I made a cool graph thing showing how I did in all 7 LDs I participated:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ar-33qvLZBHXdHgtV3RmTUFtTGxPV3dQbXZfa0dXc0E&usp=sharing

And here’s a summary of them all. If you’re new to LD, I hope you can find some kind of wisdom somewhere in there.

My first LD, #19: Worked my ass off, and my game was really buggy and unbalanced. The graphics were very tiny pixel art, but I’m glad people liked it. Here I learned that having a clear goal is important, and that the main mechanics should be worked on first (as obvious as this might sound)

LD#20: Remembering how I got tired after LD#19, I said I wouldn’t work as much and do something simpler, so I made a puzzle. It holds most of my worse scores… That’s what going into LD with no enthusiasm looks like.

LD#22: Now trying to find a middle ground, I decided to take part in the Jam and just get my game polished and not buggy. I was really satisfied by the end product and the ratings. I don’t take pride on the audio score since I used free music for it (which is what I usually do)

LD#23: This time I worked in a group. It was as fun as it was stressful, me being the project coordinator and the programmer. We aimed a bit higher than we should, so the game lacked in the level design department, and there were a few glitches.

LD#24: Again with the same team, we decided to go with an idea that didn’t involve intricate puzzles or graphics. The game was simple enough to work on, and the team did a great job working on the assets. Only problem was a lack of decision-making, resulting in a lot of confusion and last minute rush.

LD#25: Working by myself again, I decided to try different ideas (no platformers or shooters).  I enjoyed making the game, and take pride in the end result. Problem is, there was a lack of good documentation making planning and debugging a mess in the long run, and resulting in the game being confusing, with unclear goals and feedback.

LD#26: Zero hour hit, and people were mad about the theme. I wasn’t. To me it was a great opportunity to try to think outside of the box. I remember explicitly saying “with this theme, few good ideas with shine” (and they did!). And some of the games were amazing.

So I had my idea of making an interactive adventure where you could switch between two worlds to solve puzzles. I quickly saw a need to simplify this idea, so I made it a point and click game, which would have simpler graphics and mechanics.
The idea of having two game windows that connected to each other came when I went to bed (like most ideas ) but I was not sure it would be possible.

So I spent pretty much the whole first day making sure it worked, and the entire time praying it wouldn’t break the last minute >_<
I’m glad I could figure something out that was unique and fun to do, even if I didn’t work as much in it as I wanted (had to cut a good 1/3 of the game…)

Then results are out and I see a golden medal next to one of the scores. It took 7 LDs (and a couple MiniLDs) and I couldn’t be happier!

See you in august

It’s a browser game, and it’s two games.

A simple world and a complex world.

Considering using Construct 2 to enter Ludum Dare? Our friend Ipsy Kyatric is making a series of live video classes to cover all the basics of this engine.

Watch it at Youtube

Watch it at Twitch.tv

More info at the University of Reddit

Get Construct 2 40% off this month

Click to go to the game page

 What went right

» Tools: I was familiar with all tools I was using

» Art: I’m addicted to working with the NES style graphics, so this was no problem. From the sprites to the font and title screen, it was all fun to work on.

» Sound is my weak point. Luckily a day before someone suggested me a website with free music, and there I got all music I needed. I also used sounds from freesound.or instead of the usual bfxr

What went wrong

» Time: Couldn’t join the compo because I wasn’t going to be home on sunday, but this is hardly a problem, as I still had 2 whole days to work.

» Planning: I didn’t plan the game properly. I never got to that point where you say “ok, the game is about this“. It was all over the place, and because of that near the end I had to spend a great deal of time just to figure out if the concept actually worked.

» Had to cut many features off, like a more in-depth interface with more helpful information, and a loot system that was supposed to add more depth to the game.

And then

After submitting the game, I added a statistics system to it, and submitted it to Kongregate. It’s pretty fun to see how many people are playing it.

Not my best game by far, but this is what Ludum Dare is all about: learning. Next time I will plan things better and actually have a fixed idea of what the game will be.

In my game you’re that RPG villain, and the hero is coming to you. Your objective is to position enemies and traps in dungeons to discover what are his weaknesses. The finally when he gets to your lair, you choose the right weapons to defeat him.

When the hero goes through a dungeon, you can see how much damage he took and dealt, and how much time it took him, so you can eventually find out what enemies give him the most trouble. But you must remember you can’t kill him until the end, like any good villain.

It’s progressing quite nicely. Most art is done; databases and UI too.

   I’m 7Soul and I’m the programmer of Dead Pixel Games, a group of 5 brazilian friends with a passion for game design.

   Cosmic Canvas is our second ludum dare game, the first being Biodome.

   I don’t have much to say, other than go play our game, and have fun.

Took us (a team of 5) 4 hours to come up with an idea. The concept art you see here doesn’t make any sense, ignore it.

I’m continuing my MiniLD game. More info here

Alright, game is done. Well, sorta. At least it’s playable. There’s only one level that keeps looping

Play here (WEB)

(use chrome or firefox, IE will probably lag)

The initial idea was to make a game that was half a space shooter, half exploration/roguelike/zelda, but had to scrap the second half early on. There are 3 weapons that level up when you pick more power ups, similar to Raiden. Bombs doesn’t work u.u’

I interpreted the theme DARE by making graphics that followed the NES restriction a lot more closely. I also DARED to copy The Guardian Legend and make the ship a girl, that transforms when the level start (31 frames :0)

Also, I DARED to try some stuff in Construct 2 that I never tryed before, like loading the level from a .tmx (Tiled file) using XML, and using SpriteFont to create the info in the HUD

Music by http://ozzed.net/

Game is taking shape pretty quickly ^^ Sadly I’ll have to give up on the roguelike-ish part I was planning on doing because of the time

Got some music from http://ozzed.net/ you should check it out

First time I’m interested in a MINILD, the theme is really cool this time. I’ll be trying to make a game similar to The Guardian Legend, in which you have a space shooter and an exploration/roguelike game all-in-one. Graphics will be 8-bit, trying to follow the NES restrictions

 These are some sprites I made in advance, the girl will transform into a ship, like in the game

Using Construct 2 and Photoshop

This is my port-mortem for Biodome, my 4th LD entry, first Jam.

The Good

» Working as a team was a lot more fun than expected. I was on a team of 5 people, talking over on skype. We’ve known each other for quite some time, and decided to get together to make games, and this was our first game, kind of a experiment, to find out how each other work and how to coordinate our efforts.

» Defining right at the start what each one would be doing. We are pretty much all pixel artists, but I’m the only one who can program, so that was decided beforehand (our composer also can, but we couldn’t sacrifice our only composer). Each of the other three were assigned to sprite work, scenery work and general artwork.

» Using Construct 2 to make the game. It’s easy to use, has a ton of cool features, and is completely stable (contrary to construct classic). But recent updates were kinda buggy, like using “or” statements with key press not working. Also, thanks to Construct’s HTML5 exporter, we could get a lot more people playing.

The Bad

» Our idea got too big. Starting with the concept of a puzzle platformer with 3 characters at the same time. First of all, a puzzle for LD is not a good idea, cuz it’s hard coming up with good puzzles in such short time. Second of all, platformers are not my strong point, so the movement was kinda weird at times. And finally, having to program 3 characters with different abilities and properties took a lot of time, and making the puzzles was hard because of their different characteristics.

» God-damn buttons and doors.

» The guy in charge of making the tilesets didn’t know anything about making tilesets. This resulted in it not being correctly aligned to the grid, tiles missing, tiles not tiling correctly… a big nuisance.

The Result

» People seemed to enjoy the game, despite a couple of flaws. They said the puzzles were good and they loved the music and the art, so I guess the whole team did a great job.

» We will be working on new projects now ^^ We formed a gamedev group, at Dead Pixel Games (temporary website), or @indiedeadpixel

My timelapse:

Some progress ^^

We had an idea pretty fast, and started with the concept of characters. I begun coding everything. What you see here is the 3 controllable characters, and one of them can carry boxes around, and stack them.

The other guys are making the art and the music, and it’s all looking pretty good

Maybe someone can answer me this. How can I have the times in between my timelapse to be black? For instance, if I turn it on at 9am until 11am, then turn it off, and turn it on again at 1pm. How can I fill that time in between in my final video?

Me and some buddies (X-wing9, Renato, Mat and Guax) are going to be in for the jam

We just joined forces as a brasilian gamedev group called Dead Pixel and this will be our first work together

Dead Pixel @indiedeadpixel

Not much to say here

What went right:

Simple gameplay idea
Using tools i’m familiar with
Livestreaming, there was only a few people, but they were a great motivation and stress relief

What went wrong:
Making a level editor, should have added a few more features like painting an area and auto-save
Enemies programming, should have optimized this

Timelapse:

Download and rate here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=2958

Just a reminder, don’t forget to add a cat to your game!

Progress

I made a lot of progress, the level editor and an automatic tiling feature. Some of the art is done as well
The game will be about an astronaut that find himself the last survivor of his space ship. But he has extreme powers that will help him defeat the invasors.

Little advertisement here:
Twitter: @7SoulDesign
Livestream: http://www.livestream.com/ails

Going to bed now, ill continue my livestream tomorrow morning, and continue my quest on having more people watching than Notch’s stream (so far i had a max 5 viewers :O)

Cya, 7Soul