I’ll be using Python with my Myrmidon library, which in-turn is backed by PyOpenGL and PyGame. I’ll probably end up using bits from Frimkron’s pythonutils library. (It’sa very nice.)

If I can be arsed to get it working again I’ll be timelapsing with pycatcher.

Any music and sound effects I inevitably end up doing will be created with Propellerhead’s Record as usual.

Here’s hoping i finish this time, I’m thoroughly embarassed by my last escapade.

Sorry, I’m not happy with how the game has turned out. I’m not willing to submit it in it’s current state.

See you all next time.

All of the game elements are there I’ve just got to make a bunch more objects and levels. Maybe a title screen or something I dunno. Also all sound.

Looking like an all-nighter.

There is far more going on here than it might appear. Tomorrow is going to be a frantic content creation fest.

Spent most of today drawing walk cycles. Done some collision routines, got player movement and attacking. Got destructable barrels. Particles and debris system is in.

I’m very behind.

For once in my Ludum Dare career this is actually a theme I like.

Gonna do some sort of pirating pillaging game loosly based on Just Cause 2. Groovy.

I’m available for the LD weekend thankfully – let’s see if I can get first this time instead of measly-old second place!

Depending on what I decided to do I’ll be either using my pygame based library pygame-fenix or my embryonic pyopengl based library Myrmidon.

Whatever the result of that is I’ll be developing the game in Python, doing graphics in Graphics Gale and GIMP and music+sfx in Propellerhead’s Record as usual.

I might also try to sort my timelapse capturing program out this week, it’ll be nice to do that again.

You guys, a good feature for the website would be for game developers to be able to reply to comments on their games. It helps to say thanks and clarify things. I love that people play my games and I’d love even more to be able to tell them personally. This is the only way to do it currently.

C418: Brilliant. Shame I couldn’t get the Spacestation into my little space ship

I lolled. Thanks.

eli: The lonely, introspective feel is really great. Artwork is excellent, the music is cute. However, the back-and-forth mechanic was a bit tiresome for me. Overall effort: 5 stars at least.

Thanks for the comment. Music is cute? That’s different! The back and forth mechanic was kind of on purpose, the idea was that the game was forcing you to travel further to get more valuable items so you could upgrade your ship and make getting even further than that more viable. I wanted to have things to shoot, like space pirates but I never got round to it, so I would have added more mechanics eventually.

SonnyBone:This game looks REALLY NICE in motion. The pictures don’t do it justice. The game is very relaxing, which is what I think of when I hear: EXPLORATION. Everything works well together. For a 48 hour game this is incredibly polished, as others have said. NICE!

This LD I made a very conscious decision to polish things as much as possible as I went along, assuming it was viable in the time. It only takes a few lines of code for me to make something popout or fade, or highlight etc. It seemed worth it as it enhances the overall feel of the game. It seemed to pay off. (Thanks for the trophy recursor!)

refrag: Beautiful. A simple premise, beautifully executed. Well done!

Thanks! My initial idea wasn’t simple. Infact the debris sucking up and upgradinfg thing was meant to be a side thing that you could do in addition to the main game, but as time went on I decided to shift my focus to it.

madk: Good and well-executed concept, and it’s a relaxing game. However, more variation of gameplay would be nice. I got bored of just riding around and absorbing debris after a short while; some sort of enemies would be a good addition.

Go further.

Codexus: Nice little game with a good ambiance soundtrack. I would have appreciated the option to play in windowed mode, playing low-res games on a 30″ monitor isn’t too great. (with distorted aspect ratio too due a nvidia bug :/)

Jees, it’s ludum dare! What more do you want from me?! Hehe. Really this comment confuses me, how many LD games let you decide to play it windowed or fullscreen. I felt having it in a window would ruin the insular feeling  of the game.

TenjouUtena: Great game! Full of fun stuff to do, fun places to go! Great to play, will probably pick it back up after the compo.

Thanks! With luck I will too.

ExciteMike: I love the atmosphere! I played for a long time before I got down to the enemies. Form some of the other comments it sounds like many never made it that far. Two biggest problems: 1. Hold meter catches up too slowly, it looks like I still have room when I filled it, it just doesn’t show it yet. 2. The enemies were killing me before I even got to see what was shooting at me, and it’s really not easy to dodge so that’s where I stopped.

You’re not the first person to make that comment about the hold meter, I noticed it upon extended plays after the 48 hours too. I know how to fix it, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. As for the enemies they are kind of meant to stop you going down there since it’s where the most valuable items are, I appreciate that their range is perhaps a little on the long side though. If you hear the pew sound then just run, you can outrun the lasers easily!

Arne: I like this. I think I’m going to write a clone, if that’s ok.

Uh, that’s a bizarre comment. Okay, I guess.

recursor: Wow. This game has an impressive amount of polish for a 48 hour creation, and it is quite fun. This is one of my favorites so far. I hope you do even more with it.

Thank yoooou! With luck I will!

localcoder A couple of things almost stopped me getting into this game. First, I pressed escape to get out of the inventory screen and the game quit.

Then on my second attempt, I collected junk because that’s what I thought you were meant to do, and when I sold it and got no money I thought the game was bugged.

But once I worked out what was going on, I really enjoyed the game. I love the creative items, both the funny ones and others that suggest the story of the destroyed fleet.

The variety keeps the game interesting and I wanted to keep exploring to find bigger and better treasures. The surprise hostilities at the end were great too. The only disappointing thing is that there is no ending, so once I had all the upgrades I was left with no reason to use them.

Yeah the escape thing is silly. I’ll mentally put that aside. Even though I had time to have a start screen, a quit screen never occurred to me.

The not really knowing what to do aspect was definitely part of the design. I intentionally didn’t say much about the game (if you notice I don’t say that you can even tractor with the mouse button, you just sort of discover these things). To keep with the theme as much as possible I wanted to make the game mechanics themselves explorable as well as the playing field.

Once you twig that the further you go in the more items are worth you end up all “Oh alright it’s on now.” and try to get to the end of the field, about half way you run into a mine and don’t know what the hell. Putting the turrets right at the end was definitely the right decision I think, the shock when they first blast you apart after there’s been nothing like it for the whole game is cool I think. Discovery and exploration go hand-in-hand.

Yes there’s no ending, I had big plans but time and all. Thanks for the nice comments!

And thanks very much to anyone who has played it but not commented!

Here is Scavenger.

Of all my Ludum Dare entries this one I am most proud of. It’s one of those games that would be ruined if I sat here explaining it’s mechanics, so please just give it a go.

Ta.

Ohh what’s this? Let’s tractor it in.

It’s only a broken solar panel. Salvage is salvage I guess. Better go sell this stuff in.

Back through the wormhole we go!

SPACE HUB

Well that’s a rather pathetic haul. Better keep tractorin’…

I’ve done most of the gameplay mechanics. Next I’m going to populate the debris field with all the valuables that you can suck up.

Now we have a working, functional GUI. Health and hold meters. You can tractor stuff in, which gets added to your inventory.

For absolutely no reason I added lasers too. Maybe I’ll make use of these tomorrow.

Next up is the hub like place where you can sell off your hard earnt booty and get missions.

Exploration as a theme left me wanting to procedurally generate a universe that I could fly about in.

I eventually realised that this way led failure, so I locallised my idea a bit more.

The idea is that you’re a member of a scavenger group and you stumble across a massive debris field. You’re told about valuable items that you need to find in the debris field so you go in there, exploring the place and trying to find them before someone else does.

I’ve managed to get the controls down, done an awesome parralax star field, done the worthless debris, done physics and collisions, done particles and done a little targeter so you know what things are before you pick them up.

Also some terrible programmer graphics. Next up is the tractor beam so you can pick up useful items.

I didn’t do caverns due to family obligations, but I’ve just realised what a dramatic increase in quality the competition eventually produced.

Terrifying!

Doing this one though, wild animals wouldn’t stop me. (Hey, theme idea.) Gonna need to serously up my game this time. . .

See you all in a week and a half. :O

Here’s the timelapse for my LD entry this time around. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6TqFZE7Y14

The webcam flickers a bit due to issues with OpenCV but it’s mostly not noticable. It doesn’t include about the first two hours of drawing during which it didn’t work and I didn’t realise and it doesn’t include writing music/sound as I still haven’t been bothered to get it running in Windows yet. (I use Propellerhead’s Reason for audio)

A terrifying tale of intrigue, kidnap, danger and a cute little blob!

This LD I decided to do a game where you fly around as a little blob. Smashing things and trying to escape a horrible lab where experiments are being performed on you.

The Advancing Wall of Doom is your health, it constantly decreases causing you to run as fast as you can before you get splattered by the metaphorical Wall. You fight back the wall by smashing things which regenerates your health.

Full story and instructions are in the readme. But to put it short – Point mouse and click where you want to fly.

Download source:Fiona_LD14_Happyblobisunhappy-src.zip (Requires Python and Pygame 1.8)

Download Windows bin: Fiona_LD14_Happyblobisunhappy-win.zip

Vote generously!

lol. Looks like the aftermath of a paintball game.

I’ve done quite a lot although it might not look like it. Game has an actual beginning. (This is the first screen)

Gonna carry on just making levels from now on I think.

Oh yeah, the game is now called “Happy Blob is Unhappy” too.

Going to bed now. But I have a pretty good start for an awesome fun game.

Have the character in, he moves pretty well and is quite fun to fly around. The theme is accounted for. I have him dying and he’s able to move to other levels. (With cool transitions.)

In addition I’ve managed to add one “enemy” (he is a helpless guy who runs around).

Tomorrow I hope to have more challenging stuff and eventually build some levels. If I’m lucky I’ll get sound in.

Okay so you’re a little green blob (Called Jamie) you fly around a lab of some sorts just because you can. But oh no! You’re slowly desintegrating, and so you must smash things to regain health and try to escape.

At the moment he’s only got tables to smash but soon he shall have so much more. (Jamie shall feast on flesh this night.)

I’ve spent most of today drawing some tiles and getting super-realistic-blob-bouncing-physics to work.

Here’s all I have to show for it in screenshot land.

I promise you there’s a game here, I know what’s going to happen, how it’s going to fit into the theme and all that crap. First though I need to add particles… (They are the most important part of any game.)

Does not like theme. (Like I do not like theme every time I wake up on LD.)

But whatever. I think about it.