It appears that I didn’t get enough time on my game.  That’s okay though.  Lots of other things demanded my time (like screaming kids), but I managed to make a really fun game.  Really, me and my wife were having more fun with this than with all of my previous entries.  It’s not ready for the compo and I might not bother with the jam because work starts again tomorrow.  That means there will be a post-compo version for sure!  Stay tuned to my website or the LD planet.

I had a great time, as usual!

Here are some screens to part with.  Behold, “Don’t Blow It”.

It’s moving along slowly…  I have level loading and animations in.  Now I need some goal triggers.  Once I have that and some custom control setup, I’ll be ready to pump out some fun, playable levels.  It’s a puzzle platformer, so the level design will be enjoyable.  :)  It’s likely that the game will feature different levels depending on the number of people playing.

A name would be nice, but my preschool kids have only been able to come up with “Throw Jump”, “Throw Everything”, and “Backpack Throw Jump Everything”.  With that kind of creativity, I’m sure it’ll have a name sometime next month…  and it might involve peanut butter and jelly.

Here it is so far.  There’s been a lot of distractions today which I’d rather not talk about.  Suffice to say there are bad bugs outside!

In my game, four players can throw each other around.  I’m not sure yet how it will turn out for voting if I require four players.  I can’t even test it well!

Can I swing that?  Probably not.

Anyhow, I thought of a nice idea…  But as usual, I like to keep my secrets until I have something to show for it.  See ya tomorrow.  Maybe there will be a screenshot.

Well, looks like time is up, but don’t worry if you need a bit more time to wrap things up.  This is for you, after all!  However, if we have to name your game 2012, then there’s a problem.

The things I’ve seen out there so far look pretty sweet.  Good job, all!

I came up with a fine idea, but I had a full day workshop yesterday in another state and I have to go pick up my wife from yet another state today.  At least here’s a mockup:

Here goes!  The Title of your game must be a Year!  Feel free to use the round 6 variant: Game based on a year.

And the subtheme: Spring Physics
If you’re not doing an action game, I suppose you’ve got to be creative!

Good luck to everyone out there.  See you at the end of the 48 (or during if you’ll be in IRC)!  Go LD, go!

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Hey guys,

I’ve decided to move MiniLD 23 to the 21st of the month.  Check the announcement post for details.  See ya there!

Hosted by yours truly, Jonny D…  MiniLD 23 will be a good time (see below).

MiniLD 23 will begin at 9pm EST (2am UTC) on Friday, January 21st (moved up from the 28th due to conflict with Global Game Jam).  It will end at the same time on Sunday, January 23rd.

MiniLD 23 begins 382 days, 22 hours, 6 minutes, 39 seconds ago

Until then, you can vote on the main theme.  There will be a sub theme announced as well when the mini compo starts.  There will be either an immense amount of groaning or excitement, since your choices for the main theme are taken from LD 19′s Round 3 list.

That’s right! Vote here!! And like the monkey said at the fruit playoffs: Go bananas!

Wow, I really didn’t expect to participate this time, but I thought of a simple concept and put it together in time!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=654

In case you didn’t see the comment on PoV’s meetup post (or if this one’s easier to find), here’s the video of the New England Ludum Dare 18 Meetup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEAC4fnobGI

Good stuff. Jonny D, HybridMind, and billknye were able to attend. We wound up at a great place, Me & Ollie’s in Portsmouth, NH, and much fun was had.

All done!  Check it out, yo.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-18/?action=preview&uid=654

Want to know the worst feeling ever?  When your battery dies and upon reboot you notice that “gameloop.cpp” has been truncated to 0 bytes…

Well, I’ve had to rewrite that file, so I lost a bit of time.  The (very) good thing is that it was possible to rewrite the file within the competition time!

I tried out some Gimp effects to make the level prettier and to make the fire look less like red circles.  I’m also animating the fire through three images.  I’m pretty surprised my computer can handle this!  There’s a lot of spawning and scaling going on, and those things spread like…  I’m not gonna say it.

It’s way past my bedtime.

I’m not sure if I’ll go with that game title, since it’s kinda taken, but here’s another screen:

I have a video of the New England LD Meetup, but I’m having uploading problems.  For now, I’ll just post a couple of images of my game’s progress.

While hanging out waiting for HybridMind to arrive for the meetup, I was chillin’ with billknye.  He was working and I was trying to think of a concept.  I joked about finding inspiration in the local newspaper, so I picked it up and mentioned the front page headline.  It was about a fair-sized fire nearby and billknye made some remark about the gamability of it.  It stuck, I guess.  It turns out to be a creative take on the theme.  Enemy?  Fire.  Weapon?  Fire.  There you have it, a game about fighting forest fires.

I first got the player moving around and then some fires drawing onto a grass buffer:

Then I worked the rest of the meetup time on getting the fire to spread in a good way:

The implementation is surprisingly simple, so I’ll be able to polish this baby up…  Like all babies should be?

I haven’t had the chance to formalize my entry, so here we go!

I’ll probably be using my usual basecode of C++ and SDL with many little libraries.  They can be found at my website:
http://code.bluedinosaurs.com

So…  I don’t have a game design yet.  Heck, it was my theme suggestion!  I should’ve been ready.

Well, it’s over.  That was great!  This game turned out to be fun, though a bit chaotic.  Check it out!

Okay, so I didn’t update you yet, but I have been taking pictures along the way.  This game is going to be done completely with photos, instead of the usual.  It’s pretty fun doing this so far.  ^ Here you can see how dirty our bath tub is…  This is with a single controllable sprite.

^ Here’s when I got some AI for the computer player and too many cannon balls.

^ Here’s the foreground effect in place (and some ugly water – which might just stay…).

Now, the game?  Plod around and shoot stuff with your cannon, so far.  I have a few directions I can take it, but I haven’t settled yet.  Treasure collection?  Cleaning toys?  Environment puzzles?  Save the captured toys?  One of those, surely.