Ok, two years ago I started with LD. Since then I produced a bunch of crappy unfinished unawesome java / jMonkeyEngine games. Here some screenshots( in chronological order):

I have the feeling that it is time for a change. So this will be my setup:

Unity3d / blender / gimp /chronolapse

Now I have from the beginning that game-framework I usually code during LD-Time. More time to concentrate on the game itselfs. BUT still enough rules for me to break in order to let this LD be a desaster as the ones before

Let’s see what will happen….until LD starts I will not stop saying to myself:”Keep it simple!Keep it simple!Keep it simple!…”

Yeah, it is WRC (World Rally Championship)-Time. At the moment they setup for the race through the city right in front my house. Actually quite cool cars, nevertheless I will switch to my office as this will go on like this the whole day and that cars are really “silent”

Too bad that the race itself is not viewable from my house.

Okay,…time to start bombing some fuzzy-guys on my android-phone:

Keep on rocking and see U later!

Ok,…let’s end day one.

Actually I’m a jMonkeyEngine-User but this time I want to create an android-app for my new phone. I use gdx that should help me a bit with that. Still I don’t feel too comfortable with that….until now I have build a TileMap-Reader that read my txt-based tilemaps with additional meta-data (postions of player and enemies). Actually there is no game play, yet!  But that will change tomorrow.

Here a screenshot:

This is more or less one to one to the android-version! As soon as there is some interaction I will publish an apk-file.

Ok, I decided to invest some time to change my game a little bit. Most important, the guys are now able to drink beer! Therefore I modelled a can with the very uncommen brand: BEER

But it is not only the beer drinking (the ‘punishment’ if you lost all your money) I actually changed the concept around the ‘blackjack’-scenario. Now it is more ongoing. You have money and decide how much you want to bet in a ‘match’ if you win you double, if not you lose it.And so forth…

Beside that I wanted to make the game more ‘game-like’ with an ‘esc’-key popup (resume,restart,exit) and a main-menu with instructions (that are for sure still very confusing), exit, infos etc. Actually I planned to change the mutant-fishes to real ones but I am too lazy now and somehow I feel cofortable now with my friends:’Hungry Eye’,'Hungry Eye’,'Glitshi’,etc (Who knows what kind of new fishes deep water horizion will produce…) . I added some birds that fly around, a wave sound and one nice fish (you can’t grab). Well,…actually as I wrote this down I wonder why this took me another 2 days and it is still such a boring game . It was for sure fun and I will upload it to a gaming-platform (the first time since my very first game ) and the people teact! (The first one I showed it was not very nice , but I don’t care!)

Here are the links:

WEBSTART WINDOWS .EXE

Ah here a beer-action-scene:

Actually I also planned to have gunshooting towards the opponet’s boat and fightings but first I rigged the models really poor for real animations and 2nd it’s enough now. I still have one game to finish and want to start something new…

It was a pleasure. Looking forward to the next LD,

ToM

Ok, after some huddle with my gui I finally can present:

‘Greedy Fishing’

You and your opponent are fishing, trying to get the most out of the lake that can be handled by your boat. All you have to do is to decide to get another fish or if you think you got enough you can see what the computer is doing… Actually I wanted to add much more stuff, but time is running out, so have fun.

Follow this link:

http://thomas.trocha.com/games/ludumdare/greedy_fishing.html

After kicking my first try I started over again and started a new game called  ‘greedy fishing’.

It is about two competitors (one computer) who are on a sea in their boats trying to get most weight of fishes. It is round based and the player starts. Every turn you get a fish with different weight, so does the computer. The problem is you have to have an eye on the maximal weight of your boat and stop fishing if you think the next fish will break you neck. Get as far as possible to the maximum to beat you opponent. But if you get too much fish your boat will sink and you loose the game…

Here a first screenshot:

Ok,…one week ago we were all still coding and developing like hell and it is again amazing what cool stuff was created. Big respect to everyone.

I as always viloated the “keep it simple”-rule and switched from a too complicated RTS approach to a not less complicated Third-Person-Shooter… That’s me, and even I know I decided to change my behavior for the next time, I’m sure I will fail again (until the complicated project works out)

Nevertheless I want to present you a little introductional video I created with blender and windows video maker. Actually I have absolutley no experience in that so expect not too much(click the image)

EDIT:

I also created my timelapse video now. Have a look here:

http://thomas.trocha.com/games/ld17/ld17.html

Yeah,…I’m really looking forward to this competition. As always I’m so optimistic and have the feeling I improved from the last event, but realistically spoken I know it will be hard work and I have really to be concentrated. Actually I quite often struggle in tweaking little things that actually are not so important but just eat time…

Ok,..here my setup:

java 1.5 / jMonkeyEngine / blender 2.49b / gimp / reaper with my keyboard’s VST-Plugin and maybe some sourcecode from my last LD’s exploration-entry.

Well,…actually I tried to build a nice game with the codebase I created on miniLD. Well,…haha! I started with a tank-training scenario and in that I “just” wanted to build a method that let then tank-”tube” lookAt a certain point. My engine somehow cannot handle this if the tube is child of a node that already has a rotation,…Well,..I failed in this. So I really was killed by math. I tried and thought and thought and tried…a bit too confuse I have to admit…so my weekend-project stuck right at the beginning. But if you want to start the tank-training you can give it a try here:

http://thomas.trocha.com/games/tank/tank.html

At the moment the game violates the color-constraint…I will change this at the end. Here a screenshot:

Have a nice week,…

This miniLD was like more or less all of the last competitions before. I work and work on writing frameworks for the specific game leaving not enough time to do something cool gameplay with it. So I decided to invest an additional weekend so that I finally can say:”Yes it is some kind of game!” So stay tuned and buy some fuel for the upcoming Tank-Missions

Ah, as the competition is over, I decided to add one green color to the colormap and I will really think about kicking the input-constraint or just adding additional gamepad-support. Maybe I will use a MiniLD and a Normal-Mode. Similar to the old “Turbo”-Button of my very first PC (8086) where you could lower the speed from 10MhZ to 4.8MhZ . Unbelivable 10 (TEN) MhZ…. seems to be some years ago

Here a very first possible new tank…(blender render)

Soo,…after lot’s of work and lot’s of problems at places I wouldn’t have expected before I finally have something to release. See it as demo as I again hadn’t enough time to really design a level. But now I have to stop cause I have somehow think about work tomorrow….

The Level is still the same as yesterday now with NPC…Very very “intelligent” ones with from time to time strange behaviour Actually I worked lot at my engine but in the end didn’t use most of the new stuff… (clever, isn’t it? ).

Here a satellite-picture from the whole scene:

Play the game here:

http://thomas.trocha.com/games/tank/tank.html

It tried to fulfill all constraints. (color,24sec loop,microphone effects,size and input)

Well, after quite some time in front of my computer I finally came to a playable demo where you can drive your tank through a 9-color landscape and fire you bullets as much as you want . Actually I used an indexed-colormap in gimp to convert a baked colormap in order to fit the color-constraint.

Control:

1-Left 3-right 8-forward 9-backward 0-fire

You can start the game from the website with java-webstart. Follow this link:

http://thomas.trocha.com/games/sheriff/sheriff.html

You will need java to start the game. (Just try what happens if you press the button! If it does not work, plz tell me your configuration…)

I finally implemented NPCs. Well, they are dumb as hell, but they are moving from their own will. It is quite funny to watch them trying to break the wall! “YOU WON’T SUCCEED, LITTLE BLACKHAT-GUY!”

Ok…finally I will call my game “Plague”. So far I have my character in game, moveable with keyboard-controlls. Still lots to do but I’m on the way.

Btw: For those people how don’t know about the game I want to remake (and I think this might be 100%!?) here a screenshot from original:

Actually I just wanted to go to bed and checked a last time for news about MiniLD….

Argh…the theme was there ==> no sleep! Clone,…yeah! Always had in mind to clone once one of my favorite games of my childhood. So I started immediately. And of course as always starting with the content, hehe. May I present: the three protagonists.

Does anyone recognize the game?

Well,…my history in finishing games is not the best. Nevertheless I’m optimistic as ever to finish this time 

Stay tuned and good night

Ok, more than a week after the compo finally ended, here my short summary what went fine and what was a fail (again?)

Good:

- After about one year experience with jMonkeyEngine and blender the comparison between ld13 and ld16 is really a progress.

- clear gameplay (platformer game – 3 buttons to use)

- added music. actually I’m quite happy about that smooth music. Wasn’t that difficult to create

- added soundfx (thx drpetter )

- webstartable java game. (most of the people was able to start it)

- timelapse

- created quite extendable platformer-framework for jME and blender

Cons:

- created quite extendable platformer-framework for jME and blender (although this might be good for the future it was not good for the compo! I hadn’t enough time to really show its capabilities)

- christmas-party the day before + 2h earlier starttime

- webstartable-game: not everyone was able to start it

- too less gameplay  (4h more time and……. )

Ok, even I’m not happy about the low-level gameplay I’m quite satisfied with the overall-experience. Next time I will for sure not start with jME from scratch again. It’s time to concentrate on gameplay!

Ok,…here my timelapse (3:30min)

http://thomas.trocha.com/misc/timelapse_ld16/ld16.htm

LD-Preview

One last think: To the people that are not able to start my game: Plz post me your configuration (OS, Browser and if possible installed Java-Version) THX…

After quite a rush in the end I got “Lost in Exploration” finished. Or let’s say that what I had time for is finished.

Actually most of the time I created a platformer-egnine based on jMonkeyEngine. That took lot’s of time and when I started using it (with the help of blender). In the end it was a real good job when I compare the result to my first LD (one year ago).

The first scene:

The whole scene how it looks in the  my blender-”editor”:

Have a look here (hope the webstart works for everyone):

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview&uid=479

So,..still the sourcecode to pack…

It was really much fun again…

Stuff used for creating this pice of software:

eclipse,java,jMonkeyEngine,blender,reaper,drpetter’s supersound-generator

With hearing the theme “exploration” my first thought was cave exploration… As I always wanted to create a platformer it decided to do something that should be a bit like pitfall in caves, or so…. Still my biggest problem is that I get stuck in too much details and it was quite exhausting to create some kind of engine that let me create the in blender.

I think I have now a more or less good base to start with gameplay tomorrow. Here a first screenshot:

Usually I planned to publish the game (if it will be one) as java webstart. But actually it does only work for me from the commando-line at the moment. It would be nice if someone could try to start this from the browser (I didn’t succeed).Nevertheless I think I will have to provide it as downloadable archive….

Browser: http://thomas.trocha.com/games/exploration/exploration.jnlp

left/right :  a/d-key

jump : right shit

Command-Line:  javaws http://thomas.trocha.com/games/exploration/exploration.jnlp

But now I need some sleep. Adios and cu tomorrow,

ToM

Well,..finally I got ready more or less.

It’s is a typical collect stuff in order to come further game:

It is about Sandro Sand that is searching the last Sandbox in the world as the government forbid everything that makes fun including sandboxes…

In the second level (on the other island) there is a bug that the camera perspective is changing to very high above the player. You can still see him very very small (beside the mousecursor) so go on collecting and go then to the brown door of the tower! Actually to finish the game you need about 2-3 minutes

Here two screenshots:

This my second try in python. First one was in pygame, now I tried panda3d (as I usally use jMonkeyEngine). It was quite cool. Nevertheless somehow I wrote everything in one(!) class. LOL….usally I’m a java  programmer using for every small piece a class Quite a difference…Panda3d has a pack-function that makes an installer for you. Problem is that the package gets quite huge. This one is about 57MB. So be warned…

Nevertheless I hope you are able to run it. (Starting it from the installer doesn’t work for me! Try to use it from start-menu) At the moment I have only a win-installer but will try to create a linux-deb as well.

Here is the LINK

And here is the source with all of the blender-stuff included also: LINK

CU, ToM

Increpare, can you give some details about the date of Mini-LD #10? I want to produce some stuff to be (mini)reviewed