Wow, it took me a week to rate 10% of the games submitted this time.

So, if I continue to at my current rate, I will only be able to play a third of them before judging ends.

Ludum Dare is huge.

So I managed to finish my super-simple game about a contract killer in a timely manner.

Here is the link for my entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-25/?action=preview&uid=8403

The game was almost done yesterday, so I had a whole day to just polish it. Aiming really low payed off for me nicely. I just hope it won’t get too bad ratings due to its simplicity.

Unfortunately I still couldn’t make music for the game, I have to practice it before the next compo.

Here are some screenshots:

Title screen

BAM! You’re dead!

Two targets in the city

I see there a lot of games submitted already, I can’t wait to try them out!

And for those of you who are still working hard: Don’t give up! You can do a lot in 2 hours!

So the first day is over and I think I’ve made enough progress to be able to finish tomorrow.

This time I wanted to aim really low, because in the past I felt overwhelmed with the complexity of my game ideas and I wasn’t able to completely implement them in time. I’m also trying to improve my graphics skills, so it was better to have a game with the least amount of code possible.

I didn’t want to make a game with a stereotypical villain (aiming for world domination, commanding an army of minions, kidnapping people, etc.), instead I made the player have a villainous occupation – as a contract killer.

At the beginning of each level you get a picture of your target(s) – early in the game you only have one per stage, later you will have more. You have to memorize the targets’ appearance, find them in a crowd of people, then kill them with your rifle.

Once you fire your first shot the police will make their way to the scene as indicated by the progress bar at the top of the screen. You have to finish the job before they get there, otherwise it’s game over. The game is endless, each stage will have a bigger crowd, and you’ll have more targets to hunt down.

Here is the target.

And he’s down.

Murder in the park.

The code is almost complete, but I will still have to make sound effects, music, backgrounds, title and game over screens, etc.

Anyway, I wish you luck with your games, as I can’t wait to play them. There have already been some really cool looking games presented here.

Hello Everyone!

This will be my 3rd shot at the 48 hour compo.
My only goal is to be able to make a better game than I did the last 2 times.

Tools I will be using:

• XNA with C# in Visual Studio 2010
• Paint for basic pixel art, Paint.NET for more advanced raster graphics, Inkscape if I decide to use vector graphics
• Bfxr for sound effects
• Renoise for music if I have the time (I never do)

This time I decided against using a base code, I’ll build everything from the ground up. I hope it works out alright.

Anyway, I wish you all the very best with your game making endeavors and I hope we won’t be wiped out in the looming apocalypse, so we can do this again next year.

I “finished” my entry, as in I don’t know how to make it any better without rewriting it from scratch. :-/

I was focusing on making the game resembling real-life genetics, and I forgot to make it actually fun to play. I wanted it to be about survival and adapting in a harsh environment, but I couldn’t make it work, so I just added a bunch of random enemies to shoot. It became completely repetitive and the genes aren’t affecting the game as much as they should.

Next time I should simply focus on making the game fun, without worrying about the theme so much.

On the flip side, I think my drawing skills improved a bit. In the past I preferred to use vector graphics, but in this game I was using smaller sprites, so I thought pixeling them made more sense. It was a risky decision, because I never really used pixel art in the past, but I’m happy with the results. See for yourself:

Also, I never worked on a code base before that included classes like Allele, and methods like Breed.

Here is my entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=8403

Hi!

In the past few weeks I’ve been working on a simple, lightweight game development framework that I would like to use in my future projects, codenamed “Slygap”. I am using C# and the XNA Framework because that is the environment I am most comfortable with. I haven’t tried to make a complete game with it yet, as I wanted to add features and generally improve the code quality first.

Anyways, I figured this LD competition would be a great way to take it to a test drive, so I can see whether its features can really make development easier and faster.

Stuff that already works:

• A pure component based entity system as described by the great T=Machine articles
• Data-driven design, entity templates and concrete entities can be loaded from XML files
• Game state handing (intro, menu, game, credits, etc.)
• Out-of-the-box support for saving/loading
• Support for recording replays
• A basic graph library with A* path finding and topological sorting
• Small extensions for the base XNA framework, like a bit more convenient input handling

I hope everything will work as they should, so I can focus on the actual game instead of fixing the framework.

Here is the download that includes the full source code, as well as compiled binaries: Slygap.zip

This will be my 2nd LD. Other than Slygap, I plan to use Paint.NET or Inkscape for graphics and Bfxr for sound effects. I’m not sure about the music yet, I may skip it altogether (again…).

So, long story short, I’m in!

I have successfully finished my very first LD game, The Last Man on Earth.

You play as the last survivor of an alien invasion, your goal is to avenge your species by clearing out an alien spaceship.
It is a pretty hard game, but please don’t get mad at me – I had no time to balance the gameplay.
The game has two endings… and a kitten.

It has been great fun, I would love to participate in the future, too.

Screenshots:

Tools:

• Visual Studio 2010
• XNA Game Studio 4.0
• Paint.NET
• Inkscape
• Bfxr

Download: http://attilahorvath.me/TheLastManOnEarth.zip
Source: http://attilahorvath.me/TheLastManOnEarth-source.zip
Game Page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8403