I made a video of SOLILOQUY, especially for Linux users which can’t use the Unity3D webplayer plugin.

(This post mortem can also be found on our own blog!)

SOLILOQY – my LD compo game – you can play it and rate it!

Ludum Dare 22 was somehow pretty exhausting for me, and kind of depressing. I don’t exactly know why, but I think that multiple factors brought in.

The weekend before the compo I made a “warm-up game”, even though I planned to do it long before PoV announced this kind of thing. I just wanted to make a game in 48 hours in order to help a friend (a 3D artist), who needed a programmer for his university project. The programming part wasn’t wasting, but the fact that the game didn’t get finished at this weekend (mostly because of my friend ) left feelings of “incompleteness” inside me, which I hate.

Another thing: I didn’t like the theme “Alone”, and I still don’t think it was the best or even a good theme of the ones in the final voting round. But, as I always have to live up to my own standards I wanted to follow the theme AND make a good game. And this often leads to a status-quo – as long as I don’t have the right ideas I won’t start, and as long as I don’t start I won’t have the right ideas. Or something like that. My mind was blocked and I did other things, like playing Skyrim and chatting on IRC (not in #ludumdare, though, that place was CROWDED). Later, I started Unity3D and tried to play out another idea I had days before, about some time manipulation gameplay. It wasn’t feasible to do it in Unity3D, but due to the fact I did something concrete (game with 3D environment and FPS controls) I could develop another idea in my brain, which became the concept of the final SOLILOQUY.

I still think the best part of my game is this name! I thought of it before I thought of the gameplay (but it didn’t give me any directions,), and I liked it so much, I wanted to use it in any case. I’m quite happy nobody else named his/her game the same, too.

Even though I have some experience by participating at Ludum Dare before, I still don’t really know how to cut back optimally. The concept of SOLILOQUY demands levels, and levels demand content and art and story and design and choosing colours and making 3D models … but I knew this would be hard for me, as it was when I made my Ludum Dare 20 game, “TRI“. So I decided to do NO textures this time, and it didn’t hurt much (on the game’s side), but the benefits weren’t that great either. I mainly put the levels together in Unity3D instead of 3dsmax (in contrast to TRI), but this didn’t help me much, either. Altogether I have six levels now, where I really wanted ten, but at least seven.
The levels don’t look that bad (abstract style for the win), even though I chose the colours quite randomly. On the other side, what I don’t like much, the levels are all tutorial missions only. You just jump around in the first two, learn using your souls in the levels after that, press some buttons and work together with yourself. After this, the real levels should come, but I didn’t have time to do any more content.

I finished the last level three hours before the deadline, and I couldn’t do any more creative stuff. I especially failed in doing sounds or anything like music, unfortunately. I thought about using inudge.net again, but it would sound like my other two Ludum Dare games, so I dropped that idea. At least this frustration encourages me to actually learn how to make simple songs with real tools. (Wish me luck.)
The reason why I couldn’t do more creative work: This time, Unity3D was my enemy. Sometimes I really had to fight the engine, mostly when it came to the text you see in the game (story & hints) – Unity’s GUI system still is awkward to look at, and it has bad effects on the performance. So I used someone’s code which displays bitmap fonts via SpriteManager (the original one), but it didn’t work out of the box with all my bitmap font generator tools (I decided to use “TWL Theme editor”). After those problems were resolved, at the very end of the process, suddenly my white text became gray in the webplayer version. Argh! I needed nearly an hour to find out why that happened – a plane with alpha (the dark overlay) had the same distance to the camera as the text, and somehow the editor sorted it differently than the webplayer. Whyever that is.

After the mixed (or even bad) feelings I had about my own game, I’m really relieved that people actually liked it! The current feedback is mainly positive, and some things that were criticized are fixed in a post-compo version (on Kongregate, for more attention)! Other things, like the jumping height / range being too crass, are somewhat subjective and unfortunately can’t be changed without rearranging some of the levels.
Of course, many people complain about the brain-hurting aspect of the game (gameplay and visuals alike), but that was expected. I could have done the double-soul mechanic with just a picture-in-picture style or something like that, but then the game would lose its uniqueness pretty fast IMHO. Also, as soon as dogbomb does his “I play your game drunk!” video, the whole game visuals will make much more sense, haha.

BTW, if you have a look at the source you will need Unity3D. The indie version should suffice for just reading the C# files and so on, but you need Unity Pro (or its 30 day test version) in order to actually start the game, because I used Render To Texture. Sorry!

Thanks for reading this wall of text, and don’t forget to PLAY THE DARN THING!

Day 1 feels like it’s already over, but I have a few more hours. I wasn’t very productive, because I don’t like the theme and it didn’t inspire me. But at least I have some kind of idea now, and did a first test:

You play two souls at the same time which have to find each other by synchronizing. You can play the first test here, it’s Unity3D.

Eating cheap spaghetti right now. FYI.

Heya,

I gave a talk in October 2011 (at the Devmania, a small-ish Hobby Gamedev Convention in Germany) about the three Ludum Dare games  I made so far, in front of ~80 people. You can watch it here if you happen to speak/understand German or just want to hear some gibberish: http://www.devmania.org/videos (scroll down to “Ludum Dare”). You won’t see my face in the video, as I was hidden behind a monitor, thank God.
Unfortunately the recording started a little bit late, so some stuff about I told about Ludum Dare is missing. But you probably know it anyway.

I’d also like to avail myself of the opportunity of announcing that “I’m in”! I’m not perfectly sure that I will really participate in LD No 22 (as the date is a little bit too near to Christmas), but at least I would like to do it.

Some shameless advertising following: At the Devmania I also created a game (theme: “Pirates”) in ~12 hours, called “Treasure Chest Island”, together with talented artist Björn Grunewald. You can now play an extended version on Kongregate. It is the first game I know of in which you play as a treasure chest, or a chest in general.

Hi,

I won’t participate in the current MiniLD (no time), but here is something to inspire you all: Parity is a Flash animation I found years ago, perhaps even before 2000 … I don’t know. Back then I found it to be pretty scary, and if you dim the lights and turn the speakers up you perhaps will know why.

It’s dated, alright, but IMHO the animation shows why sound is very important for this MiniLD’s theme.

Just wanted to tell that I did some minor updates to my LD21 game, “Bunnies, Back Into Your Cage!”. This is something I don’t do often (working on a post-compo version always was a timewaster to me) but this time it felt like it was worth it. Even though some people really HATE the controls.

Well, at least I had some fun with it.

Updates include bug fixing (no invisible blocks anymore, also no double level loading), rebalancing (especially the last level) and a new control scheme (picking/dropping blocks only with shift key now, WASD added). The latest enhancement is the addition of text which serves the purpose of a tutorial and a “story” alike. Also, someone didn’t like that falling out of the level resetted it, so this was removed too.

The updates are for the Kongregate version only, so play it there.

The Ludum Dare entry page is here – please rate it (the unaltered LD version, of course), if you haven’t already! Thanks!

“Bunnies, Back Into Your Cage!” was my second Big Ludum Dare game, so I didn’t expect anything surprising here. Of course I was wrong.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

1) Idea and tools

I began my 43 hours of game development (I woke up ca. 5 hours after the theme was announced) without any idea. I already knew I wanted to use Unity3D though (because I use it at work and made my last LD game with it), so I tried to make my concept fitting a 3D engine. After some time I had the idea of  a guy running faster and faster as long as he doesn’t hit anything concrete. If you run fast enough (e.g. after running in circles quite some time), you could break certain walls and destroy enemies. Objects would have different values to which speed they react.

So I started Unity3D and did a small prototype. One of the first problems here were the physics though. Smashing through walls only looks good with falling and tumbling pieces of trash, but physics aren’t much controllable. As soon as the player runs into something, he becomes slower. When there are many bricks (sized 2*1*1 meter or so) lying around, the player becomes slower constantly. Which is tedious and not much fun.

The lesson here: Don’t add physics unless they are part of the core gameplay.

2) Motivation

In the end, the prototype just didn’t make any fun even after some hours of work, so I started to distract myself with things on the web and IRC. Motivation was completely vanished – the fact that the theme “Escape” wasn’t really to my liking didn’t help much either. But as soon as I realized that I was more procrastinating than working on the game, I stopped. Grudgingly, I closed Unity3D.

Even though this was bad at least it led me to using Flash, with which I made my final entry: “Bunnies, Back Into Your Cage!” – a game about capturing bunnies that escaped.

3) Again, theme

My second idea didn’t fit the theme any time. I had the idea of a really minimalistic Minecraft which I would call “Pixelcraft”. From there, I began to write code, with more motivation, and at some point, the prototype was playable, and even a little bit fun.

Of course, it was missing the “Escape”.

4) Controls

The player controls were wonky from the beginning, and still are wonky. “Tedious” is the adjective I hear most as feedback to my game.
This is because everything moves/works block-wise. A block was originally meant to be pixel-sized, so this is why I chose to do the movement this way. Now, to add a little bit detail, the blocks are 8*8 pixels (they really are 32*32 pixels, but you can’t see that, hehe), and the controls feel strange. It feels like you often can’t direct the protagonist where you want him to be. Of course, I have no problems with the control scheme, but I am the creator, so this is expected.

The lesson here: Take the time to let your game test by others. They will crush your ego by pointing out all the bugs, but it will be worth in the end. I think. (Of course, the *real* problem is that in the Ludum Dare IRC channel were 330 people who all needed game testers. Try another channel or your girlfriend then. )

5) Being not Notch

With ~600 entries, not being the creator of Minecraft can draw some of the attention off your entry. You have to compensate it with marketing. And like most people, I hate doing marketing.

Lesson learned: Be notch. Top notch!

6) inudge

I like inudge, but the music sounds just like the one from my last entry. Also, there still is no way to export to WAV or MP3, so I had to record the tune with Audacity. But whatever recording method I tried, it either didn’t record or it all sounded strange and noisy. Even other recording tools made it sound like some horrible sound experiment.

The lesson learned: Sometimes, just rebooting your computer can help. It’s some kind of magic.

WHAT WENT RIGHT?

1) Flash. And FlashPunk.

I just began to love this combination, because you get results so fast. I started my second try at 18 o’clock, so I only had 34 hours left – sleeping included. Yet I came around to make full game, with levels. Cool!

2) FlashDevelop as a level editor.

This is a screenshot of my “level edtor”.

As you can see, you can edit not only rows, but also columns with FlashDevelop. This made it much easier to edit my ASCII array level definitions. Also, I am happy that I decided not to dwell into level definition files, but just hardcode the whole thing. I got levels pretty late, about 8 hours before submission, and yet it didn’t feel like “too late”.

3) Pixel art.

I often hear “nice art” or “I love the graphics” for my entry. This baffles me – everything is just 8*8 pixels. It was a piece of cake to do the graphics. I don’t even have animations, or different frames for walking left/right. OK, color selection may be a factor, but that isn’t hard to get right, either. Just choose colors with nearly the same saturation. Bang, instant good-looking art!

The lesson here: Minimalism is for teh win!

…

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to play my game!

OK, I confess, I could have posted earlier. I am not much of a blogger, so please bear with me.

I changed my plans Saturday evening, when I couldn’t see my Unity3D project any more and I just thought: “This isn’t fun!”. Instead, I stopped thinking about the theme and started FlashDevelop. I already looked into FlashPunk, but didn’t use it seriously; on the other hand, somehow I got the idea of a “PixelCraft”, a minimalistic Minecraft, and it was obvious that I should try it.

So I did this for some hours and it started to become fun. You can pick up and placing blocks, and other characters in the game follow you. It only missed the gameplay. Sunday afternoon/evening I decided that some animals escaped from their prison and you have to capture them. And that was it.

You can see the entry for Bunnies, Back Into Your Cage! here!

Graphics were done in Photoshop Elements 9, sounds in bfxr, music in inudge.

Okay, my last post was about entering Mini Ludum Dare 28 – and that was it. I tried hard to think of a simple gameplay, but couldn’t come up with it. I also developed some strange reservations towards the theme (my conscience had problems with making “war” fun, with all the suffering peoples out there, right now …).

But Ludum Dare #21 now should be interesting, nearly all the themes sound doable, although I fear that something like “Dreams” could make the entries too diverse and thus lead the compo ad absurdum.

As usual, I probably will use Unity3D (with MonoDevelop), Photoshop Elements 9, bfxr, and every other tool that will help me. I looked at FlashPunk a while ago, and if I think that the gameplay would be better in 2D, I probably would use FlashDevelop.

Well, hopefully Ludum Dare #21 will be my first Ludum Dare in the Compo, as I put my last entry (for LD#20) into the Jam. Before that, I participated in the Mini Ludum Dare #23. This time, I’ll get famous!

As a German I am not able to not participate in this Mini Ludum Dare. Thus, I’m in! But I don’t really have time for it, so I thought of a very simplistic gameplay which I hope to implement in less than a few hours. Currently I’m learning Flashpunk in my spare time – it will be used as the game engine for my little idea. Other than that I don’t know yet for certain. Probably Photoshop Elements and bfxr.

I was too lazy/stupid to make a timelapse, but at least I created some screenshots while I worked on my Ludum Dare #20 entry, “Tri”. And finally I uploaded them! Here they are.

Yesterday, shortly before the deadline and when I uploaded my game, I had no problems to classify “Tri” as a Compo entry. But after sleeping for some hours, regaining my sanity, I asked philhassey to move my entry to the Jam. It makes me sad, but using a script for the gameplay (to be exact, it’s the character controller) which is written not by me is just against the rules.

Well, okay. What did I learn from this? Think smaller! Although I still like my game it seems like it was too much (for me). Next time I will do something which doesn’t need a sophisticated first-person character controller.

What else went wrong?

The time I needed to make a level was just too long. I thought I’d be faster than two to three hours per level (including modeling, texturing, writing “story”, and of course testing), especially when they are so short. But it just happened that I am more motivated when writing the scripts, not when I have to think hard of puzzles and interesting layouts. So, next time I perhaps will make something with procedural content, something I really have to look into. Even though I don’t like Minecraft that much.

Other than that I hoped I could implement some kind of NPCs (because I like them much more than the all-knowing  narrator). But they didn’t even make much sense with my concept so they were cut out pretty soon in the process.

What went right?

I really like how my concept turned out to be actual fun! At least that’s what most of the people say who played it. Over the whole time I had “Optimize Gameplay By Restricting The Gun!” as a TODO on my list, but it wasn’t really needed. Okay, you can now place hundreds of triangles (instead of, like, only three or so) – but so what? My learning here is: FUN COMES BEFORE RESTRICTIONS. If it’s just cool to let the player do “too much”, I think time spent on finding the right numbers is not time spent right. Portal showed how to do it right by adding the Challenges as alternative ways to play some levels. (Of course,  that rule doesn’t always apply. Not every game is meant to be sandbox.)

The other thing what went definitely right is the fact that I even had time to add some sounds. Some will think I even made some music but I really just used iNudge, clicking randomly on some buttons, hehe.

Conclusion

Joining and working for the Ludum Dare is rewarding in itself, and I will definitely participate again (perhaps not #21, though). Even though some of you had problems with the theme, it just proved to be the least common denominator – over 300 entries? Just wow!

For me, it really was cool that this theme got the most votes – I had the basic idea for my game in the night the LD started (4:00 am – I slept), and the next morning I found out it fit perfectly!

Thanks for reading!  Here is a bonus screenshot from my game, Tri (talking about too much force field triangles):

Nonetheless, I uploaded my game in the last minute possible, probably in the minute after that minute. Look at the entry here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-20/?uid=3663

Play it here:  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10650964/Tri/WebPlayer/index.html

… if I can finish it. I need much longer for a level than I thought, and that’s really bad for motivation. Initially I wanted to have more than five levels, and now I wonder if I even get to this number.

Gameplay was cut down, too, and several bugs are still there. Worst part is the FPS character controller (inbuilt Unity) which has a severe bug that destroys my gameplay (it allows to slide up(!) a slope if you jump on it). Meh. Of course, scripting my own controller is out of question. I once wrote a character controller as part of my diploma game project – it needed two weeks alone and still doesn’t work perfectly.

Well, at least I can provide you with a screenshot. Take this, it’s dangerous to go without one!

First, a cryptic screenshot:

As I said, I am going into the “Portal” direction. Without portals, of course, but ego perspective and environmental puzzles will be in it. (Which means that I will have to make some levels, ugh.) The gameplay is finished now, at circa 80% (hopefully the Pareto principle won’t hit me here).

I will go to bed soon and tomorrow work on minimalistic graphics, levels, story, and perhaps sound and music (even though I’ve never done that, but maybe there will be time for it).

You probably noticed that I didn’t tell anything about the game’s gameplay. There is not much to tell, you get a device which looks like a gun, and have to overcome obstacles to reach the exit of every level. At least that’s the plan for now. I don’t want to do the obligatory robotic voice which tells you what to do, maybe I add some NPCs.

I think I’m going for a Portal-like game, at least that’s the rough idea for now. The “this” in “Take this!” is the -Whatever- Gun it will provide you with.

Just saying. Only 1 day 19 hours 50 minutes left? Argh! Still have to buy snacks and so on …

Yes, the Ratking will also be part of the Ludum Dare #20, at least if His other plans will be successful and He will have the time for it.

He then will use Unity3D Pro, because He created His Mini Ludum Dare #23 entry with it and was very pleased with the result. Other tools are not decided yet, but there will probably be no sound. It will be a game for deaf people! Ahem.

Good luck to you all!

Edit: Other than Unity3D I will probably use iTween, Photoshop Elements 9, 3dsmax 2012 (Trial Version).

Only 5 levels (+ 3 tutorial levels), but I just don’t have the energy to do more.
Music was found here. The music is also the reason why the game is over 3MB big. Sorry!

You can play the final version here.

“1930″ was made with Unity3D, in less than one day (I started on Sunday). The gorilla was made by my team partner Jana.

This is a WIP post. I don’t know if I will be able to complete the game, but at least I wanted to try it.

Initially, I wanted to name the game “1933″, because this is the year King Kong got his first movie. But this year is just too connected with Hitler’s Third Reich, so I called it “1930″ instead, because of the Chrysler Building which was build in this year and was the tallest building on the world at this point.

Ok, here is a screenshot:

At the beginning of the game you will be presented a path of houses, to one last house (will be marked with a star or something like that later). You will then have to follow that path from your memory.

Controls is mouse + left mouse button for jumping. (The longer you hold the button, the bigger the jump is. This is not used in the current testlevel.)

Play the WIP-version here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10650964/1930/1930.html

No win-situation yet.