So I finally loaded up Vegas Pro 9 last night and inserted the some 2,537 images that Chronolapse took of my screen during the 72 hour Jam for LD#22. I whacked on some good music, was surprised by how well the tempo of the music and the image changes matched up in places, and published.
My only regret is not capturing Nathan’s screen, as that’s where most of the game’s art happened and a bit of coding, too.

Let’s not regret though, enjoy the timelapse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5zSoB9fVCI&feature=youtu.be

A new blog post at From The Beginning with a video detailing our new sounds and other changes. Too many to write about while we’re so tired, really.

Almost ready to submit the game for the Jam.

- Jonno & Nathan

A new blog post at From The Beginning detailing our new level system, the new enemies and the new multiple machine linking system. There is a video to show off the latter two.

Again, hope you’re all enjoying yourselves

- Jonno & Nathan

A new blog post at From The Beginning explaining and showing off our current three puzzle elements and how we think the game will turn out.

Video at the end of the post.

Hope you’re all enjoying yourselves

- Jonno & Nathan

More progress as we finish the pause and menu states and implement the first working version of linking machine classes like doors and switches.

The blog post at From The Beginning has more information and a video demonstration.

Good luck once again to all, hope you’re enjoying yourselves as much as us.

- Jonno & Nathan

Posted a first look of our Jam game to my blog, found at From The Beginning.

Do enjoy, good luck to everyone!

- Jonno & Nathan

Ok, finally an official word: I’m definitely in for Ludum Dare #22!

I participated in Ludum Dare #21, and it was there that I produced my first ever hand-made Java + Java2D game. I’ve made a hell of a lot of progress since then, and am moving into Java + OpenGL (LWJGL library). I’ve dabbled in C# and C++ as well. Another interest I’ve taken is teaching a couple of friends how to use the language and encouraged learning for them. I also took part in the LD One-Hour Jam for fun.

This time, I’m in with a friend. His name’s Nathan, and he’s pretty much in the position that I was in for my first LD. Working as a team, we hope to combine efforts and skills and produce something to be proud of in 72 hours for a Jam entry. I can at least guarantee that this’ll be better than my last attempt, Captain Starfire.

A lot of my posts will be on Google+, Twitter and my public blog, From The Beginning. I might be doing a timelapse of my screen as well depending on whether I have the hard drive space or not.
Nathan and I will be using Java with the standard Java2D library to produce this game. We may decide to dip into a bit of OpenAL for sexy audio, depending on the time we have towards the end.

Thanks for reading, good luck all, and do check out my G+, Twitter and blog:

Blog: From The Beginning
Twitter: @jonnopon3000
Google+: https://plus.google.com/100416291177265133194/posts

- Jonno

Took me a long time, but I programmed in some brute force collision and a “death” where the game simply stops. It’s interesting to generate random enemies again and again to see how quickly you die.

Going for a few hours’ sleep, and when I get back I’ll be adding bullets and cool stuff like that.

Here’s the latest version for anyone who wants to see it in action:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38489921/Starfire.jar 

OK, so I’ve been doing some work on Starfire  and it’s reached the point now where I have a comfortably good story to integrate the theme in a rather backwards and unexpected way (I believe), and adding more features is mostly as simple as adding objects.

For example, I can now add an entire wave of new enemies with a loop and one ArrayList. I don’t need to change any other code to make that work in game. Oh how I love OOP.

Here’s the latest build for anyone interested in the storyline (no gameplay really, yet).

Starfire will be a wave-based survival shooter wherein you play Captain Starfire, a brave space pilot who recently helped his fleet escape a band of kamikaze bombers.

Unfortunately, Starfire’s ship was badly damaged in the battle and he cannot move in space. He may or may not be able to spin with the mouse pointer (maybe planned feature, if I can do it), and he can shoot with his still-functioning weapons.

Enemies will come in waves and dive straight for Starfire’s ship, and Control is watching and keeping record of how well he did in his Final Stand (for the history books, of course).

You will probably earn points for killing enemies and surviving, and the only way out is to die.

Expect programmer art. Terrible programmer art.

- Jonno

My game is currently untitled, and it fits the theme in a relatively backwards way:

The idea is that in this game, you cannot escape. You just have to survive for as long as you can.

You will be a fighter pilot (center screen). You can spin with the mouse pointer, and fire with the space bar. Waves of enemies will come and you just have to survive.

Here’s an image of the first intro screen draft:

(Image is squashed)

Hi, my name’s Jonno and after some decision making and practice in Java I am in for LD21.

I’ve watched a few competitions on the side lines, and decided that this time, due to my beginning with Java in May of this year (and recent success with Java’s standard accelerated graphics controls), I will join in.

All the code I will be using will be standard Java classes.

I’m most hoping that this competition, whether I produce anything finished or not, will be a massive source of learning for me and a boost in my motivation and skill with the language.

I’ve always wanted to develop games and I’m the only 17 year old I know personally who is able to do what I do…so Ludum Dare is where I will start.

Good luck to all competition and I look forward to the two days of hurried coding! I plan not to sleep because I’m a noob and I’ll likely need the time.

- Jonno

Hi, my name is Jonno.

I’ve been self-teaching Java for a few months now, after a few years of self-teaching code in one language or another,  and I have decided to use LD21 as a good bit of motivation to push myself into simple game development in the language. I’ve had a passion for gaming since I was young and have always had a back-of-the-mind plan to write games.

I’ve come to the point where I can write applications in Java with confidence, implementing drawing methods and the Swing API to create a good event-driven GUI app.

My only problem right now is animation and timed events (like game loops, for example). I have read that in Java, Swing Timers do not work so well on Microsoft’s Windows Operating Systems…so I was wondering what other methods are available for gaming. I have a small example application that uses a method to define the game loop, which performs all the actions that would normally happen with a timer tick, but it’s not very clear in its implementation and I’ve so far failed to replicate its function.

So, can anyone help me out?

As a side-note, if I’m not supposed to be posting anything at this time (seeing as there’s no category for LD21 yet), I apologise.

- Jonno