I'm an indie games designer.
About Sophie Houlden
Sophie Houlden's Trophies
![]() Suprise! Your Keyboard is Now an Award Award Awarded by Cthulhu32 on February 24, 2008 | ![]() The Most Surprising Award Awarded by pymike on February 24, 2008 | ![]() Eating Power Cables Award Awarded by fydo on December 18, 2007 |
![]() Accidental Electrocution Award Awarded by noonat on December 18, 2007 |
Sophie Houlden's Archive
Dinosaurs didn’t have keyboards
…but if they did, they wouldn’t break (like yours is about to)
DinoBalt
so here’s the concept:
sure it looks like dinorun but I dont care, the control constraints seemed to scream ‘running game’ at me and I wanted to do a dinosaur game anyway so thats what Ima do.
the actual game will be in 3D though, and unlike run or balt, you’ll be able to go both right, AND left! I know going left in video games is like dark voodoo but whatevs, ima do it!
This is as far as I go I think
Ok, I sped up the walking, slowed (and made more controllable) the jetting, added a shadow and this funky rock here (which can be found if you turn right 90 at the start and look over the hill). why is it the end for me now? well I wrote down the story I wanted, not any chance I can finish in the time left. and I don’t want to spoil it by doing it half assed so this is my entry for the weekend I think, pure ‘exploration’ with no goal
playable build is embedded if you view this post in full.
Walking and slerpy
Added animations, and made the camera all ‘woo’
its slowly getting to be the time where I actually add stuff beyond just walking around. I think I’ll give Bellona a little shadow first. and of course theres a playable build embedded if you view this post in full.
Marsbase 01
Not as cool as the one from doctor who, but I’m happy with it
also in this build I added the martian equiv of the Aurora australis, I couldn’t find any photos of it so lets pretend it looks like this. (we at least know its not the same as other aurorae in the solar system so I can do what I want really).
I plan to have other cool martian features like the dust geysers also found near southern mars during certain times of the year, though I dont know if I’ll have time to put them in.
anyway, the playable build is available if you view this whole post
An astronaut
Took me way too long to build and sculpt her, and there is so much left to be done but I better get back to the actual ‘game’ thing huh?
the build is after the more
Rock-ing on mars :D
Ok, got my normals on the ground working ok, altered the PCG a little for better rolling landscape, added fog and some random normal mapped rocks (their scale and rotation is random, I did actually model them, I’m not getting *that* hardcore with my PCG =P)
and of course there is a playable build after the ‘more’ link (and you can turn in this one!)
mars exists, first build
yup, I fixed my triangles problem, and I even coded all the streaming PCG stuff, so already you can wander endlessly across the surface of mars. click ‘more’ to play the embedded version
Started, making mars :D
Ok, overslept a little but thats ok as I woke up with an idea, I’m going to procedurally generate mars, and put a psychologically disturbed astronaut on it.
ok, so I need to work on the procedural generation bit, I always forget how to set up my triangles right when I do this, but it will come to me sooner or later. and unity does it fast enough it should be able to generate the landscape in realtime, allowing for endless trips to wherever. and because its seeded it will be consistent too.
my plan is to have a story of course, but this will give me a huge expanse to explore with (hopefully) relatively little work. though the compromise is of course mars would be cooler if I made it myself, but the theme is exploration, you need something big to do that right IMO
Mini LD #12 is END!
thats 48 hours folks!
to submit your game go to:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-12/
and to view all entries check:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-12/?action=preview
you guys clearly took the theme and ran with it, very far indeed it seems! I have to say you guys once again impressed me. I cant wait to check out what everyone has done
if you havent finished yet dont sweat it, its only a miniLD after all and I’m not going to hurt you if you want to take an extra hour or so to clear out any bugs and the like
also, voting for August’s LD ends in 3 hours so if you have time to spare you dont have long left to vote.
Mini LD #12 is GOOOO!
And the theme is…
WIKIPEDIA / MEDIAWIKI
ok, so before I dropped the hint that you should be ready with some way of getting at web data, well heres what that is all about:
I want you to make a game that pulls stuff from wikipedia (or a mediawiki I set up especially) and uses that in your game. it could be something as simple as loading images on a page and making them enemies to kill, or perhaps you want to generate levels from the text, and links on the page are doors to other levels? or perhaps (if you really want to push yourself) you can get your game to add pages and content to the wiki and have a full on changing MUD going on.
reading information from mediawiki really isnt that daunting, and I’ve put up some examples on the mediawiki I set up to get you started.
if you cant (or dont want to) access the web with your game, saving a local copy of a page and/or images is fine. as is picking any page on wikipedia you want and using that as a theme instead if you want a more traditional LD experiance.
big important thing to know:
miniLDs now also have the new submission page for your finished games (if you only make a blog post about it I might miss it!) so when your game is done, post it here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-12/
and finally the optional bonus theme that gets you pretend points:
“Duke Nukem Forever”
…have fun with that one folks
finish time is 0000 UTC on monday, you have 48 hours, get cracking!
Timelapse of Cavern0048
It was a long and tiring journey, but I made a game, you can watch me do it if you want:
anyhoo, I need sleep now, hopefully tommorow I’ll have time to play a large chunck of the entries
Almost there ^_^;
I think I have everything in there I need to now (including a second trick). I just want tohave a go at redoing the character and fixing up the UI a little before I call it ‘finished’
backflip alongside lava at really fast mph... how did I even come up with this?
playable after the link:
Cooler combos
its not much bit its actually been the biggest headache so far this LD =/
hopefully the game will be done soon and I can add more ticks and rejigger the player art.
playable after the link:
Combos, Lava!
Combos are working, though there is still only the 1 ‘trick’, you can add to your combo by doing air jumps, and getting *really* close to lava (best to try when in slowmo).
Lava in games is always cool right?
playable after the link:
Light and Sound
Morning LDers, added board sounds, the begginings of a combo system, and I’m playing around with lighting so my lava pieces will look cool hopefully.
I've run out of onomatopoeia to type here, thats the real reason I added sound in this build =p
playable after the link:
Character get!
Whoosh!
the character is really a rough for now, especially what animations are there. also I improved collisions a little.
anyhoo, playable after the link:
Caverns eh?
Well I just got started, hit up the more to see what I have running in unity
the.domestic
I had a hunch an increpare mini-LD would squeeze an art game out of me
anyhoo its done, but dont go into it thiniking it will be the feelgood game of the LD
















