, will be prepared for final stretch tomorrow

8 hours 9 minutes 30 seconds left

Lots of updates

+ Revamped level design
+ Added level text
+ Improved visuals on the death message and level ended
+ Eated dinner

4 hours left

ALL FINISHED

I have uploaded the game, and published my entry as well as put the various videos on youtube. LD 48 #21 has produced the needed pressure to kick my butt into gear and i’m very proud of the end product.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=4933

3.5 hours left… Then I have to go set up hosting for it.

Whee!

Added death, and multiple stages, corrected loading problems associated with both of those…

Two stages drawn. A little overly difficult… I’ll tweak damage and healing a bit.

Sitting in a quiet room, with the rain pattering outside and a clock ticking loudly in the corner, it’s hard to feel the type of catastrophe that my game is trying to convey. Likewise, when my character – pieced together from the photos I took earlier in the day – looks sanguine, it’s not ideal.

However, it’s a character, and it’s animated, and it will suffice.

Next, I’m adding some effects – hopefully no longer than half an hour. Then I’ll try and get a start and an end. And tweak the camera, and think of a name, and submit before the server crashes.

It’s called Close Your Eyes.  I think it’s a fairly reasonable prototype for something. Who knows?! It’s time to go cook food!

I submitted Maze++. I’m quite pleased with it. I’m pretty tired.

Trying to avoid producing something the same old maze escape game while writing a maze escape game may not have been a good move, but I’ll wait for comments. If I’m lucky the extra features will keep this game interesting, despite it needing more work.

Bam! not that many status updates….why? server was DOWN . the brighter side of this actually is that it shows that a lot of people are in for LD, and that’s good stuff! thanks for the guys of LudumDare to take care of this matter so fast^^

so here are still a few images from before that i wanted to share. showing progress yesterday evening and some images i made with graphicsgale

After WAY too little sleep and way too much programming my Ludum Dare 21 entry is finally done!

Even though this is the first stealth game I’ve done I gotta say it turned out quite nicely.

It only takes a couple of minutes to finish so why not give it a try?
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=3537

Anyways, a time lapse will be up in a couple of hours.

/HighQuality

I’ve submitted Safari Park Escape; you can download it here.

I was way too ambitious, and it’s lacking all of the mechanics that were going to make it interesting (like individual inventories for each animal, random items, reinforcements in the battles, ranged attacks, fog of war, high scores…). But it is a complete (if limited) game, with various possible end states.

Anyway, time for bed. Not sure if I’ll come back to it to add all that stuff in (the code’s a disaster); I’ll see how I feel in the morning.