I’m in again. I hope. Work schedule is very tight unfortunately.

Construct 2, Photoshop and FLstudio are my weapons of choice this year. I will have very little time, so hopefully the theme will be very interesting

Look what I found, quite by accident, by going through Pixel’s previous games (click on the pic to get a link)

Yes, a CaveStory-ish metroidvania, where you control a squid, with an unorthodox control scheme
What does it remind you of?

Why of course, my game, Trina

As my Arts Professor said,  it’s all been done before. It’s all about different treatment of the same subject matter.

Disappointed and super-excited at the same time! On the one hand I’m not original, but on the other, I’m not alone in thinking an underseas game with bizarre controls is worth experimenting with.

Has this ever happened to you? Does it discourage you? Does it make you want to do better?

This is the postmortem for my game Trina of the Depths  ( play it! ).

::: Development Notes :::
I worked alone on this one, because I couldn’t find a coder to partner with.
It’s the first game I ever made myself. I’m an illustrator by trade, and have never been (and probably will never be) a hardcore coder.
It was very hard work, since Saturday morning through Monday evening, I slept about 10 hours total.

I used Construct 2, FL studio,  Photoshop and Flash.

About the theme: I couldn’t top my last LD submission, which was about an evil dungeon lord trying to destroy a hero, using traps. So I thought I’d go with my second idea, controlling an evil octopus. So this whole RPG/metroidvania idea developed in my head, about Trina, daughter of the evil Sea King and the secret of her birthright. And it really worked for me, to the point that I’m going to make it an actual game.

Gameplay Video:

:::How I spent the time:::

I really wanted a control scheme that captured the feel of an octopus slicing through water. Therefore I spent some 8 hours developing the control scheme.
Trina, the heroine, is controlled via cursor keys, in a unique way. Pressing a direction doesn’t move Trina, instead it charges her corresponding vector, horizontal, vertical or both. Movement occurs after the release of the cursor key(s), and the muscle meter on the bottom left is accordingly drained by the effort.

Since Trina seemed to be falling too fast (she is in the sea, and this just wouldn’t do), I also implemented some resistance to gravity, not in the form of passive Lift, but in the form of a last strain of her muscles/parachute action. For 30msecs after finishing her ‘jump’, trina will try to stay afloat, giving the muscle meter time to recharge.

This simulates a movement that requires judgement and thinking-ahead, like an octopus might plan. After you’ve made your mind about your target, you jump towards it.  The result is a very exact, very elegant control scheme, that most players so far hated?? Wait, what? More on that later.

When I was satisfied with the control scheme, I added an enemy, a cute fish, which naturally hurts (and annoys) evil Trina. I struggled with its behavior, AI and patrolling patterns, and in the end managed to only get one to spawn…

Graphics came on the end of Day 2. I animated Trina’s animations in Flash (just penciling) and inked/colored each frame in photoshop.

Music-writing sessions were interspersed throughout Days 2 and 3, to ensure maximum inspiration, and time to go back and re-do things. I ended up with three themes, a main tune, an encounter scherzo and a battle theme , using old soundfonts and a sampled gameboy Bass sound.

Day 3 was about damage control (since I hadn’t succeeded in properly implementing enemies) and level design. I also made rapidly prototyped level blocks. For this I took one giant background and start painting directly on it, taking care that assets do not overlap, so I can lasso them and export them later. This way I work super-fast without overthinking everything, I have a good idea of what my assets will look like when overlaid on the game background, and I don’t have to worry about layers and CPU performance at all. It’s the technique I’ve used since my first LD#23 and I wholly recommend it.

Here’s a screenshot of my almost final assets file:

And what my final stage looks like:

:::What went right:::

• my first ever solo game!
• the control scheme: having extensively playtested the game, I find that Trina moves in a much more refined, much more interesting way than if I had used plain 8 direction movement or mouseclick-to-move. After getting the first power-up, Trina controls like a charm, cutting through water like the evil princess she is.
• animation/character design. It’s as fluid as I envisioned. Like all animators, I was mimicking an octopus in the mirror the whole time.
• the music: I thoroughly enjoyed taking a soundfont of women singing “ooohs” and another of women singing “aaahs” and writing parts for them to sing, so that they sound like one chorus that sings both. I loved the battle theme, which I injected a sample of a rhino snorting into. I think it makes the mood more intense.
• the backstory and foundations for expanding this into a proper game. I couldn’t help daydreaming and scribbling notes about how I want the game to be, after LD is over

:::What went wrong:::

• the control scheme! From what I see in my comments section, many people don’t get it at all, can’t maneuver, and/or believe gravity to be too harsh. In my opinion, it may actually be too lenient; it’s a platformer, and you can (with some effort) ‘fly’ to wherever you want to. How is this harsh? Ok, it’s not Owlboy, but it’s not supposed to be. That having been said, I’ve been convinced that up-front giving Trina the powerup that nobody bothers to get  will do its part in coaxing new players into playing, and is a good game design move.
• coding. I’m not a coder, and even though the Construct 2 forums are full of good FAQ and solutions (thank you, community!) , I seriously messed up the code that spawns new enemies, and even though I finally managed to pinpoint the cause, this left my game with only one enemy
• time: because of my coding set-backs, I didn’t implement the larger level I had in mind, the metroidvania “get the item and go back to unlock a new area” portion of the game, and the boss battle. I decided to make it as fun to play as possible with the assets at my disposal.
• backstory/dialogues. It’s not apparent why Trina is a villain. She hates all people (fish) in this part of the world, where she was brought unwillingly, and will scheme and plot against Good King Triton. All this is lost, since I didn’t want to cheapen the mood by inserting plain text using a plain font (Construct 2 doesn’t support embedding, and using webfonts was a big risk)

And that was my entry. I hope you enjoyed it

Random music composition tools. Better music means more polished games. Random generators are fantastic for inspiration, even to hardcore composers. Compiled with the help of Zeik and ChainedLupine in the LD chatroom.

These are all free except Easy Music Composer, and ACS which is shareware and in my opinion is amazingly useful even without a pro license. For me at least, ACS has an almost 1:1 ratio of success; it prompts immediate inspiration. I’ve personally found Wolframtones to produce quite meaningful ideas as well

http://codeminion.com/blogs/maciek/2008/05/cgmusic-computers-create-music/
Kindly suggested by AdventureIslands in the comments below. This is quite mind-blowing in fact.

Wolframtones     <- algorithmic, very interesting pattern. Has preset genres like jazz, world, rock, etc.

 http://www.soundhelix.com/  <- Sound Helix  cool pattern-based compositions

( http://www.soundhelix.com/audio-examples )

Circuli   http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/circuli <- ambient generator

Easy Music Composer http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~mcs/emc.html

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA014815/music/English/autocomp.html< very very useful musical ideas. This is a must

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Greasemonkey’s Autotracker-Bu <- Run “python autotracker.py”, you will get an .it file, then use your favorite tracker ( like http://schismtracker.org/wiki/Schism%20Tracker ) to export it to .wav or .mp3. ( link and description provided by jarnik )

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http://www.bemmu.com/music/index.html <- music driven by a simple math formula. interesting convoluted results

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http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata <- freeware online version, paid iOS app

Please signal boost this post and if possible get it on the official site. What is a community without communal spirit!

Also be sure to suggest more of these

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These are the tunes for my game Trina of the Depths . Only the first two made it into the game. The encounter theme was to be played when you met the crab seller.

Here they are in .ogg format

1. Trina of the Depths – exploration theme

2. Battle theme

3. the Encounter

Made with FLstudio and lots of free soundfonts and my own samples of a gameboy bass

Thank you for a fantastic 3 days! I’m just beginning to scratch the surface of what all you people created. A definite improvement in content, I feel

I haven’t been this proud of myself in a long time! I’m so glad to be sharing this with you!

Play it
Also, I didn’t manage to get all three pieces of music in the game (because I’m not a proper programmer), but I promise I’ll upload the soundtrack soon, as I’m proud of it too!

Thank you thank you thank you, for the fantastic experience, third time in a row!

Here’s a mystery snapshot

My engine is playable, and the controls are very satisfactory.
I also wrote two  music themes. This is going to rock!!

I am in! After a fantastic first LD#23 where Fedor and I made our superb shoot-em-up Kumiho

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=13139

And a great second LD#24 where Nathan and I made our hybrid-genre, sadly unfinished, super-ambitious Arcane Dungeons

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=13139

I am in again!
I haven’t found a programmer, and have a deadline on Monday, so will go solo, and can only dedicate a few hours. But as we all know, a few hours in Ludum Dare time, go a long way.
So I’ll be using

• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Construct 2

and will keep my fingers crossed that the tiny amount of programming logic that I possess will be enough.
I’m probably going to make something tiny and not very ambitious, but watch out for my entry.

Good luck and have fun, all you wonderful people!
Never give up. Never surrender!
Workspace:
.

What a fantastic 3 days!!! Thank you LD! Congrats to everyone who entered, we make the community awesome.

I’m too dead to do a post-mortem right now, but it’s coming

Until then, here’s the 3-day timelapse of the art development for our game, Arcane Dungeons ( aka Evil Lord vs Angel for the salvation or perdition of a hero’s soul)

Watch it on Youtube

I edited out almost half the boring time inside Fruity loops, because I was just humming music to myself and that never makes for compelling viewing.

Love,

Christina

Day 2
<- well, I animated this little guy.  He is traversing the dungeon in a lemming-like fashion, so I crafted the following animations: walking, climbing, falling and attacking. More may be needed, but I think we’re good. The one on the left is the attack animation.

I also finalized the card format. Pictured here>

Nathan did all sorts of coding, and we have an alpha version that, as far as I can tell, knows all the cards and can deal the first hand. This is quite huge.

I’m getting down to business fleshing out the dungeon graphics. It’s going to be big tileable chunks of dungeon, in 3 layers so we can have some parallax.

After that I need to make the artwork for the cards themselves, based on their description.
Being a professional illustrator, I know that this job would be insane (30 cards), but that’s why I love LD !

I’m sorry to all the awesome people and your awesome entries, I just haven’t had time to comment.
Thanks for viewing

Christina

Lots of brainstorming!

We’re making a game in a new genre. It’s a mixture of lemmings, tower defense and a pVp collectible card game. The game is about indirect control of a hero. You play as either a force of good or a force of evil, and are trying to help or hinder said hero from reaching the other end of a dungeon.

A reverse lemmings game was an idea I had last year but never fear, all graphics and the very gameplay concept are being redone.
The theme of evolution recurs in the game. Firstly, the indirectly controlled hero keeps his/her positive and negative statuses like attack upgrades and slow/poison effects till the end. It’s the character evolution of RPG characters and I like to imagine the hero surviving or dying, having lived an adventure.

Secondly, the dungeon itself evolves. There are three slots on the floor, each of which can be filled up by evil traps and magical aids. Even if you replay the level, it will never be the same dungeon.

Thirdly, spells, traps and effects can evolve into something else. A spike trap plus a fire upgrade create an evolved flaming spike trap.

Finally, and most interestingly for me (it’s the first time I’ve attempted it at least) is that the music evolves. It’s not completely incidental, made up of tiny little phrases that come together in a perfect whole. I don’t have the time. But, the main theme is made up of a symphonic instrumental part and a separate piece of percussion and general mayhem, that can fade in and out at will, making the action more intense at specific points in the game.

And then there’s the battle theme which will come up when the tough gets going.

We spent all morning planning the game, the cards and their effects, the algorithm of the gameplay (Nathan did almost all the actual card game design, thanks dude)

I spent my day composing and performing the music. Tomorrow it’s graphics time for me and coding time for Nate.
Let’s hope we can balance the gameplay in time

This promises to be fun, tell your friends!

Kisses

Christina

Ludum Dare 23 was my first.  Me and awesome coder Fedor made a super-cool shooter called Kumiho, which came #5 in the Fun category.

This year I team up with Flash/Actionscript  legend Nathan to hopefully blow some minds
Fedor will compete in the solo competition, I’ll post details so you can marvel at his game too!

Good luck to every single one of you.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12384

Go play this. NOW! I’m in love!

OK, so here’s some development shots and various assets for our game, Kumiho

This is my visual reference chart, the visual references that most influenced how the game looks. Ikaruga has a prominent role visually, even though I did play some Jamestown, Touhou 8 and Xenon II to get a feel for things. I used a 21 color palette which grew organically as I added more and more stuff. It’s the strange shape at the bottom left of the timelapse. I also tried to keep with a vertical composition and Korean text, in its (less usual) top to bottom form, was a huge help in establishing the look. Korean and chinese drawings were also a big influence on the style.

I always like to have reference for everything before I start to work. In this case there’s background ideas, spaceship designs, photos of insects and stylized korean drawings.

Here is my timelapse.
I used one main photoshop file to draw new stuff, so that I could see them relative to other assets. Essentially, a mockup/overview of the game.

When something needed animating, I just copied it into a new file and went on from there. Cases in point:

Long explosion. Again, Korean and Japanese art influenced the shape

the flappy wings of the squid boss. I realised, from looking at slow-motion squid videos on youtube, that the movement is essentially a sine wave. Even so, this took about 2 hours

The ship was my first animating challenge for this game. I had chosen an asymmetrical design, so left and right animations would have to be different, and not just a flipped over version.

The tentacles. This took 3 hours. Sine wave movement again, but these were harder. The two right tentacles are flipped versions of the two left ones, with a time delay of 3 frames, so that the movement looks more organic.

Hope this helps,
Christina

Fedor and I made this completely from scratch in three days (with little sleep):

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=13139
We’re proud of it and couldn’t wait to show this off to you guys! Please spread around, rate and comment

I will now attempt the daring feat of sharing what this experience felt for me, so we can all benefit from it as game designers/developers/artists.

Development notes:

It was exhausting and super fun. I particularly enjoyed composing the music, and how we came up with an interesting gameplay mechanic (teleportation).
Coming at it as equals and negotiating ideas did a world of good for our game. Our main inspiration was the Touhou series of games for Fedor (I’d only seen gameplay) and Ikaruga for me (finished the game several times).

I started doing graphics on Saturday morning. I worked on a mockup photoshop file full groups of layers, to which I returned throughout development. For example, when I needed a new enemy, I would fire up the mockup, draw the enemy next to all the other sprites and then paste it into another photoshop file and animate it separately. I would then export as individual .PNGs (Photoshop’s “Render Animation to Video” was very helpful).

Dropbox of course saved our lives, and we communicated through skype’s chat. In fact we haven’t even seen each others’ faces.
I used Photoshop CS5 for all animation and graphics, and Fruity Loops with free soundfonts to write and perform the music.
Fedor used Unity and I don’t know what else ^-^

Post mortem: We gave it our absolute best. A coding set-back made the scrolling clouds unusable, so Fedor had to wing it at the last moment, which left the background a little bleh in my opinion ( I had no time to make changes to the cloud graphics and scrolling). But even so, when at the last minute he managed to fix the clouds so we at least had some, it was very exciting. The level is very very well thought-out and very fun to play. It took Fedor, what, 6 hours? to come up with the patterns that complement the teleport mechanic.  The 3 hours before deadline were, for me, mostly about helping Fedor out with any requests, like changing sprites or giving him a list with all the visual elements he had yet to implement. I made a second enemy ship graphic in 15 minutes, since Fedor made enemies with two different numbers of hit points, and I felt we needed to be able to tell them apart. This was done 2 or 3 hours before deadline, when Fedor was struggling with the stupid clouds. He added the second enemy graphic in the game 1 hour before deadline.

I also wanted finite lives implemented (9 of them, as many as the tails of the Kumiho fox-spirit), shown only everytime you are resurrected from a death, in order to keep the interface as clean as Fedor wanted it. Scoring wouldn’t have hurt either. But we didn’t have time to even negotiate it, because the ideas came too late. Even if they had come early, we wouldn’t have had time. I stayed up Sunday 12am to Tuesday 6am, and it’s the longest I’ve ever been awake.

So, overall, I couldn’t have wished for anything better, I had the fastest and best coder at my disposal, we had a crazy schedule and working hours, and implemented almost everything we set out to implement, and still had time for a little polish.