Well, it may be a bit late (again? Yup.). But since this isn’t really a game, more a kind of linear history, I didn’t intend to submit it so I took my time. I think you ‘ve got to test enough games right now to not add something that doesn’t fit the rules. :p

♦ English version of Evocation – web

♦ French version of Evocation – web

♦ Sources (javascript/canvas)

 

But I wanted to show it here because :

•  It’s my first program, and my first javascript/canvas program, something moves on the screen, and I’m happy so I wanted to share that ’cause it’s for some part thanks to Ludum Dare.
• I have been sustained a lot by kind people to DO SOMETHING for this LD, so I did. They are the others (great and moving) part of my motivation. I felt I have to  finish here what I have been encouraged for.
• I’ts not a game, but I tried to do something elegant that fits the Minimalist Theme, It contain potato, some references I was pleased to use, and it have been nicely received in it’s first french version. So maybe you could like it.
• Since my english is still awfull, I’ve been helped for the translation. Seems better to honour this work by publishing it here. ^^

♦ Post mortem – Premices :

Well… Honnestly I wasn’t really inspired by the theme. I searched on saturday morning about Minimalism in it primary meaning, in it’s artistic current, about it’s context and consequences, about artists themselves.. I’ve learned a lot. But I wasn’t inspired. And a little bit ill too.

I like Mies van der Rohe -which is a minimalist architect- since many years, when i visited his Spanish pavillon in Barcelona. I love the elegance, simplicity, lightness of this construction. The use of water and space. I thought I could perhaps not make a game, but try to reveal that.

It would only use some moving rectangles, I didn’t knew if i could only do that but it would be the occasion to try. I didn’t saw this like an animation, but like a path the user should take moving forward with the up button. It would have a little story with a potato (…well…) talking along the path (hum…), that could react if the user choose to go back instead of move.

That wasn’t the only idea, but I didn’t enjoyed the others. This one had at least a nostalgic touch. But I couldn’t figure how to make it funny. That was not a gameplay. I spent the day and the night thinking about it without give it a try. I thought about not submit anything for this LD and go back to work.

But I had announced my participation here and there and people had been very supportive. So I told them that I didn’t know what to do for this LD. I felt bad. I felt sorry that they had wasted their time and encouragements because of me. And their responses were so cool.. “Come on, you can do it !”. Okay, I couldn’t NOT do nothing.

♦ Newbie discovers about powers of code :

That was on sunday evening. So. Lets try. Up Button, moving rectangles. I had a tuto about games on canvas made by a friend. Took the game loop and the up button parts. Well, this works. Never tried to programm anything in JS before, only theorical exercices with boucles and operators. In the console. This was the first day in my life where i had something on the screen !

I don’t clearly remember how and why, but I switched from the Mies van der rohe evocation idea to moving rectangular islands. More or less like in the SNES “mode 7″. For Mies van der rohe I needed perspective illusion when the player goes back or forth. So make a rectangle grow in the screen when button up is pushed was the first move.

Well, I had got some problems. To figure how to use the coordinates – at begining my islands often flipped themselves, and expanded seemingly randomly. I had to remove the down button, cause if false-perspective eventually became good forward, backward was still pretty messy. Fortunately, I’ve been helped. I did my code myself, but I had the chance to have people reviewing my code and explaining me where or why it couldn’t work.

Added and removed an inertia system – It worked, but messed again with my island generation. Don’t know why. Often forgot how exactly functionned pieces of code i had writed myself. Even only two hours before. Even commented. Had hard times with the animation of the “signal” announcing new messages – and I’m still not proud of it. But I was pretty impressed by the things which worked quite easily when I tried to make them.

♦ Choices and challenges :

I had no libraries. Nor jQuery. I wished to work from scratch if possible, and with no graphisms too (the up button representation is the only picture). Just with code. I usually do the graphics, so it was my personnal challenge. When I decided to not submit the “thing”, I took some code I have made for the last LD, for the footer part of the website.

I didn’t worked on monday and wednesday days. So I’m pretty happy with the time spent in the project, I’ve lost some hours on the issues mentionned before, but I’m surprised that it were finished so soon. I used two days on the story and timing, reviewed all of it hundreds of time. One day again for translation – to realize that it was awfull and be helped. I’m fond of Ray Bradbury for his english mastery, and his language’s massacre by myself was really a shame to me.

I had to make a choice for the history. I had an idea more contemplative in mind – You’re a bird, a voice asks you to rescue her. You finds and takes it, it’s a potato (humhum), she share her thoughts with you during the flight. You let her go on the continent, she thanks you. (“You were so kind to rescue and let me speak, you know, you’re a good guy !”). And this story about Chell and Keats (from Portal, Hyperion, Mush, and others refs too :3). I asked people to choose what they would enjoy better.

I was not sure about the linearity. I could easily make alternative choices in the dialogs but it wouldn’t have a real impact on the island below (not a significative and visible one, island remains islands..). And I also have already made a novel game with real and efficient choices on my last LD entry. I don’t wanted to seems to be ‘the girl which make novel games’, since that’s not even my cup of tea…

♦ That’s freaking cool !

I wish it will be as smooth for the next projects. Which will hopely be real games ! The story of Evocation will continue in it, this story is a prequel of a project I have in mind since long time. I’m currently learning to program to be able to make it some day. For my formation, I plan several mini projects in this perspective.

Thanks again, Ludum dare and Ludum dare people !!

I got some ideas but not a single I would find pleasant to make. So I’m still trying to find something more appealing (Mies van der Rohe ? Flatland ? Game of life ?). Meanwhile, I ate my ♥-potato in revenge. NAHAHAHAHAH.

PS: I forgot to put the link to the post mortem of our last submission, by Mokona. It’s here.

Well …probably.

I’m currently learning about Javascript/Canvas but I have only few basics. So I will try to do something, or at least just a little concept and graphs that I would be able to finish later. And, oh, my english is as approximative as always, sorry about that. :p

PS : I saw this munificent “heart-potato” while doing my food shopping yesterday. It’s destiny ! yum yum yum miss potato you will be a delicious dish HA HA HA !

 
By the way, this is my desk. For the tools, I will use HTML/CSS/JS and perhaps jQuery on Flashdevelop; and Paint shop pro for the graphics, with MyPaint and Krita if I have to paint. The two later are great cool free and open source tools.

 
Take care and have fun everybody !

Finally ! I can show you the little ‘novel game’ we made for Ludum Dare 25 !

The english translation had been made collaboratively by folks who followed the project -and it was really really cool to see that. But we made a lot of modifications later in the french version that couldn’t have been accounted. So, sorry, please consider the content as a demo.

Well, I know we have a month late. :3 But we had some little problems and first of all : we lost the programer, late of LD’s weekend. So we had to find somebody who would be eager to retake the project, and it took some time.

And at last : Mokona undertook to make it, but due to his job he only could work on it late on the day, some days. Mokona says that he tracked the time he passed on the project and happily, that could have fit on a Jam.

I cannot say as much : the graphics could have been made in time but I exploded the schedule with the css-html integration part. I’m not experimented on that, so it took me longer than it should had.

But well, thanks to the LD, we have our first own game for 2013 ! That’s really cool. We showed it to french players yesterday and despite the fact that it’s a text-based game, they seems to mostly have liked it (on a sondage, 138 people said they liked it or would have like a next chapter and 33 only didn’t liked it). Or perhaps they are too gentle with us. :p

This is pretty encouraging. 2013 is the year where I will try to learn programming, do games, and …hopefully : in 2014 perhaps, live with video game’s revenues. And I will do looooots of mini-jams by myself to fulfill this goal.

I wish all of you a really wonderfull new year, with lots of cool projects !

So the game won’t be finished tonight, but we are still standing to fight for a release – hopefully this week.

Here is the shop, where you can see the result of your selling with the adventurers.
Currently I’m drawing some objects – rusted sword, devilish goat, Perfume of Deadly Cheese…

Congrats to all the fine people who submitted their game, and some love for the ones who tried ! :p

Well, we probably won’t make it since the project lost it’s programmer. I’ve spent some hours to find someone who would try to take the project and at least, three people have begun ..on their own. Surely neither of them will be able to finish it for the Jam deadline, but perhaps we will have a game.

I give my best to finish the graphs and HUD. The polyphasic sleeping helps a lot.
Here is the end screen game, with awards and three endings to achieve.

  Oh, and we have a goat. One of a kind… ^^
(sorry for my poor english, I’m really not fluent… ).

I said in my last entry that we had issues with the english translation of the game. So we opened a Titanpad doc and fortunately, really nice people helped us ! Thanks to them, I’m able to give you a sneak peak about the story.

Dungeon Master: YOU, flunky!!!

Flunky: Yessss Masssster..?

- You will serve my evil schemes!

- Please, I wanna liiiiiiive… T_T

- You will be in charge of the Dungeon Adventurers’ Shop!

- …But… Is it really to our advantage to equip them ??

- Well yes! Let me explain…

Firstly, the money they’ll spend there will help if they eventually get to the treasure room.

Secondly… We’ll get rid of all the junk left by all the dead adventurers who came in our wonderful dungeon…

More importantly, QUITE A FEW TIMES. Hahah! You will give them the worst possible equipment, and don’t be shy on the hidden flaws!

And then, the really sneaky detail. You’ll get a glimpse of their gear, and will tell me everything about it, so that we can welcome them… Warmly…

MWAHAHAHAH!!

Later…

CLANG KLONK BLANG… Someone’s coming… It’s awful, they’ll never believe it, I’ll die here… Aaaargh! IT’S THE END!
HELLO WELCOME TO THE DUNGEON SH- .. Wait, no, just an average adventurer, just wandering there, like you, and selling a few things. Care to take a look, without killing me?

I’ve spent all the night, writing stories of encounters between the main character and random adventurers. I’m quite happy because if players enjoy the game, they will be able to write some encounters themselves for the enhanced version. So we may have a community game. =)

You can hear heavy steps, really heavy ones, in the corridor…
Troubled by the arrival of a Barbarian, you didn’t see the Thief already stealing your wares…
Barbarian: We take everything.
Flunky: Ohh? Wonderful! … It’ll be ten thousand gold c..
Thief: No, you didn’t get it, little man. He said: WE TAKE EVERYTHING.

Elf: Kyaaaaaa, this invisibility cloak is sooooo cute! I need it, I need it! Don’t you think it suits me well? You’re quite the cutie too, you know… Oh, but I’m afraid I don’t have enough gold… Can I get a discount? Can you give it to me? As a gift!
Flunky: I… Erm… Glblbl…

Ranger: … So, I sell you 37 rat tails, 18 magic chicken bones, 72 giant coachroaches’ wings, 7 rusty swords, 22 bat wings… Oh, you’re out of money. Well, I guess that’s all.
Flunky: …Okay… So, what does tickle your fancy here, maybe a shiny sword? Maybe some magic potions?
Ranger: Me? I don’t buy anything… I got everything I want in the wilderness, you see. It’s goodbye then!
Dungeon Master : Let’s recap. You gave ALL my gold to this guy in exchange for bits of MY creatures corpses?

I’ve got the last few hours today to make the graphs of the HUD and integrate them in CSS/html. Tomorrow, I will make the items icons and add some more stories if I have some time left.

Oh, here is a picture of my desk and lunch. With a polyphasic sleeping schème : I’m right in the adaptation period, and it’s an amazing experience.

We join the Jam !

Not sure to submit anything however, because it’s a novel game and my english is …really… awful.

So I’m writing it in french and we will see if we have got the time or some help to make an english version. =^-^=