Well, here goes…

Building:
Okay… This went rather smoothly. I chose to use GameMaker, which I am highly familiar with, rather than PyGame or XNA (as I am still learning these), or a lower-level environment (o_o). I went in stages. I first built a mockup, then basic movement, then enemies and victory/defeat conditions, then a frontend, then sound, music, effects, and art, then I tweaked it and eliminated as many bugs as possible (thankfully few). I was able to run a lightweight timelapse program as well. Actually, now that I think about it, all 6 programs I used are built to be easy and quick to use: GameMaker, Paint Tool SAI (Paint for tablets), SFXR (you can use multiple sounds from this at the same time for better sounds; I did this in both my LD20 entry and this entry), Chronolapse, the Autotracker-C script (for music), and Schism Tracker (a .it compatible music synth program, perfect for replacing the beeps with instruments) Everything was smooth, I even got sufficient sleep and submitted my game to several sites and into the compo an hour before the 48-hour deadline.

Then, votes and comments meandered in… Universally, the game was fun and intense and the music and graphics were considered good. However, there was one very common complaint (EVERY comment, including my own, mentions it). This complaint is the very high and often sudden difficulty of the game (odd for LD especially). What makes this especially ironic is that during playtesting, the difficulty was even higher…

Contrary to public belief, the game is possible to beat, just extremely difficult.

All in all, the Ludum Dare (my 3rd, along with 19 and 29) went pretty well. Once my computer is fixed (which is why my Coolness is 0), I can address the complaints and create a gameplay video to entice more players (not that this will affect the competition)

Thank you for your time, for your votes, and your patience!

–Fenyx

Well, I have my shmup done! It’s about a ghost who wants to be alone so he can rest in peace.

It’s over here if you want to play it: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=2976

Here’s a timelapse video of me making it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Z0gd7cpig

Well, my game has victory and game over screens now

All I need now are a couple hastily drawn pictures, music, and sound!

Well, I feel that I have been decently productive over the last two days…

Since my last post, I fixed the runtime error, got all menus fixed, added boss fights to the game, cleaned up the HUD so it looks decent, and recreated a Touhou bullet pattern, making it more intense at the same time .

Take a good guess which pattern:

Anyway, off to sleeps. Good night, all.

Well, I got my menus in, and now GM is deciding to bug up significantly, creating runtime errors whenever I exit my game… Ah, well… I’m sure I can find someone to compile for me.

It’s going pretty well here… still needs a bunch of varnish, a menu, a few more enemy types, sound, and music.
Here’s a screeny:

And here’s a working build, could you give me feedback?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/40870733/theghostwhowantstobealone.exe (Windows only, I’m afraid)

and since I just woke up then had to do chores and eat, not much got done from the last time I posted.

I got particles worked in, and a grave marker for the player, along with smoother movement.

but I’ve gotten progress made.

I’ve decided that my game will focus on vengeance. The ghosty guy you see, that guy was forever alone in his life, shunned by society, and now he’s out for blood.

Added movement and shading… now need enemies, boss(es?), talking engine, menus, shooting, HUD, and actually having to do with the theme…

… and I have some basic engine components working…

Here’s a screeny of what I gots so far

This is my battle station for the next couple days. Yes, it is a bed.

Well, this will be my 3rd Ludum Dare… so I’m going to give this a shot… This time, I’m going to do something I know, not something unfamiliar, so I should be able to do this
Okay… tool list…

Make: Game Maker 8.1
Graphic: Paint Tool SAI and Paint.NET
Sound: SFXR, Autotracker-B and -C
OS: Windows 7 (none of my programs work on anything else)
Food: Ham

…I have some more progress on A Fey Mood. I was able to add a shadow effect and improve the quality of some effects, as well as make the particles and shadows adjustable (as while it looks good, some effects are a bit hard on the computer). I need to add the rest of the story, and this also means adding transitions between stages and actually adding in more content. I also still need to create music and art for the game, but that I’m leaving for later, as I could get all wrapped up in doing that with no real progress. When I complete all the stages and start building assets, I’ll begin taking pre-orders… Hoping to get this onto Desura by the end of this month, at least as a WIP.

…but I will not despair. This challenge has showed me what it takes to make a game, both the fun and the frustrating parts, and I finally have something that I can turn into a real game. I am motivated to make this game the best I possibly can, and I will release, but the October deadline is simply too close. I’ve created a story, characters, a general theme, and have decided on a title, “A Fey Mood”. I-I’m going to post my progress so far here, and I’m going to set a new deadline for myself (as without one, I will never release).

This is an automatically updating link to my progress (at least that which I wish to make public).

My new deadline will be Christmas. I hope to see you all then!

Well, I have a temporary menu up and running… and it is smooooooooth…

Random menu link

Well, I decided that this would be a good way for me to actually finish a finished game… so…

So far, I gots a random shoot’em up IN SPACE!! It’s functional, has 3 enemy types so far (not actually shown :O), and the art’s pretty decent…

I still need to build a frontend, an actual HUD, fix some bugs, add more enemy types, balance its difficulty, add the bosses, add music and sounds, and add variety and possibly some story?

Anyway, progress is progress… and I need to make sure I have enough time to actually finish this…

My personal goal: To get enough to buy a Game Maker Standard and possibly Game Maker HTML5 (uses GMLite for everything)

#93 Audio 3.08
#207 Community 2.67
#276 Graphics 2.62
#280 Theme 2.85
#375 Overall 2.46
#379 Innovation 2.23
#399 Fun 2.08
#418 Coolness 0%
#466 Humor 1.00

Well… Let’s start with the bad stuff… Humor. I… didn’t have much, as you can see… Coolness. I am not very good at rating games, or playing them, when I have other things to occupy myself. I probably easily could have gotten a better score if I was actually interested. Fun. In this case, it was the large amount of fake difficulty in the hidden enemies, as well as the rather unorthodox control scheme. Innovation. Not much here, either. I completely agree with my low points.

Overall hits a little low, and it was even worse than my last entry in LD19 (2.46 vs. 2.82) -_-; It wasn’t a particularly good game, and I probably will only touch it to steal different things from it, just like I did from my last LD game.

Now let’s hit with the higher points. Theme. It fit the theme, but you weren’t really given backstory, and it didn’t really try to go anywhere special, so maybe a little higher than expected? Graphics. Honestly, there was little I did to do good graphics. It was a particle snow effect, some filtering, and some nice little tidbits like bullet cartridges, impact points, and the such. I didn’t even do any character sprites, let alone finish them. Community. Like the Coolness score above, this one didn’t really strike me as important. I simply posted my intent, midway point, and game. Audio. Well, actually, this one was pretty good. The soundtrack, though quickly made in Autotracker-C and edited to fit, worked rather well with the mood. I made sound effects to go with pretty much every action (except enemy movement for some reason, though I did for bullet cartridges), sometimes having to combine different sounds to get the effect I wanted (for example the gun-fire and the reload). It was easily my best attribute, and though it didn’t score top 25, I’m proud of the score I did get.

All in all, this was a rather mediocre game, and the players agreed. Though it had good points, it also had some low points. I’m not necessarily happy with my overall score, though I am happy with my Audio score, and content with my game as a whole.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=2976

This actually turned out pretty well… Though it wasn’t exactly what I was going for, and the sprites are rather unfinished, the game works well, and I’ll probably end up using this engine, or a modified form of it, for a variety of random games.

Okay… I got some work done here. It doesn’t look like much, but it has an AI, depth ordering, really smooth movement, resource management… so I just need to build variety and assets.

Going to go eat breakfast and shower, then get back to coding.

Progress?

Yep, I’m going to participate in this Ludum Dare! It will be my 2nd dare, so I hope I can do a better job this time around.

I’m going to be using a laptop on my bed.

Materials:
Game Maker 8.1 Lite
sfxr
Paint Tool SAI, possibly Paint.NET
Some music generation python script that someone posted for LD20
Schism Tracker
A loptop with Windows 7
Chronolapse

I’ll probably end up making a shooter no matter what the theme is; the key will be to make it interesting with unique gameplay and to make it fit the theme.