It’s a time honored tradition of the gaming industry.

Take a look at these screenshots and see if you can tell what all of these games have in common.

Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, is after the cut.

EDIT: SUBMIT HERE

(more…)

Will be happening the weekend of the 22nd.

No hard and fast rules, you can take as much time as you need, use whatever code you want.

Stay stewed.

Hint: I composed all the music on a gameboy.

Oh, my dear God.

What have I done?!?

WHAT HAVE THESE HANDS WROUGHT?!?

Behold the manner of your destruction.

Super Bean Kid.

Phood photos.

I’ll finish up tomorrow.

Here’s how we’re looking.

Well, the game may or may not suck, but at least there are going to be 3 semi-rockin’ tunes in it.

Here’s a couple of them unfinished.

• Stage 1
• Stage 2

• This post is also in list format.
• Things I have done since last post:
  • Cook breakfast
  • Take foodphoto
  • Eat breakfast
• What I had for breakfast:
  • Fried Eggs
  • Pancakes with:
    • Butter
    • Honey
• Here is a picture:
• 
• It looks:
  • Delicious
• It was:
  • Delicious

Taking it easy this time. My last few projects have been too ambitious and I’ve had to rush to finish them off. This time I’m just making something that’s fun to play. Meet Bean Kid.

• Or to burrow, as the case may be.
• My announcement post is in list format.
• I am going to be using the following tools:
  • Python
  • PyGame
  • GIMP
  • Probably will write some crappy chiptunes on some combination of defunct software/hardware
  • Energy Drinks
  • Nicotine
  • Frequent cursing
• Here is a picture of my desktop:
• 
• Enjoy LD and have fun everyone!

The official time is up, but if you haven’t even started yet, now’s the time! It’s a long weekend for those of us in the US, so take as much time as you need on this. I’ve tried a few of the entries and was super impressed; can’t wait to try more. Thanks for playing and I hope you found this as enjoyable as I have!

Several people seem to be attempting beat-based music games, so for your convenience, here are the tempos of each song in the sample pack (not including the noise/static tracks):

Kontinuum – Pulsar – 170bpm
Destroysound – Maggies Circle Acid – 140bpm
Kontinuum – Safe, Asleep In The Library – 140bpm
Kontinuum – Sphere – 170bpm

They were all exported directly from a host audio program and so should sync up perfectly at those tempos.

Really excited to see how what you guys turn out. Have fun! 

And the theme is….

TIME

Rules:

• All development will be done in 48 hours, solo, from scratch, except for whatever audio libraries you chose to use.
• You must incorporate sounds from the sample archive located here. You can do whatever you want with the sounds, and they do NOT need to be played back in an audio form, just incoporated SOMEHOW into the final product. You could, for example, procedurally make levels based on them.
• You may also download the entire soundpack here (warning – it is 156MB!)
• You may manipulate the sounds however you like. You can cut apart the loops to get one-shot samples, remix the .XMs or rip the samples out of them, or whatever.
• You may use as many sounds as you like, or as few as 1.
• The theme, Time, is just meant to give you an alternate starting point for your brainstorming. Focus as much as you want on the soundpack, or not at all.
• Edit: I am streaming the entire sample pack here for your listening pleasure. All told (without the MIDI data) there is 51 minutes worth of content. If you’re not already, consider joining #ludumdare on irc.afternet.org to discuss your ideas!
• Have fun!

Just a reminder that you have 5 days to finish your research for Mini-LD #9. The rules are:

• You may use any code you write between now and Friday, May 22nd at 9:00pm EST, but ONLY if it pertains to playing or processing sound.
• You will be provided with a resource pack containing sound assets for use in your game.
• Sounds will be provided in the following formats:
  • MP3/OGG
  • XM
  • WAV
  • General MIDI songfiles
• Due to the size of the resource pack, I will make all sounds available on a webpage so that you can preview them and select the ones you want.
• All other code for your project must be written from-scratch, during the compo.

Here is the original announcement. Good luck, and see you on friday!

well, apparently i just suck a lot, because i messed up map3 on ethergrind. python’s dom chokes on it because of some malformed xml. here is a fixed copy of the xml for those of you with nerves of steel who can make it that far. drop it in the /maps directory. alternatively, i’ve just gone ahead and fixed the download link from the original post; feel free to disregard levels 3-5 if you wish when you vote.

also, you’ll be happy to know that it IS beatable. many levels, however, took me several playthroughs; notably level 2 and level 3 are fiendishly difficult. some tips:

level 2: use speed and boost through the level until you reach the last grinder. take out the turrets first and let the enemy ships you’ve dodged come back. destroy them all before trying the boss. make sure to take out the cannons before you fight the boss.

level 3: just power through with speed. this is just really hard.

level 4: for the asteroid area, concentrate on going slowly and eliminating all enemies as they appear. when you get to the grinders, dodge like hell.

level 5: make sure to pick up all of the powerups. it will give you enough to get a shield. when you get to the boss, fly straight through him (losing your shield) and keep going until there is enough space for you to deal with the enemy ships. then fly to the top and bottom of the screen and take out the turrets before engaging the boss. it’s very, very hard. good luck.

thanks for the comments, guys, all the games i’ve played are top notch. congrats to everybody!

Submissions for Ludum Dare #14 may have just ended, but don’t retire your braincells and pack your coffee mugs away quite yet. Because on May 22 at 9PM EST… destroysound presents… a Ludum Dare production…

MINI LD #9
May 22, 2009, 9PM EST-May 24, 2009, 9PM EST

Yes, it’s a little early to announce this, but I want to make sure everyone has some time to adequately prepare. I’m going to spoil the theme slightly here by telling you that whatever tools you decide to use, you will need to be able to have access to a computer (gasp) with a soundcard (shocking) and some method of replicating sound (i suggest headphones or speakers) as well as an environment that can play back one of the following types of sound/music files:

• .WAV sounds
• .MP3 or .OGG tracks
• .MID music files
• .XM modules

The more of these you can support, the better.

Any code you write with this intent between now and then is acceptable for use in the compo. That means you can’t write your game now, but any code you write (or have written) that experiments with sound, manipulates sounds or otherwise mangles/destroys your audio interface is A-OK to use. All game logic must be developed in the 48 hour timelimit.

In addition (this is not required), you might want to get familiar with some sort of audio editing tool/music tracking software/thing to make your soundcard flip out, if you so wish. For free tools of this sort, check out Audacity, MilkyTracker or Pure Data. In addition, people have written some nice audio generation tools specifically for LD and game design: check out SFXR if you haven’t already. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to respond to this post and let us know what you use.

Aaaaand.. that’s all you need to know about MiniLD #9 right now. I’ll make another announcement after the post-compo hysteria dies down. Hopefully you are intrigued enough to give it a shot. See you then!

EtherGrind Timelapse

Music is “Do You Know Squarepusher” by Squarepusher.
Annotations so you know what the heck is going on.

:: ethergrind ::
:: distribution (source and win32 .exe) ::
:: source requires pygame and pgu ::

:: keys ::
:: arrows – move ::
:: space – shoot ::
:: enter – accept powerup ::
:: f – turn on high-quality visual effects ::
:: esc – quit (why would you want to do that?) :: 

:: start main.exe or main.py with the -f switch to run in full screen mode :: 

5/6 powerups are coded, level format is done. need a way to finish levels.. still, this leaves me with all day tomorrow to generate content. i might try to make a boss, but i wouldn’t hold my breath on that.

I made some delicious shrimp fried rice.

Frying the veggies and shrimp.

Rice ahoy!

Om nom nom.

Also, this.