I going to be getting back to school, moving into the dorm the weekend of the LD, but I may try to enter despite that.  If so, it’ll probably be the Jam, and I’ll be using flixel.  Otherwise, I’ll just lurk around the compo.  In any case, good luck everyone!

Due to various reasons, most prominently an eye injury, I have to withdraw from this LD.  I currently have nothing even started so it’s pretty far fetched to hope to submit anything now!  Until next time folks!  I may try to enter July’s mini if the topic is released early enough, but August’s LD sees me going back to school and moving into the dorm so that’s probably not an option.  Best of luck everyone!

Well I’ve gotten nowhere on the mini LD.  It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks.  I’ve had a multiplicity of things taking up my time in the evenings, some of that work bleeding over after 5pm.  And today a recurring eye injury cropped up again, forcing me to stay home from work, meaning I’ll be doing even more in the evenings.  I have a concept and a good codebase, but that’s it.  Seeing as the project is much too ambitious for just a weekend, I doubt I’ll have anything very presentable for the deadline.

On a brighter note, the get-together that I was planning actually happened!  Last Saturday a number of us met at a friends house and hung out and discussed our ideas.  I believe it was a profitable time, and it was definitely fun.  Although many of them won’t be joining this LD, we all shared projects that we wanted to work on and generally had a good time talking about game coding.  Some new ideas developed out of the mix.  We’ll be doing it again this coming Saturday, just in time to wrap up for the mini LD.

I will enter the Mini-LD.

After considering the theme, I don’t actually have much interest in creating a story through text.  The concept is about dialogue.  Since I generally don’t like to explore mood and story via dialogue (I prefer the ‘show, don’t tell’ method), this theme is challenging for me.   Therefore, my entry will likely be somewhat unconventional.  I will be pursuing one of two goals:

Either:  Concentrate on a dialogue engine.  I have never written a robust dialogue engine before and I need to know what goes into one.  I have a rough outline of what I would like it to support and how to code that.  As such, I would be producing a tech demo for the competition.  I would still attempt to do some story (I have a vague idea), but I might just have to fall back on old poetry I’ve written as a script.

Or:  Try to be innovative with the idea of all talk.  What if the characters (this would work best with two human players) could not speak to each other, but still had to communicate (ala Journey, the upcoming atmospheric PS3 title).  What if the characters were robots, and instead of speaking verbally, used some protocol language (R2D2 anyone)?  What if you were interacting with aliens and had to learn their language (The Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis)?  I have a basic story to go with the robots idea, and I may pursue that.

Feel free to steal any of those ideas (actually I’d be excited to see anyone use them)!  I’ll see you guys in irc, and I’ll be watching the blog.  Good luck, all!

So who ever came up with calling these analyses post-mortems?  My project certainly isn’t dead.  I certainly have a lot to say about it though.  For reference, play it here.  If you don’t care how I personally performed, scroll down to Product to hear my comments about the submitted game itself.  For the Tl;dr, scroll all the way down to the conclusion.  Otherwise, prepare for a wall of text!

(more…)

Due to internet trouble Saturday, I’m still far from Done, but I did the best I could.

Find my entry here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-26/?action=preview&uid=3023

Post-mortem coming tomorrow.

As is customary, here is my setup for the MiniLD:

Unfortunately I’m not in my own home for the summer and am somewhat displaced so I’ve had to make do.  That is a stranger’s stuff behind the desk, and the desk itself is weird and missing its right front leg.  Anyway.  It’s working out well so far.

Well here goes.

I intend to encompass all the themes.

UNDERVERDEN will be a game of exploration and spelunking, discovering the subterranean blight that is corroding the surface world.  On your journey below the earth you will have to destroy the source of the evil while leaving the caves as untouched as possible.  You will need ample supplies and may make numerous trips to the surface to restock and rest.  Cleansing the evil will be a monumental task, perhaps too large for just one lifetime…

Underverden will be done when:

• The story is narrated and the scene set
• Buildings/terrain can be destroyed
• There are at least 3 objectives to destroy in different cities
• Healthy cave grows when objective destroyed
• There are intervening tunnels between objectives
• Equipment is functional – rope, pick, shovel minimum
• The death mechanic is in functional (keeping it a secret)
• SFX are present for actions that need feedback - jumping, falling digging, etc
• There is at least one ambient music track
• Game can be won, restarted, saved and loaded

Extra goals that probably won’t get done:

• Integrated, fuller storytelling
• Ambient lighting from torches/gemstones/mushrooms etc…
• Break and carry light sources
• Pseudo-random cave generation (connecting objectives)
• Water present
• Equipment purchase mechanism
• More equipment – bombs, drill
• Famine & fatigue mechanism
• Scoring mechanism

Good Luck everyone!  Have a great MiniLD!

I’m in for the upcoming mini-LD provided I don’t have to roadtrip that week.  I’m waiting to hear back about a possible job opportunity in my area.  If I don’t get the job I’m going to have to drive halfway across the U.S. to stay with relatives.  So as long as I’m in one place, I’d love to participate.  This will be my first Mini-LD and second LD overall.

My tools will (probably) be:

IDE:  FlashDevelop

Codebase:  AS3 + flixel + flixel power tools

Graphics:  Photoshop

Sound:  Sfxr/Bfxr + Audacity

Music:  FLStudio

Tools:  Handheld whiteboard and 8 colored markers; Programming hat of +5 code skill

I have a couple ideas that I hope can fit with the theme.  One is an atmospheric platformer (pretty generic) and the other is an orthagonal (3/4) view puzzle game with a unique means of interaction.  I really hope I get to do the latter.

Excited as always!

Edit: Looks like the 26th is a Thurs.  Since I’ll hopefully be getting a new job I may opt for fri-sat instead. Nvm.  Misread the date.

I feel a bit guilty posting this in the compo blog, but I think this is a legitimate inquiry that might be of help to others besides myself.

Here’s the deal:

I want to set up a personal website as a permanent portal for my game development news and any games I write.  To this point I’ve been using dropbox to host files and linking them from my tumblr blog.  I’d like to find a solution that allows more flexibility than tumblr in site layout but still supports a blog format.  Being a game development site I would need to be able to support hosting my projects and ideally I would like to have support for embedded flash content since my recent experimentation with flixel.  Another want is the ability to write completely custom html and css, while php would be a bonus.

I’m interested in what solutions other developers (like you) are using.  What has worked for you?  What hasn’t?  I’ve experimented with Google Sites, WordPress, and some other options but I haven’t found anything to really fit the bill.  So what do you use?  Are you happy with it?  Would you recommend it as a solution?

I trust LD community and its varied experience can provide some good input on this topic, just as I am sure there are others in the community with the same question I have.  Thank you.

P.S.  This would be an excellent question for an LD forum if there was one…

Source code now up on my entry page (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=rate&uid=3023).  Post-Mortem coming soon.

There is a timelapse.  Me making my game.  On the youtubes.  Go Look.    Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5G1jvTWfZ4

Due to some forseen, and yet more unforseen delays, I have missed out on ~10 hours of possible programming time.  This puts me irrevocably behind schedule.  I am somewhat disappointed to say that I will have to relegate my game to Jam status, since it is nowhere near playable at the moment.  Nonetheless, I am grateful for the added time this gives me to properly prepare a release.

Thanks LD, it’s been an awesome first bout!  Much more fun than I anticipated!  I hope that most of you will stick around on IRC for the Jam and the voting.  I’ll be there!

Look forward to release of Hakken by the Jam deadline, and further updates tonight (morning for some of you.)

Time for a small (gameplay-less) demo before bed:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1911947/hakken0.1.zip

Make sure to read the README!  Enjoy!

(P.S. Windows only for now, sorry.)

I won’t be to bed for another many hours (it’s 8pm-ish here) but since this is the official 24hr mark, I’ll put up a screenie:

So far I have a halfway-decent tile engine and an in-engine map editor for it.  No Animation, Music, Sounds, or Scripting yet.  Hoo-boy.  Tile art is not final.

Hello LD community.  I’ve been following LD since #18 (not long, I know) and I thought I’d try my hand at the main competition.  I’m exceptionally excited and I’m on the lookout for tips from veterans.  Could someone direct me to where the LD community congregates?  I’ve heard mention of an IRC channel…

I’ll be developing in python 3 with pyGame and possibly pyOpenGL depending on the nature of the project.  If anyone has experience creating standalone apps or at least using distutils to package the correct items with any of those modules, I’d be very grateful for advice.

Looking forward to a great competition!

P.S.  Advice on screencap software for a Windows environment is welcome too.  I have none and don’t wish to buy any.  Email is the best way to contact me -check my profile.  Thank you all very much!