I accepted bach’s challenge and made a christmas version of my game. Enjoy!

You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSZJI-Q0t5Y

I didn’t get any immediate ideas, so I began by making the basis for a platformer with the theme in mind. Then it sort of evolved as I came up with things I thought would be cool to add.

The tools I used:

• Flashdevelop (IDE)
• Flashpunk (Game library)
• Photoshop
• Audition (sound editing)
• Cubase (music)
• Chronolapse (timelapse recording)

I decided early on to make it atmospherical, and I put a lot of focus on the effects, sounds, music and animation.

What went wrong:

My computer kept crashing throughout the weekend, I think it crashed 8 times in total, which was really annoying. Fortunately I didn’t loose much work.

I waited far too long to implement basic things like getting hurt, dieing and winning, which meant I had to rush that in in the last couple of hours. The basic gameplay challenge when fighting the ravens is not that hard or fun, I should have worked more on that, as well as added more kinds of enemies, and perhaps a boss. It would also make the game more fun if I added some sort of progression, like new abilities.

The story is intentionally vauge, but only because I didn’t have time to flesh it out. It might add to the mystery and mood, I’m not sure. I would really have liked to have time to add a proper ending.

If you miss one of the spheres, you have to go back and find it. I wanted to have some sort of checkpoint, where to pass you would need to complete the part of the game behind you, but I didn’t get around to it. This also means you can win the game in different places, which is maybe cool, but…

What went right:

I think the strongest part of the game is the atmosphere. The rain and lightning effects really add to the mood. I’m also happy with the graphics, and especially the animation, considering I haven’t done that much before. The music is simple but effective, I didn’t go crazy despite listening to it for 10 hours straight.

The player physics feel pretty good, although the attacking part can use some more work. I’m proud of the healing mechanic although it isn’t used to such a big extent.

The camera doesn’t follow the player all the time, instead it snaps to 32×24 tile screens. This was an experiment, and I think it turned out ok. Because the screens are predetermined, you have more control over the scenes the player will see, and can tailor each scene to look as best it can. Of course, it’s also a limitation, and can be irritating for the player when navigating small passages for example.

I made the level as one big png-image in photoshop, where each pixel corresponds to one 10×10 pix tile. This made it really easy to edit, and because it was one single big image, I could quickly see how the whole world looked together. In order to see where each screen in the game was positioned, I just filled the image with helper rectangles. It worked suprisingly well.
Here is the final world image scaled up a bit (Warning: SPOILERS!): world.png

The auto-tiling was a thing I threw together in a hackish manner, but it worked really well too, and supports additional tilesets easily given an offset to the base tile (solid tile).

Summary:

I’m happy with the result. The graphics are simple but effective, the atmosphere is good, sound and music works, the gameplay could be better but is ok, and it’s a completed game! I focused on stuff I usually don’t, and think I learned a whole lot. You can try it out here: PLAY!

Here is the entry page, go rate it.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=rate&uid=2311

Bonus:

Some concept art I made while trying to come up with an idea.

All that is left is content , and maybe climbing ability.

Click to play (flash): NOTE:Flashing lights, beware!

I have made lots of progress on my game, but I’m getting sleepy now. Must add enemies and a goal soon, and not obsess so much over small details. I’m really happy with the game so far though.

I added a rain effect, took far too long but I’m pretty happy with the result.

It’s starting to look a little better. I have finished animating the player, now I need to fix the tiling.

I slept far too late, and didn’t get any good ideas. But I settled for a platformer, and have tile loading and player physics working at least.

I’m using Flashpunk once again. I have had practically no time to prepare due to school, so I figured I’d settle with something familiar.

Timelapse video

Ludum Dare 21 – Coin Runner – Timelapse

Waking up at 1:30 PM in the day today with aching fingers, I felt happy.

The game is actually pretty fun to play, and not too badly balanced. There are three zones of different colors, and each zone get’s a bit harder. The enemies get a little too fast and jumpy after a while though.

I don’t regret using Flashpunk this time, it really makes everything so much easier than using just as3 like last time. I spent many hours on a stupid bug though, and realised Flashpunk tilemaps do not actually clear tiles when you call clearTile() on them if the clear tile (index 0) is transparent. That was annoying and made me loose a lot of time.

I think the leaderboard can add a lot to the game. Sadly Playtomic has disabled it’s leaderboards due to some problems, but it should be working soon again.

I didn’t really make any graphics at all, but focused on gameplay instead. I think that was a good idea, but the game could really use some better graphics. The music and sound effects could be better too, but they do the job.

A breakdown of the time spent in different applications (tracked with ProcrastiTracker):

• Flashdevelop 13h
• Chrome 6h
• Flashplayer 4h
• XChat 2h
• Photoshop 2h
• Cubase 1h

Entry page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=rate&uid=2311

Phew. That was stressful. Having worked to fix a stupid bug for most of the evening there was not much time for balancing the game. I hope it’s not too easy. I’ll write more later, for now here are screenshots and a link to the game: http://danikgames.com/stuff/LD21/index.html. Now I need to sleep.

I have actually felt really productive today, even though the effort is not showing much in the screenshots. Now there are a number of skills and upgrades that you can buy for the coins you collect. I’m currently working on the shop screen and it’s taking a whole lot of time to get all the components right.

I plan to implement highscores and maybe achievements if I can make it.

Shop

I got the basic idea of my game working yesterday. You are a red square trying to escape from all the purple squares chasing you. The levels are randomly assembled from a set of pre-made sections, and there are yellow squares (coins) you can pick up. I want to make a upgrade system so that you can purchase new abilities such as climbing ledges, double jumping, increased jump strength, making you able to reach higher places and more coins.

It’s still not pretty, but I’m happy with the way it plays so far.

Here is the game as it was after day 1 (click to play):

After lots of trouble getting the level to scroll correctly, I focused on the player controls and physics and made some progress. Behold.

I took a bicycle ride to get some inspiration.

Inspiration +1
Stamina +1
Strength +1

No good game idea yet though…

I’ve been working for the last 8 weeks until yesterday, so I haven’t had a chance to prepare for this LD at all. I will see what I can come up with anyways.

My workspace:

Make shift keyboard action cam:

I will be using

• Flashdevelop
• Flashpunk
• Photoshop
• Cubase
• Sfxr

Watch it on youtube:

>>The World Above – Timelapse<<

It’s finished!

Entry page

Play

Sub above!

Gameplay and graphics are pretty much finished now. Next up: music and sound. And if there is time; online highscores.