Hi Guys,

Well after another ludum dare compo I’ve noticed alot of people, including myself have always needed to spend a great amount of time writing the tedious backend for our tile based games, The problem with these back end levels is that they are always the same old code and its just boring to have to write over and over again.

Well not anymore, I’ve been working on a application that allows you to make your tile based game and once your happy with the way it looks you can export the map as a IDE ready source file (currently XNA 4.0/  c++ and JAVA output is planned)

How is this program any different then Tiled for instance? Well with tiled and other programs of this nature it doesn’t allow you to export to ready to use code, you will always need to parse in a XML file for instance.

When you export the file it creates all the needed source code for you.. It may be a little hard to understand so I’ve made a video demonstration below.
Its also worth noting that this is extreamly early in the dev stage and alot of improvements can and will be made. You should also know that the viewport is rendered using a camera so you can look around and zoom in and out (not shown).

Got a opinion on the application, think its crap?.. Great let me know as its early days and your opinions are useful to development.
Enjoy

TY Medice for the great idea!

Happy New Year 2012!!!!!

Hey peeps and thanks for all the lovely comments you made on DiggyDig so far!

First I want to explain a couple of things here as reply of some of the comments:

I apologize that it is so crash prone, again. My engine is not very stable and i experiment a lot with it. I try to improve that while i work on it, but it is quite difficult to get it to work properly on different machines with all the different hardware configurations. In that respect, ludumdare is the only wide scale test i have available right now, so i am using your feedback to improve this piece of software so it will eventually end up working alright. LD 21 was already a great help there! Thanks for all your input on it.

Thanks for the praise on the game mechanics. It is certainly not unique, but rather borrowed from minecraft/terraria and taken to a slightly different direction. Getting the mechanics work properly actually took most of the time, so i only had a couple of hours left to create the content, which you can observe in the timelapse.

The limited amount of time, i think i had around 6 hours left, is of course the cause for the lack of game depth, versatility, actual content, and everything else basically.

The physics are very hackish. I never coded collision with rastered terrain before, so i am happy that it works as well as it does.

Post Mortem

What went right:

• I got the mechanics and gameplay to the degree i wanted to. I was not expecting to make a stellar entry either, instead i just wanted to fiddle around with this idea.
• Although loading times are terrible, i was able to get a quite big world created from a number of bitmaps. This was actually an important proof of concept, as i plan to use this technique to improve on the concept.
• The music was quickly hacked into like an hour before the deadline. It is not too shabby, so i’m fine with it.
• The overall appearance is not over the top, but okay. It could certainly use more polish but you can see what it is supposed to be.
• I had awesome food.

What went wrong:

• I couldn’t fall asleep on thursday, therefore overslept on friday, and was screwing up my sleeping rhythm just before LD.
• The theme. I was raging all night after the anouncement, and the day after about this ludicrous theme. I was thinking about making a game actually fitting the theme, before i realized it is just too generic to actually make a game of it. Same as Escape was, but this is getting offtopic. Anyways, only got started with the actual project some time saturday afternoon, so i wasted a lot of time actually not working.
• I spent too much time on the tech side of the game. It was not so bad this time because i was trying to get something done i planned to do anyways at some point, but i really  should get more gameplay done next time.

Aftermath

I will use the next month to play with this prototype.

I will :

• add dynamic lighting and normal maps to create a denser atmosphere.
• create a 2d Ragdoll animation thingy for teh awesome moves like i already started with as you can see in this basic proof of concept:

• add different kinds of terrain materials, and an actuall surface
• add physics (actual 2d physics) for bridges, elevators, traps, and more
• if the january is still not over by then, I will start experimenting with smooth particle hydrodynamics, or an approximation thereof in an attempt to add realistic 2d liquid simulations. I am not sure how well this will perform, but man, that would be wicked to have

I am not sure in what direction i will take this to be honest. This has an aweful lot in common with terraria, which i don’t like. Don’t get me wrong, i love terraria, but i don’t want to basically remake it. So i will just keep working on this and see what i can make of it. While i have a few hints, i am not fully certain about it.

Thanks for reading, and all your precious feedback!

with love

wzl

It took me several days of non-stop playing and rating, but it is finally done:

220 games (25%) have been judged in a critical but honest manner. The milestone i was aiming for.
While doing so i experienced fun and frustration, astonishment and annoyance, excitement and ennui, ingenuity and inability, sympathy and sadness, love and loneliness, quality and quantity and many more things… the games vary a lot in all of those aspects. But only a few managed to get me thinking: “Wow, i’d actually pay to have a more complete/polished version of that!”

I’ll use this occasion to highlight some of those titles that appeared exceptional to me. Keep in mind that this list is not meant to be a complete list of the top games. I only played a quarter of all games anyway. Its just a list of games that i think deserve some attention.

Final Trip Soccer by Benjamin

I won’t talk about this one… just play it! No, don’t ask, just DO IT! I reserved an overall rating of 5 Stars for extremely exceptional games and in the end this one was the only one of those 220 games that recieved such a vote from me.

The Last Geek by Robotic

It’s basically Super Meat Boy with better graphics and a gameplay twist. Easily the most complete game in this competition. The controls need some tweaks (movement ist too fast in my opinion), but apart from that there isn’t really much to complain about. Also the Kittendare challenge was completed in such a blunt and yet hilarious way that it deserves an award.

Ennui by Zutty

The basic idea of this game is incredibly creative and the gameplay is deeper than you would expect at first. The game itself is a bit short, but it has a lot of potential.

Terra Dua by lectvs

An adventure-platformer, which is a surprisingly rare concept. Surely not among the most adrenaline pumping games, but intriguing and driven by the desire to see what happens next.

Loneliness by Vit

A game that doesn’t involve fighting or the threat of dying, which is a nice change. It comes with an amazing mood, a lovely main character and the by far most annoying message beep sound in the world. The amount of gameplay is quite limited at the moment, but i’d love to see what other friends she might gather in this desolate world in future adventures.

Are We Alone? by Fiona

The search for extraterrestrial life… always worth a game. The logistics and dangers of deep space exploration without it involving battles, invasions and other overly fancy sci-fi stories is quite a rare theme. Add more gameplay possibilities (like building outposts, permanent mines, etc.), many more things to discover and a way to recover from failures without restarting the game and you’ll have a game with a very unique feeling of exploration and discovery.

Thanks to those mentioned for these exceptional games, and equally to those unmentioned for their contributions in this event.

Hi there,

A while ago the October-Challenge was held. It went over the entire month, with the simple rule “make 1$ with a game.”

I planned to enter this game, but unfortunately the port wasn’t ready in time. So now, with a slight (and very miniscule) delay I present my iPhone-game!

Unstoppaball DX is a marble-style puzzler, in which you roll a ball (by tilting the iPhone, no less) through 30 varied levels.

Check out the trailer if you’d like to know more.

Also features a new soundtrack and ball-customization, with 36 balls available.

It’s now up on iTunes. Some say it might be the Best Game Ever. (it’s not) (it’s still fun, though )

-Matthew

I’ve quickly hacked in a Fireworks show at the end of my game as my nod to the New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Trust me, it looks better in motion

[GAME LINK]

I’ve pulled this from another thread, as I think it deserves it’s own discussion.

[1]
Since we have a bigger server now, I think LudumDare can afford to expand it’s range of contests, so there is more happening all year round.

I propose the following.

Feb – 9 day Challenge. Normal LD48 competition rules except it runs through 2 consecutive weekends + 5 days inbetween. Voting afterwards. This is a great length of time for a competition.

Apr – LD48

Jun – Summer Jam Weekend. No restrictions or theme. Just make something awesome.
Perhaps concurrently with this could be “Ludum Dare All Stars”, a special contest restricted to LD veterans and past winners.

Aug – LD48

Oct – October Challenge. 30 days. Make a game. Make $1

Dec – LD48

With this proposal, the mini dares would be cropped to 6 per year, and maybe could become more experimental in nature, using more specific themes/restrictions, serving as a testbed for innovation.

[2]
Seeing how the community here continues to grow exponentially, I’ve been thinking what effect that is having upon the voting.

Firstly, the number of game we are each willing to play and rate is going to remain fairly constant no matter the number of contestents, so the number of votes each game receives (on average) is also going to remain fairly constant.

A few years ago, 20 votes per game would have been enough to stabilize the scoreboard, but with 891 games it can’t possibly do that. Look-see…

20 votes with 5 scoring options gives only 81 graduations between 1.00 and 5.00. (1.00, 1.05, 1.10, … , 4.95, 5.00)
See that 81 graduations is much less than 891 games!

So one voter undecided between 3 stars or 4 stars will have the effect of moving a game up or down the scoreboard by tens of places. So whether you come 1st or 20th overall could be down to just one voter undecided between 3 or 4 stars.

What meaning does the scoreboard have then, when it is so unstable? I propose this solution…

Instead of ranking games on a scoreboard from #1 upto #891, have Gold/Silver/Bronze awards, and select a percentage of games for each. The percentages should be large enough to be achievable and feel in reach, but small enough to be prestigious and meaningful.

I suggest: Letting N = 2% of number of games.
Top N games are awarded Gold
Next 2N are awarded Silver
Next 2N are awarded Bronze
So overall the top 10% of games get medals.

So this time with 891 games, N=18
18 Gold medals / 36 Silver medals / 36 Bronze medals

Please post your thoughts.

Main idea: An astronaut finds himself all alone in boundless Space. He must reach his spaceship before it flies away.

Used: Inkscape, freesound.org, sfxr, Monkey, Paint.NET, Audacity

We were very excited to take part in our first LD and create our first ever game.

We tried to prepare for it as hard as we could. That’s what we ate.

And that’s where we have been creating «Stand Alone».

What went wrong:

Idea. From the very beginning we haven’t worked enough on our game concept. Therefore, changes in the game have been made during the development.

Art. It takes as a lot of time to create art. More than we’d expected. We had to refuse some game objects due to lack of time to draw it.

Some art in progress.

Sound insertion. There were some bugs with sound in Monkey. It was very annoying.

Performance. Flash-version works not very well in browser. Have to deal with it later.

Time. We did not have enough time to add everything that we’ve planned.

Tiredness. Despite the huge amount of fluid, good nutrition and healthy sleep it was very difficult to concentrate on any task.

Despite this we managed to submit our game in time and got a lot of fun!

And we’re going to finish and improve «Stand Alone» according our plans.

Ludum Dare 22 Entry – Stand Alone

Hey Indies,

One thing that my LD 22 entry (and most games I make) lack is sound.  I have little to no experience making sound, so I wanted to get some feedback from the community about how indies either prepare or gather sound effects for their games.  Right now, my “option of choice” is to go to Freesound.org and play with sounds for ~1 hour until I find the ideal one I want to use (for 1 sound clip), and it takes forever, and sometimes the sound I want isn’t there!

I did notice the LD team was awesome and posted a bunch of tools here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/tools/ for us to use, which is cool, but I had a few questions for the community.  Answer as few or as many as you’d like!

Do you use LD’s recommended tools?  Are they any good?
Do you outsource your sound generation (can’t for LD-comp) to someone else?  Do you pay them?
Do you use any other tools to generate sound?  Free vs. Low-Cost?
Do you make your own music?
Finally, do you use any reliable royalty-free sites to pull music and sound from? (is that legal for LD?)

Thanks for sharing!
Josh

Well, regardless of how the voting goes, I consider my effort a failure. I’ll explain why after breaking down the issues…

What went right

What went wrong

In this shot you can also see the debug plane – a quad with a mist texture on it that slices through the landscape (most obvious above the doorway) showing where the player can move. I used this to help sculpt the terrain and place objects on it, and intended to delete it before submission. It’s a minor niggle, but it annoys me!

Self-analysis

The main reason I consider Lonely Island a failure is that I made ALL THE SAME MISTAKES as in LD21. Read the post-mortem for that one here.

You’d think because I’m a programmer by trade, I’d be able to knock up working game mechanics in a few hours. And I can, if I try. But that’s exactly what I do at work day-in, day-out. During Ludum Dare, I’d far rather play around with the art – it’s more fun, I learn new tricks and I get a pretty result a lot faster than with programming. And I guess that’s fine, if that’s what I wanted to do.

But what I really want out of Ludum Dare is to prove to myself that I can design and build my own games – not just implement highly-polished cogs that go into the big machine. And I’m failing at that because I’m doing the fun stuff instead of the important stuff.

So as far as I’m concerned, the theme of the next LD is “Self-Discipline”!

Play (Unity) | Ratings Page

HOLY PLATFORMERS BATMAN.

The next Ludum Dare should have not only a random theme but a random genre too.

Who else likes this?

Hello! I am static_boy123 and I just wanted to share my experience in my first LD, and first game, with others:

I found out about this competition last year when Notch(The maker of Minecraft) entered Prelude of the Chambered, I immediately said to myself,  ”I will do this next year.” So now I did it, I entered in my first, but not last, Ludum Dare.

I was watching tv one night when something popped into my mind, the Ludum Dare. I checked the website to see when it was, two hours. I ran to my computer and started memorizing my basic -5 file- library inside and out, after an hour I was able to repeat most of it from memory and the rest, thankfully, wasn’t needed. So I waited the longest hour of my life hoping the theme would be kittens.

Once the competition finally started I cursed everyone who voted anti-kitten, opened up handy dandy Visual Studio, and got to work. I typed out what I remembered of my library only two classes, but I was able to make a bunch of edits to one to make a new class. I had lots of trouble starting and coming up with ideas for what to do, but I did the basic things, like changing the screen size and creating the controls for moving.

After an hour of sitting and thinking I had an idea, a game that is more based on story than game play, but still has game play. I sat down and started, I added in textures, added a way to shoot, and realized just how inexperienced I am when it comes to game making.

Coding was crazy, I had tons of road blocks; bugs, bugs, and more bugs. I had to go into untraveled land to create the game, and I also spent plenty of time in well worn territory. Overall my game was very fun and frustrating to make, but it was well worth it.

Now a list of what was good and what wasn’t:

Good Things:

• It was fun
• I learned a lot
• I coded in XNA which I am very comfortable in
• Everybody was very supportive of my first game
• I am happy with my work
• My coding works
• Others enjoyed my game
• The ultra great graphics game “Real Life” didn’t distract me that much

Ludum Dare #22 was my third consecutive time participating in Ludum Dare. Reflecting back on my past entries I can see clearly that each time the quality of my entry improves.  This time was no different, you can play my entry Alone In Space… here and be sure to submit and check out the Leaderboards here.

What was left out: (but I wanted in)

> More resource types, I wanted you to be able to gather gas from the nebula’s, that would have been worth more than ore.

> Two more types of asteroids. As it is you have no control over whether you mine metal, or Ore. I wanted different asteroid types to allow you to hunt down just Ore, or just metal.

> More Dialog, as it was I wrote the small bit of introduction dialog within the last hour of working on it, to try and set the scene.

What went Wrong: (I’m still  a pessimist)

> The length of the game, is too long for the type of game. It takes around half an hour to upgrade the ship so that you can easily defeat the waves of enemies. I wanted it to take around 15 minutes to upgrade, and defeat the waves.

> The difficulty is to hard. I didn’t get the enemy ship AI quite how I wanted it, I wanted them to fly side by side, but instead they stack up on top of each other. There are also some cases where they fire more shots than they should be able to. They should be able to fire four shots at a time, but there are times when eight or more are fired.

> I wanted the mini-map to show incoming ships, and the location of the drone (used to trigger the enemy ships) but it was causing an error that made the game unplayable. I changed it to show you the location of the station, as well as the location of asteroids (after you pickup a kitty).

> The graphics, they are almost how I wanted them, but I never had a chance to revise them. I wanted to add some lines to the ships and space station to imply joining pieces, and curves. I’m also not happy with the particle trail for behind the ships, its not that its wrong, its just not what I pictured.

Too Many shots...

What Went Right:

> The music and Sound effects. Although the mp3 don’t loop correctly (I’m not sure how to make them loop, or what format will loop. I still felt the music was a success. I used GreaseMonkey’s script to generate the .it files, then converted to mp3 using VLC. For sound effects I used sfxr, and though the sound effects added to the game.

> The Gameplay was how I intended for it to be, I wanted you to have to venture out from the station to mine, and in doing so you would find the kitten, and the drone. As I mentioned before I wanted the game to play out faster, but that would be achievable with more control over what you collected, so you could earn more money from one load.

> The Leaderboard/ Online High Score table, I had most of the game finished before I decided to add in the highscore table, but I’m glad I did. It add a sense of achievement when you set the highest score, for all to see. I just wish I had the time to add an in game viewer for the leaderboard.

What Comes Next:

I plan to continue with Alone In Space… I want to work on a revised version and over the coarse of a month create a more polished game to release. I’ll be blogging about the progress on the 1 Month Game Website. I will probably start the revision next week. Off the top of my head the revision will include everything mentioned in the What Went Wrong section, as well as more levels, and anything else that I think of while working on it.

Ludum Dare 22 Post Mortem
December 2011 – Game: Fernands War.

Pre-compo prep.
Last year I found out about the Ludum dare competition and was really interested in doing something, unfortunately I didn’t have the weekend totally free to commit to making any real attempt, but I managed to crank out a tiny little endless runner in a couple of hours and catch some of the live recordings (Notch’s one mainly). It was interesting to see the fruits of every-one’s labours, and the community spirit here is really inspiring.
So as I hadn’t managed to make a decent attempt last time, I had planned to jump in properly for LD22. In preparation I had made all the necessary requests for that 48 hour period to be free and started thinking about the tools I would use to make the game.

Physmo is a 2 man team, I do the art and design and @physmotone is the chap with the coding skillz. We had talked a bit about entering the jam as a team but were struggling to both get the time off we needed so I planned to enter solo. This meant coding the game myself; I am a programmer but I’m certainly no game programmer so I realised this would be tough. I’m sure Tony would be shocked by all the fundamental coding mistakes I made while making my entry, stuff he has the experience now to avoid, but I learned a lot doing this, especially about the architecture of making a game, the game states, resource management etc – all that tricky stuff we can take for granted sometimes.

In the week before the theme was announced, I decided I would choose Java as the language, and Slick2D as the graphics library for drawing the sprites (It also does a great job of loading graphics, sound and level data.) I’m not a java programmer but it seemed close enough to C++ to be easy to pick up, but mainly I wanted something that would be multi platform with the vague possibility of embedding in a web page (this didn’t happen). I didn’t know what kind of game I’d be making but assumed it might need level data, and I had heard of a map editor that was supported by Slick2D called Tiled, so I downloaded that and made sure I knew the basics of how it worked. In the prep week I didn’t find as much time as I would have liked to do actual prep but I did get a few hours to find some java tutorials and create a small test application that demonstrated loading and displaying sprites, loading and playing sounds and reading a Tiled level. I didn’t want to waste much of the 48 hours being stuck on some trivial problem like not being able to draw a font to the screen so I investigated the font libraries too (Angel code fonts I think it was). I had the small test app running, the final thing on my list of prep was to actually package the program to be runnable on other computers.
This was a couple of days before the announcement and I could not for the life of me package this thing properly. Eclipse is the IDE I was using and it’s pretty complicated if you don’t know it, and I had no idea about how to create Jar packages (which is what I needed to make the thing runnable). I tried every combination of including the platform specific .dll files, the library .jars for Slick2D and LWJGL, and did a lot of googling for the problem. Fortunately (?) many novices seem to have a problem with this step, and in the end I reluctantly tried using another app to package all of the files up into a fat jar, which worked. i say reluctantly because even though it worked in the end, I still don’t have a good understanding why it didn’t work and why it does now, but hey, it works! This was a real problem just before the compo started though. If I couldn’t find out how to package the game, there would be no point in working on a game. I would heartily recommend anyone taking part in a time limiting game creation competition to build a full app end-to-end before they take part.

The graphic and audio tools were to be Photoshop, SFXR (of course) for sound effects and Audacity in case I needed any sound effect editing. In the end I did install audacity in the final hour to tweak the ship thruster sound effect but that’s all.

Announcement
I’m in the UK, so the announcement came at 2am our time. The plan was to stay up for the announcement, have a think about it and then get some sleep.
The theme is announced. “Alone”. I stare at the screen for a few minutes. My first thought is, “Well at least I won’t have to code any enemy AI”.
At Physmo we have a folder full of crazy game Ideas and prototypes, but we have never really considered a thrust style game. I used to like thrust style games though, and I though it would be within my skill range to make a good attempt at one. Quite soon after the announcement I had come up with some ideas for a decent plot – I wanted to have some narrative in the game that would be explained as you play and I really wanted to have a good twist in there too. I had my general story Idea and style of game I wanted, I could now sleep (and secretly hope to come up with good ideas in my dreams).

Oh, this post mortem is going to be a total spoiler for the game, so please play it first if you intend to… I’ll give you a couple of minutes, just watch out for the spinning sawblades, the collision on them is a bit saucy.

For the plot of the game, I wanted the player to have unwittingly done something really terrible. This idea made it into the final game but was very scaled back. The initial idea was that you would be flying a ship around a room with some kind of reactor in the middle, there would be a cage full of energy capsules milling around that you would have to pick up and drop into the reactor. At some point you would realise that this is not the true reality of the situation, the reactor is actually a horrible mind controlling alien, the energy capsules are really other human members of your crew and the alien has tricked you into feeding your crew to it.
This was the plan until the end of day one, I didn’t think I would have time to code the mechanics for all this, the switching level graphics, picking up and dropping the crew etc, so at the start of day 2 I decided to change it slightly so that you were a security guard of a mining colony, who was going mad. It seems like at first you are being attacked by aliens, but as you progress through the game you can read log files that gradually explain that the aliens are really just the colonists, and by the end of the game you will be alone, having killed them all. It’s nice to end on a cheery, up-beat note.

It was time to start programming. But first I went to my trusty Photoshop and drew some sprites: A yellow ship, some bullets, some white splodges to use as particles and a simple tiling foreground and background tile sprite. The spaceship made it into the final cut of the game with no modifications as I quite liked it. NOW it was time to start programming! First I needed some classes to represent the ship, bullets and enemies. That’s what the game needed, they are an integral part of the game. You can’t have a game without them. That’s why, like an idiot, I spent the first couple of hours making some pretty particle effects.
Ok, Basic particle engine created, I now really HAD to start creating the game objects. I found a nice tutorial about creating game entities, and then creating generic behaviours that could be inserted into them, this seemed like a cool Idea and one I had never tried before so I gave it a shot (I’ll try to link to these tutorials and things at the end of the post). After stealing the code to create the framework of the entities, behaviours and renderers, I derived my own object classes for them, starting with the players ship movement code. This was easy as I had used some basic maths like this a lot in some processing toys I made a while ago. It’s useful to know so I’ll write it out here:
Horizontal Thrust = sin(ship angle of rotation) * force;
Vertical Thrust = cos(ship angle of rotation) * force;
So everytime the thrust button is pressed, I add these values onto the ships velocity on the x and y axis. Every time through the game loop, I add the velocity vector to the ships position, and that moves the ship. And at the same time I dampen the ship’s velocity by multiplying it by a number slightly less than 1.0 (0.98 or something). That reduces the ships motion over time and eventually makes it stop in a pleasing way.

Ok, next big problem. In my processing (processing is a simple java-like programming language) experience, the main loop is locked to a certain frame rate, but in the Slick2D framework it isn’t. This means the loop runs as fast as it possible can – maybe hundreds of times a second – but it will vary from computer to computer and will vary depending on how much is being drawn on the screen too. To handle this, the update loops are passed in a variable that represents the number of clock ticks that occurred since the last update, and using this I could feed it into all the motion equations. Essentially, every calculation that results in something moving on screen needs to be scaled down by the number of clock ticks, so that the movement is nice and constant. I forgot to do this to the scrolling routine though so sometimes the scrolling can be a bit slow if your machine is struggling. That’s a bug but would be easy to fix.

I now had a ship swishing around the screen nicely, with lovely particles firing out of it’s bum (and me making “woosh” sounds) so I flew it around the screen for half an hour thinking how awesome I was to have achieved such a thing. Next I needed some background to be drawn. The Slick2D libraries can load and display level data from Tiled map files, although they couldn’t handle (as far as I could tell) drawing level sprites scaled up, but it was quite easy to parse through the loaded level file, find what tile is at what location and draw it scaled up myself. I got this running surprisingly quickly (well it wasn’t very complicated) and then added some scrolling offset code, and voila! I had a ship flying around a scrolling level. Flying right through the walls though. Next step was to detect collision on the walls, so I wrote a routine that given a point in the game world, would find the foreground level sprite, and check if the pixel was filled or not. It worked and that is the basis of all the collision in the game. To collide the ship off walls, I check around 10 points in a circle around the ship to see if they are touching a solid part of the background. If they are, i calculate the vector from that point back to the centre of the ship and add that to the ships velocity, I was amazed that this works but it resulted in some pretty solid feeling collision (I was worried that the collision would be awful in this game) so maybe this is what real collision is based on.
I created some simple behaviours for the player bullets that I reused for enemy bullets (The entity system worked well here) then I added some basic enemy types. I regret not having the time to make the enemies do more, but in the end I just had static enemies that varied in the speed that they fired bullets at you and the number of shots it would take to kill them.
I added a lot to the game in the last half day, as the main mechanics were there. Different sprites for the enemies, more particle effects and the log file objects that can be picked up. Some trivial looking things took more time than expected, for instance displaying the log file text on screen and making the rest of the game pause while it was displayed. At this point I realised I would have to start thinking about game states, so I changed the main class to be a state based game state using the Slick2D libraries and created another state for the main menu screen, then worked on getting this to transition back and forward and make sure that the player could die and the game would switch back to the main menu. This is something I wish I’d thought about a lot more at the start as game states are a tricky thing to to if you aren’t used to it.

Panic was setting in in the last few hours of the 48, there was a lot to be tidied up. The collision between bullets, player ship and enemies was quite off so I modified the renderers to display the collision box and that helped me track down and fix the issues there. One big problem that I regret not fixing is that the hit-boxes for the circular saw blades is a square, not a circle and this makes for some really unfair deaths in the game. I realised I had no time left to fix this so I modified the level to move the saws and give the player more room to move around them, still it’s disappointing to get unfairly killed by them.

The game was looking quite finished, all the log files were placed and the end could be reached, but it was quite hard, so at the last minute I made the players health slowly regenerate over time. In the last half hour I feverishly added a lot of minor details: The player health bar, more particle effects for killing enemies, more sound effects and a dodgy system for playing the ships thrust sound. Panicking further, I played through the game one more time and hit the build button to build the final Jar file, and opened slick jar (i think) to package it up into a runnable jar file. With minutes to spare I clicked the Jar file and it seemed to work, phew! Opened my web browser, and went to www.ludumdare.com …… wait a … WTF .. oh MAN! Why is the site not working! Through lack of sleep and burnout I thought all was lost, I refreshed the site and still nothing. Thinking that all was lost, I gingerly climbed onto the window ledge, and, oh wait, the site loaded! Wheee! Well, at least, I saw a message from the site saying they would accept entries for an hour or two after the closing time. I eventually uploaded the game and could relax, but those last few minutes leading up to the deadline were some tense minutes let me tell you.

In closing this rather rambling post, I did enjoy the experience. I think I made a decent, complete game that I hope you enjoy playing – it’s quite short. I’ve learned a lot about what should be prioritised next time, and I feel like I was part of something big and crazy

Please try it, it’s called “Fernands War” http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=5349

We have a full game called Mos Speedrun too, for iPhone and Mac/Pc, you might like it.

Thanks!

Nick

@physmo

http://www.physmo.com

Alright!  Finally got around to doing this post.  This is going to an extended look back at the development process of One of a Kind, which you can download, play, and rate here.  It’s going to be a lot of walls of text, so if you want the shorter, regular port-mortem with “what went wrong vs what went right”, you can instead read this post.

That said, onto walls of text!

(more…)

Well, it’s time for me to write my own post-mortem about Never Alone Hotline in order to have more ratings share my experience.

You can also watch the boring timelapse :

Oujevipo#videoId=xn37yp

Oujevipo#videoId=xn381p

What went right/What helped

Hot Chocolate.

On Ludum Dare 21, I found my game idea drinking a hot chocolate outside in the heat of summer. On Ludum Dare 22, I sat in front of my computer for hours without any idea coming, so I decided to have a hot chocolate outside in the cold of winter, juste like last time, and it worked ! As soon as I sat at the café, the whole game idea came immedialty to me, in one second, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. So I recommend hot chocolate, and I’ll order one for every other Ludum Dare.

Breaking up.

Me and my girlfriend broke up a week before the Ludum Dare…and I think it was quite useful (what a jerk!). I felt very sad this whole week (I still do, but that’s not relievant) and I suppose it helped me to come up with this idea of hotline for lonely people and to create this quite depressing atmosphere. Every clouds got a silver lining.

Adventure Game Studio.

AGS is the only software I know for making games, and god, I love it ! Even if it is normally a point & click software, you can use it to make plenty of stuff if you know it well, even puzzles or RPGs. I think it is a great software for beginners : easy to use, and very rich.

Knowing this software helped me to work quicly ans the Never Alone Hotline code is my less messy code ever !

Irc french chanel.

It was great to have people to talk with during this week end. I could complain to them I would never finish my game in time and finally be the first one to finish ^^. It’s a good thing to actually « feel » the community. So thanks to Bender, Meedoc, Gib, Alchymi, 01010101 and the other ones !

Pulsate.

I wanted to use Andre Michelle’s Pulsate even before knowing the theme. So I was quite happy the theme to be alone because this tool makes very lonely tunes. I think it adds a lot to Never Alone Hotline athmosphere ans I’m very happy with it.

Same old graphics.

I suck at graphics. So I used the same old character style I used in my previous game : Big pixels, not much exprissivity, flashing colors…The graphics were done in an hour or two so it allowed me to focus on the narration and coding.

What went wrong/What did not help

Audacity

I spent way too much time trying to record the Pulsate Sound from my own computer with a double-jack. Not only I didn’t know how to use Audacity, but I wasn’t also able to hear what I was recording (because of the double-jack). That was awful, I gave up thrice, then tryed again later. Finally, I managed to do it, but it would have been more clever to learn how to do it BEFORE.

The game title

I don’t like my game’s title. It is the first I came up with and then I did not change, but I think I should had. I don’t like when the Ludum Dare theme is in the title, it’s a serious lack of originality. But even now, I didn’t find any better title so…

Writing in english

I’m not a english native speaker : writing the dialogs in english was a pain in the ass. I wanted to tell much more, but couldn’t because I wasn’t fluent enough. Fortunately, Wordreference helped me, A LOT, and I think it saved the game.

In the end, a lot of things went right and very few went wrong. The game is exactly what I wanted it to be at the first place (drinking my hot chocolate) and I’m very happy with it. I consider it is my best game of all time (ok…I made three…), and I’m glad people seem to like it.

Thanks Ludum Dare !

I you haven’t played Forever Alone Hotline yet : It’s here !

Hello,

My name is Kaylin. I’m an independent game designer looking to create a game exclusively for Kongregate. I have been designing this game for 3 intensive month in advanced to this post, Here is a little background information on what the game is about and a small description on the game play aspects:

Story:

Traced is a hacking type game set in a cyber-punk world where player plays a Grey Hat hacker. SecuDrone Industries has been an established company for some time; putting security programs in every major business and home system. Recently though, there have been reports of computer viruses and power surges worldwide. Evidence points to SecuDrone Industries as the culprit. In a bout of vigilantism the player will be tasked with the choice to either Defend Secudrone Industries by eliminating the evidence, or by investigating them in order to uncover the truth.

Aesthetic:

Visually, the game will look like a normal computer screen with a “special” program created by the player loaded into it that renders hacking easier. The graphics will be minimal, as most of the files and nodes will be represented as primitive shapes.

Gameplay:

Visualize a computer screen that displays the world map with different blips on it indicating “server spaces.”

Upon entering this server space the player will be presented with a number of servers to choose from.

Upon choosing a server they are taken to an objective screen that explains the files they need to retrieve from the server. After that they’ll be sent to the outside server view window which will look like a smaller circle (indicating the player) hovering above a larger circle, indicating the server they are about to crack.

After entering a series of commands oto learn information about the server, find its weak points, and ultimately crack into the server, they will be taken into the server’s mainframe.

The mainframe will be presented as a maze where the files are hidden. While going through the maze to find said files they’ll have to avoid the “SecoDrones” that will be patrolling the server. As the player moves through the server they’ll drop little squares called “Logs.” that can be detected by the Secudrones.

If the SecuDrones detect a log they’ll follow it in order to find the player’s point of entry, or “Trace” (picture pacman if you will). If they find the point of entry then the player will be booted from the server resulting in a lost port to crack. Three loses results in a game over. After successfully finding the file the player will enter backtrack mode where they must re-trace their steps and “delete” the logs from the server. once they’re out, the whole process begins again but with another chosen server.

Artist:

• Requirements: Experience, punctuality, and willingness to cooperate with other team members.
• Task:Even thought the art is minimal in this game, it needs to be stylistic, something that though primitive is easily distinguishable. The artist will be tasked with creating the graphics of the game.

Level Designer:

• Requirements: Experience, Willingless to Cooperate with other team members
• Task: This game has over 50 levels each of these mazes will span the size of a 8.5×11 inch piece of paper (2,550 × 3,300 pixels). The level designer will work closely with the game designer to create levels that will not only enhance game play experience but also bring out elements of the story.

Programmer (x2):

• Requirements: Knowledge of Flash Action Script, Experience, Willingness to cooperate with team members.
• Task: This being a game mainly based on coding, Programmers are the glue of what will make this project come together. Programmers will work with the designer to design, create, code game play elements and mechanics in accordance to the design document.

Before I open up the forum to replies let me get some things out of the way:

Will you be working as well?: Of course I will be working as well. Along with designing and leading the project, I will be doing Music composition, Writing, and Programming.

How will this all work?: I’ve designed a schedule that consists of meetings and deadlines that will be explained to members who join.

What will I get out of all of this?: Having you help me on this project means a lot to me (this being my first big project), Ideally, I want everyone on the team to get an equal share of the revenue that the game generates.

The official start date of the project, or the first meeting will be on the 18th of January, 2012.

For more information email me at onemanproject@live.com.

Thank you very much for your time.

I’ve just released yet another update for our game Follower (submission page here). Thanks to everybody who played and commented our game, I was able to patch in a few post-compo bugfixes and additions, so that you won’t jump out of a 12th-story window screaming after playing our game. Please feel free to play it and leave behind a comment or two! All of you who already did, we really appreciate it. Thank you Ludum Dare community members!

Hey everyone! We’ve finally got our time lapse videos up!

For our programming timelapse, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cU2_m4gkz8&feature=youtu.be

For our art timelapse, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb6UBkAgrfg&feature=plcp&context=C3854edbUDOEgsToPDskJvdVApGT52a5yIinw4kVse

Please play and rate us here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7415

We hope you enjoy!

I’m interesting in rating some games (I’m thinking 30ish?) that are focused on creating an interesting atmosphere or narrative, and than writing about my observations from playing them.

I tend not to be into “interactive fiction” for the following reasons.

- Non-intuitive control schemes (I’m looking at you, text-parser.)

- Boring opening situations (I’m looking at you, I’m-somewhere-but-I-Don’t-know-Why)

- Find-the-Authors-Solution-Through-Trial-and-Error (I hate you, every puzzle revolving around kitchenware)

However, if your “interactive fiction” doesn’t feature any of those qualities strongly, than we’ll talk

If you comment that you want your game to be rated, I’d probably be somewhat critical about it. Not actually that critical, because I’m a big softie who spent 3 days doing the same thing you did and thought it was totally awesome that you did, but still somewhat critical.