Well, it’s half-time for the competition, and until 5 minutes ago I had nothing to show, due to a stupid bug caused by an uninitialised variable. Fortunately, I’ve just fixed that, and I now have a screenshot. It’s not much, but the underlying mechanics are (mostly) there, so there’s not that much more to do before polishing.

Well, I’m in again – but this time I’m going to try and actually make a game. I’ll be entering the Solo competition, but I may go either with Java or C++.

Language: Java/C++
Libraries: My own engine (see my posting history if you really want to)/SDL 2.0
Graphics: GIMP (if I had more time, I would enter the Jam and ‘recruit’ an artistic friend)
Music: Sibelius/GarageBand (GarageBand had issues exporting last time)
Sound FX: CFXR, the Mac version of SFXR/GarageBand (it works fine for small .wav files)

Good luck, and I hope to see you all there

Polar

Well, it’s after 11pm here in the UK, and I still have virtually nothing to show. I guess I now have various graphics that can be cycled through with the ‘p’ key, and a moveable character, but that’s it – the problem was, OpenGL wasn’t working for me, so I lost all of the first day (almost, anyways) and I lost half of today because I went to see the Hobbit and then ate at a restaurant for dinner (read: not my idea, although the film was great!)
I’ll still upload it anyways, although I’m expecting last place (Wooden Spoon, anyone?), and if you can be bothered to rate it whatsoever, I’ll be really happy (even with all one-stars!)
Anyways, may the best game win (certainly not mine) -

Polar
(-:)>*

Well, there’s only a few hours left of the first day, and I’m going to have to start from scratch, as OpenGL doesn’t like my Mac Still, I’ll try and get screenshots out by tonight (ie. a couple of hours), until then I’ve got a massive coding frenzy. In other news, I lose several hours tomorrow as I’m going to see the Hobbit!

Polar

(-:)>*

Well, it’s almost exactly halfway through the first compo day, and halfway through mine, so I guess that I have to provide a progress report. Only problem is (as before) that OpenGL is incredibly annoying, and it’ll take a while before I have anything to put on screen. Good news though – I finally managed to work out Blender

Polar

(-:)>*

Well, I’m now a few hours in (the competition started at 2am here or something), and I’ve got absolutely no screenshots to upload. I’ll hopefully upload something later, but that depends on whether OpenGL will work for me or not… Hope everyone’s doing well, anyways, see you later (-:)>*

Polar

So I’ve finally woken up, and after designing a few tilesets I’ve decided I want a 3d main hub. Only problem is, I can’t use Blender and it’s all I got

Oh well, I better get on with it. Also, the idea’s a secret I don’t want anyone stealing it just yet.

Polar

(-:)>*

So I was reading all of your lovely (and mostly unoriginal) ‘I’m in’ posts, when I realised I forgot to mention my tools. *facepalm*. So, without further ado:

Language: Either Java, as last time (2D), or for a real challenge C++ and 3D. I normally use C++, but I don’t normally write games.

Environment: The Earth, especially the British countryside. On a more serious note, Xcode for C++ (Yay Macs!) or Eclipse for Java.

Graphics: Probably GIMP, as I finally got X11 working again. And because I can’t afford Photoshop, and there’s no decent graphics software for Mac. Also, I’ll be using a Sprite Editor on my iPad.

Art: What’s the difference? For me, art is the backgrounds, whereas graphics is the sprites. But for the same reasons as above, it is done as above. Making it completely indistinguishable from the graphics (i.e. Same dreadful quality)

Sounds: Probably few, if any. I’ll have to resort to using SFXR, or equivalent Mac port, and possibly GarageBand or if I’m feeling lucky Sibelius.

Music: The same to sound as art is to music. This means the same software, but the focus is much more on Sibelius because it can actually export music, unlike GarageBand.

Storyboarding: OK, this is now getting kinda stupid. But if I can fix my Bamboo tablet pen, I might try using that. Or I might not. I guess it depends on my mood.

And that’s about it. Again, good luck (and Christmas to all), and I’ll see you at the LD (-:)>*

Polar

So I’m in again, after my disastrous previous performance (which was a lot of fun!) I first entered for LD #23 and couldn’t enter the last one due to time constraints, so hopefully I’ll end up completing another game before Armageddon, this time one which works! In fact, I’ll end up missing the first third for other reasons, but hopefully it’ll all be fine. Anyways, good luck to all entering (-:)>*

Polar

TL;DR Good luck, have fun and a Santa smiley (-:)>*

Well, I’ve finished as I need to get some sleep now for tomorrow, and so I have kept the status quo by uploading my incomplete game. It’s not very good, and lacks a story/spawning world, but it’s my first game in years and has given me a new-found love for game development. The .jar and source are here:

Best of luck to everyone else! I’ll be happy if I come in the top half (unlikely) but even then I’m happy with anything but last place

Polar

Well, there’s only six and a half hours to go (of which I intend to sleep at least three and a half), so I only have three hours to go, and I already lost over 2 hours earlier (grumble…)

I’m just finalizing the crafting mechanics, and then I’ve got to add world generation (random), enemies, the boss, and a parser for a CSV file representing the boss’ lair (the only non randomly generated part). Well, I guess I’ve got to finish, as otherwise it could be me (gasp!) that means we don’t get 1000 entries!!!

Polar

Well it’s the morning of the second day now and I finally fixed my ‘World Eater’ bug – this was where my player entity randomly erased the background… permanently.

I finally have something playable – in the sense that you can lose (and not win ) – if you want to have a look, it’s here:

Instructions – Not much so far, press n, c, h, e and b to load the different worlds, arrow keys to move, and you can collect stone (press space) and die in lava

Polar

NB: Yes, I know its partially inspired by Minicraft… but it was all that came to my mind

So I’m almost at the end of the first day, and I have a nonfunctional (I couldn’t be bothered to add controls yet) sprite on the screen. My question to all of you LDers is why is there a black border around my player sprite when it is set to transparent (ie. in Gimp)?

Polar

Well, I’m four hours into the compo (of work, that is) and I’ve yet to get anything playable. I’ve spent the last hour trying to fix an error with buffer sizes and .wav files in Java, so if anyone knows how to fix that, please comment.

I’m going for lunch now, and after food I aim to have a playable game (not very playable, but still playable) within 2 hours more work…

Good luck to everyone else – it all looks amazing

Polar

Hi guys,

So I’m joining the Ludum Dare for the first time this year, and decided to announce what I’m using. First of all is to shake off some guilt for using my personal code libraries, and the rest is for a (hopelessly poor) shot at that community award.

So I’m going to be using Eclipse (ie. Java) this year (I recently weened myself off Xcode) and, as I said, my code libraries (although libraries may be a wrong term).They are derived from a book by Andrew Davidson called ‘Killer Game Programming in Java’, but don’t worry, he gives permission for anyone to use his code in the book. I’m also going to use Cfxr – the Mac version of Sfxr, Sibelius (or maybe not), and probably something like GarageBand, along with the trusty Internet (it is allowed, isn’t it…). Oh, and Gimp for Graphics.

I’m probably going to Chronolapse this as well, but not livestream it, as much as I would love too. Still, it’s set up to be a great weekend. I’ll post a link to my code tomorrow, but until then, good luck and happy programming!

Polar

EDIT: Here’s a Mediafire link to my pitiful (but useful) barebones 2D Engine: http://www.mediafire.com/?cnf9s5x96g9rdl9