LD48 comes round again, and I am In.

This will be my third LD. Each time I enter something like this I try to use it as a vehicle to improve some specific aspect of my game dev skill set, last time it was 2D art, this time it will be audio. As well as having a specific feature focus I’m going to try and concentrate on making a “game” this is actually harder for me then it perhaps should be, as a programmer by profession I tend to find myself getting lost in the mechanisms of my code base and loosing sight of what I’m actually trying to make. To try and combat this I will be using my code base from the last LD as a starting point for this one. Shock! yes I feel like its cheating too, but the engine rules allow for opensource engine code to be used and although I feel a little dirty doing it, this should help focus me more on the game and less on the code.

Anyway, like last time I will be using HTML5 and developing on Linux using standard tools for the platform ( GIMP, MyPaint, Geany  IDE, Chrome web browser ) as part of my focus on sound I will be trying out a bunch of audio editor/creation software that I will review after the contest. The link to my code base will be placed here as soon as I have setup the github repo.

Good Luck LD’ers!

Well, first off  ”post-mortem” suggests this game is dead, that’s far from the case. In fact I will be enhancing and completing this game for some time yet and have some cool things planned. So instead of a postmortem think of this as more of a summation of the contest and the game to date.

When ever I approach something like the Ludum Dare contest I try to focus on a specific discipline with the aim of using the contest as a vehicle to improve my skills in that area. For this contest it was art and I think that although it went very well in general I spent perhaps a bit too long on polishing things and this hurt other areas. Also I really had no idea how to make good tile sheets! Hint for anyone reading this, there is a very handy plug in for GIMP that will help!

As for code, well I started with no pre-crated material at all, I like to write everything as much as possible within the contest. To me, starting with nothing seems more inkeaping with the spirit of the challenge, mostly though this way I end up with a bunch of new code that I can pull the gems from that might not have been written if I was locked into an existing framework. Using HTML5 and JS for this game was a lot of fun, and I am left with the feeling that I have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities. It will be excited to continue experimenting with it in the future. Choosing a language that I have relatively little skill with did prove to be a challenge but I think adding something new into the mix helped keep me motivated and interested. So over all it was a good choice.

And then we come to sound, well yeah, that should say it all really. Sound was very neglected in my game and really only got bodged in in the last 30mins before submission. Its a real shame that a tool as powerful at creating emotion, interest and atmosphere as sound is so lacking in my own person skill arsenal. So, improving this will be the focus for my next Ludum Dare!

Finally  the tools I used, I develop on Linux and my tool choices reflected that with one exception,  Mappy. This little tool is windows only and so I had to run it through Wine. Really the only reason I picked it as my map editor was familiarity, the tool itself isnt bad but using it via Wine was very cumbersome. So, inspired by tools like bfxr I will look into building an online tile based map editor using the tech I created in this LD. Hopefully this will prove useful to other LD’ers as well. Other than this I used GIMP, bfxr, MyPaint and Geany IDE, all were really good bits of kit and I will be using them again.

So thats a wrap, but look out for future versions of my game as well as a new map editor that may help with your next LD!

- Callidus

P.S. I guess I should link my entry here, on the off chance it gets a vote or two. Link

time laps now online

day 1
day 2

first youtube vids ever enjoy!

OK, for anyone interested, I developed on Linux and the tools I used during LD21 were:

MyPaint

GIMP

Geany IDE

Google Chrome

Mappy

Bxfr

OK im tired but happy, here are some pics, its all HTML5.  Time laps and details to follow later, after sleep.

Manages to miss the last, well, lots of LD compos so I’m stoked and ready for this one! Good luck to everyone, Bring it on!

and im done first ever LD and its been a blast! Escape From Hell is done, help a dood who looks like packman’s evil half borther escape from the bowls of hell! Jump on the platforms and keep climbing, once you get high enough the exit appears. Clime too slowly and the wall of doom will destroy you ( love that animation though )

This is a pygame app, use left/right arrows and space to jump. Good luck to all those still working!l

link https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/971318/callidus_LD14_EscapeFromHell.zip

so far, so good, saving gameplay for after a power nap wish art wasn’t such a pain

Hi all Ludum Dare people!

first post, nothing much to show for the project so far, just a bunch of python code, so here is a workplace pic