This theme had me thinking of something either way too complex or way too simple for this competition. I’m no novice to the tools, so doing the least bit of work would be a waste. Pushing myself beyond what I feel comfortable with is the key to the Ludum Dare for me.

The Theme Announcement: After the theme was announced last night, I took a while to think about permutations of the minimalism idea. Admittedly, it’s pretty abstract, not easy to visualize. So I thought of the zen/taoist view of minimalism, which is the emptying of ones self, the binding of mind and body, and the ability to calm distractions. This narrowed it down, and I had considered some sort of heroic Rampage-style game. Way too big and most likely not readable by you great Ludum Dare judges/developers. After another hour of plans in my head, I was exhausted so I went to sleep.

That Archimedes Moment: A great experience occurred while I was drifting into dreams. I had a major ‘eureka’ moment, as visions of a hero became clear, and of a platforming game, a fun mechanic, and a theme tie-in boiled to the surface of my sleepy-brain. I lept up and jotted down everything I could, messaged my best friend the great news, and smiled widely. This game development challenge now has a direction!

Placeholder for the Hero

Morningtime: So, this morning has been piecing together a platforming engine. It will be very similar to platformers I’ve done before. Except for the gameplay twist. (No spoilers this time). I drew a placeholder hero character, and have enjoyed a nice breakfast and iced coffee. Momentum is high! No fear!

Plans for the Day: Actually, even with this momentum and good vibes for dreaming up a good idea, I’ve only got about 3 more hours before a long break in the middle of the day, to continue at about hour 19~20. Not letting it bust my groove for this moment. My plan! The plan is to have the level map system and moving the player around, jumping, attack hitboxes all before hour 14. The graphics are all placeholder until tomorrow. I do my best sprite work at 3am anyway!

I’ll be participating in this, my 6th Ludum Dare 48-hour competition! This weekend is something to be excited for, and prepare myself mentally and physically for. Let’s start with the basics:

Programming: C++ in MSVC++ Express 2008

Library: SFML 1.6, for Windows only.

Sounds: Audacity, SFXR, PXTone

Ingesting: A power smoothie made from the finest vegetables.

I’m going to give progress updates throughout the weekend. On this blog, on twitter (@feyleafgames), my facebook (for friends & family), and most likely youtube (because I assume everyone wants to hear my dashing voice!) Saturday early afternoon will be a break-time to spend with my son and my girlfriend. They are important, too ^_^

Viva Ludum Dare 26~

–Benjamin

So, the game is done. Kings of the Archipelago. Tropical mayhem and animal breeding in an evolutionary vacuum. The problem is my full idea didn’t come to fruition. That’s OK, because the final product is still fun to mess around in. If you use your imagination, it’s like a crazy war game with turtles. And yes, kittens.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=3375

So, last night I napped, woke up, drew a bunch of stuff, and began working on the GUI for the game. Now I have awoken for a second time, ready to finish the GUI and finally put some gameplay into this game.

Here’s the checklist so far:

Things that are done:

-Map Generator

-Creature Sprites

-Creature Data Structures

Things that need to be done:

-GUI Interaction (the sprites are there, just no buttons)

-Creature Commands and AI Commands

-Sound/Music

This list doesn’t include all the boring backend stuff that is either done or not done yet. It’s just the highlights.

Screenshot with the new graphics. I nixed the fish that were placeholders in my last screenshot, at least:

I’m pushing myself pretty hard on this game. It’s worn me out tonight. No amount of coffee can keep me focused. I’ll take a nap and start back in the early hours of the morning. The game is progressing wonderfully, though. I just need to add all the cool features I planned out last night. And seriously drive it home tomorrow.

Thank you Ludum Dare, for making me believe I can go further, push harder, and make something great. It’s not over, and tomorrow will be so much work. But I’m ready. I’ve been here for almost two years, making games in a seemingly impossible amount of time. And I get better each time. So it will be with this one. But for now…my eyes can’t focus, my calculations can’t calculate, and my body just wants a while to rest. See you in the morning!

They aren’t even what I’m planning to put in the game. These fish are placeholders based on a simple scribble.

It took me way too much time to figure out how to select an isometric tile with the mouse coordinates. Thanks charlie for the suggested reading, I must have read a half-dozen tutorials and it looks like I do iso differently than half of the people who wrote articles. Sines, cosines? What? The math turned out to be pretty simple, and then I had to align the odd alternate tile because the mouse was only picking one half of the map. Grr. It’s working fine now, everything can be selected intuitively. Gameplay will be next, and finish the control scheme/creature attributes. That should be easy.

So, here I am, playing with fish, wasting valuable time. I got frustrated, and I’ll get over it. This game is going to rock! And there’s a little more than one day left to complete it. I can do this. Just hit a roadblock, it’s behind me.

This is the stuff! I feel the urge to experiment, to breathe the true spirit of the Ludum Dare, and push myself into a realm I have never before dealt: the isometric map. Spent the hours I had this morning figuring out how to best render an isometric grid, and now…SUCCESS! Step one complete, I shall move on to some placeholder graphics and start the control scheme.

I didn’t forget, just procrastinated. I want to consider myself a veteran at Ludum Dare, as this will be my 5th entry.

Hooray for Number Five!

Let’s just say I’ve graduated from complete newb to novice, and now am just above novice. I don’t make games professionally (yet), more of a hobbyist developer. It’s something I completely love to do, create little fantasies in code and allow people to see them and interact with them.

Ludum Dare is my way of looking back at previous projects, gauging how my skills have improved, enjoying the ride, and letting the community know that I exist. So anyway, there are tools I have used before, and I’m gonna list them:

• language: C++ in MSVC 2008 Express
• library: SFML 1.6
• audio: SFXR, Audacity, PXTone
• ear candy: musicforprogramming.net
• health: good food, smoothies, coffee, some light exercise, and a decent amount of sleep (but seriously not too much)

Everyone, have a blast, and best wishes for your projects.

Those pink circles look mighty hungry!

Okay, the game is really close to finished. I still have a couple sound effects to make and finish the in-game README reader. I never made a title screen, so there’s that too.

I love this game! I’m so busy playing through the levels, enjoying the randomness.

The point is, it’s almost done. I decided to name the game ‘Everlasting,’ because tiny worlds are so tiny, they could never fill the universe. Also, because the game doesn’t have an end event, it just cycles for as long as you feel like playing. The little guy you control is just reborn over and over in different places. Hmm, that’s an interesting concept really…

To everybody finished already, congratulations! This is going to be one of the most memorable Ludum Dares in history.

Biome Testing. The left is volcanic, the right is an island.

A couple hours later, and some palette testing, and I have created my 8 biomes. For debugging purposes, they are selectable using the arrow keys (I test everything constantly when developing!)

Here’s a link to the current build, because I am hungry for feedback: http://feyleaf.com/downloads/ld23-test3.zip

There's a pink thing chasing my blue thing!

So, I woke up about 10 hours ago, and have gotten to work most of the day on the random map generator in my game.

Boy was that a struggle! It’s something I have never coded before, but have wanted to try out. Honestly, the Ludum Dare is good for taking those kinds of leaps, but it’s unforgiving if I spend too much time learning something new and testing, testing, testing.

Anyway, I don’t think I have lost too much by doing random maps. It will add the depth I want to this tiny world concept.

Just added a simple monster chase AI, of course he’ll be running into walls a lot in the game, but that’s okay.

Current task list before the night is over:

• Map themes, there will be 8 “biomes” on this little planet.
• Textual help and fanfare. As it stands, there are no words in the game yet.
• Main Menu and game states.

If anyone would like to leave comments about the current testing demo, you can download it here: http://feyleaf.com/downloads/ld23-test2.zip.

I’m extremely excited about this 10th Anniversary Ludum Dare this weekend.

This will be my fourth entry for the 48-hour compo. Again, my toolset will be:

C++ in Visual Studio 9 with the SFML 1.6 library
GIMP for graphics
sfxr for sound effects
PXTone and Audacity for music

Best wishes for all the entrants!

Finally finished & submitted the game. This has been such a great weekend! I even added some kittens, just for added play.

More words about the game will be added to another post, after I rest a bit. I’ll probably check out a few other entries now.  I am ready to take the rest of the evening and relax, and invite you all to check out ‘Parcel Walk’ on the submissions page. http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=3375

Thanks Ludum Dare!

She never called me, either.

Things have smoothed out very well. Although my code is still an absolute mess. I figure as long as I can wade through it for the next 9-or-so hours, the needed changes can be made. Inefficiently.

I have had such a great time so far in the competition! This community is just outstanding. I have peeked through lots of posts, and see some promising stuff on the pages of the Ludum Dare blog. Can’t wait to play them!

Continuing on, the game is playable, but the levels seriously need to be fleshed out. It’s too easy to get stuck and not be able to finish. I just left the levels cloned from the original demo level to test the various implements and graphics.  Also, I will need to make a title screen, beginning, and end. The first thing I thought of on Friday night was a little story for this main character.

I’ve skipped breakfast because I slept more than I had planned. Now it’s time for a lunch-and-Sunny-D break, then hopping back into level design.

She looked threatening with that walker...

Huzzah! The demo level/first level of the game is finalized. I put music and sound into it, more fluid animation. I sortof think I might mess around with the launch trajectory, to get that lady over the wall with the fire hydrant. After all, the main character wants desparately to be left alone! If anyone (running windows) wants to try out the demo, you can download it from http://feyleaf.com/downloads/alone.zip. The music track is bundled in there too. I’d like to know how well it works on different setups.

Meanwhile, there are several other levels I want to create. And different methods of dispatching folk in the game.

That yellow thing is a fire hydrant.

I have made NPCs and Props in the level, and my primary sky tile is a little too crazy/iridescent. Levels load, the player sprite has smooth movement and jumps, camera view pans better than I have ever made. That’s all great progress!

I finished lunch and a jug of Sunny D, and am ready to make the NPCs move and the props do stuff. Plus, will redo the sky.

Placeholder Graphics

Okay! I got a decent night’s sleep, coffee and breakfast, and now I am ready to flesh out the ‘rough draft’ of this game. For the theme, I chose to make a game about the character wanting to be left alone. He will find clever ways of sending random people away while he makes it to his goal.

The code is still Yuck! It’s mostly whatever I could get running last night after the theme was announced and I picked a design. I’ll probably rewrite what I have and add the opposing characters and maps before lunch.

PS: Chronolapse didn’t really work for me last night, I checked it out and it just loops through the few minutes I had captured prior to start time. Not going to worry about it, but there’s not going to be a timelapse from me this competition. Maybe I should have gotten myself familiar with Chronolapse before I began! Live & learn, heh.

Greetings! I will be entering the Ludum Dare this time for the third time, and three might just be a lucky number. Good vibes all around. Also, I promise to add sound/music to my entry this time (the previous two were dead silent: not cool).

Tools I shall use:

Code: C++

Libraries: SFML 1.6

Graphics: GIMP

Sound: sfxr, Audacity, PXTone

Timelapse: Chronolapse

It’s nice to see posts from a lot of first-time participants! I look forward to seeing some very good entries. The Ludum Dare has twice been a completely awesome experience for me, and it’s always fun to make games alongside [figuratively] so many wonderful people. Best wishes to all competitors!

-Ben (@feyleafgames)