I had an interesting time this LD. I made two demos of different games and completed neither.

First, “Catch the Apples” was a remake of one of the microgames from the original WarioWare, but expanded into its own game. For reasons that should be obvious, this turned out to not really be worth the kind of lovely art I had in mind for it.

The other game was “Plink”, a shmup with geometric graphics and very simple gameplay. I wound up running into my natural weekend laziness and then technical problems (my laptop has been freezing randomly lately ) so I couldn’t finish it in time for the jam.

I gained something, though. I gained the knowledge that I can get something working, and that doing so is the most important part of this process. I have a habit of getting lost in boilerplate and features that I don’t need yet. Part of that is a tendency to put off making artwork. I’m starting to make artwork much more promptly and actually get the thing working in a timely manner now.

I have a game in the works which I will sell on Flash Game License. I’m more confident than ever that I can finish since I’ve been reminded that I can actually make a working game.

I might have failed to finish this LD, but I got the knowledge that I can actually do this. I proved to myself that this doesn’t have to be a pipe dream.

I wish I had finished, of course. However, I can finish my current project instead. It’s a pretty nice project that will hopefully work out well for me.

Peace, love, and hope,

- Henry

I have had HaxePunk recommended to me by a few people here and there, and now that I’ve done enough to get it (seemingly) working, it seems like I should use it.

So, I’m going back to my roots of having no idea what I’m doing.

That’s right! I’m going in with minimal experience. Ludum Dare is at its best (for me at least) as a trial-by-fire. The struggle of learning under that kind of pressure keeps it fun for me.

I’m not completely without knowledge, though. I’ve done plenty of things with FlashPunk (which HaxePunk is a port of) and I’ve used Haxe a little bit before (though it’s certainly been a while since I last used it), so I kind of have some idea. Kind of.

As for the type of game…

I want to make a shmup. I love shmups. They are probably my favorite genre of game. Kenta Cho’s shmups are some of my favorites. I also like Danmaku (aka “bullet hell”) shmups since they are nice and challenging. I also love to destroy lots of stuff, and shmups are generally pretty good for that.

So, with all that said…

- Henry

(Edit: Put some tags on this post, that’s all.)

Y’know, Flixel hasn’t updated in quite a while. It seems kinda dead.

I’m thinking of using Axel instead.

I’m going to be playing with Unity in the coming days, but I definitely don’t think that I can do something with it in the 72h of the jam.

So… yeah, I’m switching to Axel.

I also might use Gimp for my graphics since I can’t get anti-aliasing to work in Stage3D so my vector art looks really bad when it rotates. After all, when you export an SVG into a PNG, you end up with a raster image with smoothing baked into it, not a vector image in PNG format.

Anyway, good luck to all entrants!

Also, potato is not a good theme. Just wanted to point that out.

I have the concept for the first game of Warmup Weekend Madness. It’s a tower defense game where instead of towers, you have tanks that you can order to move around.

There will be nine types of tanks and about that many types of enemies.

I might take time after the development deadline to polish it up a bit, but otherwise I am giving myself only twelve hours.

This game will be the one that I submit as my formal warmup game.

I will be posting demos as I make progress!

Tower defense with tanks? Sounds good to me!

- Henry

Edit!

Hey, I forgot to say when I’m starting and finishing this!

I’m starting at 10AM EDT (2PM GMT) and finishing at 10PM EDT (2AM GMT). If I feel that I need more time to polish before putting it on Kongregate, well, I’ll take that time!

I’ve calmed down a bit since my last post and have decided to amend my rules slightly.

Firstly, I’m going to lengthen my time limit for my games. I’ve realized that six hours isn’t enough to do most ideas justice, so I’m going to give myself twelve hours instead. I know that’s kind of wimping out of doing this “hardcore style”, but I have realized that I would definitely burn myself out if I tried to do six-hour sprints.

Also, I will settle for one game each day, since twelve hours is only enough for that if I sleep during each night. This means that I’ll have at most three or four games for this weekend. I think I can live with that.

That being said, the games will still be submitted to Kongregate and I’ll still provide updates on each game’s progress.

I’m not too ashamed about backing down from some of the extreme things with this self-challenge. I think it’s better for me to be more reasonable than for me to wear myself out before LD even starts.

Okay, maybe not too hardcore

- Henry

So, warmup weekend, eh? It’s that time of three-times-a-year again, everybody!

So let’s see here…

I know what I can do! I can try to make lots of games really quickly and put them on Kongregate!

I once made a game in six hours, after all. Hell, I once made a game in less than that! I can do this!

So here’s the plan for me:

• Make multiple games each day
• Each game must take at most six hours to make
• Between games, I will take an hour-long break and will make a progress post with links to some of the games
• Most games will be submitted to Kongregate
• I will keep a separate count for games completed and games submitted to Kongregate and will post both numbers in progress posts
• I will start at noon EDT (4PM GMT) on Friday, April 19
• I will stop when I feel like it and not a moment sooner

Going in hardcore style, yo!

- Henry

So here’s a realization that I had about being an indie game developer, and it hit me when I was about to open up a project that I had no strong feelings for and wished I hadn’t started.

We indies get to make games that AAA developers don’t.

Stuff about quirky indie games and why we get to do them follows the break!

(more…)

In my “I’m in” post, I forgot to talk about my tools.

Well, here ya go:

• IDE: FlashDevelop
  
• Libraries: Just Flixel
• Graphics: Inkscape or GIMP, depending on what I make
• Sound: BFXR or Audacity, depending on my willingness to make noises
• Music: Haha! Maybe after the crazy deadline!
• Platform: Adobe Flash Player version 10+

Yep, I’m still rocking Flash, even as HTML5 slowly rises to be its rival. Flash is still the most viable option at the moment, with Unity being overkill for many games and HTML5 having issues with inconsistency between browsers. Flash’s days are numbered, but it has lots of them left.

As far as the type of game I want to make, well…

I want to make a non-violent game. I’ve sort of been fascinated by the idea of games with mechanics other than combat, especially when they don’t have combat at all. So, I’m going to make a game without combat if I can make one fit the theme.

That being said, I’m looking forward to this jam. Oh, yeah, I’m doing the jam (72h) instead of the compo (48h), like I usually do.

This is going to be fun. I hope so, anyway.

I’m definitely in for this LD.

If I remember correctly, I sat the last one (December 2012) out, but I’m ready this time.

I went through a time where I was emotionally exhausted. I couldn’t get myself to work. But…

Well, now I’m ready again. I took some time to rest. The thing that has me ready again, though…

My family has been going through tough times and needs me to have an income to support the household. I have yet to actually make any money, but I’m motivated again. It forced me to find the will to work again.

I’m not going to talk about what I’m doing at the moment (I usually do, but not this time), but I will say that I’m in for Ludum Dare this month.

I’m excited about this again. I’m excited about game development again. It’s hard to explain. I want to do this again.

I’ve been passionate about games for a long time, and I’m ready to get back into making them. Not only is it my (self-employed) job, but it’s my craft, my trade, my profession, my freakin’ passion in life.

Trying again, and again, and again. We can only succeed if we keep trying and never give up. I guess this is a weird place to say that, but it’s something I want to communicate. It’s easy for some of us (myself included) to lose hope and feel like there is no way to accomplish our goals. To succeed, we must believe that there is hope.

I’m starting to ramble a bit here, and I apologize for that.

That said, good luck to everyone who is entering Ludum Dare this month. I think we could all use some now and then.

My Mini-LD game is one that I started but never finished.

It was a one-button game titled “Foxy Ninja”, which I’m renaming to “Mini Ninja”.

In it, you play as a ninja who has to perform various tasks to infiltrate a castle and kill the samurai that killed your master.

The game will feature the following player actions:

• Walking and jumping
• Walking and sprinting
• Walking and stopping
• Charged-up jumping
• Throwing shurikens (ninja throwing stars)
• A final boss fight

It will feature the following obstacles:

• Holes in the floor
• Spike floors
• Retracting blade traps
• Laser traps
• TNT boxes
• Enemy ninjas
• Final boss

I will post more about this as I go and will be uploading it as a demo (and eventually a finished game) on Flash Game License as I progress.

I’m finally getting somewhere. There’s a bunch of underlying structure code (for example, parts being attached to each other) that isn’t visible in this screenshot and I’m going to come up with a better background than the default Unity background color, but it’s a thing. On the screen.

Wow, this is going pretty slowly. Hahaha!

I have two sprite sheets done for the boss. One is for the body parts and one is for the weapon parts.

Body parts for the bosses.

Weapon parts for the bosses.

The red weapons always aim toward the player (which is AI-controlled), the orange weapons aim toward the mouse pointer, and the yellow weapons stay at a fixed angle. That should make managing the weapons fairly easy.

The boss (which you control) will move automatically back and forth, leaving you to focus on the weapons.

I have some in a Unity project, but I’m taking a break right now. Next, I’ll get a boss thing assembled and working!

My game will be a boss rush shmup with a twist; you control the boss and the AI controls the player. Everything except that will look like a normal shmup.

The objective will be to get the player to lose all of its lives trying to beat you. If you lose, the player gets to the next level and you try again with a different boss. If the player beats the final boss, you lose.

I think that might have been confusing, but it’s 7:26AM while I’m writing this and I woke up about 2 minutes ago.

Are you ready? Are you ready to make this dream come true?

I’m excited for the jam. Very excited.

I’m probably going to make something very simple. Something like a microgame which I can expand into more of a minigame.

As for Staraga (my LD warmup game), I’m going to continue with it after the jam. I wound up doing other things this week, but after the jam (and possibly polishing my entry after the jam) I will get back to work on it.

I’m very optimistic. I kind of have to be at this point; it’s what’s keeping me going after all of this failure.

Day one is – for the most part, at least – over for Staraga. It was not a productive day.

I have the player’s ship in a Unity applet and it moves with the arrow keys. That’s about it.

Here is what I will (I mean it, I will do these) do tomorrow:

• Enemies with movement and Galaga-style dive-bombing
• Enemy and player death
• Enemy wave spawning
• Items
• Player weapons

I’m hoping for the best tomorrow. I really am.

Regards,

- Henry

So I have my warmup game idea. It’s going to be a remake of Galaga with some extra features. The title – as the title of this post suggests – will be “Staraga”.

The extra features will be:

• Individual enemy movement behaviors (that is, more than the entire wave moving left and right)
• Multiple weapons (both guns and missiles)
• Bosses

I will be making it in Unity using the Orthello 2D framework. I hope that I can get it fairly polish (even if that takes after the time limit I have set for myself) and then put it on Flash Game License for sale.

I am giving myself from noon EST on the 7th to noon EST on the 10th to complete this game, but I will take more time for polish if I need to.

Are you ready? I sure am!

Edit: Woops! I meant on the 7th, not the 6th!

I’m doing the LD warmup weekend! Yeehaw!!

I need a break from my current project. It’s not going fast enough for me. I’m going to enter the warmup jam to speed things up for me.

I haven’t decided what to make yet, but I’ll post again when I have an idea!

So I lost track of time and missed out on the Charity Game Jam aka this month’s MiniLD.

I’ve been working, but I won’t make promises yet.

The December 2012 Ludum Dare is coming up, and you can bet that I’m in for that!

I’ve been playing with Unity and the Orthello 2D game framework. As I’m writing this, I’m installing Unity 4.0 in the hopes that using it with the latest version of Orthello will fix some technical issues that I had.

For the LD, I might make a Retro Remake of a game that fits the theme or put a theme-related twist on an unrelated classic game.

That being said, no promises yet. Well, okay, it’ll definitely be a web game. I can say that for sure!

Well, I’ve got something going, it has a development schedule (not a complete one, but I’m waiting to see how ahead or behind I get), but it occurs to me that I might want a break.

Thinking about that, I stumbled on the idea of polishing my miniLD entry (of course, miniLD hasn’t happened yet) for sale on FGL. It’d take quite a bit of polish, but taking a break from the game I’m working on now would be nice by that time.

Oh, and the game I’m currently working on should have a demo up on FGL some time next week.

For those who don’t know, “FGL” stands for “Flash Game License”, which is a website where you can auction off licenses to Flash, Unity, and HTML5 games.

I’m going somewhere. Not fast, but I’m going somewhere.

After getting over the depressed mood I had over not finishing the October Challenge, I decided that I want to try redeem myself by at least giving a real effort in the Mini-LD this month.

I’m not sure what I’ll make, to be honest, but it’ll be something simple.

I’ll probably use Unity for it, too.

This isn’t the end for me, not even close.