I really tired, and I wont have too much time, but I’m in.

My tools are:

Framework: ImpactJs 1.22
IDE: Notepad++
Sound: SFXR, Aria Maestosa, Audacity
Gfx: Photoshop CS 5.5

Best of luck everyone!

PS: I wont be streaming, but I’ll be using Chronolapse this time.

Yesterday, we gave a presentation in tandem with Ace Team, so I was not able to work on my game for the compo, but I’ll finish it for the jam (it’s getting to a point were the game is heading somewhere, so I’m not planning to stop).

By the way, our kickstarter campaign for Evilot, was featured in Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’m Pumped!

I moved away from the platformer concept I was considering initially, now I’ve got some pretty dancing stars, and many gameplay ideas:

1.- Planets (that need to be drawn, they are still using the “star” sprite) will colide into each other
2.- You’ll get points for every “lap” each planet does around the star
3.- You’ll use those points to “evolve” the planet, from a rocky lifeless mass, into possibly a civilization being able to fend off asteroids (?)
4.- I’m accepting any crazy ideas in the comments (what would happen if you evolve two or more civilizations, will they fight each other?)

No more streaming for today, I’m going to bed, good night everyone, and good luck!

PS1: Shameless plug: our completely unrelated to Ludum Dare Kickstarter campaign 

Slowly an idea takes form inside my head

PS1: I’ll be streaming the whole time.

PS2: Shameless plug: our completely unrelated to Ludum Dare Kickstarter campaign 

Supplies are here

PS1: I’ll be streaming the whole time.

PS2: Shameless plug: our completely unrelated to Ludum Dare Kickstarter campaign 

Here are the obligatory workspace photos, I’ll be working at Toma’s place (a friend of mine since a very long time, he will be playing Diablo 3 in the meantime)

As you can see, the workspace is a mess

PS1: I’ll be streaming the whole time.

PS2: Shameless plug: our completely unrelated to Ludum Dare Kickstarter campaign 

I’m ready! and back to the trenches of Ludum Dare. I’m doing this as mental break from our game Evilot and it’s Kickstarter campaign, it’s been weird for me to work on the same project for so long, so to get my creative juices flowing once again I’ve decided to participate.

This time i’ll stream so I got to add some tools to my usual toolset:

Today I had lunch with Yasuhiro Fukushima

Due to a conversation with a friend, I began to think again about the question “are Games, art?”

So my Theme suggestion for Ludum Dare 23:

Huizinga’s book, Homo Ludens, proposes that the common element to all Games is the “magic circle”, a conceptual space, defined beforehand, either materially or ideally, where we have to accept the arbitrary rules within, in order to access the experience. (that is, to adopt a lusory attitude. Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia)

On the other hand, the institutional theory of art, (as defined by George Dickie in Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis) proposes that a work of art in the classificatory sense; is an artifact, upon which some person or persons, acting on behalf of a certain social institution (the artworld) has conferred the status of candidate for appreciation. It puts forward the notion that art is what the art world defines as art.

We adopt the lusory attitude, when we accept, that a painting is more than pigment, binder and the base onto which it is applied.

We adopt the lusory attitude, when we accept, that the photograph of a chair, the chair and the definition of chair, are the chair. And not just any chair, but Kosuth’s chair, placed in a gallery, or museum, by it’s curator. The artworld manifests itself as the architectural, economic and social realization of the “magic circle”.

And so on, for everything contained in the art field, we adopt the lusory attitude, when we accept, that art is art.

Therefore, Games are not an art form, instead they are hierarchically above art.

Hello! Once again, I’m in for the Jam

I’ve participated in a couple of compos and jams before this one:

1.- Last time I tried to make a HTML5 Game (Phares), with really poor results on the coding and design side of things (it did pretty well on the Art and Sound department).

2.- I tried to make something for Mini-LD 29, but it was sooo boring that I did not bother to send it :-p ( here it is in case you feel like doing something boring, I still think the idea has potential, will look into it later )

3.- For LD 21 I did “Escaparazzi“, it did not get high scores on the compo, but this little piece of game, has taken me far (basically: I polished it a little, sent it to another compo, won, landed my dream job), currently I’m working on a extended version of the extended version.

So, my tools:

- Even tho I f*ckng hate Javascript with passion, HTML5 is the “way of the future”, so once again I’ll be using ImpactJs. (Seriously, we need a open source framework on par with Flixel or Flashpunk, I love ImpactJs… but it makes me feel dirty to use a closed source framework here, sadly i’m not “coder enough” to build my own)

-  Notepad++ I love it. period.

- Aria Maestosa, GXSCC, SFXR, Audacity, el-cheapo microphone, a sock. The most convoluted audio workflow EVAR. Somehow works for me: Compose in Aria Maestosa (or blatantly make cut-outs of sheet music I like), take each instrument to GXSCC, make it sound like I want, mix it all in Audacity, with all the effects and samples I want to add.

- Photoshop CS 5.5 too powerful compared to the open source options. I just can’t get used to any of the paid, free or open source alternative. (might try CS 6 Beta)

And that’s about it. Good Luck Everyone!

I came into this Ludum Dare with one clear objective; to develop a game using HTML5 to evaluate the Impact Game Engine (it passed with flying colors, tho I’m still hoping that someone ports Flixel to JavaScript). Besides that, I had no further plans, so when I saw the theme, I was a bit troubled, how can I make a game about being Alone?

So I decided to think about job occupations that lead you to loneliness, and while I went through the list the weirdest one was “Lighthouse Keeper”. So I scoured the web searching for a Lighthouse with a cool name, but I found none that I liked, so I decided to create a fictional one, that somehow made this idea pop into my mind:

Yes my notepad is rainbow colored

“You are the Lighthouse Keeper at Styx River, your job is to persecute souls trying to escape hell, it can get lonely, but jumping on ghosts sure is fun and it’s pretty comfy.”

For some reason, I saw the tarot card “The Tower” and I felt that it was fitting, so I dropped the idea of being the Keeper, and the player became the Lighthouse itself. For the mechanics I concieved Space Invaders meets Hop & Bop platformers. Sounded pretty easy at first, but the execution proved difficult and it does need a lot of playtesting to get right.

What went right:

a.- The Music: As usual I took a public domain music score (Danse macabre, Op. 40, by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns.), recorded some sound effects (cards shuffling and hitting the table), and a public domain fireplace sample that I looped. I was very pleased with the final product, I think it properly represents the core concepts: We are all alone and the same in death (Danse Macabre), We all share the same destiny(Tarot), and the fires of hell that served as setting. Once again I used Audacity, Aria Maestosa and GXSCC.

b.- The Framework: Impact Game Engine was pretty intuitive to use and extend, even for a first time user, I only missed per pixel collision.

c.- The Concept: The idea is great, I’ll keep working on it.

d.- The Art: I loved the Art. I drew on paper, then took a picture with my webcam and painted in Photoshop, it went smooth as silk but…

What went wrong:

a.- The Art: Spent too much time on Art creation. Last time I think that no one realized that my Art style was Atari-like on purpose (I even implemented a Pixel Bender shader to simulate screen ghosting after the screen flashes), so this time I decided to go for a painterly style, that also happened to be more labor intensive. In the end I could have used a couple more hours on coding.

b.- The IDE: I was too stressed out to properly install and configure Eclipse, I was stuck with Komodo Edit.

c.- Server Stuff: Spent too much time trying to configure PHP on my laptop to run some tools.

d.- Platform: HTML5 audio support is not there *yet*, had to implement a quick hack with SoundManager 2.

e.- Language: I had no prior game dev experience with JavaScript, I was left wondering how to implement a global variable registry. Also, I got to find an IDE with proper code completion, Komodo did not autocomplete variables I had declared on the same *.js file.

f.- Execution: The concept was hard to execute successfully, I should have playtested more, and also I should have investigated prior implementations. Now I have homework: Why does Mario bounce off enemies the way he does?

Phares, Jam Entry

I’ve got some behaviours going, I got almost all the art ready I just need to draw a few other hell dwellers, and I’ve already have a idea for the core mechanic (FINALLY, I was going nuts).

The Main Character is ready
(Now i’ll catch some sleep, good night everyone!)

I overcame most of my technical hurdles, and now I have a pretty tech demo

I’m using SoundManager 2 to check if you have flash. If you do, the game will not bother to try to use HTML5 Audio. If I had the time, I would just integrate it right into my game engine :-p

Previous WIP posts:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/12/16/phares-wip-001/
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2011/12/16/phares-wip-002/

Now, Some music. The Lighthouse made me think of the tarot card “The Tower”, the whole hell thing, made me think of campfires and Danse Macabre:

Poker macabre by Felipe Budinich

previous progress:  Phares, WIP 001

Job Description: Lighthouse Keeper at Styx River, you got to persecute souls trying to escape hell, lonely but comfy.

I decided to work on art first, since the theme made me think about a lot of artistic references, I’ll work in the mechanics tomorrow.

Hello everyone, as usual I’ll be doing a web based game, but this time, instead of Flash I’ll make a HTML5 game.

I’ll be testing a proprietary framework, so I’m going to be doing the Jam instead of the main compo.

>>Language: Javascript
>>Libraries: Impact, soundmanager2
>>IDE: Open for suggestions.
>>Gfx: Photoshop, Web Camera, Pen & Paper.
>>Snd: Audacity, SFXR, Aria Maestosa, GXSCC

Hello fellow Ludum Darers,

I’ve been meaning to develop a game in HTML5, and my complete lack of understanding on the subject cripples me.

Are there any good opensource/free IDE’s out there?

Are there any good frameworks besides Impact?

How do you deal with sound? I’ve tried some games like Panda Poet, and the sound works perfectly, others not so much, what gives?

I’m aware of Construct 2, but am I gonna be able to go deeper in the code if I want to?

Are there any tutorials dealing with a HTML5 workflow?

Any tips, suggestions or advice?

I failed the challenge, I wasn’t able to get $ 1 USD out of Escaparazzi during october, the “get the app into the appstore process” is too damn long, and I feel that I have not finished the game yet, but…

I got a 100000% of that during november . 

I entered my game to WorldMakers (the first Chilean game development competition), achieving the second place, so I won:

• A Samsung Galaxy 5 I5500 phone. These are pretty inexpensive, but hey, free phone
• Any course I choose to take at Academia MacPC Crossmedia Training Center (I’ll take UDK programming, with a developer from Ace Team). These cost around $ 1000 USD
• An Internship at Behaviour. Priceless

I’m so happy I could explode.

I’ve been working hard to complete the october challenge using my LD21 game Escaparazzi, and one of the steps was to enter it to a game dev contest.

Now I need your help, one of the judging phases requires public voting, so I was wondering if you could spare a minute of your time to go to the contest webpage and click “like” (highlighted in red), in return, you’ll get my eternal gratitude

(also you can play the latest version of the game using the button highlighted in green)