Around 9pm last night I found myself working on a moody platformer with droning chiptune music and gray squares for graphics, and decided I should sit this one out.

Good luck everyone!

So it turns out I’ll have to work this weekend. I’ve figured out if I subtract work, sleep, driving, eating, and the inevitable stress-diarrhea, I have about 8 hours to make a game. That should be enough time, right?

Oh, and since I already went to the trouble to make this:

See you in 1 day, 12 hours, 48 minutes, and 53 seconds!

I didn’t have much time this weekend, so I decided to go for a short, simple game. Run around and avoid the spikes, that kind of thing. You can download it here.

I had an idea for “escape” before I even knew the theme. Now that I’ve started on some graphics, I’m not sure they will work with my idea, but whatever.

Also started on music. Nothing much yet.

I may be short on time this weekend, but I’ve had my heart set on entering LD21 for like… six days now. There’s no turning back!

I’ll be using Game Maker 8, Graphics Gale (maybe a little photoshop), MilkyTracker for music, and sfxr/bfxr for sounds.

Here’s my basecode. It’s not much, just sets up some surface scaling and GMBassmod, which I’ll use to play music. Also has some constants for the colors I’ll be using. Oh yeah, I think I’ll be doing all my graphics with this color palette:

…just because.

Good luck everybody

Everybody else is doing one of these. I want to do one too. There may be spoilers here, so if you haven’t played Don’t Go Alone, why not check it out?.

“It’s dangerous to go alone, take this:”

I wasn’t thrilled with the theme when I first saw it. I thought, “Great… old video game reference in a video game competition. THAT WILL INSPIRE NEW AND ORIGINAL IDEAS!”

Of course, it’s silly to be disappointed in the theme. Part of the fun of these things is that they provide boundaries for you to creatively hack away at. People who complain that a theme is too limiting.. probably just aren’t that creative.

It was Friday night for me when the theme was announced. My first thought was, “if it’s dangerous to go alone, why not have somebody escort you?” From there I though, “who would escort you through a dangerous forest?” Maybe a creepy stranger. Maybe this stranger could start out being helpful, but become malicious along the way.

I did not open up Game Maker right away… I don’t really see the point. Instead I opened up MilkyTracker and started composing a gloomy tune. As I was working on/listening to that, I opened up Graphics Gale and started doodling. And then I went to bed.

What Went Wrong:

My main problem was a lack of time. I had to work Saturday afternoon, so that cut a few hours. Also, Saturday was like the nicest day of the year, which made it kind of depressing to sit in front of a computer making a gloomy game.

So I did most of my work on Sunday. Which is fine, although it’s also when I came up with my best ideas. Hence, as the clock is ticking I have to resist the urge to make this game more ambitious. I added a second path through the game, and made the stranger react if you got too far away from him. Then, 30 minutes before the deadline, I realized I hadn’t created any ending to the game. I made a quick still image with some fade effects for the “normal” ending. And for the ending “bad” ending, if you make the stranger angry? I used the same graphics and added a stupid caption. Art!

Graphics were kind of a mess. For my two main characters, I had ZERO animation. Yet for a single enemy (the big wolf-gorilla gate that shoots lasers), I made a big death animation. Also, the tiles are as ugly as can be. I left out a lot of details in order to get the game done on time. For future LD games I might just throw in some auto-tiling scripts.

What Went Right:
In spite of my time crunch issues and my half-assing of things, a lot of things went well. On the technical side, I learned that GameMaker’s built in pathfinding stuff actually is pretty cool if you know how to use it. It certainly saved me a lot of time. Music and sound were easy, and probably the most enjoyable part of this whole thing. Sfxr definitely made things easy, and I know it well enough that I can petty much get it to do what I want. I’ve been using MilkyTracker for years (and Fast Tracker II for years before that), so I can churn out some decent music in half an hour.

Now What?

I like the basic idea of this game. I think I’ll focus on polishing the graphics… Work on the tiling and give the characters some real animations. After that… who knows? Once I finish something I’m usually sick of looking at it, so I don’t see myself expanding on this idea anytime soon. But I do think it has potential.

If you still haven’t played Don’t Go Alone, please check it out here and tell me what you think.

Six hours left and I’ve got about half the level design done. I also fixed every bug I know about, but I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch. Here’s a playable build:

Download Demo (Windows)

Let me know what you think! Also, let me know if something doesn’t work.

I didn’t do much last night, and today I was outside most of the time because it’s FUCKING BEAUTIFUL outside. Also I had to work this afternoon. SO I’m pretty far behind but I do have some progress to show.

First screenshot!

Got some snakes. Also have an npc that follows the character. Game Maker’s built in pathfinding is shitty, but it will have to do. I did try out some of my own lazy pathfinding code, in which my npc would just step toward the character and bounce off walls, but that looked stupid. SO I’m using Game Maker’s motion planning stuff, and the npc MOSTLY follows the player… Although he sometimes snaps back to the beginning of a path, and sometimes he just wanders off the screen like a retard. But HEY I’m making a game and it’s fun!

Also made some music last night… In fact, that was one of the first things I did after I saw the theme. If I decide to post a video later you’ll hear it. I’m going to add some enemies and build more of the map tonight, and then tomorrow I should have most of the day free so maybe I can FINISH this thing.

Oh, and my screen just flickered a few times. Maybe the power will go out.

Yeah, I’m ready for my second LD48. I’ve got Game Maker, GraphicsGale, MilkyTracker, BFXR, a computer, food, beer, and time– and I know how to use most of those things. Let’s go make games.

I saw “industry” and thought “baby factory”. So… yeah…

Island Hermit Hop

Here’s what I have so far. I need to come up with some gameplay ideas.

Island Hermit Hop!

I didn’t have any ideas when I saw the theme last night. This afternoon I decided on a little island-hopping platformer. So far I have a guy who can jump around and swim. I think it needs sharks.

Excited as all hell, too! I have homework and other stuff to do this weekend, but I’m going to make the time to create something. The tools:

Game Maker 7 – For game making
Graphics Gale – For graphics galing
Sfxr – For sfx
MilkyTracker – for music

Let’s do this!