So my Jam game is done.  Well, mostly done.

It lacks some of the content I desired, but I spent time on making the other 3 levels to polish the game play to what I hope is a lustering shine.

This is my first bullet-hell style shmup, so take pity on me.

Try out my game right now!

We made it! Our first Ludum Dare Jam game is here!

-> http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8069
Great! Now time to sleep!:)

Transdimensional Moon Rift is now finished! Thanks to the decision (well, had no choice anyway) to put it in the jam and use about twelve more hours to finish and polish I’m quite satisfied with the result.

Will you try to save your zombie kittens, ninja looted by rotten pirates?

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=5242

Made in Unity  (about one meg file)

A lonely boy decides to end his life and finds himself in Purgatory.

First time @ LD so I’m unsure if this is the right way to post an entry? My jam entry.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28746581/Purgatorium_LD22.zip

edit: fix for kitten crash. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28746581/Purgatorium_LD22_1.1.zip

Hell Yeah!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=5454

This time I made a much much bigger game than in September. A big map, some objects and characters, 3 endings, many animations and models, it was a very hectic week-end.

I’m already very happy that I succeed to do a lot more in the same timeframe.

As for the game itself, it’s now your turn to figure it out. Getting to one of the endings is only up to you. I hope you will like it and get all 3

That’s it. I give up.

Since I had prior commitments on Saturday, I planned on making my entry for the Jam during the remaining 48 hours. The idea was to make a game that has NO graphics, forcing the user to navigate by sound alone. That was all going fine, and I was well on my way to a finished game, until 15 minutes before the deadline, I discovered a bug that renders the game unplayable. The way I tested it, I enabled one sound at a time and tested them individually. But, when it came time to put them all together, the way I coded it makes the whole shebang sound EXTREMELY choppy, making it impossible for the player to know what’s going on. I think I know a fix, but it’s gonna take more time than I have left. I guess I’ll keep on plugging and put out a non-jam version when I can.

Tarassis

You are the pilot of the Tarassis, and have found yourself locked up in the control room.  As you find your way back to the control room, you remember the chaotic events that caused this eerie silence.  As the pilot, you have the ability to fire the ship’s local navigation thrusters, tossing around objects (and yourself!) in the meanwhile.  You’ll need to pilot the ship skillfully to get past the obstacles in your way.

We’ve had trouble with the Ludum Dare Submission Link, so we’re posting here for now.

https://github.com/jceipek/Ludum-Dare-Olin

Current Build: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IUGEEMVM

Help page coming soon here and on the Github page!

Instead of programming, we went off to watch episode after episode of Johnathan Creek. I regret nothing.

I think we learned a lot, well… okay, we learned how to make arrays full of pictures of trees in Lua/Love, and now I have an entirely different and much less user-friendly version of Linux installed. Also, I learned that I completely hate Audit and hope he dies from brain cancer caused by radiation emitted from my monitor at precisely the angle of “reading code over my shoulder and making me so angry I hard reset just to spite him the stupid Gack”. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s people looking at stuff I’m currently doing. I mean, who corrects their typos as they go? No-one, it’s more EFFICIENT to go through and correct typos afterwards. I may kill him in his sleep.

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/ce8deb3d855ce51d75bf714ad1cbfd6a my game for the game jam. Attempting to submit it, had a lot of fun rushing around to get it finished.

source code: Mediafire link http://www.mediafire.com/?on7xkcepeo5fbdo

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&&uid=3164

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=7456

This was my first Ludum Dare and I must say that I enjoyed every moment of it. I rarely see my projects through to the end so having a time limit and some competition was very useful for motivation.

What went right?

• Time. I had plenty of time to work on this game, an empty house and no plans for the weekend meant that I could dedicate every moment I was awake/not eating to working on the game.
• Pre-planning. I planned every aspect of the game on paper and planned out exactly what order I was make everything in before I wrote a single line of code. Not a single feature in the final version wasn’t planned on paper first, a lot of features from my original plans were removed though.
• Knowledge. Every feature in my game had been made at some point or another, in some form or another, by me. The problem was trying to remember how I made them and then put them all together into a game that actually works.
• Notch. That man’s livestream had some great music. Plus, the rhythmic tapping of his keyboard was great motivation to keep typing.
• Gameplay. The idea was that my game would be hard. I wanted people to feel under pressure while they were trying to disarm the bombs, I thought that the time-limit, lack of a reset button and having to start the game from the beginning if they failed was a good way of achieving this. Plus, if no one can finish the game, no one can complain that it’s too short.

What went wrong?

• Gameplay. Apparently players don’t like to be infuriated by high difficulty levels and over-the-top punishments for making just one mistake, who knew?
• Over-estimation of my programming speed. A lot of stuff from the original plans were never in the final game, this is purely because I didn’t realize just how long it takes me to code even the most basic of features.
• Lockpicking. As a result of not having the foresight to realize how long these features would take to add, lockpicking wasn’t started until a few hours before the deadline. This resulted in lockpicking turning from the Tetris style puzzle that it was originally supposed to be and becoming a “Bash the buttons as fast as you can” minigame with awful graphics. It also meant that the option to place a previously disarmed bomb in the lock to explode it open, had to be cut completely.

Conclusion:
Overall, I’ve learned that difficulty is not a good substitute for longevity and that believing my programming skills to be god-like is never a good idea, especially before I attempt to make something against the clock and something that other people will play.

So, how’s been playing for everyone? What are your personal favourites so far?

Personally, I’ve enjoyed the following entries most (although I’ve barely scratched the surface yet):

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=7036 (not really a game, but… so true!..)

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=7689 (pure fun)

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=7086 (better than it looks… quite challenging as well)

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=8850 (kinda amusing)

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=7264 (short, fast, retro).

What about you?

The only readable parts are the graphics, and there's no text in them.

I don’t know how to download files off of livestream, so you can check out the slow, realtime process here:

http://www.livestream.com/rhy3756547/folder

My internet cut out a lot so there are big/small gaps between some of the videos but nothing too important should be missed. Except for the submission, which as I mentioned earlier in my post mortem, was hell. Unfortunately, since my upload speed is incredibly low the videos are in SD so there’s a lot of text missing. The StencylWorks design mode parts won’t be visible at all. Sorry.

Just did some minor bug fixes in the game (the game was crashing when you died, and  there was a area that the cold weather wasn’t working) and increased a little the quantity of provisions in the game making is a little bit easier (now you can actually finish it )

check it out here

Timelapse!!!

Screens were taken every 10 seconds. Playback at 14 FPS. Made using Chronolapse.

Play/Rate my game here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=3289

I submitted my game, and finally have it a title: Lone Survivor. Link here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=7488

So, I’m going to evaluate what went right and wrong now. My wrong list is going to be waaaaay longer than my right.

What went right

- Code ideas! While making this I thought up some great ideas for code, and even separated my QuadTree code into a separate library to use in later projects. I also thought of some nicer ways to handle physics than I’ve traditionally done, which is also going to help me with some later projects.

- Development speed. Since I was using C#, the compile time was minimal, making testing a breeze. C# is also a fairly quick language to develop in.

- My interpretation of the theme. I disliked the theme chosen, it was one of the few I -1′d, but I had to work with it anyways. So I interpreted it in my own way

What went wrong

- Absolutely everything else. Everything else was a disaster. My art was poor, and my game lacks animations because I didn’t feel like making or learning an animation library for XNA. Before I start next time I’ll make sure I do that. I also lack background music, even though I have some sound effects here and there. I was pressed on time towards the end, so I ignored adding new features and aimed to just finish the game up, because I wanted to submit something.

So all in all, I had a wonderful, gained a lot of experience, and felt the wondrous feeling of finally ‘completing’ a game. All in 72 hours. Amazing how time can fly by so fast.

I just completed my first ever game jam (not counting the 0h game jam). I’m so happy and I’m glad that I had support from my indie friends over twitter.

I just noticed that this is my first post that isn’t a draft (I have about 22 drafts currently), meaning this is the first that anyone has seen. I should probably introduce myself!

Hi, I’m Kaylin Norman, a rather spunky indie designer looking to make a name for himself. When I’m not playing video games I’m designing video games, and when I’m not designing video games, I’m learning how to design video games better. My life pretty much revolves around game design and development. My commitment to it as a career is barely straddling the line of raw passion and obsession.

I have a little thing called Asperger’s Syndrome. Its nothing big really, all it means is that I see and think differently (most of the time). I would have to say that because of my AS I’m here right now, among indie developers, creating small games. Its what got me to this point.

I don’t normally blog due to incidents that happened last time. See, if you were to meet me somewhere say, a coffee shop, you’d be quick to figure out that I’m rather shy and am also generous to the point of stupidity (“did that guy really just give $100 to the salvation army?”). I’m also very keen and love observing things, which I document…through game design!

Among game design and gaming related things I often blog about life through my eyes. Sounds arrogant I know, but bare with me here there’s a reason! My posts about life generally follow a “Cracked.com” style of satire where its almost like a humorous rant (well at least that’s the intention), and because of that people have branded me with all different types of names (that I won’t repeat).

Anywho, Thank you all for letting me join Ludum Dare. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot of things from the friends I make through this community!

I added a screensho to media with a link to my game. IS that all I have to do?

a link to the game is below –> http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/ce8deb3d855ce51d75bf714ad1cbfd6a

Sadly I had to eject from the cockpit…

This week-end wasn’t so good for any of us at Québarium as each of us already have other plans and thing to do in our todo list.

Since it was a “Jam” we could have kind of cheated and prepare thing in advance and be more prepare (like having a project template for SDL all setup in the IDE). Since I spent time to setup first SDL 1.3 (which I grab the recent snapshots) which in the end I couldn’t get to compile properly (I was really interested to get it to work as it’s now supporting iOS).

Alas it was not to be, I though at first I will have more time yesterday as I was all “alone” (wife went out to university), but then I care thing in the house like setting up xmas decoration. Looking for iOS devs stuff for a friend that had call me in the afternoon for his own project. And today was back to work and just came back home at 18h30… and have a big headache so not in the mood to do any coding.

But I did learn new thing this time, as I got a bit more familiar with VS 2010 C++ Express Edition. Got to setup SDL 1.2 properly (will still take a look at SDL 1.3) which I will make into some kind of template for next time. Found some interesting tools, as I played a bit with Autotracker-C to get some music. And found an interesting character creation tools (http://charas-project.net/charas2/index.php). So not all time is lost and the goal was to have fun.

Hopefully next time we will organize our self a bit better (the same way we did for our participation in a fast demo compo last month, where we have less 1/2 day to build up something with the theme “potato” and hey we end being the #1 demo of that day , you can see our “Poutine” demo here : http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=58079)

See you next time everyone!
And I also wish everyone Happy Holidays! Ho Ho Ho

This was my first Ludum Dare and I have to say it was a lot of fun. Looking back I can think of a dozen ways I could have done better, but I don’t think I would have ever seen those until I tried. Lets look back on the weekend about what went right, what went wrong, the game that came out of it, and what I feel I should do next time.

My Game:  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8475

The Game

After the theme was revealed. I was taken a little bit. I had read over the list of possible themes and had really no thought in my mind that it would be alone. So I had to think. Above all, I wanted to really work off of the theme in a real way. I thought that would help to make the game unique and feel part of this specific Ludum Dare and not just a generic game built in a haste for a contest. I decided on caves, on flashlights, and on dim lighting. After looking at the submissions it looks like about 100 other people had those same ideas. These were things that made you feel alone. I decided that I wanted the game to be about exploration, about rewarding curiosity and trying to achieve and end goal of just making it home. A solitary experience, but one that would (hopefully) be fun.

The Good

I finished the game! Just barely, but I did finish it. So what went right?

• Setting the mood. Even with a limited tileset (and talent) I was able to pull of  consistent atmosphere through the art.
• Navigation. Leveraging the Flixel Framework the platforming of the game works well enough to be considered fun.
• @Notch’s livestream. It may seem weird, but keeping his livestream open while I worked on my own game was a constant encouragement to keep working. Plus he cranked some pretty good tunes.

The Bad

This is it? The game was finished, but can I really call it a game? So, what went wrong?

• To many features. I had to cut so many features at the end, that the game feels incomplete.
• Not familiar with tools. I had never used Pixen or Dame before this event and I spent hours struggling against them to just get my tilemap working. If I was to do it over again, I’d do much better for this fact alone.
• Forgetting about the importance of Sound. Perhaps @Notch’s livestream is to blame, but I didn’t even think about adding music/sound until there was only 90 minutes left in the contest. I tried desperately, but had to cut them to finish the game in time. Then I sat and played my submitted game in silence and wept (silently) over what I had (not) done.
• Not knowing my frameworks documentation. Confession: I haven’t made a game in 3 years. Its been that long since Ive used Flixel or programmed in AS3. It was a world of hurt trying to relearn all of that in the course of 48 hours. It came back to me, but I spent way to much time reading forum posts and searching google for options and ideals. I feel the challenge in game design should be programming the conception in your head, not strugglingly against code libraries and syntax errors.
• Sick girlfriends do not, for a good game weekend, make. My poor wonderful girlfriend came down with a horrible sinus infection on Friday. Which caused my remaining time and attention to be torn between Ludum Dare and preparing Chicken Soup and the usual rounds of Man Nursery.
• Hitting the ground running. I knew this was basically a code sprint and I laughed at those attempting their premature code optimization. Sadly, my approach was just as wrong. I through coding standards to the win as I raced valiantly towards my goal. I had a working prototype up in only an hour! To bad all that code was scrapped and the residual bits came back to haunt me in the final hours of the game.

Tips for next time

• Plan then code. My work was never efficient until I took the time to get away from the computer and write out a game plan. It takes the indecision out of the process and helps keep you focused when coding.
• Make the game work first. I spent a long time working on individual features and making sure they worked. (some didn’t even make it into the game), but I neglected to make sure the game as a whole was working. Not until the final hours did I realize I didn’t have a cohesive mechanic for playing and, importantly, beating the game.
• Stick to coding conventions and organization. As tempting as it is to just let it all go away. Some of those conventions and organization techniques take no extra time to perform and will actually help.
• Know Thy Tools. I’ve already made a personal commitment to make a full game in the span of a week, the week before the next Ludum Dare, just to make sure the code, libraries, and tools are fresh in my mind.

Bonus: Where my Time went!

I use this great tool called RescueTime for keeping metrics of my average productivity per week. As an indie developer this is great. Well, I forgot that it would be keeping track of me this weekend and I for one am happy to see its results. Here they are.

Friday

• Development : 1h 50m
• Art: 10m
• Documentation / Reference: 1h 2m

Saturday

• Development : 5h 23m
• Art : 1h 40m
• Documentation / Reference : 2h 3m
• Level  Design : 43m

Sunday

• Development : 3h 44m
• Art : 1h 31m
• Level Design : 52m