Wow, I can’t believe this is my fourth Ludum Dare in a row! I started with the 10th anniversary last year and although I’m a bit late to “Game Jams World” (with capitals!), I hope not to miss a single one from now! Speaking of which, I have a religious-familiar-event (r) on Sunday, so I’m unsure if I’ll be making a 24 hours game on Saturday or if I’ll send the game to the jam instead. I’d prefer to send to the compo, as that’s the one I always participate in, but well…

Finally, I’ll be using:

• Unity
• Blender
• Gimp / MyPaint
• BFXR / Autotracker

And I’ll be listening wonderful music from fellow’s indie games. Lots of them from this amazing collection.

C’mon! Let’s make some games!

This is my third Ludum Dare and I think this is the best game I made. It went almost exactly as expected, but of course some thing were not so well.

As with the previous editions, I used Unity as my framework of choice but instead of using RagePixel (2D), I risked to make something in 3D. I think the result is not that bad

What went wrong or so-so

• I could not setup proper screen capture software for my dual screens. My laptop’s display and external monitor use different screen resolutions and the utility (screencapture, OSX) didn’t take both screenshots at the same time. In fact I couldn’t manage to take capture from my secondary (laptop’s) screen with any tool!. A pity because I coded on my laptop screen and managed Unity on the external monitor. So the time-lapse is a bit boring…
• I got distracted with not so important details, as the feet animation and its synchronization. I didn’t know about Unity animation events so I lost a lot of time trying to “manually” sync those feet… When I found about events, I felt both stupid and relieved And that made my day! But that is for the “what went right”.
• As with animations, I over-complicated some things. For example instead of making the player walk for real and dynamically generate the terrain, I faked the movement by displacing the road’s UV map. This lead to problem of buildings and enemies, which had to advance too, independently of the players speed (which changes). So I ended up manually correcting every objects’ speed according to the player’s. It’d had taken less time just to generate the terrain as needed
• I totally forgot about music until the last minute! I wanted to make *anything* using garageband or something easier, but I totally forgot about it and ended up using autotracker….
• No procedural city. I wanted to make a few buildings/houses to randomly place then along the roadside, but I ended up using the same model with random height and colors… Well…
• Enemy waves and increasing difficulty. Although the game is not simply easy, I think it’d be better with increasing difficulty. Right now the enemy’s spawn rate and max units is fixed.
• If an enemy shots, you are hit. I think this is OK for soldiers and tanks, but I wanted the plane only to hit you if you were right in front of it, so you could dodge it when seeing it come from the distance.

Wow, that’s a lot of things that went so-so

HitlerZilla – development screenshot

What went right

• I managed to finish every item put on my “unavoidable TODO list”. This means that although I left some thing behind (like enemy waves) I got a fairly amount of work done.
• My code was not perfect, but good enough to allow me to add tanks and planes without touching the base enemy class, and in the last 2 hours! You can see in the time-lapse that tanks and plane don’t appear until the last hours. I could have added more enemy types (pointy barriers?) without much more work.
• I wasn’t as ambitious as with my last LD (9 mini-games, what was I thinking about????). I got the idea during my morning shower, where I get all my LD ideas , put it simple on paper and started working, getting-shit-done (TM).
• I finally got Unity animation system! I had to fight with a “getting back to origin” problem, but everything solved using an empty GameObject as my animated object parent.
• Animation events. I didn’t know about them! As I said before, I struggled my mind trying to sync my feet animation. With animation events I can say when to start the other feet animation, sounds and object destruction. SO USEFUL!!!

I think that’s all. I hope to get better rating than with my last entry. I’m getting good feedback by the moment, so I hope this to stay the same.

If you have the time, I’d like you to check HitlerZilla and write some comments:

HitlerZilla – Rate, rate, rate!

Thanks, LD community!!!!

Well, my first Ludum Dare (LD23) was pretty cool, the second one was kind of messy because I was too groovy with the mini-games (and not many people liked it…). I hope that this, as the third LD will be a good one. I learnt from my mistakes!

So, I’m gonna use:

• Unity 4 (w/ Ragepixel or 2DToolkit if 2D)
• Blender in case I (Ludum) dare to make a 3D game (Rimshot for that!)
• Gimp/Pixelmator (whichever computer is closer) and Pickle if pixel art
• sfxr
• Audacity
• If I have the time, I’ll try to “”"compose”"” something with Garage Band for iOS. If not, I’ll use Autotracker-C

Dude, I started writing this post a few hours ago! I got distracted testing some Blender animation importing in Unity that I almost forgot it! Here’s a screenshot:

And finally the mandatory desktop setup:

Ready to go!

Let’s make some games!

Well, I did finish my game, but I’m not really happy with it. Although it’s finished, I feel like it’s not.

Anyway, should anyone want to try it: The Path For Evolution.

Hi all! Of course I’m in!

This will be my second Ludum Dare, and I’m feeling more nervous than the first time!

I’ll be using Unity3d – 1d= Unity3d with a 2D framework, stil not sure if RagePixel which I used the last time or Orthello2D. I bought a cheap mic for  sounds and effects recording, but I’ll be using the amazing Autotracker for music. For the sprites, I chose the also amazing Pickle and MyPaint for larger painting (I need to take the dust out of my wacom).

Anyway, as timezones rules, I’ll read the theme at 3am and go to bed. I hope to get my great idea in a dream

Mandatory desktop panorama:

Good luck everyone!

Hi all!

I wanted and wanted to participate in a Ludum Dare since I knew about it a few years ago, but never did. This time I decided I could not let pass the 10th aniversary, so here I am. I’m pretty happy with the final result, although I left a few features out. Here’s my little post-mortem:

What went right

• Features selection: I think I did pretty well selecting what to do and what to leave behind. I wanted to include enemy waves between the different bosses, but the lack of graphics and sound made me discard this in favor of title screen, graphics, sound and winning/loosing screens.
• Tools: Although this is the first time I use Unity3D without following a tutorial, I felt really comfortable with it. At first I wanted to go with Cocos2D-iphone & Objective-C, but I also wanted more people to be able to play my game
• Planification: The Compo started at 3am local time, so I went to bed right after knowing the theme. I woke up, took my breakfast and started thinking about the theme. After writing down 2 or 3 ideas (both 2D and 3D) I came with the right one (for me ). Then decided that the core idea was simple enought to be ready in one day so that left me with a full day for polishing, graphics, sounds and bug-fixes.
• Graphics: Used to use my own programmer art, it’s not difficult for me to improve any previous work. Although the graphics are not spectacular, they are much better that the ones I normally produce