So I’ve decided on my idea, like many others from the looks of it I wasn’t too inspired with “Minimalist” but I’ve decided to try something that I would feel fits the theme, meaning it’s very simple but I’ll try and make it as varied and big as I can Images to come later.

For now, check out the breakfast I had a few hours ago

Who can say no to crumpets with peanut butter! Well people that don’t like crumpets or peanut butter I suppose

Sadly I did have a little detour off the game as I stupidly spilt some boiling water on my thumbs…of all places my flipping thumbs

I’d love to stay and chat…write a long post however it’s coming on 3am over here so I’ll make it short.

I finished my game in time! Which is great, annoyingly it takes a while to upload things and take screenshots so I cut it quite close to the submission deadline, but it all got uploaded in time!

Annoyingly I keep looking at my game and seeing so many things that I’d love to fix, even after looking at a screenshot I can see two things that I’d love to change. But it’s time for bed now so here’s the title screen of my game along with a link below. You can currently play it via the power of the internet or download an executable.

 A trip along the railroad tracks

Good luck to all those taking part in the Jam!

With only six hours left I’ve just eaten up my dinner, which although samey to last night I changed it up a little by chopping up gherkins in the pulled pork while I heated it

The game is going well, just finished off all the art assets, now just re-aligning everything and fixing my remaining bugs, which hopefully I’ll smash all of them!

And to give an idea of my upcoming game here’s a little snippet

Only because it’s almost lunchtime of course! Although it’s just a late breakfast in my eyes. I wasn’t allowing myself to cook it until I at least did a couple of things this morning and crossed them off my list, and it took a while doing the two things I did, but now they’re ticked!

My big left over script thing is only really the highscore table as I’m having some issues with it, but otherwise I’ve only got polishing script and timing to balance, and then it’s all art to do.

So on with the art! Then I’ll show some screenshots/images later

My game is coming along pretty well I’ve only got a few small coding/scripting things to do and there’s still another 4 hours left of the day so I’m pretty happy as usually lots of scripting stuff bleeds into my second day. It may be because I’ve chosen a simpler game this time round, meaning I didn’t get to make inverse paperboy, but I’m still having fun with the game I’m making

Had a lovely dinner planned for today as I’d popped some of my previously cooked and then frozen pulled pork in the fridge to defrost and I’ve now eaten it on some lovely onion and poppy seed bagels.

I imagine over the next few hours I should have all the script ironed out and I may even get to start on the images and menus tonight

Just popped outside to get some brownies from the local market along with a variety of cheeses and orange juice.

However I’m now back on track, just made a delicious bacon sandwich and it’s back on to working on the game, it’s going a little slow, but getting the game in place should be fairly quick, allowing me a day for the art (hopefully)

So, I finally finished my game off yesterday after not finishing it in time for the compo. Meaning I had to fit it around Monday, although luckily in the UK it was a bank holiday so I just had to plan it around my usual Monday events as well as popping to Lidl.

What went right:

1. Art: I was fairly happy with the art assets I produced, although I didn’t manage to create the dressing assets that I wanted or all of the interactable environment pieces which made it all look a little empty.

2. Scripting: I came across many walls of things stopping working randomly and I’m happy to have fixed them. Plus I made the decision early on to not make it run in HTML5 due to problems it was having where I didn’t know the solution. This meant I could save time and use it on the actual game running in Windows.

What went wrong:

1. Too much sleep: I allowed myself to have normal sleep over the weekend, although it didn’t help that on the Saturday night I developed a horrible headache that was stopping me from working.

2. Falling asleep why coming up with my idea: As the theme is announced at 2am in the UK I fell asleep after about an hours’ worth of planning without realising it. Darn my sleepy self!

3. Too big an idea?: As of recent I haven’t managed to get my LD entries into the compo, previously it’s because of having work the next day so I end up having a couple of assets to draw the day after work. However with this LD falling on the bank holiday weekend that wasn’t an issue so I intended on pushing myself. However even doing so I still didn’t have enough time and spent a large portion of the Monday finishing off the game.

4. Making silly mistakes: Bugs that were a simple fix or a fault of my own, getting wound up on it and spending 3 hours was just wasteful. I need to stop myself from spending so long on a fix.

5. Limitations of my knowledge of Game Maker: I chose to do something that with how I script was very messy, variable heavy and object instance heavy. Potentially I may have been able to make it all tidier but I spent lots of time having to faff around with messy script.

6. No time for sounds: I actually didn’t have the time to record sounds this time round so it’s my first silent LD game which I’m very sad about, sfx brings a game to life.

7. Rushing all the art near the end of the duration of the Jam, I left art too late which meant I was unhappy with some of the assets.

What didn’t make it into the game

Luckily all my art assets made it in however I had extra evolutions that were scripted in but wanted more work when tacking them onto the player walk cycle, then causing me to scrap them. Here’s a list of bugs/features I didn’t manage to fix/finish.

• ·         Carnivore evolution stages
• ·         Sea, air and land dress assets
• ·         Stopping the player from racking up all the states
• ·         Making interaction only be known by pressing space on the object
• ·         Collision issues on changing the object_instance + my bodge fix for it
• ·         Enemies in the air and in the sea
• ·         A larger planned out environment with trees and other dress so it’s not just a plain colour
• ·         A thank you image (I usually get to do these)
• ·         The game working in a browser
• ·         Sound effects to hint at interactions
• ·         Other dinosaurs
• ·         Your previous state wondering off once you’re a baby (bug where they multiplied)
• ·         Keeping the babies within a range

I could go on for ages, but by not referencing my txt file back on my laptop at home these are a few I can think of.

What I could have done that could have made it better or worse

1. Made the evolutions silly so that when the dinosaur can swim he’d have armbands etc, or to fly he had a jet pack…although I wanted to keep it a little more serious.

Lesson learnt:

Next time, I will try to organize my time like this:

1. Don’t feel sad about the theme and try and stay awake and don’t sleep till it’s all planned out, then sleep may be allowed.

2. Make sure to have a goal for the game straight away

3. Sleep less!

4. Don’t allow myself to do art on the sofa which can lead in accidental sleeping

5. Try harder to make it for the compo

Feel free to play my game here it’s lacking sound and perhaps doesn’t explain itself well enough but there’s an idea there and it has an end so at least I kinda finished what I set out to do. Thanks in advance to all who play my game!

Overall LD24 was the first Ludum Dare where I really felt like quitting. Mainly after loosing work on the Monday and feeling pretty down. I kept strong though and managed to come out with something a little less complete than I hoped, but I did do it

Perhaps I can sleep without stress tonight as I’m shattered, however I’m very tempted to work some more on it tonight and figure out why it won’t run in a browser. Here’s to a great LD25 in December!

So it may be my last Ludum Dare meal…or maybe not? It all depends on these last five hours. I’m busy working away on the art after having made a simple but tasty baked bean pie

Which may look a little sloppy but I can assure you its tasty, and I’ve still got two thirds of it left so I can guess what’ll be reheated for tomorrow!

Anwyho the game, I ironed out a lot of the code related issues I had, I still have about 4 code issues I need to work on, three bugs and a lot of art. In the meantime here’s a puddle for your enjoyment!

The chances of another update before the compo is ended is slim, however if I don’t get everything finished my work shall leak into the Jam to make sure I have something finished

And thanks to some bodge fixes they’re biting me in the bum as they’re causing other issues I still really need to start on my art for the game too! Plus I should start showing my game more as currently it’s all food, food, food.

At least my lunch is tasty, some of my homemade pulled pork accompanied by some beans from my soup and a crusty roll

Wasn’t needed but I wanted both so I won’t need to eat until late lunchtime

My game is going ok but at a bit of a slow pace, I had tooo much sleep last night as I got a headache in the evening and wanted to go sleep it off. Plus to top it off after getting up this morning I spent three hours trying to fix a bug that had a super simple fix Oh and my game only works as an exe not in html5 which is annoying.

I’m hoping soon all the scripting will be there so I can spend time on the art which I haven’t really touched yet except for making super quick placeholders. I’d really like it finished for the compo though and not the Jam

So while working away (not done any art yet so there isn’t really much I can show that looks nice) I had a spot of dinner which is a five bean soup that’s been bubbling away in the slow cooker since yesterday evening with a nice crusty bread roll.

Followed by a naughty massive London cheesecake and with that I’m about to explode while writing up lots of different variable combinations

I’ll probably be snacking on the soup for the rest of LD.

Well actually now it’s a bit late for lunch as it’s almost 2, but it was still my lunch as it’s a Saturday I thought I’d pop to the market in town and get some nice warm food from the thai food market stall and be a bit lazy I haven’t tried their big meals yet with noodles and rice but their spring rolls and satay chicken are yummy!

Plus I popped by the bread stall too and bought some naughty cakes, just look at the size of this one!

But I just can’t resist cakes with a custard filling, also got a london cheesecake and eccles cake for munching on at some other point over the weekend

Although now lunch is over and I’ve managed to eat nearly half the cake I’ll get back onto work

Shortly after getting up I thought I should make something to eat to keep my brain working, and the only real breakfast food I had other than cereal was this!

So I’ve been spending my time since the theme was announced sleeping a little on and off as it gets announced at 2am over here. While also trying to come up with an idea. I’m not a huge fan of the theme of evolution but I’ve got a few ideas I’m thinking about and wondering if they’ll be able to turn into something plausible for being created in 48 hours.

In the meantime here’s my desk, which if people have seen my desk shots before may notice it’s one monitor down ¬__¬ thanks to my partner who pinched my monitor after I came back from E3 and he still hasn’t given it back, meaning I have to try and do work with one monitor…I swear it’s impossible, especially as my monitor isn’t large at all, it only displays at 1280×1024

At least I’ve got my laptop to help me out.

I am intending on taking part again as usual It’ll be my 7th Ludum Dare I’ve taken part in and I hope to do something different I was looking forward to developing something on Gameboy however I don’t believe my coding is up to scratch. I’ll have a play around with it tomorrow before LD starts and see what happens, but it’d be nice to get something displaying on the screen

Otherwise due to my lack of pure coding skills I shall be using the usual…

Scripting – Game Maker

Art – Photoshop

Sound – Audacity.

I look forward to making some soup over the weekend to keep me going while also being tempted to pop a lamb shank in the slow cooker and see what happens with that. Along with some rice pudding that will last throughout the compo. Plus it’s a bank holiday on Monday in the UK so I can have as little sleep as possible without worrying about being sleepy at work! YAY!

So I never posted my dinner, mainly because I forgot to take a picture but it was naughty chinese takeaway so I shouldn’t of really had it. However after that I scooped out some of the rice pudding I made earlier in the day and popped it in the oven, it’s come out very nice for my first attempt at rice pudding

Also my game is coming along ok, I need to make sure to get all the mechanics/code related things nailed down so I’ve got tomorrow to spend on the art & sounds, as currently everything is placeholder and I haven’t touched anything arty yet.

Coming up with a few ideas, trying to figure out the best one of the lot currently.

Although it’s slightly annoying that I’ve got Diablo III in the back of my mind as my partner is currently playing it due to the open beta weekend, and I don’t have the time to play it because of LD23

However my weekend is more eventful if I make a game over sitting at my PC all day, oh wait

I have just cleaned up my desk a bit too so I can see it and start working

Sadly I didn’t manage to finish my game in time last night, so I’m entering myself in the Jam instead as I really wanted to finish off a couple of screens that I didn’t have time to do this morning, and I didn’t want to submit it without them.

With 20 minutes left to go I realised I couldn’t draw out 3/4 menu screens as well as record and put in sound effects.

Which is a shame as I really wanted to get my game finished, but it’s not like entering the Jam is a bad thing at all It just means I didn’t manage to complete it in 48 hours, although with the amount of time I spent sleeping over the weekend added to the amount of time I’ll get to work on my entry today, it’ll probably total about 48 hours

My entry will probably be submitted later this evening.

So I made my dessert, and as usual it’s yum! It’s a cherry clafoutis and is so light and fluffy and addictive.

I’d bought some cream so I couldn’t help but make something great for LD22 Also here is a worm from the game Hoping I can get it all done in time! Not long to go now.

So as I want to spend more time on making my amazing dessert tonight (picture’s will go up once I’ve baked it) meaning I’ve got for another naan pizza but just plain tomato and cheese

I’m working on all the art now for my game, here’s a grub for fun