So when I first posted my game, there was a major memory problem. So everyone who played my game experienced a crash 15 seconds in. This clearly sucks. I also originally only put up a .love file because I used the love2d framework, and people hate that. So I have since changed it to the executables.

Overall, this experience of having things not go as planned has been very educational. I obviously need to test my work on more than one computer.

Another thing I’ve realized is the fact that the way I incorporated “alone” in my game is not readily apparent, which I’m sure has cost me. The secret of my game is, once you kill an enemy, they are gone forever. So once you run through the game once, there will only be a few enemies the next time, and the time after that there won’t be very many at all. How lonely is a game where there are no enemies?

Well anyway, if anyone reads this, please give my game a shot. Thank you all.

I’ve had a week to reflect on the Ludum Dare experience and when I think back on what was the most fun aspect of making Hug Monster the answer surprised me :

It’s the title screen and ending

What could possibly be so compelling about the title and ending that makes me rate them as my favorite part of the experience?  I think it’s because I wasn’t really expecting them.  The desire to have them came out of nowhere.  I honestly didn’t even think I’d have the time for them so I didn’t really give them much thought.  When I realized that I would in fact not only have the time for them but that I would even have the time to make them fancy I decided to stretch what I’d already made for the game itself and see if it could be used for my very own machinima title and ending screens.

What I ended up with was programmatically generated motions for all the characters.  There isn’t a keyframe or a baked animation in sight in either the intro or the ending.  The same code that powers the game’s core mechanics right down to the Hug Monster’s player seeking behavior are all used to give the illusion of a movie sequence in which the characters are making intelligent decisions.  So I went from having no concept at all of a title screen or ending to having fully animated ones that illustrate and enhance the concept and theme.  And there you have it, the biggest surprise and possibly the most unexpectedly fun aspect of the development process for my game.

Well, I suppose I should do a postmortem! This will be short, don’t worry.

I made a space shooter. Yes, I know, it doesn’t really incorporate the theme too much, but the player is alone against all the alien ships…

The Good:

• It’s finished
• I’m really happy with most of the art
• It has sound effects
• The gameplay is pretty solid, in my opinion
• The game will keep going as long as you can

The Bad:

• It has no background music
• It could have used a little more polish
• Some artwork isn’t very good

The Ugly:

• Life got in the way of improving it
• I slept a little too much

If you haven’t played it yet, you can check it out here: Clicky

I’ve been improving the graphics a little, and will add background music and more enemy types soon. Thanks for reading this postmortem.

Just wanted to say that my first (well, technically second) Ludum Dare was a frustrating, torturous experience. It was also super fun! Can’t wait till the next!

Se encontró patines de buscar la sección gratuita de Craigslist. Después de encontrar a cerca de que también se encuentran algunos en nuestro callejón. Puntos Fern cómo encontrar patines adecuados para el cultivo – Yo no estaba tan preocupado con el uso de los alimentos específicos de la madera (aunque lo hizo) como no de nuestro suelo se pondrá en contacto con la madera. Vamos a compartir cómo éstos sobreviven durante el verano – esto es tanto un experimento, ya que es una idea de cómo hacerlas. Yo soy, hasta ahora, encantado con los resultados. El mayor reto fue la eliminación de los listones en los patines sin destruirlos. Artículo recomendado por Decks

The Dare is my iron. To quote Henry Rollins:

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

Coding a game in 48 hours is humbling. I might think I’m a coding bad-ass but the Dare tells it true. (I’m not)

(more…)

Cientos de guacamayos y los loros pueden ser vistos en la selva tropical que alberga el Centro de Investigación de Tambopata, canoa accesible por avión y motor de Lima. Miembros de la gira de la Sociedad Audubon también escuchar a los expertos hablar de la otra fauna y flora. El costo es de $ 2.770 a una persona, ocupación doble, incluyendo pasaje aéreo de Miami. Una extensión de seis días a Cusco y Machu Picchu es de $ 995. Reservaciones: (800) 289-9504, extensión 7411. Artículo recomendado por machu picchu travel

It’s been requested and I’ve only now got a chance to do it. A short gameplay video of “A form of monotheism”. Feel free to fullscreen so you can actually see what’s being clicked and so on.

Play/rate the game here!

I spent a lot of time during last week going through the entries, playing them, rating and dropping some occasional praising/scalding/(maybe)helpful or just random comments. Since I’ve hit 25 percent coolness and I no longer have time to do rating (I originally thought I’ll be already on traditional new year lan party, but I got delayed for a few days before finally declining challenge of Unity Flash to Flash compo) I’ve decided to post a list of few games that IMO deserves your attention.

It’s (in no particular order) a list of some games I’ve rated high enough (4-5) for whatever reason stroke my insane fancy at the moment. I might have missed some from those I’ve rated (and I’m pretty sure I’ve missed some interesting entries in 75% unrated remainder) – so… sorry for those of you who were left out

Arzea – arkeus – one of the nicest platfomers I’ve encountered, with RPG stats, nice art and music, quite playable and with a lot of content.

Final trip soccer – Benjamin – one of the biggest surprises… at first I thought what the hell, soccer sim? For the idea alone this would deserve some high rates

Super Smash Lander Suicide Party, Bro? – Black Ships Fill the Sky – no link to theme at all… but very funny and crazy game I enjoyed playing for a while.

There Can Only Be Static – cards – very nice “programmers” action / puzzle-ish game with minimalist art:) I probably wouldn’t put it here (even if it has nice gameplay), but using breaks and speed++ and other stuff appealed to my inside programmers mentality.

Last breath – deepnight – platformer puzzle story of lonely dog and his shadow. Interesting gameplay and great visuals.

alone I art – Make A Game very funny looking “stealth” type game. It gets boring later on, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Farrokh – Doktor Ace – gameplay of this running kitten on the moon simulator is pretty simple, but I was awed with the resulting retro – lowres – voxel visuals somehow made in Unity.

ASSAULT THE DARK FORTRESS – FrankieSmileShow – probably contender for the best LD entry in terms of sheer gameplay, this Zelda clone is one of the games I made copy on my netbook so I can finish it later when bored.

Space Ghost – madmaw – At first I looked disbelievingly at the description… Matlab-esque shooter… WOT? And after clicking on the link I found out one of the most innovative game I’ve seen in this LD. Yeah, it’s definitely for everyone, target public is pretty small, so if you hate math / don’t know what sin(x) is / you don’t want to flex your math/coding skills (or you don’t have any), you probably won’t like it as much as I did.

Insanely Awesome Physics Saga – Merrik – platformer which tries (quite successfully) to innovate the gameplay using physics.

Abandoned – Noel – I guess enough was said about this innovative puzzle game, but I would feel bad if I wouldn’t list it here.

Warrior cursed by Loneliness – Spotlightor I really liked this FPS combat simulator… probably because I wanted to try it exactly this way for some time

/follow – 01101101 – One of the best pixel art in compo, great music, simple but enjoyable gameplay (with several types of it), nice fitting story… Enough said.

The Invention of Colour – bach This is one of them entries “not a game, buddy”, which is really shame, because visuals/audio/mood is one of the best. Worth looking at.

The Chosen – Balooga03 Almost same as above… not much of a gameplay, but wandering around in a strange land was very… meditative? From the aesthetic point of view this is definitely best looking 3d game in compo I’ve seen.

And then, alone at Epsilon-1 – eld Very good little scifi adventure. It’s short and hacking puzzles could have been better, but it’s one of the few games in compo which feel mostly finished and polished.

Midas – Wanderlands another “highprofile” game I noticed in the feed, but it’s really deserving your attention.

Well… that’s it. See you at next LD.

(PS: Can I has ratez too?)

My first thought when I read the theme was “exploring an old house alone, at night”. I played too much “Alone in the Dark” in my days… And I wanted a similar game, but in 2D. So I choosed the “survival horror” genre.

What went right:

• Programming tools: I had no problem with the usual write-build-compile-play-debug workflow
• Chronolapse was very good for the screen capture (see timelapse here)
• I was more focused than the last time
• It was really fun!

The Planning

The planning for the game started ahead of time. There were 2 things I wanted to have set in stone before a theme was announced, and that was a genre and a name. I wanted to pick a genre that could easily be tailored to any kind of game, but the one I chose far ahead of time was a Metroidvania, mainly because I have a project on the backburner that is a metroidvania, and if I can get a similar kind of game out of my system, I can feel content with keeping my planned project on the backburner for a long period of time (in order to work on my main project at the moment, which is an RPG). The name was something I also really wanted to lock down. Last time I wasted about 30 minutes near the end coming up with a name, which I felt wasn’t a good use of time for the competition. This time, I pegged down the name Arzea ahead of time, with the intention that if something better came to me while working on it I would change it.

When the theme was announced (thank goodness it wasn’t randomly generated, that was one I just wasn’t feeling in the mood for, and would have required me to change my genre I believe), I immediately started planning out various parts of the game. I chose to go with a magic theme, since I wanted something different than I’d done before, and in the process I also started thinking up story elements for “Alone”. In the end I interpreted it as being the only one of his kind in a place overrun with monsters, but it seems most people interpreted alone as being a single entity. The main character had always felt kind of alone being that he was different than others, but being thrown into an unknown world made him feel even more lonesome than before. I feel I didn’t get a chance to tie very much story into the game, but I felt that it was definitely one of the better areas to skip for time.

The Process

Once I had the basic gameplay elements and story pegged down, I dived straight into art. I went with basic dirt and grass tiles, and just went on instinct for how they should look. I was very happy with how the first draft turned out, and there was very little modification after that. By choosing a magic theme, I was able to magic a wizard main character which was a big plus, as it let me keep things really simple with the hat and robe. I also ended up drawing some objects that I didn’t have time to fit into the game.

Once tiles were done I dove into the map generation code. I wanted to keep it quick and easy, so I decided to autotile pretty much everything, and just draw the top tile layer with a single color. I had seen a neat effect with backgrounds in other games (my biggest inspiration was Level Up!) so I did something similar which worked really well, as it was also very easy to autotile. My tiles ended up tiling extremely well (I was incredibly surprised at how well, since I hadn’t put any thought into it while drawing them) which made it really easy to quickly map up a world.

The movement and jumping were very familiar as I’ve done a few platformer games in the past. I think my jumping ended up feeling a bit more floaty than I would have liked, but overall it felt pretty tight to me. Once that was working, I added my first spell, the fireball. This time around I was able to quickly add particles, and the particles were one of my favorite parts. It was fun working with the colors to make the particles look neat against the background, and I also liked trying to make unique particle effects for each spell. Once the fireball had particles I moved onto adding the other 5 spells I had planned. This was long and tedious, but I managed to work through it without losing my motivation, and was able to move on.

After that I added some very basic enemies, and then expanded the world. From there on out it was mostly adding small things repeatedly, such as keys and doors. I worked all the way up to the deadline, but in the end I felt the game was polished and complete, even if not as complete as I had originally envisioned.

What Went Right

Planning – I feel my planning worked out well. I saved time on choosing a generic name and genre before hand, and putting all my thoughts down into a document before I dove into coding game me a good linear track of what I needed to work on. I wasn’t stuck figuring out what spells I needed in the middle as I had planned it all out from the start.

Art – The art wasn’t something I was expecting to go so well, but even with my very limited pixel art skills I was able to come up with something quickly that I was extremely happy with.

Genre – Since I had been wanting to work on a metroidvania for some time, choosing to do one gave me a lot of motivation. However, there was a downside in that I really did want to do a full fledged metroidvania with all the bells and whistles, and when it came down to it, I had to strip it down to a very basic form in order to make the deadline.

Tools – Using flash with flixel was again a really good choice, as I now have a year and a half of experience with it under my belt, so I could focus on making the game rather than fighting with the language.

What Didn’t Go Right

Tweaking – There were some bugs and some tweaks that really needed to be fixed for the game to feel less tedious. For example, there are some problems with the spawning logic, so sometimes thing don’t spawn properly (which is very important when that thing that didn’t spawn is a boss). Also, the respawn way turned out to be buggy in that things would respawn as soon as they were off screen if you kill them. These are the first things that will be tuned/fixed for a post-competition release.

Scope – While I feel I did a much better job than last time of limiting the scope of the project, I still had intended quite a few other features that didn’t even have a chance of making it in (pause menu, map, achievements, spell swap popup). In the end I felt I was able to cut things that weren’t essential and it still felt very complete, but I would have liked to have more.

Performance – If you have a low end computer (I managed to test with my netbook right before the deadline) you may have problems with playing. I was surprised at this, but I didn’t get a chance to look into it before the end of the competition.

Theme – While I thought I had hit the theme much better than the last couple times, it turns out that it wasn’t quite enough.

What Comes Next

I’ve already begun working on expanding the game for a post competition release. I want to include some of the features that I had to cut for the deadline, along with expanding the world to be much bigger. As a comparison, here are the original competition version worlds, and the expanded world (not yet finished):

I’m probably not going to put too much work into it, as I would really like to get back to work on my current main project, but hopefully it will feel much more balanced and fun before I release it!

Here are the links to the game:

Play/Rate The Game:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=4155

Watch The Timelapse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcFZQaoMdCM

Read The Journal:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/category/ld-22/?author_name=arkeus

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the game!

Merry Christmas everybody!

Over the years that I’ve been blogging on and off I’ve been seen as strange due to my views on certain situations. So in order to clear it up before hand I created a “Purpose post.” What this post does is it explains a little bit into my thinking as well as who I am, it will also introduce and explain some of the segments that you will see in my blog.

Since this blog is on Ludum Dare most of the posts that go on here will be game design or gaming related in some way. If you want to see any of the other stuff I talk about, You’ll have to head over to my Tumblr(1manproject.tumblr.com) account.

Being on the autism spectrum is a constant chore at times socially speaking. There is no definite way that autism effects a person that is seen in other people; it effects everybody who has it differently. For example, my ex girlfriend has Aspergers syndrome just like I do. But she is lower functioning that I am. In other words, I have an easier time learning and dealing with social stress than she does. But its not just limited to that. Think of the Autism Spectrum as a tree, where  the trunk would be “autism spectrum.” All of the branches would have different types of ASDs (Autism Spectrum Disorder) assigned to them. And on those branches, the leaves that grow on them would be different people. That is probably the best way to visualize it.

Anywho, my type Aspergers Syndrome- an Autism Spectrum “Disorder,” allows me to recognize or piece together certain things that wouldn’t be put together normally. For example, Many straight A students in colleges are often successful, but the result of their success is always one of two things. Either A) they are often harboring a secret of some sort to their success that’s not exactly ethical, or B) in the end they are often unhappy with their successful lives leading to strong regret for not enjoying themselves like their peers. That is a connection I made by observing straight A students while in Junior High, High School, and my Freshman year of college. I don’t just spout this stuff, there is actually science and logic behind it. Sure its somewhat obvious, but that’t just the way my brain and that’s the way my logic works.

That said, Let me introduce some of the segments that will appear in my Tumblr, and on this blog:

[Pre-emptive Strike]: Pre-emptive Strikes are posts in which I create theories about game design and development based on my observations of developers and gamedev in general. The theories in these posts will often seem far fetch but can only be understood by reading through the post. These posts are debatable.

[Counter-Attack]: In these types of posts I take apart an argument and analyse it piece by piece. Often, the arguments in this post can be rendered useless, BUT these posts are not absolute, there is ALWAYS room for debate.

[Kaylin Reviews...]: Sometimes I like to post my thoughts on games, With these posts I review games informally, often cracking light-hearted jokes while doing so. Think of it more like comedically roasting a game.

[Me,Myself,and I]: I like to write down my inner thoughts. Problem is I have a bit of an imagination an tend to create different personalities. On Tumblr, these posts will appear as “chat logs.” On Ludum Dare, these posts will still have their chat log like format, but will appear slightly altered.

Look forward to these posts in the coming days, and please don’t hesitate to comment, I love interacting with other people and hearing their thoughts on my posts.

See you next year!

-TheOMP

No Friend Time Online a game by a indie company monstraproductions 1 persons made 48 hours coding Mattias Sikmar is his name

and that’s me the game is a top down shooter game you can host your own server how many that can join has not been tested but online working if you host with hamachi or port forwarding there is many type of weapons graphic by me windows download http://download993.mediafire.com/611dsukh6u8g/nha47vnzct58nb7/NFTO.zip

Here you go:

Click image for download. After unzip: DrA.exe for win, DrA.py for Linux.

To rate the game (based on LD version), click here.

Ahoy all!

Last weekend I made a compo entry called Castaway.

If you speak French, you might want to read my lengthy writeup on Les Forges. Else, here are the traditional bullet point lists :

What went well

• Using familiar tools (custom framework, FlashDevelop, HaXe, Photoshop, Reason, etc.)
• Using project management techniques and tools. I used Asana to handle my ever growing todo list and a mini scrumboard for tracking bugs. Pictures at the end of this post.
• Recording custom sound effects. This was my first time and I’m very happy with the result (especially since it didnt take long). Picture below.
• Testing. Two friends came on Sunday evening and played the game again and again to spot bugs. They were the one writing the scrum post-it and it was very useful.
• Chronolapse. Making a timelapse took no effort and I love the end result.

What went not so well

• Theme. I did not think long enough of the theme and started working without a clear idea of what my game would be.
• Time management. I spent too much time working on animations and art assets instead of making content. Look at this 8 frames walk cycle : . This is wasted time, lots of it.
• Balancing. The game is way too hard ; my testers thought it was funny because of it but I should have considered this as alarming.
• Oops. A critical bug that crashes the game on slow computer was shipped in the compo version. Maybe the test configuration should include a slow computer too.

Pictures

Asana

Bug tracking scrumboard

Sound design tools

Even though my game is way too hard, too short and unforgiving, I’m still happy with what I did. I am satisfied I made some art and music that were not 8bit/chiptune over the course of the weekend and more importantly, I had lots of fun. Next time, I will NOT make a sidescrolling platformer, that’s my objective.

Thank you all for reading/playing/rating !

Christmas edition for my game is done! Play it!

Things to do:

1. Collect all candies.
2. Sing “Jingle bells, jingle bells”.
3. Meet the gnome.
4. Watch a garland.
5. (Did you know those white floating platforms are clouds?) Pierce the heaven with your drill-shaped hat!
6. Miss the “Restart” button.
7. Enter the Shrine Of Festivity.

So, it’s christmas, I think, and I finally have some time to write a little about my experience with LD#22. My entry isn’t that great, but still, for what it’s worth:

At first I wasn’t even sure if I would participate, due to several reasons, too little sleep in the weeks and days prior to the weekend being one, and an important 30th birthday on saturday night being the second. I usually don’t have a problem with all-nighters and actually can produce results in 20-hour coding stretches with 4 hours of sleep in between, but this time I was just completely burnt out the night when the theme was announced. I tried to stay up until midnight, take a 2 hour nap to recharge my drained batteries and then start crunching once the theme was announced. I failed. I woke up to my alarm, feeling really dizzy and decided to get some more sleep and start in the morning.

(more…)

Maybe a bit late but I don’t want to miss a post-mortem for my game.

You can try my game here. It’s recommended to try out the game first so this text makes a bit more sense

This was the second time I participated in the Ludum Dare competition, and it was also the second time I actually finished a game in my life. At first I was very doubtful if I will even have the time and power to make a game since I had some busy days before and after the weekend – Starting tired and stressed into Ludum Dare is a bad idea. Some hours before the compo began I created an just-in-case ‘I am in’ post. Then I stayed up until 3 AM local time to wait for the theme being announced. Shortly after I went to bed. It was until 10 hours later that I finally started working on my entry.

What went right:

• Idea and gameplay. While not very innovative (parts of my game are similar to Flow and the first phase of Spore) I like the final result. LD is flooded with 2D platformers and top-down shooters so I wanted to make something different. I spent 3-4 hours just to come up with an idea.
• The graphics. This was very important for me since this was the main critique point of my previous game. I am not very talented regarding drawing stuff, so I had to find another way to compensate for this. I decided for a very minimalistic style which ended up great in my opinion.
• The sound. This time I also used FL Studio which allowed me to make a decent background soundtrack. I am missing a lot of soundeffects for various gameplay events (e.g. collecting stuff) but it turned out that this adds a lot to the atmosphere.
• Controls. Actually I was not sure if the controls are good or bad. But I decided to see things positive. When moving there is nearly no friction which makes it hard to chase parasites or hit collectibles. But on the other side it fits the style and again adds to the atmosphere.
• Mood & Atmosphere. Probably my strongest point. This is the result of the right combination of elements mentioned above.

What went wrong:

• Illogical or missing gameplay details. The game is finished, yes. But there are still some minor things where I didn’t find the time to complete them. For example, the player is immune to parasites while all of his clones are not. In the game this is not explained so the player has to find that out by himself.  It’s not very tragic but it makes the game a bit less intuitive.
• The name. I hate the name of my game, no joke. I simply failed to come up with something better than ‘First’ in time. It is not a good idea to use a general English word as a name for something on the internet. You will find everything but my game if you search for ‘First’.
• I missed the theme slightly. The game progresses too fast so the ‘alone’ feeling disappears quite fast. In my original idea it was planned that the player is alone for a much longer time.
• I am very ashamed of this one.. but I failed to include a kitten in my game.

All in all it went a lot better than I expected and feedback for the game has been very positive so far. I learned that it is important to give it at least a try even if you think that you will miserably fail for whatever reason.

On a side note, I also uploaded a timelapse for anyone interested.

Only a few hours ago did I find out about these christmas changes. So I started working on mine, and here’s the result!

It also includes some gameplay changes that I worked on the day after LD22 finished. Also, the nice thing is that editing the content was very easy, but adding separate textures isn’t possible at the moment, so I had to replace the tileset with a new one. Also, I couldn’t save the old content because there’s no way to choose which you want in a level (which you can’t choose either). So there’s still lots of room for improved mod support.

But anyway, enjoy, and merry christmas!

Direct link

Link to the rate page

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said that Cat: “we’re all mad here.”

So, Harry hosted a Ludum Dare jamsite in Melbourne, inviting game developers around the area to spend 48 hours cooped up in his house to make games. Here’s an account of the fun and chaos that ensued!

What went right:

• Going out and brainstorming before anything – give a chance for ideas to grow / ferment
• Being in the same room provided motivation and staved off the loneliness
• The epiphany couch (which doubled as Luca’s makeshift bed)
• There was always something to playtest, and the instant feedback was useful
• We all got semi-appropriate amounts of sleep

What went wrong:

• Pepper flavored cup noodles. Imagine noodles and pepper in a plastic cup. Yeah.
• Getting lost to the shops several times thanks to Harry’s navigation
• Temperature and computer cord control in the room was not great
• Canine interruptions; the dog would occasionally enter the room and chew on wires
• Didn’t record anything down, making this post-mortem more difficult than necessary