Early tomorrow morning I’ll be heading to CB2 to make a game for Ludum Dare! Huzzah! I’ll post some photos of the charming and sexy developers filled with stress, dread and strawberry milkshakes!

Here’s what I’ll be using:

• Hardware: Sony Vaio Laptop
• Engine: Unity 3.1
• Code: C# via Monodevelop
• Graphics: Photoshop + 3DSMAX
• Sound: Garageband, SFXR + Audacity

Super excited about this, although I have no ideas for any of the themes! Let’s see what fate deals me in a few hours!

Progress is so slow on this, but I finally have some gameplay going on. I might end up with this just being a low rent MGS with some very mild ‘enemies for weapons’ gameplay, but I’m going to get as much as I can working before I reduce the design scope somewhat and do some real art.

Seriously need to fix my camera, and I’ll do one last attempt at a base environment before proceeding to getting all the play systems in place. Want to have a simple version of gameplay done today so that I can spend a good chunk of time on graphics.

I think I might focus on getting a quick dialogue and inventory system working, so that I have some tangible gameplay.

Progress is slooow, but that’s okay – it’s still early! My game stars a robot… and it’s currently leaning towards some sort of low rent stealth-em-up, but so far there’s just the ability to slide around and fight with the camera. Hurrah!

Here’s my framework. I say framework, it’s just a few helper scripts in Unity for handling sound and text. You’re welcome to use it! [update: fixed a couple of compile errors!]

I’m up for LD18!! I’ll be doing my entry at CB2Bistro with many other Cambridge and UK people.

My goals this time are to make something a little more polished, with title screen, music, sound effects and everything in place.  I’m giving myself strict time limits so that I don’t spend too long on graphics, design, or let any one task harm the project. Thankfully my new laptop is much nicer to develop on, so I should be comfortable.  Also: No penguins!!!

Here are the tools I’ll be using:

• Engine: Unity, with Monodevelop IDE.
• Libraries: iTween for lerping
• Graphics: Photoshop, 3DSMax
• Audio: SFXR, Garageband, Audacity.

Previous Ludumdare entries:

Thanks to Codexus for the inspiration. XD

So, I see people saying that they consider frameworks to be acceptable, but game engines to be objectionable. It would help to specify the differences.

Is the use of a physics engine considered a framework or a game engine?

Automated systems, like terrain generation, are considered too much by some people. However, what about tilemap systems? Is a framework that accepts input from a tile editor, is this considered in the same way, or does it have to be 3D to cause upset?

Similarly, are there any aspects of audio that people find to be too much like cheating?

Do you think 3D graphics are a problem, especially if the engine/framework enables people to import complex 3D meshes, often with animation?

I’m surprised that some people consider Flixel to be such a ‘game engine’, as it’s mostly just an SDL style framework like Pygame, and requires very ordinary coding practice.

I don’t mean this to cause an argument, I’m more curious to figure out which parts of frameworks and engines that people object to. Then people can make a conscious decision to avoid using those services, or at least they’re able to choose when they design their game.

Please let us know in the comments.

I wasn’t able to finish implementation of much of my game, but I was pleased that I persevered and delivered something. It was nice to be able to make something less scruffy in terms of artwork, and I had fun LDing in a social environment.

Last night I decided to give up on this, but this morning I changed my mind. I still have a lot to do, and none of the gameplay mechanics are working yet, but I’m pleased with the look of it and I think there’s enough time to make something work! Wish me luck!

We’re ludumdaring together here in Cambridge, England!

From left to right, Terry, Dock, Roburky, Titch, Perrin and Nora Shishi!

My progress is incredibly slow this time. I’m using just my laptop, and I think using 3D/Unity was a very bad idea. Nevertheless, I will persevere, and revise my design if I need to in order to get this finished.

The game is about a turtle ferrying cats (and perhaps other animals)  between different islands. I hope I can get it together! -_-;;

Wow, that was close! I managed to have major tech problems at the end, but managed to submit it after all.

You can play it on the web here:  Penguinagain or grab a windows EXE HERE.

edit: or the mac one: HERE

Arrgh I have soo much work to do, but at least my game has voxel cake!

I’ve just made an ‘exit door’ for my game, which will be the goal. It feels good to have something concrete to aim towards, and hopefully I can get everything together and in place in time. I’m starting to feel much better about this game.

I decided to go with penguins again! I’m sorry! But these were kinda interesting to make.  Today I woke up at 6am and somehow felt that I ‘overslept’, which shows that I have a lot of work to do. I need to focus on the essentials only, and see if I can bring this together.

So, now I need to investigate some breakfast and building the environment for these guys to play in!

Phone cam shot! Om nom nom!

I’m starting to get a better feel for where my game is going. I hope I can finish most of the difficult code today and focus on content tomorrow.

Chicken rolls for lunch! Game is going a bit slowly, but I’m slowly checking off my list of mechanics I want available, then I’ll be able to build the game based upon what works.

Still don’t have a direction with this game, but I’m trying to get some of the mechanics out of the way. I have textboxes and questions working in a fairly tidy way. Need to get my inventory working, and then I’ll be able to start thinking about what is possible in the game!

Breakfast was delicious!

I’m still getting started with this, struggling for inspiration somewhat. I’m probably going to make a third person exploration game. Hmm.

Gawker for the mac is a nice free app for recording timelapse videos. It will record screenshots every X seconds, and then compile them into a MOV file.  I’m doing a test over several hours at the moment, but I think it will be fine.