Okay, so it’s time for a post mortem of Someone To Love! There’s also a timelapse, if you didn’t see it. Let’s dive right in – what went right and wrong, and what lessons are to be learned from my experiences during this Ludum Dare!

What went right.

• Graphics. I mean, I usually think very little about my art skills, but this time I feel that my approach was perfect (for me, at least). I’ll admit that simplicity wasn’t something I thought of at first, but at some dead end while coding, I figured I could as well create the graphics. I used a total number of 6 colors, the main being white, with cat being 10×10 pixels and human 10×24 pixels. Then I used FlxG.camera.color to change color tint of the scene, depending on the distance between player and the human. I usually tend to overdo things, so this simple solution (achieved after many hours of experimenting with other options) is brilliant according to my standards. Like the last time, at the beginnig I used placeholder graphics, which is always a great idea and I recommend it to everyone.
• Music. Wolfram Tones. That’s it. Go, check it out if you don’t know this. I’m actually really interested if it’s possible to use this generated content in a commercial game – anybody got any info on this? I mean, I understand the technology is copyrighted, but I don’t think that this also aplies to generated music (I mean, Wolfram doesn’t have rights to every CA there is, does it?).
• Flixel. I have issues with this piece, so read on below. Here I can write that Flixel is a great framework, especially if this is your first contact with AS3, and especially if this is your first contact with game programming framework. Automaticly done collisions, very simple map loading, many options, Flixel Power Tools for GREAT effects and much, much more.
• Mood. I like the overall design of the game, the colors and cat monologues, and the direction it was heading when it was time to finish. I like that there are endings, and that there’s a few of them (last time I didn’t have time to make an ending for my game). It’s definitely not flawless, though – read on, below.

What went wrong.

• Over-coding stuff. I didn’t have any idea regarding the theme, so I started programming some kind of platformer. I wasted a lot of time on nice effects when player leaves world bounds, only to design level in such a way that it’s impossible. I prepared my object model to be very flexible, but in the end it was a waste of time, because I didn’t need this flexibility.
• Flixel. Yeah, when you’re used to programming, doing it with Flixel may be pretty crazy non-intuitive. I mean, collisions are done automagically for you! I know this speeds up the developing process, but this wasn’t something I expected, and made me scratch my head a couple of times (what if I wanted to do something non-standard? – at the end, I stuck to the simple things). I think Flixel’s general design is best if you know what kind of game are you making, and the physics at least resemble something common, like platformer, shot’em up, top-down movement, etc. If you need something else, you CAN program collisions yourself, but this wasn’t clear for me at a first glance – however, this might be due to my idea of learning the framework on-the-fly, during LD event.
• DAME. Well, I definitely want to use it in the future – it’s just that using it during this LD’s was way too much for me to learn. In the end, I did my level design in paint.
• Design. I should’ve cut the platformer elements to the minimum, so that finishing the game would take more like 3-5, not 15 minutes. If someone wanted to see all five endings, he would need to waste way too much time, going again and again through the same story. Yep, didn’t think about that. The worst part is that the level is completely static – so if someone wants to try bringing more fish to the human, or find the special item, he always needs to go up the platforms, using the same path. This is much more boring when trying to see other endings.
• No balancing. That’s mostly why it’s so unnecessarily long. I should know better – I played my game a few times. Now I’ve got some ideas how to make it better: have randomized parts of the story, change level design every time a fish is brought to the human, or at least make time between events much shorter. Also, replaying the game could be much easier, as everyone who will play it more than once, do it only to see other endings.
• I’m not even gonna write about eating, drinking too much coffee and bad time management. It was bad.

Things to consider.

• Are you doing art/ story game? Make it SHORT. As in “5 minutes short”. If you have more than one ending, or some additional things for player to uncover, it can be even shorter, because it can easily be played many times.
• Is ANY KIND of gameplay good for your idea? Do you need that platformer-style gameplay, with enemies, bullets and things to do, if you’re creating a STORY game, or maybe “some kind of interaction” would be enough? Don’t overdo things!
• Is learning stuff during LD event good for you? If you love it, like me – here’s a suggestion. Pick the stuff you want to learn – do some research before LD and check if the amount of stuff to learn suits you. It’s BAD to waste TOO MUCH time on learning, when you’re supposed to create a game.
• Very low-res pixel-art is GOOD. Easier to create, but still recognizable. Manipulating color from inside the code can give great effects. Learn some simple graphical tricks to make your game even more appealing!
• If you’re programming in AS3, learn to incorporate TweenLite/TweenMax into your framework. It’s GOOD.
• MUSIC changes the mood of your game astonishingly. Use anything you can use – be it Wolfram Tones or any other generator, or whatever. For instance, I’m quite sure that without that ambient music, my game would be much, much worse.

Okay, that’s all folks. Big thanks to everyone who motivated me during my development, I’ve had a GREAT time and YES, I WILL PARTICIPATE AGAIN, and again, and again… forever! Last time was Flashpunk, this time – Flixel, so next time… don’t know yet!

Here’s my 48 hour timelapse. Postmortem is coming soon! In the mean time, you can check out and rate my entry: Someone To Love.

Hey guys!

I managed to finish my game, Someone To Love. Timelapse is on the way, as well as a decent post mortem, but I thought I’ll share some first thoughts, fresh from my crazy mind, after about 5 hours of sleep.

Read more below.

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Well, this could’ve been predicted: my game is leaning towards “kittens” theme. I mean, what could be more “moody” than a game about poor, sad kitten looking for home? I almost wanna cry myself.

I must say, I am actually satisfied with my pixel art, but sadly, there’s no gameplay yet. However, after creating my 10x10px kitten with animations and all that stuff, I really would like to be able to finish this game.

Also, my code is becoming awful. Don’t get me wrong, I love learning on the fly – but there’s no beauty in whatever comes out of it. I mean, this here is definitely a matter of my little experience with Flixel game programming model, and a lesson to be learned – I need to create games more often!

I know, this doesn’t look very fancy – but at least my code feels much better organised than in the last LD. I will probably scale down the graphics as much as possible, and I don’t think I will finish the full game mechanic before going to bed, but there’s still a chance it will turn into something good. I hope so!

Btw. thank God for the Flixel community…

Well, nothing special comes to my mind. I mean, I have some vague ideas, but yeah, I voted (-1) on “Alone” theme. Most good ideas are already being done by some of you guys.

This is going to be some kind of platformer, but I’m not sure yet. Learning Flixel on the fly is actually going pretty good, for now (its a very good framework for fast prototyping). I think besides Flixel Power Tools, I’ll be also using TweenMax (if I will be able to learn it, that is).

I’m quite certain I will run into trouble later, though. :]

Nothing special about my basecode, just a very simple Flixel (with Flixel power Tools) project for FlashDevelop with very basic directory structure. Sadly, I had no time to any proper preparations during this week, so it’s gonna be “learning on the fly, baby” – just like the last time with Flashpunk! I’m gonna be proud if I finish anything at all.

I’ve just gathered all important tutorials and documentations in one Firefox window, hoping it won’t crash. Now waiting for the theme announcement and… going to sleep (it’s just after 2 a.m. here). Good luck, everyone!

I will try to reserve a decent amount of time this weekend, as I really need to get a break from my daily job (mostly C++). Of course I didn’t have time to prepare, but hey – maybe that’s for the best. It would seem LD48 is very good for me anyway – I learn a lot of new stuff in 2 days. So… Last time I used AS3/Flashpunk without any reasonable knowledge nor preparation and it wasn’t that bad, so this time I’m gonna try Flixel, unless something really bad happens and I won’t have any time to learn it – in such case I hope to finish anything using FP.

Like the last time, I will be doing a timelapse and a postmortem, and maybe some progress posts! Oh yes, and my desk photo (well, at least the most important part of it) can be seen on the right.

Language: AS3 (Flixel/Flashpunk) (haXe has to wait for more time)
Gfx: GraphicsGale, inkscape, Paint .NET
Sfx: bfxr, Audacity, maybe wolfram tones?

Please, vote for something decent!

Rating entries is a damn hard job. I know many of you think very little about rating or even openly hate it, but IMHO this seems to also be an important part of LD. Especially commenting on people’s entries, giving some feedback to the community, some constructive criticism. And yet, I can still see many users with 0% coolness. There are 427 (71.29%) people with coolness under average of 3.523% and 190 of them didn’t rate any games… Why is that? I know everybody has a life and so on, but come on! You CAN rate at least 6 games or so! I mean, I’m not expecting everyone to leave their lives and rate games, but honestly – if someone has found the time to participate in LD, he or she should also participate in the voting (or at least commenting) process, even if just a little.

I spent on this more than a few days already, just trying to rate as many games as I can, because for a few days I’m not going to rate anything, as I’m gonna be without internet access (sounds horrible, I know).

A few days ago I was pretty bored and wrote a small program in Python to analyze stuff and help me pick games to rate faster, as I find the webpage with entries a little lacking. And because I like numbers and plots, too. Since I noticed that many of LD participants still have coolness around zero, I figured I could share this thing – maybe it will mobilize some of them to give some feedback. Or will be useful in any other way.

So, feature-wise, the script parses LD webpage with your ratings and generates a html file looking like this:

Here are the links:

• Windows binary package (py2exe) + source (tested on Win7 64bit) (py2exe site says it probably needs this)
• Python source only (clean Python 2.7.2, only native Python library dependencies)

Usage:

• Login onto the Ludum Dare site, and go to the voting page with ALL entries (not the one with screenshots, the one with all your ratings):
  http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?more=1&q=
• Save source code of this webpage to file data.htm and save it in the same direcory as analyze script/ binary
• Run the script (see README.TXT for more info anyway)
• Analyzer data is saved to log.html in current directory. Open it with Firefox or something similar
• To refresh data stored in log.html, you need to repeat this process

EscApe was my first entry to Ludum Dare and I did it mainly to learn stuff. I’ve had a lot of programming experience before, but I’ve never done any graphical games. Although I use C++, Python, PHP in everyday manner (work stuff), I decided to go with FlashPunk, having no knowledge at all about either the framework or the ActionScript 3 (besides that they exist) – but being familiar with object-oriented programming, this issue itself didn’t turn out to be that much of a problem.

I’m quite happy with my creation. I’m unhappy with the code, but I decided on developing speed, not beauty. As this is my first game, and done in only 48 hours, it feels just O.K. in my opinion (that is, I could do better, but it’s not awful).

See below for idea explanation, “what went right & wrong” and playthrough video.

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Yes, I finished! My first LD!

You can check it out here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5431

Timelapse of my work:

I’ll be posting more info later!

I figured I could share on my progress. Since “ape” is a half of “escape” , my main characters in the game are monkeys! The idea is to save them, using a primitive flying machine (anyone played “Ugh!”?).

The progress isn’t bad so far, considering that:

• this is my first graphic game ever
• I started learning AS3 + FlashPunk yesterday*
• I never used Ogmo Editor before
• I cannot draw AT ALL (hence the horrible graphics)

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I basically need some deadline to learn FlashPunk, and hope to finish something really simple. It’s my first time, so I’ll try not to feel awful if I fail.

Code: FlashPunk, FlashDevelop
Graphics: GraphicsGale / Paint .NET
Sound: bfxr / pxtone