It’s now a couple of hours past half-time, and I decided on the direction for my game. I call it “Minicraft”, since it’s obviously going to get compared to Minecraft.

Lacking is a bunch of more item interactions, more monsters, sounds, and some kind of game goal.

You can play the latest version here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/ld48/ld22/index.html
Comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated!

For some reason I decided to really limit myself technically. The screen is 160 x 120 pixels, and the only available graphics is drawing four color 8×8 pixels sprites. Each color index can be one of 240 different colors in each sprite, and the sprites can be flipped along the x and/or the y axis.

Click here to play!
(Click the applet, then use the arrow keys)
((No gameplay yet))

The idea is to make sort of a 2d Minecraft or a harvest moon clone, where you wake up on some shore and have to do the best you can with the tools you find on the island.

I uploaded a Timelapse of the Chambered to YouTube!
I recorded this at one pic every four seconds, and it ended up being about 14 minutes at 60 fps, so this video is skipping quite a few frames.

So when’s the next LD? I miss it already.

See, this is why I love Ludum Dare. I’ve worked on sooo many dungeon crawlers before, but I’ve never quite gotten around to finishing any of them. This time, the theme seemed to fit the gameplay, so I went for it. Here’s the end result:

Prelude of the Chambered

Play it! | Game entry

I recorded the entire process at one screenshot every other second, and streamed it all live. I didn’t do as much talking as I hoped I would. It’s very difficult to stay interesting when concentrating..

The first several hours were spent making the game renderer from scratch. I chose a low resolution screen with simple four bit images that can be tinted to any color, which sets the graphical tone in a nice way while still letting me draw art fast. Levels are designed as images with each color representing a different block, and the alpha channel containing the “id” information. For example, a pressure plate with id (alpha) 200 will open all doors with id (alpha) 200. I can override this default trigger behavior in the code to do more advanced pressure plate logic.

One major inspiration for this game was Link’s Awakening, which I’m currently replaying again on my 3DS, so the game world is based on a central hub with a few different dungeons you need to complete in order. In each dungeon, you find a unique item that lets you access the next dungeon, and a boss monster that drops a key. Once you have four keys, you can open the final door and win the game.

The game play ended up being slightly more action oriented than I originally thought, but that is probably a good thing. Except for a few places where you can get yourself stuck, I think it actually plays fairly well. I tried to design the levels so that there were very few wasted blocks to make the game feel tight and complex. There are two hidden trinkets per level. and usually two hidden powerups as well. All-in-all, there are six levels in the game, and even something that actually feels like a boss fight.

In the last couple of hours, I added stuff like sound (SFXR, woo) and title screens, while trying to play test the game as much as I could. I got in bed at about 5 am or so, feeling exhausted and happy.

As usual, I just barely know what I’m doing, but it’s turning into some kind of low-fidelity dungeon crawler. Next up is implementing sprites and movement.

I’m streaming the entire thing live at http://livestream.com/mojang

2:30 am. 1.5 hours left until LD #21 begins.

I’ve prepared my recording tools, set up a blank new project in eclipse, and I plan on staying up until the theme is announced. Then I’ll get some sleep and let my dreams invent games for me, and get cracking tomorrow when I wake up.
Exciting! Fun!

As usual, I will be making games from scratch in Java.
I’ll use Eclipse, Paint.net, and quite possibly SFXR.

I’m joining this weekend, I’ve sent my little “hello”-vid, and I’m super excited to see recursion on there!

I mean, without recursion, how would you explain the joke at the end of the post someone just submitted?

You can play what I managed to finish here. You can get the source code from there as well.

Well, six hours to go, it’s 9pm, and tomorrow is Minecraft Beta Day, something I probably should be well rested for. My game is nowhere near a game yet, although the game engine is pretty fun.
I’m giving up! I’ll go watch some tv, go to bed early, then check out what the rest of you managed to finish later next week!

Good Ludum, good night!

Play the current version!

I spent all of today working on just the engine. You can go up/down stairs, pick up items (actually, the engine can detect clicks on any sprite), and throw items now.

I sleep now. Tomorrow, I turn this into a game.

As usual, I’m working in Java, and I make everything from scratch. I decided to go with a purely billboarded sprite based 3d engine this time, and I’m making some kind of dungeon crawler a la Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. I’ve got much of the engine implemented, and it’s about time to start working on the actual game now.

The plan is to build game areas, and add the required game features as I go along, so I won’t implement monsters until the map actually requires monsters.

Click here to try the latest version. Use WASD + Q +E. There’s not much gameplay yet.

I’m also streaming the entire thing live here. There’s no sound because I have a cold, but there is soothing music.

I want to make a first person dungeon crawler a la Eye of the Beholder. Of course, having said that, I’ve jinxed any chances of a suitable theme winning. Making an interesting tile based first person game about evolution might be an interesting challenge..

tl;dr: vote elements!

There’s a big release the Monday immediately after LD, but I care not! I will do this!

We’ve also got a board game/ginger bread baking day planned with friends, but I still care not! Making games and eating junk takes precedence!

I will be developing my game in Java, using Eclipse.
For art, I will use Paint.net and quite possibly my wacom tablet thing + photoshop.
For sound, sfxr, of course. DrPetter is a wonderful human being for that tool.

I’ll record the entire thing using chronolapse, and stream it live on livestream.
Socially, I’ll be tweeting and hanging out in the irc channel, and I’ll try to post something on here every now and then.
Food will be fatty and salty, and there will be red bull.

Good luck, everybody! I’ll see you next weekend!

First of all, here’s the timelapse: Making Metagun timelapse

This LD was timed extremely well for me, hitting one of the few free weekends I have these days.
During the voting rounds, I hoped for Skyscrapers, so I could do a life-in-the-city simulation that I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time. Of course, it didn’t win, but instead the somewhat hard to work with “Enemies as Weapons” won. Because the theme gets announced at like 4 am my time, I was asleep when it got announced, but I managed to wake myself up at about 5 am to see what it was. I stayed up for a couple of hours, thinking about what kind of game I could make, but couldn’t think of anything interesting.

So I got some more sleep. When I got up, I almost felt like giving up. There just wasn’t anything interesting I could do with the theme. But since I had promised people I’d livestream it, I eventually got online and started brainstorming. Not long thereafter, I got the idea of having a gun that shot other people who shot back at the player. I figured it’d make for an interesting platformer mechanic if you yourself were responsible for the dangers in the level.

And strangely, after that, I never ran into any real problems. I implemented some basic physics and rendering framework, then added some graphics, and got started on level design pretty early. I added new features to the game as the levels demanded it, which both meant that new features would get introduced gradually, but also that I didn’t waste any time implementing stuff that never got used.
I felt relatively finished with the game when there was about six hours left, so I spent a few hours just polishing it and adding some fluff features like an ingame credits list and such.

I think I got a bit lucky this time around by finding an idea that fit my style pretty well, but I also felt some experience from old Ludum Dares help me guess how long certain features would take to implement.

What went right:
Almost everything went surprisingly well! I had a great flow this time.

What could’ve been improved:
As usual there is no music. But worse, the jumping still feels a bit off. I should’ve spent more time early on to really nail it.

I made it! It’s a bit difficult at times, but that’s what makes games fun, right?

You can play it by clicking here.

I’m looking forward to playing everything everyone has done, the screenshots I’ve seen sure look tasty! But first, sleep.

I woke up after about eight hours of sleep, shuffled to my computer to get an early start, and checked the LD news stream. And it was full of awesome screenshots and even cooler, screenshots of games I saw yesterday, but they look much nicer now!

You guys kick all kinds of ass!

I managed to get lots of stuff done for Metagun today, including the first mini boss fight and some basic level progression.

And sfxr is the best program ever made.

I’ve uploaded the latest version here, so you can play it:
http://www.mojang.com/compo/metagun/

I will go get some sleep now, then tomorrow I will just focus on cramming in as many screens of content as I can, adding new features and blocks as I go. There’s some pretty interesting bullet hell mechanics going on that I will probably explore further, and I need to make the title screen for the game as well.. But I feel like I’ve got plenty of time, so I’ve got a good feeling about this.

Good night, y’all’s!

You play a guy in a fodora hat who recently found a cannon that fires tiny angry brown guys. Use platforming skills and puzzle solving to beat the levels and reach the end of the game. Although almost nothing of that is in place yet.

You can play what I’ve got so far here:

Play Metagun!

First of all, here’s my setup:

I will be livestreaming the entire ludum dare here, as soon as I get started: http://www.mojang.com/live/

I had a few ideas in mind for some of the other themes, especially for skyscrapers. While I had a feeling enemies as weapons might win, I totally wasn’t prepared for it to actually DO so.
So now I’ll start by eating some food and trying to work out what game I’m making. This is going to be FUN! =D

Good luck, everybody! And have fun, for those of you in the jam!

You know what to do! Vote for it, and I’ll give you money!

(disclaimer: no money will be given)

At this very moment, I’m rising up to the challenge of my rival (if you know what I mean)!

As usual, I’ll be working in Java and Paint.net, and I’ll be making a timelapse AND streaming the whole shebang live on livestream so people can listen to me ramble more and more incoherently as the hours fly by. My meals will probably consist of red meat and pizza, possibly with some yakiniku, and I’ll be drinking coffee, red bull and water.

I know I’m setting myself up for disappointment, but I’m really hoping for skyscrapers! (or enemies as weapons..)