I’m going to try to mess around with sounds and processing + html5. That makes me very afraid. Yes I do realize that it’s not enough to match the theme. If that fails I’ll break out regular processing.

With that in mind, does anybody have any useful links for javascript/html5 sound stuff?

Having been away and sick I didn’t get a chance to write this, but I’ll do so now(with a little over 24 hours to spare)

Let’s get started then. Not with the beginning, that’s what is expected, let’s go for a random order.

“A form of monotheism” a silly name, thought of in the last 30 minutes as a better-than-nothing name. It surprisingly works and fits the mechanics of the game. You’re an exterior force with equal control over everything in the game world. You can chose sides, be impartial, have some work for the benefit of others and so on.

The original idea was to have the player be some fellow that clones himself amd tweaks said clones to accomplish some end (repopulate the planet, fight off aliens/ zombies/ in-laws) but someone already  had that idea. Can’t remember who.

The second idea was to make a platformer and beat the theme into it with a stick. Since I forgot to make a platformer framework before the compo, I decided that’d take too long so I dropped it.

Back to square 1.

I wanted the player to start with one individual, and have the ability to spawn more and breed a populaton.  That took too long, so I ended up spawning a whole bunch right from the start.

Species and similarity

What you’ll notice is that creatures are divided into specias: humins, cats, rats, and llamas (the llamas were supposed to be centaurs but I gave up on that) . Each individual also has an empathy-o-meter/ similarity-rating, the color under them. The more you interact with an individual the more that changes. New creatures get one based on their parents.

Breeding and killing

Creatures of different genders and the same species will produce an offspring if they are similar enough AND one or both of them are assigned as breeders. This is mostly to avoid population floods encountered in early testing.

You might wonder why breeding and killing are in the same subcategory. Because they both depend on similarity. If two creatures are too dissimilar they’ll want each other dead(regardless of species). If you keep a similar population confined and breeding you’ll notice that eventually they’ll start killing each other to keep ‘strange’ ones away. Much like history isn’t it?

Social commentary much?

Yes. The only time when you can be sure things won’t be killing each other is when there is only one left. Hence alone. After I finished the game I was left disgusted. I unwillingly made a game about racist intolerant cartoony critters that strip the land of resources and kill eachother because the color under their feet is different. You know: like real people. The relative accuracy of my ‘simulation’ was even confirmed by someone who actually bothered studying these things.

Anyway

The good is working with processing and making html5. A lot easier than I thought.

The bad was not getting to add sound effects, which I knew how to do, and making a cheap hack to loop music. Uneven distribution of resources and a lot of other gameplay and balance tweaks.

The achievements: The end game, when you have a single individual left, a single species left, or one individual of each species. A total of 7. I don’t think anybody got any.

Want to give it a try? knock yourself out:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5432

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!

It’s not really a post mortem, well it sort of is, but not for the game I made this Ludum Dare. That’ll come in  a while after I sort out my thoughts on it. I might do a technical post mortem first.

Anyway

It’s about my previous ld game(again, sort of), which has been my first proper contact with game-making after a long long time. As if I put it (making games) on a shelf and forgot about it for many years and let it collect dust and cobwebs. It’s something I can do that makes me happy regardless of the end result. It’s something I can do that takes nothing and time and makes something, and at the end of the day I can sit back and look at something which wasn’t there before.

And you guys are to blame for me finding it on that shelf.

People liked this game of mine for some reason(the ones that understood it) and some made a point to tell me in IRC they remembered and liked if from all the way back then which blew me out of the water. Days later I still can’t believe that happened. So now that said game is on the android market and the ubuntu software center and desura and such I feel that I should give something back to the people who inspired me to keep going.

So what I’ll do is post a bunch of desura keys for that game of mine every day till Chritmas.

Let’s start with 2 for now and see where that takes us:

R42VR-VIU5B-ZBR2T-EL8BD-RIZIK

PUOJQ-X0BD5-I2QG2-E26MQ-KZCQC

So I found this thing which makes custom Santa messages.. sort of. So I made one for all of you

I’ve added my entry to the chrome web store because having it in html5 makes that a hillariously simple task.

Grab it here:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lmkbojccjjlficidfnpkgehomippmfgi

Rate it here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5432

I didn’t http:// before adding the play link to my game, so the link didn’t show up at all! it’s fixed now. I would have spotted it earlier but ‘the pages are cached’

http://software.o-o.ro/ld22/index.html

and the rating page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=5432

Sorry about that to anybody who tried and failed to play

http://software.o-o.ro/ld22/index.html

Other than some rogue images, sounds and a win conditions (and some stuff on the host page) it’s msotly there.

Does the text display? Any GUI suggestions? Any other ideas/thoughts/suggestions/bug reports?

Can anyone try this and tell me if it loads/doesn’t? There are still placeholder graphics(mostly buttons that look like”?”), but the core is pretty much there. It’s the sandboxy thing the actual game content will be built on.

It should be noted that all species of beings look the same for now, so that’s why some might not breed with each other.

Assigning traits works thusly: click them on the menu on the left, click a being, and on the bottom you should see 3 icons, the middle one changes gender, the other 2 are slots. Click one to ‘equip’ the selected trait.

I’m also open to suggestions and ideas of goals/buildings/traits(jobs,hats etc)

http://software.o-o.ro/ld22/index.html

Processing.js Y U NO like 3 dimensional image arrays?

Right then, screenshots. After I wasted some time with that platformer I previously mentioned I’ve went around and started working on one of my original ideas.

What you see here are a bunch of squares. Boy squares and girl squares. They have numbers attached. What these can do is, walk around, kill eachother, breed (like rabbits), and interact with buildings. The buildings are naturally the gray rectangles and the ellipses shall be buttons.

The rectangles on the sides are also buttons.

Now I see a lot of fancy graphics being thrown around without much coding done yet so I figured I upset the balance

There will be alone-ness, and there will be more stuff. I just need to figure out the more stuff part. Maybe some lemmings-like thing. I don’t know.

8 hours in

12 hours in

Yes it doesn’t look like much of a difference, that’s behind the scenes.

Let me tell you a secret about it… (more…)

Until further notice that is.

Once more I’ll be using processing(.org) and its assorted libraries. I might go crazy and throw some php in there for kicks. I’ll prolly use the aviary music thing for sounds, and gimp for graphics. Unless I decide to snap photos/ record sounds. Oh the possibilities! They are endless.

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish this one as well and have a decent game which doesn’t looks like it’s drawn by a 5 yearold. (Famous last words)

So my graphic novel thing is done. I can’t brain right now but I will say that the method I chose to do my scripting in is horrible. I’ll probably redo it in the next few days.

In case of freezes please let me know.

There will be a more comprehensive post-mortem soon. Meanwhile:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-30/?action=preview&uid=5432

I became unhappy with my work for day one and scrapped it (it was boring). So with a day to spare I’m taking the quick, easy, and dirty way out and doing interactive fiction( isn’t meant as an insult to graphic novel makers).

I’ve had my mind on making a graphic novel engine for a while and so I took the chance to make one now. I doubt sounds will make it in since I still have to think of and make a game using said engine slash framework slash whatever.

Well no not ALL the things, but some of the things. Some of the things is better than no things at all.

It’s currently available on the android market and pending in a bunch of other places so I’m sitting on versions for windows, linux and osx. In all honesty I focused more on getting it ready for the igf (student edition) and less about scouting marketplaces.

“Is this the part where you tell us to buy it?” the crowd asks. Well yes actually: “Go buy it!” Or at least +1 it on the android market or tell your friends and family and that cousin George you haven’t spoken with since 3rd grade about it. Yes the one with the bigger thumb on his left hand.

Some of the features will roll out to the free (ad supported) version relatively soon (the updated graphics and music), while others will be kept a version behind(mostly new levels and such).

And here’s a trailer for you(can someone please tell me how to embed videos? the code just gets eaten up)

Thanks for reading

GAME PAGE

In spite of a lack of updates things were done. Great things, wondrous marvelous things! Such wondrous and marvelous things that the human mind can not comprehend! Unfortunately we’ll have to talk about those some other time, since this post is about Urth.

As you may or may not remember Urth scored less than desirably( in LD21) in graphics with an overall 2.65. Needless to say that was given priority. Next up was audio, as that wasn’t great either. After I’ve narrowed down the priorities I’ve naturally decided to start working on something entirely different: the level editor. And what a glorious level editor it is! is it? it may be, it’s like asking a chef how good the food he spent all day cooking is. And by chef I mean amateur cook. And by amateur cook I mean someone who poured himself a bowl of cereal. Now I feel like eating cereal, but I must finish this post first.

The music… well I’ve taken the liberty of outsourcing the music to this chap right here so go and listen to his stuff (and like it!). I’m not posting the music here, you’ll have to wait till I submit the game tomorrow, or the day after. If it’s not done in the last few hours it’s not a proper jam at all.

So what have I got to show other than talk of cereal and a link to a music man? Well what’s left? The graphics! Good answer, shows you were paying attention. And what better way to show off graphics than by showing them! No, not a video, but close enough… screenshots!

Let’s begin:

The updated main menu

The pretty-fied level selection menu

The awesome-ized escape mode settings menu

Gameplay screenshot with 100% more magnets

More gameplay

This may not seem it, but it's from escape mode

There are numerous fixes optimizations and tweaks, but nobody can see them so nobody really cares. Next I’ll finish up the win-linux-osx ports and off to markets they go.

That’s it for now, until next time!

…Is operational and online, and located here:

http://software.o-o.ro/urth-level-editor/

Lord Kitchener Wants You*

 To make levels!

But seriously, I’d appreciate feedback on the monster.

You can currently make and test levels and save them online. Loading other levels will become available in the next few days for testing purposes.

______________________

*Lord Kitchener doesn’t really want that, but I do

The level maker is now (mostly) usable, other than a few missing graphics buttons and the ability to add powerups to planets/stars. You can make a level, test it and save it. There are no screenshots because it doesn’t look that different yet.

I suspect I will have a working version to share this weekend. Meanwhile you can play the ld21 version here or get a more polished version from the android market.

My choices:

• unfinished visual novel engine (android) – I believe I misplaced the source
• unfinished bullet hell engine (android) – Needs everything except the actual bullet engine
• LD21 entry: Urth - Needs about 2 tons of polish
• MiniLD29 entry: Redeye - Needs about 20 tons of polish
• Something completely new – no

Urth had a little head start on the android market, so I’ve fixed it by strapping beta to the end. How does that fix it you ask? Well it doesn’t really fix it actually, but I’m October challenging with the non-beta (gamma? ), which I intend to have for non-mobile platforms as well.