Re-posted from my blog: http://www.kennygoff.com/post/postmortem-alone-in-a-crowd-ludum-dare-22

Last weekend’s Ludum Dare was, in my mind, the best thus far. For over a year now, I have been trying to get the game development club at my college (SGDC, Stevens Game Development Club) to get together and participate in a Ludum Dare. Well, last weekend it happened! Thanks to a new dedicated room on campus for the club, and me bringing it up at every meeting for a month and spamming our email list with reminders, we had 3 people come by to work on games, and a few other’s come by to hang out and brainstorm. Unfortunately, I was the only one to finish, although one guy made a game on his TI calculator that was pretty cool (he didn’t submit though). Not only that, but I believe this is the best game I’ve made so far in a Ludum Dare, and my time was best spent during the weekend.

The Weekend

When the night first started and the theme, Alone, was announced, I couldn’t think of anything good. I thought of a lonely kitten platformer, but I hated that idea, and wanted to avoid doing a platformer (my fallback game type). I wanted to do something different this time. However, after talking with the guys who were at the SGDC room with me, a few ideas flew around. One being a game where you repulse people, and you have to corner them and make them your friend. Another, where you are trying to be alone, and you have to escape the people following you (basically the opposite of the previous idea). And a few other small ideas came to mind but I liked none of them. It was only about an hour and a half into the competition, and not late at night, so I figured I’ll start programming a simple platformer and make a kitten sprite so I have something to branch off of the next morning. After that it was about 12:00pm EST, and 45 hours remaining. I decided to take the night to sleep it over, as I typically have a better idea in the morning.

I woke up the next morning with a spark that I did not have the night before. It seemed like a more generalized version of the repulsion/attraction ideas. Basically, the game would be top down, with the screen being one room, and the player had to travel through to other rooms, and in each room was a different situation. Each situation would deal with emotions, and specifically for the theme; loneliness, love, togetherness, loss, and some others. I had been playing a lot of Edmund McMillen’s The Binding of Isaac, so I thought of the rooms in the same style as they were in Isaac. One basic rectangular room taking up the screen, with the possibility of one door on any given wall. The difference was, you could not go back through a room you came through.

Once I though of this I immediately got hit with all the different types of rooms I could do. Death, crowds, repulsive to others, getting a girlfriend, and losing a girlfriend were some of the first to cross my mind. I went to go scrap my old platformer and start fresh with this game. I decided to keep everything as different colored squares. This was not placeholder graphics though. I wanted everything to be representational and simple, in order to allow the player to image it all, and put him or herself in the game. Also I’m not that good at drawing top down characters, but I’ll stick with the simplicity angle as the main factor in the decision. The most complex thing in the game was the kitten, who was a small square with big pointy ears and a tail. As I started to put this together I also thought of naming each room something unique and displaying the name of the room on the bottom of the screen (which ended up being the most fun part of coming up with new room … and was totally taken from Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV).

I had to take a break during the day because I had a final exam and my roommate and I took a trip to New York City for a couple hours. Once I got back there was just over 24 hours remaining. That was enough time to put together a few rooms, clean up bugs, and submit on time. I ended up with 10 different types of rooms, which are randomly generated when you enter a new room.

What Went Right

1. This was the first Ludum Dare where I prioritized gameplay over art, and made sure to get everything that was needed for the game to be fun before even thinking about art.
2. Chose an idea that was easy to implement and rooms took a very short amount of time to create.
3. Talking to people and going out was an important part in my design process, and the game wouldn’t be where it is without that. I got some good ideas for rooms from my friends in SGDC and my roommate came up with a few good ones, including one of my favorites “Size Does Matter”, where a bigger blue square steals your girlfriend from you.

What Went Wrong

1. Gameplay relied on a lot of content. Although the rooms were easy to implement, I still needed a lot of rooms to make the game fun, and at 10 room types, I think I was short a few.
2. No Sounds… again. I didn’t have time to work on sounds or music, and a simple ominous tune would have sufficed for background music.
3. “The Answer” was kind of controversial, and people seemed to take it to an extreme. That room was a room you could not leave, and had a noose in the center, and when you touched it the game ended with a screen that said “Death: Forever Alone.” This was one of my earlier ideas, and I obviously didn’t think how people would take it. I was not at all trying to imply that I support suicide. It was merely a realistic look at the path some people take when faced with deep depression. I actually planned to add an exit if you didn’t touch the noose after a few seconds and other ways to end the game, including two tombstones if you have a partner, in a room called “Old Age” or something. I simply ran out of time and didn’t have time to implement the different death cases for each setup possible (alone, with girlfriend, with cat).

Looking To The Future

Overall, I think that this was a great Ludum Dare and my best and most unique LD game yet. I want to make a fully realized version of Alone In A Crowd, with a lot of rooms, marriage, divorce, more loss, friends, kids, afterlife, and basically anything in life that could effect a person. I already have 20 or more ideas for rooms, and any time I think about or talk about the game I come up with a new one. The full version of Alone In A Crowd won’t be something I’ll be done with soon. Rather, I’ll be adding to the current version over time, until I feel like I have enough content to release it. I’ll be sticking with doing it in AS3 with flixel, because I think it will be a good online game, and am also considering doing a mobile version, since it is very easy to implement on any platform (and my next few games in mind are going to be mobile and I’ll be in the groove).

I look forward to the future of Alone In A Crowd and the next Ludum Dare, which is the 23rd LD and the 10th Anniversary for Ludum Dare.

Well, this weekend has been quite successful. My 3rd finished LD! Woot!

I have a few hours to go, but I’ve decided to submit now, since I don’t know how much time I’ll have to get any more done for the rest of the night.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=1022

Because most of the content that drives the game is the variations and types of rooms, people, and things to encounter, I couldn’t fully realize the game in 48 hours. I did have a decent amount though, and definitely plan to do a post compo version. I’ve already got a lot of new room ideas, so expect more in the future! But for now, I’m done!

I’ve added a kitten easter egg. If you encounter the kitten, you can make it follow you around for the rest of the game.

With just 6 hours to go, I’m going to spend the rest of the day adding menus, an endgame, and possibly some simple sounds.

Kitty!

So, after a good night’s sleep after the theme was announced, I scrapped my original crappy idea, and came up with a new one! Unfortunately, a final exam during the day, and a trip to NYC that took 4 hours slowed my progress and I’ve only just done any significant work tonight.

The premise is just to have a bunch of small rooms with variations of things that happen in life. The theme, alone, fits in with most of the rooms, such as repelling others, being completely alone, and even building (and breaking) relationships.

SOLITUDE: The starting room for every round.

All the rooms are randomly generated, and I’m currently spending the rest of the weekend just adding more and more types of rooms, to make each play-through unique.

For now I don’t what I’ll call the game, but I’m leaning towards Solitude (the name of the starting room), or Alone In A Crowd (another of the rooms).

With just 18 hours left, and the fact that it is almost 3:00 am here, I’m going to get some sleep, and tackle the rest of it tomorrow.

The Game Development Club at my college recently acquired a dedicated room. So, naturally, we’re all going to jam together! We’ve got 4 participants so far and hopefully more to come!

Ryan and my laptop.

Other side of the room

This will be my 4th Ludum Dare and it is looking to be my best yet. Besides having a final exam midday Saturday, I’m completely free the whole weekend until Monday night. No excuses for not competing this time!

Also, the Game Development Club at my school recently acquired our own dedicated room on campus, so hopefully we’ll all be jamming together there.

I’ll be using:

Language: ActionScript3

Library: Flixel (and possibly Flixel Power Tools)

IDE: FlashDevelop

Sounds: sfxr

Graphics: Gimp

I’m wrapping it up now because I have some stuff to do tonight and I figure I’ll just submit what I have so far, since I won’t be able to get much more done anyway. Overall it was a great weekend (even though my end product didn’t have anything to do with escaping!) Good Luck to the rest of you finishing up!

Arachnid Escape: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=1022

yummmmm

Lunch Break! Turkey burger and falafel chips

I’ve got every thing ready for tomorrow night! Got my index cards, sharpies, notepads, and even got my wacom out (probably won’t use cause I always do pixel art).

this is a desk.

I’ve also set up my music playlist for the weekend. 20 hours of LD soundtrack

this is a music.

All that is left is I have to stock up on more food after I get home from work tomorrow.

This is will be my fourth attempted Ludum Dare (excluding miniLDs), and hopefully my second successful one.

Code: ActionScript 3, Flixel, FlashDevelop

Graphics: The Gimp

Sound Effects: sfxr

Time Lapse?: Chronolapse?

I’m going to have to drop out early. It seems like a repeat of last year in LD16 (even the theme). I didn’t come up with a good game idea for this theme until now so I just started about an hour ago. Unfortunately this theme and my idea are both lacking motivation for me (not to mention the fact that I have a Calculus 2 final on Monday I still need to study for). I thought I had the time but I simply don’t. Good luck to everyone else though!

It’s been a while since I last competed in a Ludum Dare compo (LD 17 8 months ago), but I finally have time to compete again and I can’t wait!

I’ll be programming in C++ using SDL for graphics, sound, and input. I’m using Gimp for art, and probably sfxr for sounds.

Good luck to everyone who’s competing or jamming this weekend!

My game, Blow Da Bricks, has been public on Kongregate and in other places, embedded with MochAds. After less than 3 days, I have earned over $1.00 in ad revenue! I have earned $0.88 on Kongregate and $0.17 through MochiAds! I have also received a Kreds tip on Kongregate, so that totals the money I’ve made for the game at $10.61. In addition to that, I have just been approved for MochiGames publication and distribution, so hopefully I’ll see another spike in game plays and add revenue over the weekend. As for the game itself, it is currently been hovering around a steady rating and is at 2.8 on Kongregate now. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t reach 3 stars, but for my first released game, I think a 2.8 is pretty good. Head over to Kongregate and play it now, and rate it if you like it.

A while back I made a game, Hungry Hungry Castaways, for LD17. More recently, I’ve been updating it and putting a lot of polish into it. Today I announce that it is finally done and rebranded as: Blow Da Bricks! It is a fun and addicting puzzle game. I have put on MochiAds and the game is also on Kongregate. I’ll stay posted with my ad revenue, hopefully I’ll reach $1.00 by Halloween. Check it out on Kongregate. If you like it, please rate it 5 stars

Last April I entered a game into Ludum Dare for the first time. After some redesigning I started from scratch and fixed a lot of problems with it (although I still have a lot more work to do).  Although it no longer has anything to do with the LD#17 theme of  “Islands” anymore, I’m happy to say that it’s still fun (and even more so than before). I don’t have a version to release yet but I’ll be documenting my progress on my new blog, twentyonepixel, so head over and check it out!

SonnyBone says …

SOME OF MY CREW STARVED TO DEATH

I’ll miss you forever, Frank!

I love that guy. He was a last minute addition but did add a bit of humor to an otherwise morbid game.
(more…)

Hungry Hungry Castaways Postmortem

Summary of the Weekend:

On Friday night I had no idea of something to make based on islands so I decided to sleep it over. I didn’t have much when I woke up either, so around 1 pm on Saturday (15 hours in) I decided to make a simple match-3 puzzle game about collecting food to survive while deserted on an island. I decided on a selection mechanic of dragging the mouse to select the group of pieces to be cleared and collected. On and off I spent the rest of the day working on getting the game up and running, i.e. setting up the game board, creating random pieces, having pieces drop down after being cleared, etc. Then I started coding hardcore from around 6-12 pm. On Sunday I worked on scoring and the “delivery” of pieces, where after collecting a certain amount, new pieces would be dropped on the board. I hit a wall when I spent hours trying to get the game to run on other computer (which was the main cause of my failure to submit last December for LD16). I finally got through DLL hell to spend 30 minutes on some polish and visual aspects, submitting the game 3 minutes before the deadline. Over the course of the weekend I probably spent only around 12 hours of coding (plus 2-3 hours for figuring out how to distribute).

What Went Wrong:

- I did not to any pre-competition planning. I just jumped in there on Saturday without a thought. Getting the game to work on other computers was a pain, and I should’ve learned from last time not to wait until last minute to do that.

- Also related to a lack of planning, I wanted to add audio to the game, but I have never used the audio library for SDL nor have I recorded any sounds for games before. I once again should’ve handled this during the week prior to the competition.

- The scoring system was very arbitrary, and I didn’t put much thought into it. I made the minimum score for round completion too high and should’ve done some play-testing with my siblings or my friends. Also,I should have put more time and thought into a reason why when people die on the island or get weaker, you don’t need less points to continue.

- A few other things like ability to pause the game and a display of the score that is needed to finish the round would have been good additions that I never put in.

What Went Right:

- I really liked the core gameplay mechanic (drag to select) for selecting pieces, and thanks to the feedback I’ve gotten so far from fellow developers who judged my game here at Ludum Dare, and a few friends who have played the game, I have found out that other people do as well.

- I finished! This was my first time submitting to Ludum Dare (second time competing), and I’m glad I was able to get it done and enter it in the competition.

Overall I think the game came out really well. I may do a post-compo version to add a few things and fix the scoring system, and will definitely explore the drag-to-select mechanic more (hopefully sometime soon). I’d also like to thank everyone who judged my game so far (and anyone who does so over the next week and a half).

(If you haven’t played the game, here is the entry page)

If you tried playing my game, Hungry Hungry Castaways, and it would not run, it was probably because you did not have the Visual Studio Redistributable. I have fixed this now so you shouldn’t need it to run the game. If it still won’t work try downloading the Visual Studio Redistributable.

This was my second LD attempted and I came out pretty strong this time (hell, I actually submitted my entry this time…with 3 minutes to spare). I was pressed for time and didn’t think I would even do it but I did. Some big things that sucked:

I didn’t like the theme, so I couldn’t come up with anything for a while, and didn’t start until 1 or 2 pm on Saturday.

I didn’t post any progress, screen shots, desktop shots, anything. I definitely won’t do that next time.

I waited until the last minute to go through DLL hell. I didn’t even know how to distribute last LD, and didn’t learn from last time and do some tests during the week. That was good ol’ procrastination making me suffer again. I could have spent some more time cleaning it up but that took a backseat until 20 minutes before the deadline.

Anyways…here it is…a puzzle game called Hungry Hungry Castaways.

GOLD!!!

Well this weekend was great. I had a great time working on my first Ludum Dare and can’t wait to compete again! Although the weekend had its ups and downs, it was a great experience. However I was not able to actually deploy my game on time as an official entry, due to some stupid timing and unpreparedness on my part. My game is practically complete though, and I will post it up later in the week, as well as a description of how my first LD went, what went wrong, what went right, and what I will do to make the next LD a success.

Good luck to everyone who has submitted an entry!