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Finished & submitted!
Well, it’s nowhere near as polished or big as I would have liked it, but it’s playable and I’m done.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=3428
Please give it a go and let me know what you think.
I look forward to playing everyone elses entries! They all make my game look like crap from what I’ve seen so far.
Progress report 4 – Damn you hurry up and get finished, game!
The games taking a lot Longer than I had hoped, and will most likely end up very unpolished and without art.
You press the E key to get in and out of the ship. The Tinies are killed by jumping on them and the turrets have to be shot with the shop (They’re very strong atm).
Give it a go here and let me know what you think.
Progress report 3 – Worth the wait.
Things have been going a lot more smoothly after the initial problems so I’m glad I stuck with it.
You can now jump in and our of your Ship and fly it around (only quick controls for now, I hope to expand upon it tomorrow).
I plan to change a lot of it but I’d like to hear what you guys think so far.
Anyway, that’s enough for one night. Good night and good luck!
Progress Report 1 – Idea Achieved
After waking up and taking an hour to think about what my idea could be I started work.
The basic idea is that you’re own planet has become uninhabitable and your people have moved out into space looking for a new planet to settle on. The only solar system they can find is one filled with tiny planets and tiny inhabitants. After landing to try and negotiate some sort of agreement the indigenous take great offence to your height and become extremely hostile, leaving you with the only choice of taking the tiny bastards out.
The game will hopefully have both space and land combat but as I’m using unity and I doubt I’ll be able to have time for that.
Hell yeah, I’m in!
I’ve been working on Uni assignments all week and I’m mentally exhausted, but there’s no way in hell I’d let that make me miss the 10th anniversary of Ludum Dare!
Tools
- I’ll be using either Unity, Flash Punk or XNA depending on how I feel when I wake up in the morning and what ideas I come up with.
- I’ll be making use of 3DS Max for any 3D art that needs doing.
- Paint.net for any 2D art that needs doing.
- Visual studio or Flash Develop as an IDE.
- BFXR for audio.
Good luck everyone. I look forward to seeing what you guys comes up with!
Post mortem – The Lonely Island
It’s a little late but here is the post mortem to my competition entry The Lonely Island, which you can find here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=3428 .
The plan.
My plan was to make a bit of a survival simulator where you are stranded alone on an island and you have to slowly gather the resources you needed to make your escape. I wanted to have day/night cycles, mountain areas and loads of different items to find and craft. All this turned out to be a little too ambitious though and I ran out of time before I could add any of these things. In the end I had to quickly implement making a raft and escaping before the development time was up.
Day one
The first day went extremely well. I got the tile maps loading and rendering very quickly and made great progress on the GUI along with some of the more important mechanics. I’m not too familiar with AS3 and Flash Punk but most the things I tried to do either worked first time or worked shortly after trying to implement it. Bug’s didn’t take more than 5 – 10 minutes to fix and it started to look like I would be able to add either everything or most things I had planned on, but I was wrong.
Day two
In comparison to day one, day two was a nightmare. Nothing worked first time and major bugs took what seemed like forever to fix. It didn’t take long for me to see I either wasn’t going to finish on time or I wasn’t going to be able to add many features. I started off the day by getting the map scrolling with the players movement, and this caused a load of problems and broke most of my GUI and I had to spend at least half the day fixing everything. I learned a valuable lesson from this though, get scrolling maps in ASAP in the future. After I finished climbing over that humongous hurdle I didn’t have long left to implement the crafting system. After thinking for a while and the most easy and time efficient way to get crafting in I decided to go with a simple combining method for creating tools and the raft. By the time this was done I only had about 20 minutes to implement some simple sound effects and get my game submitted.
What went well
I have never really tried to make a GUI before so I’m pretty proud of the results, even if it is a little crude. This is also my first game from the top-down perspective, which was a nice change of pace making.
What didn’t go well
Many things. The art, for instance wasn’t particularly good but then again my art never is, I just wish I had some more time to spend on it.
The scrolling maps, as I stated earlier, didn’t go well while implementing and ate up most my time but at least it got sorted out in the end.
My game also ended up being too easy and lacking in features as a result of various problems and the time constraint.
Most importantly, did I have fun?
Hell yeah I did. Making a game to a set theme in 48 hours is an amazing experience and I learn so much each time I enter. Ludum Dare also has an amazing community surrounding it which I am proud to be a part of.
Update 3 – End of Day One
Day one draws to a close for me. Since the last update I finished up the inventory system, added the messaging system, created the player sprite and animated it and started work on some of the tile transitions. Things are going well so far, I’ve got allot done but I still have a long way to go.
No more developing from me tonight, I’m going to relax for a bit then get some well needed sleep.
Update 2
I’ve been busy working on the GUI since the last update. Got the players stats all up and running and almost finished implementing the inventory system along with a context sensitive menu when clicking objects.
I’m glad to have the brunt of that out of the way and once I finish up the inventory system and get a messaging system sorted I’l try and do something about the atrocious art but I doubt it will look much better in the end, just smoother tile transitions and what not.
Update 1
I woke up a few hours ago and got to work.
I’m creating a survival game where you’re stranded on an island, alone and confused you have to use your surroundings to survive and possibly even escape depending on how far I get.
So far I have the basics of the tile engine working along with collision detection, movement and some very shoddy placeholder art.
But now it’s time to eat breakfast while looking at everyone’s creations so far.
Theme announced, Time to sleep.
Got a few ideas going, Now I’m going to go to bed and mull them over in my sleep.
Good luck everyone!
Entry declaration
Decided to enter last minute.
This time I’ll be attempting to use Flash Punk to make my game. I’ll use paint.net for the artwork and SFXR for any sound effects if needed.
Edit: Oh and I’ll be using the Ogmo editor for any tile-based level editing if its needed.
Progress report 2.

Good morning everyone, I’m up and hard at work. All that’s changed since the last update is that the guards have now been added. They move around randomly and if they look towards you without a wall obstructing their vision they will see you.
I’m currently working on adding shurikens for guard killing and smoke bombs. Once they are in I’ll see how much time I have left before deciding what else to add. Collisions are still a bit buggy so if I have time left at the end I’ll try and sort that out too.
Progress report.
Progress has been pretty slow and I’m starting to doubt I’ll be able to finish on time but things are picking up now that most the kinks with collision detection have been ironed out (still some left though). Currently basic physics (gravity), basic game play mechanics (jumping, wall jumping etc), collision detection and a bit of the art are in and finished. I still have a very long way to go.
The basic idea of the game is that you’re a Ninja and you’re trapped inside the deepest part of the enemy’s base. You have already acquired what you have came to do and now you must escape while avoiding detection. If you get seen you lose. How deep the game play gets all depends on how much I can add before running out of time, I’m hoping to add things such as smoke bombs to help avoid detection and shuriken to help dispose of lone guards.
It’s quite daunting how much progress everyone else has made in the same amount of time so I’ll have to try and pick up the pace.
Got idea, starting work.
Nothing to show yet but after waking up and seeing the theme I’ve come up with an idea and started work on it.
I doubt I’ll be able to finish this on time with my skills but I’m going to give it my best. I’ll give my details on what I’m doing when I actually have something to show.
I’m in.
This will be my second Ludum dare and I’m looking forward to it. hopefully I’ll be able to finish my game this time too.
For tools I’ll be using C#/XNA for programming, Paint.NET for any 2D graphics and SFXR for any sound effects.
Good luck everyone! I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with.
Finished!
I’ve finally finished my game! Damn these past couple of days have been fun. I’m glad I was able to finish ontime.
I’ll post a proper break down of what happened, what went right what went wrong ect after I get some rest.
Good luck to everyone still working on thier games.
Progress report 6: The final push!
Everything I feel I’m capable of adding in within the time limit is in, time to finish up the level design and submit !
Don’t expect too much though, it’s quite a dull game. I fully intend to continue and improve it at my own pace after the competition is over.
Even though the gameplay is lacking I’m quite proud of the end result considering I’ve never made a game more complex then a space invaders type game and never completed a project in such a short period of time.
Progress report 4: Day 2 begins
~Code monkey get up get coffee, code monkey go to job~
I woke up at around 7AM, grabbed a cup of coffee and immediately got to work on adding the limited sight.
Even though its quite ugly it only took around 10 mins to think up and implement, it also worked first try too which saved me some time.
Since then I’ve had breakfast, squashed some bugs and added a limited number of lives. Now it’s time to start the GUI and menu screens. Once I have that sorted it will be time to add more gameplay to my game.
Everyones games are looking really good! I can’t wait to try them out.














