So, I have been on a roll with being productive, and this is a great opportunity to keep the ball rolling.

I will be using Game Maker (Studio) to give out a windows exe, and on monday I will organise an html5 release. For sound effects sfxr (bfxr) and for music fruity loops studio. Paint.net for art.

Hopefully this will be a good warmup for my speed jam!

So, thanks to a caffeine, bacon, and sugar fueled event that I happened to be taking part in (the Nokia Lumia Hackathon held in Johannesburg over the same weekend of LD23) I ended up doing LD and the Hackathon at the same time. This presented a whole bunch of interesting problems, the first being that I started after the rest of the hackathon participants (9 hours later to be precise), and the second being that compared to what they had to do I had more work to complete (they could use free sounds and the likes thereof where I had to make my own content. This wasnt a problem particularly, but I definitely got labelled as a weirdo for the weekend.

So, as part of the weekend’s happenings I had the perfect setup for a Jam, there were matresses, people to bounce ideas off of, unlimited coffee, snacks, fruits, cooldrinks, water, and recreational additionals (pinball machine, kinects, a foosball table and so on). This meant 3 things for my LD participation, first that I never had to worry about meals, they were at fixed times every day, and I never forgot to eat, second, I never had to go far to get a random snack or a new cup of coffee (or bottle of water), and so the vast amounts of coffee I consumed didnt dehydrate me, and thirdly I had my friends supporting me from the very start which helped me keep focussed and motivated to mission on in my code.

You can view a lazily-unrotated image of the game here.

How I prepared:

• I spent a lot of my non-studying time practicing doing random things that I would need to do for LD, these included art (drawings in photoshop), and random songs in FL Studio
• I made sure during the nights before the theme announce that I got enough sleep so I wouldnt be too tired from waiting up till 2AM to get the theme

What went right:

• I picked the first idea I came up with at the time, simplified the mechanics, and focussed on prototyping the base mechanics immediately. This meant that I knew how it would feel in the end result. After prototyping I was however slightly dissatisfied about that “fun” aspect of the game, but I decided to stick with the idea anyway so I could have more time to polish the entry.
• The mechanics were easier to implement completely than I imagined they would be, so I ended up spending the majority of the time I worked on the entry polishing the game. The accomplishment of this LD that I enjoyed most was the fact that this is my single most polished game I have made so far. Regardless of the simplicity of the game mechanics it is visually appealing (at least it is to me), and I hope to in future maintain the same level of polish in games I make.
• I had constant distractions, which made it easier to focus on the work in sections. I didnt tire my brain out by focussing solely on one thing (though Saturday morning I got close), working near people that needed my helped me a lot in this regard.

What went wrong:

• It turned out that I miscalculated the time till theme release, and ended up sitting around doing nothing for an hour, as the theme was actually released at 3AM rather than the 2AM I was waiting for. So I ended up shifting my schedule up from sleeping from 3 till 7 to sleeping from 4 till 8.
• I should have gotten at least an extra hour of sleep as when I got up Saturday morning I struggled to find the single issue with mechanics that slowed my completion of the game. Had I gotten some extra sleep I could have potentially finished earlier (I spent 3~4 hours finding and fixing a single bug that ended up being a simple vector addition that used the wrong components).
• I got quite stressed because of the pace I worked at, ideally I should have gotten more sleep on Saturday night instead of tanking the tiredness and working till completion by 2AM (roughly), but I think this may have been the influence of the other LumiaHack participants as I spent quite a lot of time helping them with their development.

What’s going to happen (before the next contest in which I partake):

• I decided to scrap RapidXNA development (I love RapidXNA and will keep using it for my Dream Build Play entry) mostly because XNA support is up in the air, but also because it is time I started supporting multiple platform
• Im hoping to learn DX11 and OpenGL 4.0 development, and using that I want to wrap them for the 3 main platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) so I can release on all 3 simultaneously while developing only for one, but this may not be ready for the next LD.
• Im quite happy with how quickly I can develop the actual mechanic parts of the games I write, so I will keep practicing my art and music making skills, and hopefully for the next LD I can tackle a more adventurous entry that requires more content (simple mechanics, large amounts of content).
• I will until end of May be focusing on my Dream Build Play entry (for Windows Phone 7), after which I will do exams, after which I will begin looking at the DX11, OpenGL 4.0 and “multiplatform” library that I would like to build. (I may need to rope in someone with a Mac at some point to build/test for me)

Thoughts about my game in general:

• In the end I didnt work out a second idea and build it instead of submitting the first idea because the content took too long for me to build, if I had chosen another idea after the initial prototype I would probably end up with a more “fun” idea for my entry. Im going to have to think of ways to kick start my game idea thought process when I start these compos so I have ideas to choose between.
• There are a bunch of additional mechanics that I think would have been cool to add: Suns in the vicinity that you could accidentally travel to and die, black holes that suck you in if you travelled too close, moving past a nearby planet could skew your travel and make you miss your target. Mostly these didnt make it in as I thought it would be too punishing to the player, but also because for the LD theme I couldnt think of the best ways to implement them to emphasize the theme. I will have to address adding of content (mechanics wise) in future.

After starting work on my game at time theme announcement (3AM this morning) I got to the point where I figured I should get my first sleep or the 48H period, so I slept till 7:30AM, and now after breakfast I am back to work. What I did at 3AM was I built a random grid of planets to jump between (and basically destroy), but upon checking up on peoples progress on the blog I have found that someone has the same idea as me basically, so Im going to focus on making the game play focus on the destruction of the worlds you visit, which should hopefully be enough of a distinction!

My live stream is up at http://twitch.tv/edg3za and for the next 3~ hours I intend on finishing implementing the mechanics I want and the animations for moving between worlds (which works already, kinda).

Developer’s Journal: These Lumia Hackathon hosts tried to entice me out of bed with Bacon and various other breakfasty things, it was super effective! I am quite happy that I didnt wake up to them experimenting on my brain or anything, I will accept Bacon over random experimentation any day! Now… how to maximise the chaos caused in a universe by 1 individual?

Built for me to use for this LD I have started work on RapidXNA 2.0 (which  I put the design of onto paper a while back) which has the current functionality of RapidXNA 1.0 (still in Beta, though only because I have yet to test the Xbox 360 build still). The new version is in Alpha due to the fact that it contains only rewritten old features, and none of the new features (like a scripting engine that I kinda hope to finish at some point), but should suitably port between Windows, Windows Phone 7, and Xbox 360 (relying on the fact that I hope the Xbox 360 .dll works).

Simply put my aim with RapidXNA was to make it so I could port between those 3 platforms with only minimal code changes, and in the process I decided I should share it with everyone.

You can get hold of the preview here: http://rapidxna.codeplex.com/releases/view/86321

Should I get enough time, I would like to extend RapidXNA 2.0 to work on every platform supported by MonoXNA as well (giving access to porting to Mac and Linux), but for now, the above 3 should hopefully suffice.

Hi all,

I shall be participating, my weapons of choice:

Code: C# w/ XNA (for Windows Phone 7 and Windows), leveraging RapidXNA (which reminds me I need to implement the new features for it some time soon)

Art: Paint.NET/Photoshop

Sound Effects: sfxr

Music: FL Studio

I wish you all good luck!

So, I remade a game I made in Game Maker, and polished it (over Thursday and Friday this week), and it is now in the submission process to the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. My strategy to earn my $1 from the game is to get ad revenue. (Wish me luck)

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Worm Hole is a free single player arcade game.

Objective:
Travel along the worm hole (which looks suspiciously similar to a space rainbow) without hitting its sides for as long as possible with your space ship.

Also, my friends want me to write it for Android, but I will only be doing that in November after exams.

So, Im 4 hours into my entry for this LD, Im making a TBS where you escape from prison. There wont be much story to it, but I can in theory add various puzzle elements to the game and hopefully write some retardedly simple AI for it.

The guards are the guys in uniform.

The target content:

1. 1 way to play, ie. player vs player on the same computer.

2. 3 or 4 block “types”, walkable, temporary barrier, door, along those lines

3. 3 or 4 types of units (playable from both sides, but with a different mechanic for each side to get more units), ie. melee, baton wielding, handgun, shotgun, and so on.

4. A decent sized level to play in.

The ideal content would have much more (like have a tutorial for instance, though I may add that to my target if things go as planned today), but this is my goal for the weekend. As it stands I am nearly done implementing the turn based systems with movement, then I will build the types of units, then the block types.

(Also, the level format is very simple, so if I dont have time to make a simple editor for people to build their own levels I will just document it so people can make levels to play)

Im struggling to concentrate today as I only got to sleep at 1am, then woke at 4am to see the LD theme, then didnt really get back to sleep before I had an idea and got out of bed at 8:30am.

All the best to everyone, and PONIES!

OH, and live stream of my dev is here: http://livestream.com/edg3

As long as nothing else gets in the way this weekend, I plan to make something small and playable.

I will be using the following:

Framework: XNA (using Reach profile)

Engine: Afru

Physics (if needed): Box2DXNA

Other stuff: SFXR, FL Studio, Paint.NET/Photoshop CS3, the XNA samples (for things like bloom )

Good luck everyone!

ALSO: XNA users should ALL use Reach for their graphics profile, unless absolutely necessary to use HiDef…

Your 9 to 5 desk job is clearly not cut out for your martial arts skills, neverminding the fact that Joe Soap (your only friend at the office) if encouraging you to take the initiative. It is time for you to GO POSTAL!!

Joe Hands you a ???, and says “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take This!”

So yeah, Im probably aiming a bit to high here, but will see how it goes. I will be doing 3D (no animation though, sorry guys) in XNA and the aim will be fore you to terrorise your office in the best ways possible before the police or the waaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance arrives to cart you to the looney bin. Im hoping to go for a cartooney look and have some action billboards in 3D space (“BAM”, “POW”) as well as combos and stuff. But first off, will get my base code going, and then build up the office. So yeah, an arcade “destroy it all as much as possible” game in 3D. Lets hope this turns out well…

So, I am going to take part in this LD if I can. I wont be spending as much time as I did for 19 on my entry though, but will be using tools I am more familiar with.

Weapons:

• XNA (c#)
• Photoshop CS3/Gimp/Paint.Net (depending which PC I use)
• sfxr
• My helper classes for XNA

Im planning on making a non-combat game!

Also, I hope this is the 6th post title’d “I am in”! Nifty.

So yeah, Im working with a friend on this mini LD, just for the heck of it (and the pick and mix is rather appealing!)

So yeah, this is totally what Im looking like while working:

And uh, my brother is hell bent on making my time lapse really dodge… So yeah…

Oh. We totally have baby sharks.

So from the list we have:

Feinu was totally going to do a the nude challenge, but his web cam is broken. Maybe next time. Also, I didn’t tell you guys this if this ever gets into evil hands….

And some rough prototype picturez.

Also, if I end up not uploading the game with art its because the geyser above my room sounds like it wants to burst and it will totally break my laptop…

So, Im attempting to do a review of every single game that I possibly can, and Ive dont 39 so far.

You can read them in the mean time, and I will keep this post up to date (as much as I can) and in the end I will list which games are in which post.

1 to 10

11 to 20

21 to 30

31 to 40

So I unfortunately managed to break my code so badly that I had to face a hard decision, either give up, move to a new idea, or remake my current idea in Game Maker, but I am done.

It contains all the previous storyline, and 2 of the 3 minigames I planned, and Ive (hopefully) squashed all the bugs that there were.

You can download it and try it, source included as per LD rules.

Timelapse here, and music was from newgrounds.

Ive learnt a lot. My head hurts, AND I got sunburnt. Good luck to everyone!

So for anyone wanting to try out Nameless Island before I put in all the art and pretty stuff, you can get it here.

Time to make what I have into pure awesome.

So Ive run into several phantom bugs with the code using Gamelab, and after 2 hours of debugging and testing I cant get any closer to success, so Im going to switch to using Game Maker for Nameless Island. Which means that I have a lot of work to do over the next 17 hours, but I reckon I can pull it off. It also simplifies some of my existing code quite a bit.

So here is what it looks like now:

For those interested, this is the sum total of the game story. Now to implement all the scripts for this into the game world, and then I can prototype sprites. Oh! Also, I need suggestions for easy to implement mini-games (I have a few, but more would be awesome), if anyone has suggestions just leave a comment on this post please ^_^

So, I kind of have all my underlying code done, now I shall spend most of the rest of today planning my content (the story, things to do, places to see, people to harass), and here is a screenshot of the menu:

Also, there is a new YouTube video of the game in action, please ignore the music, it happened to be playing while I recorded.

Some extra cheese for anyone that wants extra cheese:

• I may not be able to completely decorate my world in the 48 hours
• I hope that I can make dialogue that keeps players interested and guessing
• So far I think Im doig pretty decently

And so, what I should have within the next 24 hours is content!

So, Ive been working fo roughly 5 hours on this. The core structure of my game is in (mostly), and I can start putting content in, and animations, and stuff to do!

5 hour snapshot

What you are seeing: Simple game menu, have NPCs you can talk to, objects that do stuff (not visually yet) and a fairly decent sized island.

So, for LD 19 Im building a top down exploration RPG where you are Christopher Columns, an aspiring legend. You seem to have become stranded on a seemingly deserted island. After finding your way around you find an english speaking tribe, the Indjuns. They are a peaceful loving tribe, but they have a great secret to keep, they have a lost treasure that they dont want travellers to discover. Being stranded and all you decide you might as well try find the treasure. Along the way you will have to cake part in mini-games that the Indjuns cook up to get information from them!

So here is what it looks like currently:

So, I suppose I’ll actually take part this time (as opposed to having an account for no reason), Im new to LD so wish me luck!

My tools:

Graphics – paint.net

Engine – Laboratory (if FuzzySpoon updates it soon enough and it is ok with him) otherwise python with pygame

Sound effects – sfxr

I might write some tools before the comp, but will see how the week goes