I figured now that I’m done rating everyone’s game, I’d sit down and write up a little post-mortem for my game, Cave Dangerous. Cave Dangerous is a fun little exploratory platformer with a minimalist inventory system. I had lots of fun creating it for the Ludum Dare 15 competition.

The good

• I actually finished this time! The last Ludum Dare I was in (Roads), I did not finish due to some unfamiliarity with AS3, among other issues and time constraints. So, yay for finishing!
• Even though I did suffer through a short internet outage, I managed to make good use of that offline time to work on some pixel sprites for the game, which really helped to set the artistic “vision” for Cave Dangerous.
• First time using Visual Studio in a compo, and it was quite enjoyable. Well, except for some major deployment issues (see below)

The Bad

• Originally planned to do something in 3D, but was feeling uninspired facing the modeller. Also, a quick test revealed my .obj loader was (again) not working correctly. So, scrapped that idea.
• As with every platformer I’ve made for a compo, I spent too much time tweaking / fixing the jumping and collision code. I think in the future, I’ll see about preparing some basic tile-based collision code ahead of time so I can focus more on the actual game.
• This was my first time trying Visual Studio with a compo entry, and it was very enjoyable up until I had to package it up to release it. I ended up almost pulling my hair out in frustration (why do I have to package a C++ redistributable? argh!). A website that I found (here: http://llbit.se/?p=19) explains pretty much exactly what happened to me. I ended up using mingw32 to compile the exe, which worked perfectly. Sheesh.
• Didn’t have enough time to add an explosion sound effect for the bomb. Apparently this is what most people complained about (aside from the length of the game) judging by the comments I got from the ratings.

As another “behind the scenes look”, here are some pics of the miner before I settled on the final image:

I got it in about 10 minutes late due to some stupid MSVS bugs. For some reason, the player disappears when running in Release Mode instead of Debug Mode, what the heck?

I spent a bit of time near the beginning setting up an MVC in the code, but towards the end it kind of fell apart, which is what I was expecting.

Anyways, I’m pretty happy with the game. I wish I had more time to work on sound and add some music. Of course, it would have been nicer to spend more time on expanding the levels and caves too. As you might be able to guess, I had originally planned being able to buy and aquire different items, including different pickaxes, etc.

In retrospect, the game turned out quite a bit like La-Mulana, which totally wasn’t my intention. Oops.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy it! It was certainly fun to make. I love Ludum Dare.

Hah, I almost passed out in the shower this morning. I then realized I hadn’t eaten anything for a long while. Oops.

Hooray for Ludum Dare!

(New screenshots coming soon from me)

Here’s a screenshot of my game so far, our little explorer is getting ready to enter the evil cave for the first time … (click to enlarge)

Still LOTS left to do … sigh.

Also, I’m trying to think of an awesome name. I’ll come up with something.

Hello! This is my little miner guy that I’ve been working on pretty much all morning, but now I have a decent walk cycle for him (at least I think it’s pretty decent)

Last night I got a level loader done that’ll read data from a bitmap file to construct a tile-based level. Still no screenshots yet… I hope I can get my vision into something playable before the 48 hours are up. Ho ho!

My Internet was down for about 4 hours this morning. Yikes! It actually helped me focus on working on the sprite. Woo.

Hope everyone is having a great time with their LD entries! Bam pow.

I am sad. Meow.

Oops, as a result of poor planning combined with some real life things (grandmother’s birthday, taking the bus to another city to visit fambly, etc) I will not be finishing on time.

Anyways, if you’re curious to see how far I got with RACING FEVER, check out this page:
http://fydo.net/projects/ludum-dare-13-entry

I totally intend to keep working on it. As you tell, there is no way to actually complete a race. Also, the computer-controller cars are morons.
Some friends on IRC also pointed out that the garage menu controls should be a little more responsive too.

Anyways, good luck to everyone else involved! :D

As always, I’ve started to get a little frustrated with the physics side of things, so I decided to take some time and make some decent looking GUI stuff. Here’s my first screenshot!

Hello everyone!

I was hanging out on IRC with some pals when Bleck, DrPetter, and I decided to have a fun little “microLD”, where normal LD rules apply, but you get only 6 hours to develop your game. It’s quite flexible in that you can choose which 6 hours you want to use. (Hooray for the honor system)

There is an added twist that I announced the theme at least a day before everyone started, so you got to think about what you wanted to make.

The theme is/was ‘Utopia’.

Here are the final entries: (From what I’ve heard, I’m still waiting on entries from philhassey and mjau)

Bleck – Snowtopia -  http://www.omnisu.com/files/snowtopia.zip
DrPetter – Utopia – http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/drpetter_utopia.zip
Fydo – Paradise Gone – http://fydo.net/programming/ParadiseGone-fydo-microLD1.zip

I certainly had a lot of fun making my entry. I had about 2 hours to kill on a busride a few hours before I started developing the game, so I planned it all out on paper. It worked out surprisingly well, in my opinion. Post your comments!

And of course, it’s not too late to participate. Since this isn’t really an official compo by any means, feel free to set aside 6 hours of your choice to make a game and put a link in the comments. Hooray!

Here’s a timelapse! If it doesn’t show up, it might still be processing on YouTube.

Music by Nine Inch Nails – Ghosts – Track 34

miniPals is a minimalistic co-operative platformer. It features 7 levels of fun! 2nd player requires a joystick (sorry team)

Keep in mind that even though this is a co-op platformer, you can still enjoy it by yourself!

controls:

z – use power

x – switch player (1P mode only)

left & right arrows – move

check the README.txt for more information!

screenshots:

win32 download with source: http://fydo.net/programming/fydo-miniPals-LD11.zip

Oh yeah, that’s raspberry cream cheese. Mmmm.

Also, here is what I ate last night. Om nom!

*Fydo participates!*

Howdy!

Here is my entry. It’s basically a cross between robotfindskitten and a generic platformer.

DOWNLOAD: http://kittay.ca/kittay-fydo-LD105.zip (1.0 mb)

Written in C, uses OpenGL. Didn’t have time to make a linux binary, sorry team.

I’m planning on doing a post-compo version, with bugfixes and better level graphics. Also, I’ll incorporate the other 3 mini-songs that I recorded, too.

Enjoy!

EDIT: Note that I’ve created a launchpad project for kittay. So you can file bugs there! Yay!

Meow!

Since the music to my game, Space Reactions, has become a little bit popular, I figured I’d tab it out for any fellow guitar players here. I haven’t got a guitar in front of me right now, but I think this is pretty accurate. I’ll update this post if I find anything wrong with it


---------------------------------------------------------
-------12~~~-----5/8\5~~-------12~~~---------------------
------------------------------------------7/9-----5/9----
----14---------7------------14----------9-------7--------
---------------------------------------------------------
-12----------5-----------12----------7--------5----------

Sounds good with some light distortion and little bit of tremolo. Enjoy!

Hey, not sure if everyone noticed the edit to my last post, so I’m making a new post…

It appears that I missed a source file (.py) in my original zip, so I’ve updated the zip to include it. If you were having problems running the game in linux or OSX, please re-download and try again

Thanks for your patience.

Hey everyone!

I’m happy to announce my final entry, Space Reactions. The aim of the game is to destroy planets using the pieces / fragments of other planets, which you ‘asplode using rockets! Bam!

There are 9 gutwrenching levels to tease your gravity-lovin’ brain, and it also features a totally original soundtrack! (special thanks to DrPetter, as I used his sfxr to generate the sound effects for this game)

SCREAMshots:

Game download (includes both win32 executable and python source) right here:

http://fydo.net/programming/spaceReactions-fydo-LD10.zip

edit: Updated the zip to include a missing source file (check the dates, I didn’t cheat! )

You don’t need to re-download unless you’re interested in looking at the source, or playing on a non-Windows machine

I’ve got some small bugs to work out, but I think I’m on track for a release before the deadline. Whew