This has been the fourth time I’ve attempted to participate in Ludum Dare, and it has produced the third LD compo/jam game I’ve released. Now, it’s time for me to talk about it:

What went right:

Actually finishing the game. I was so uncertain that I would finish this game, until the last few hours of the jam deadline.

Transitioning to a new platform. I made all my previous (mini) Ludum Dare games in either Flixel or FlashPunk, which are some really awesome frameworks focused on creating games in Flash, but I believe Flash is starting to become the new ‘Shockwave’, and will slowly be losing support from game developers, as the web, and HTML5, slowly evolves.

What went wrong:

Inexperience with melonJS. I was originally going to use craftyJS for my game, but, a week before this Ludum Dare started, I switched to melonJS, as I had some issued with Crafty (which I also had little experience with). This lead me into…

Nearly giving up. It was only within the last 4 hours of the jam deadline that I decided to take what I currently had, and attempt to turn it into what I consider a finished game.

Ugly code. Because of my inexperience with melonJS, I had a lot of really unoptimized code, and I took many shortcuts, just to get the game working.

What was dropped:

Falling / shooting spikes. I had planned to include falling spikes into the game, but due to my inexperience with melonJS, this was dropped, and dangers in the game were reduced to spikes.

Colour changing character. I originally planned to have the character’s sprite change to white once they entered a dark area. I dropped this, due to the problems I had with inexperience with the engine I was working with.

Checkpoints. Many comments on my game’s page complain about the loss of their powerups once they make a tiny mistake. I had originally considered checkpoints, but they were dropped from the game, as I has no time left to implement them.

I am currently working on a post-compo version of Stykk, and I have cleaned up the code a lot, and I am also going to make it so you don’t lose your powerups on death, making it less frustrating. (I will also include the original behavior as a ‘rage mode’)  :)

Watch my entry page for updates!

…and I got a playable game out (although nowhere near what I was hoping for at the start)

Due to inexperience with MelonJS, and the many issues I caused due to that inexperience, a lot of development time on this was spent Googling up answers to these problems. Because of this, I was almost going to throw in the towel, but, in the last few hours, I took what I had, ‘minimalized’ it, and turned it into a somewhat playable game for the jam.

Check out the game, Stykk, HERE

In the last ‘I’m In’ post I made, I said that I would be using CraftyJS or the CreateJS suite. I tried to make a warmup game with Crafty, but I found it too difficult for it to work with for my workflow (Crafty only seems to scale DOM elements correctly, and not Canvas elements).

Another HTML5 library caught my eye, though, by reading others’ ‘I’m in’ posts,  melonJS. I’ve had a look through the documentation, and worked through the tutorial over the last couple of days, and it seems to be better suited to someone weaning their way off AS3/Flixel/FlashPunk (<– I’ve got nothing against these awesome Flash libs, or Flash in general, I’m just curious about HTML5 tech)

Tools I’m using (pretty much finalized):

• IDE: NetBeans 7.3
• Language: JavaScript
• Libraries: melonJS
• Sound: sfxr, Audacity
• Graphics: Paint.NET
• Music: CGMusic (most probably, depends on theme)

Here’s a rather crappy workspace pic (taken with a potato):

Best of luck, fellow Darers!

This is going to be my fourth Ludum Dare, and, will hopefully, produce my third game for the compo. Like last time, I am probably going to enter the jam, but I’ll hopefully have more time available over the LD weekend.

Tools I’m planning to use:

• Code: JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3
• IDE: Most likely NetBeans
• Libraries: Either CreateJS or Crafty
• Sound: Bfxr, or something similar
• Graphics: Paint.NET

Yep, this is going to be my first attempt at making a HTML5 based game. I’m looking forward to it.

This is the second time I have finished a game for Ludum Dare, and I think I’ve learned lessons from my previous entry. I didn’t have most of Saturday or Sunday available, but I made a big push on Monday to get something playable out.

What went right:

• Polish. My previous entry lacked a lot of polish, and it showed in a lot of places. This time, participating in the jam, I had plenty of time to add little bits to my game to make it more presentable.
• Testing. My previous game had many bugs remaining, as I rushed it out for the 48 hour competition. This game is relatively bug free (besides a hi-score saving bug in the original upload, which was swiftly fixed).
• Aiming for jam release instead of compo. I was rather busy with work commitments during LD weekend, so I didn’t want to push myself too hard, especially after being pushed hard at work.

What went wrong:

• Work commitments. I’m usually very busy with work during the festive season, and LD weekend was no exception.
• Tiredness. Because I’ve been working all day Saturday and most of Sunday, this has left me physically tired, and with little motive to code.
• Coming up with a game idea. I really liked the idea of the theme, but I just couldn’t decide what I could actually make from it. It took me about 12 hours to come up with a simple pickpocketing game.
• A little too easy. Especially running from the police. The reason behind this is that I reduced the time limit from 5 minutes down to 3  towards the end of development. I didn’t adjust the sprinting speed (which slows down based on the amount of pockets you picked) to compensate.

What was cut:

• Music. I tried algorithmic music generators, but nothing I could find could produce a suitable 8-bit style sound.
• Road / Police car. I was originally going to put a road at the bottom of the screen, where police cars could drive past, and catch you in the act of pickpocketing, but I dropped that feature, as I was running short of time.

Well, it’s been a fun Ludum Dare. I’m looking forward to playing a load of entries (I’m aiming for gold coolness this time). In the meantime, you can play my game HERE

Yep, I’ve just finished my second LD entry. I had pretty much the whole of today available (after working a very busy weekend, where I didn’t get as much work done on this game).

Basically, in this game, you’re a pickpocket, and you have 3 minutes to steal as much money as possible, by carefully pressing a sequence of the arrow keys in a set amount of time.

You can play the game on it’s entry page.

Due to work commitments over the weekend, I’ve had little time to develop my game for the main competition, so I’m going to try to get this game out for the jam instead.

I managed to finish a milestone build today. Im this demo, you can move with the WASD keys, and steal money from other people by pressing SPACE (I will make this more challenging with a minigame I’ll implement tomorrow, I just wanted to get the basic mechanic into this demo).

Play the demo HERE

Because of being at work most of day 1, I didn’t get too much done today, but I think I’ve built a solid foundation for my game.

Latest screenshot:

You are the guy in the middle with the hoodie, and you have to pickpocket the other people. At the moment, they all look the same, but they will look different in the final game.

Anyway, it’s time to sleep. Unfortunately I have to work tomorrow (hopefully, with less hours than I worked today. This game probably won’t be ready for the 48 hour compo, but I’m aiming to release it for the jam.

I will make an attempt to create my second game for LD, despite the festive season being really busy for me. I will most likely create a game for the 72 hour jam instead of the main compo though.

Tools I’m likely to use:

• FlashDevelop (with Flashpunk)
• Paint.NET
• CGMusic (or I may make my own if I have enough time)
• Ogmo Editor
• Bfxr

This may be the last flash game I make for LD. I am planning to make future LD entries using HTML5 technologies. Any suggestions for HTML5 frameworks I can use?

After failing to make a playable game for LD #23, my first attempt a non-mini LD, the motive for making a game for LD#24 didn’t really kick in until after the theme was announced. I didn’t want to repeat the failures I made in LD #23, so I actually took some time jotting ideas into my notebook before opening up FlashDevelop to set up the framework for my game.

What went right:

Planning. After the theme was announced on the IRC channel, the first thing I wrote in my notebook was “EVOLUTION!!! FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU!!!”, then I had some ideas about monkeys evolving, then about ‘devolution’, where you have to remove genes to make a species dumber, eventually leading to extinction. I finally settled with a game where you have to ‘evolve’ a spaceship by defeating enemies.

Keeping things simple. I made an effort not to make sure the game mechanics didn’t go beyond my abilities. I’ve never tackled AI in a game I’ve made before, so I just created a very simple ‘AI’ system.

Sense of getting stronger. I really didn’t know about how this turned out until I played my game after submitting it.

What went wrong:

Work commitments / Real life. I spent the majority of Saturday at work, leaving me with little time to work on the game.

Lack of play testing. Some felt the difficulty of the game was too hard, and others said it was too easy, once they’d figured out the tricks in defeating the enemies.

Not knowing what I was doing. Sometimes, I would forget what I was working on within my code. I feared that some things could be left unfinished.

Cut content. I had originally planned on having the player destroy smaller, lower level ships in order to gain health (which would’ve given a greater sense of evolving), but instead, decided that stopping vertical movement would restore 5% of your health per second instead. I also considered having icons appear above the enemies, to indicate their ‘dominant’ stat (the one which will be upgraded when you defeath them). I was running out of time, so these features were cut, as well as a score system, and a win condition (getting to the ‘Dragon’ level).

Why did I name the game ‘Gravallax’? Because I work in a restaurant that serves Gravlax, and I thought that the name of this dish sounded like a retro space shooter. We sold a lot of Grav(al)lax that Saturday.

You can play my game RIGHT HERE

And just in the nick of time. There was a bit of a rush to get this game out before the deadline, so there are some bugs, and untested stuff, ( I’ll fix any bugs in a post-compo version), but I’m so satisfied that I’ve submitted a playable game to Ludum Dare!

Play the game HERE

I had a little more time to work on some stuff today. I’ve got bullets working, and a basic HUD in place.

All I have left to do in these 8 hours is to add enemy AI, and this could be a real challenge.

In this demo, you can press the F keys to upgrade your ship’s stats. In the final game, killing enemies will do that.

Play the latest update HERE

Due to other work commitments, I didn’t have much time to work on my entry today (only about 4 hours in total), so today’s milestone is kinda dull at the moment:

It took me longer than I had planned to implement this starfield (I had to figure out some complex calculations involving scroll factorvalues to get it working correctly)

Next up: Getting some sleep, and attempting to turn this into a game. There’s a lot left to do, but I’ve got all day off tomorrow, and, if I can’t finish it before the compo deadline, I’ll just try for the jam instead.

Play the milestone build HERE

So, after failing to finish a game last Ludum Dare, I’m going to learn from my mistakes, and actually spend some time to come up with a simple, solid idea, which isn’t beyond my capabilities. I’ve been on a game dev hiatus since, but I’m coming back for LD #24.

• Language: ActionScript 3 (or maybe Haxe)
• Library: FlashPunk (or HaxePunk)
• IDE: FlashDevelop
• Graphics: Paint.NET
• Sound: bfxr, or some other variant
• Music: LMMS or MilkyTracker (if I have enough time)
• Level Design:  Ogmo Editor

See y’all soon!

So, first day of my first Ludum Dare, and it’s on a day I work pretty much all day.

I did get quite a bit done in the time I wasn’t at work (about 6 hours), and managed to get a ‘looping’ world working, along with swimming.

Try it out HERE

OK, I’m pretty tired out now. Let’s see if I can somehow turn this into a playable game by tomorrow, or for the jam.

I’ve done a couple of Mini-LDs before, but this is the first time I’m entering the ‘actual’ Ludum Dare.

Tools I’ll be using:

• Computer: 2.4Ghz i5 laptop, Windows 7
• Language: Actionscript 3
• IDE: FlashDevelop
• Framework: Flashpunk
• Graphics: Paint.NET
• Sounds: Bfxr
• Music: Probably LMMS (if I have time to create a tune)

As I work pretty much all day Saturday, I won’t have too much time to create the game. I’ll try to get it done in the 48 hours, but if not, I’ll just enter it into the jam instead.

Happy creating, ludum darers!

After one week of mostly squishing bugs, my entry for miniLD #33 is now (mostly) finished

I kinda rushed towards the end, so the interface is a little ugly, and there may still be the occasional bugs. This is also the most complex game I’ve ever attempted to make.

You can play the game on my entry page.

Progress has been rather slow over the last couple of days, but I now have my hexagonal board working:

Test it here. Instructions: SPACE to focus on a different character, UP to move focused character forwards, LEFT and RIGHT to rotate character.

Well, I’m in. Here’s my doodle:

I’ve got a basic idea for a game. It may even involve hexes!

My first ever LD game, The Platform Master, is now complete. This game is based on Platform Masters by Ulillillia, who has a whole page of his fears. I’ve based this game of his fear of mirrors

I am proud of the 2d mirror effect in my game

Entry page