http://rialgar.de/LD26/

Click the green thing on the right to make green metaballs, everything else is automatic. Waiting longer tends to be better. The Goal is to conquer the targets that pop up from time to time.

So usually I get playable stuff early and fancy stuff later, but this time it’s different. Because I just wanted to play around with shaders and procedurally created 2D Graphics, I have some fancy looks, but your interaction possibillities are quite limmited. You can give it a try anyways.

I am not quite sure what to add, yet. I came up with some possibilities.

• Let you spend points for upgrades, the AI would NOT do this, but a certain amoint of points would mean winning, so you need to spend carefully to avoid the AI winning while you are building up.
• Let you influence the creation in more detail: e.g. hammering space makes it a little faster.
• Let you influence the balls themselfes by attracting them to the mouse/pushing them from the mouse – this would be mean disabling the aiming for the target for the player.

I would really appreciate any thoughts on that.

Obviously, whatever I go for has potential for multiplayer, because it is symmetric. However,  I am not experienced in establishing multiplayer games, especially as there is some randomness involved in the movement, so this will likely not happen in the compo.

Rommate made pizza! What you see here is a piece of pure awesome deliciousness. (I know, it looks way simpler, but trust me, it is)

And now: ONWARD: to make a game!

Metaballs

http://rialgar.de/LD26/

No interactivity, yet, but 200 metaballs rendered on your gpu! (requires webgl)

This example runs with 60fps on my machine and somewhat slower on a friends, but this number is way larger than what the final game will use, so I think it will do.

TODO:

• more fancy rendering
• interactivity
• an actual challenge
• athmosphere (music, sound)
• multiplayer??? (probably not in LD, but maybe post compo if I really like what I get to)

I plan the player controlling one crowd of metaballs that battles another, where they annihilate each other by getting close to one another.

http://rialgar.de/LD26/

no interactivity, yet, but 200 metaballs rendered on your gpu!, requires webgl

200 runs with 60fps on my machine and somewhat slower on a friends, but this number is not anywhere close to what the final game will use

I started doing this LD thing with LD20 and never stopped. I am still an university student and not anywhere close making a meaningfull contribution to the gaming world, so I keep learning and what is better for learning than LD?

Thisis what I use:

• Javascript/HTML5
• A neat array containing a keycode to char mapping
• If I want to go all 3D or use fancy shaders: ThreeJS
• Sublime
• Gimp
• Audacity (maybe)
• BFXR (maybe)
• Otomata (maybe)
• SketchUp (maybe)

I do NOT use any game engine or game creator, because there is none I know and none I would like to try right now, maybe another time.

Other things that help me:

• Tee or Coca Cola
• A roommate who really likes to cook and is a walking encyclopedia
• A keyboard (one that can make music)
• chips/chocolate/ice cream
• all those nice websites detailing webstandards/APIs/coding patterns, because seriously, who learns these by heart in our times?

To enjoy LD, I follow simple rules:

• Have fun!
• Start simple, have something presentable early and work forward from that!
• If stuck: switch task! (eg, instead of coding draw/compose something, design levels or just take a break)
• Take breaks to doodle around/read other peoples posts/test other peoples games!
• Sleep regularly, sleep depreviation ruines the time you win by staying awake!
• Have fun!

Lets make some games!

Ok, so I am making a (simplistic) 3D Third-Person Shooter thingie. Up till now, everything went quite smoothly. Let’s hope the second half goes as well as the first.

Done:

• Engine (movement, collission, shooting, damage)
• 2 Enemy Types and possibility for more
• Loot is dropped and collected

ToDo:

• Buyable updgrades
• Story
• Content (Map(s), more Enemy types)
• Sound/Musik (?)
• Better Graphics (?)

So I’m in for the *counts* sixth time now, I hope for an idea fit for simplistic 3D graphics, so I can learn more Three.js this Weekend

I will use:

• PSPad Editor
• Google Chrome Debugger
• Gimp
• Capella

Good ideas and lots of fun everyone! Let’s make some games!

First things first: I finished, and that is great: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=3996.

I aimed for some tower defency thing and decided to learn some svg and svg animations this time (it is allways good to learn something). After the first day, I was afraid I would not be able to finish, because I got stuck with how svg animations are dealt with by different browsers, especially when using the same animation multiple times. I decided to drop safari support, sound, and fancy graphics. Keeping the prototype graphics seems to have been a good decission, first commenters seem to enjoy it. Safari support could be added later. Sound will come, when I do post-compo improvements. So I’m sattisfied overall.

I personaly like it how the creeps get better over time, but you can not quite put your finger on it, when it happens. To me, this feels much like how darwin explained his theory of evolution. Originally, I wanted to evolve the pathfinding, too, by tweeking the parameters of the algorithm, but I dropped it because time got thin and I figured most people would build one-way mazes, so it would not make any difference. Maybe I try it when doing post-compo things.

What went right

• I got the idea quite fast, only 1 or 2 hours of thinking and some sleep
• The simple graphics are minimalistic and not loosy.
• The simple mechanics provide a quick learning curve, which is perfect for LD.
• I actually implemented creeps, that “learn” how to break through your maze.
• I made it, allthough I got a normal amount of sleep.

What went wrong:

• Performance of svg rendering and animation varies largely between different browsers.
• SVG animations, that are triggered by javascript, are evaluated differently across browsers. This made me loose a lot of time and ended up in detecting, which browser is used. Details can be found below.
• No Sound. This annoys me especially since I had sound in all my other LD games so far.
• No decent graphics. Well turned out not so bad
• No balancing. Seriously, I have got no idea if the game allways gets to end, or if you can reach a point where your towers get better and better and you can play endless. I hope that is not the case, as towers get more expensive on a cubic curve while the bounty increases linearly.
• No win condition, No highscore (I should have set up a server side scripting language and a database server before LD)
• I got multiple little fixes I delayed and forgot, I should keep a list next time
• One player said, he was not able to start, I hate it when this happens

Details to the SVG animations:

• FF and Chrome do not actually change attributes but apply a transform, but each animation is reset before using it again, so I still need to change the attributes manually afterwards and can not read them in between.
• Safari is not able to reuse animations at all, Once ended, it can not restart. So I needed to clone the element each time and start the new one. But it actually changes the attributes (Well, I think, I didn’t take a deep look into it…)
• FF supports the onend event, that fires after the animation finished. Chrome and Safari do not, I used timeouts as a workaround.
• The method “beginElement” starts an svg animation from javascript. In FF and Chrome, ALL animation elements support it, in Safari only the animate element does, animateMotion for example does not, so I could not start it from javascript and could not animate the bullets in Safari (It just shows a line to the target instead).

Bombai Curry made by @Xeno42alpha

(no I’m no Japanese, I just use these for fun, and the clock in the back is broken)

Ok, Evolution did not really inspire me to do a plattformer, so I decided to do a (tower) defence game instead, where you evolve your weapons and the creeps evolve themselves, getting closer to the goal means this creep is going to produce the next generation.

Up till now, I have only a pathfinding demo and a labyrinth editor, but it works as a charm. You can try it here, if you like. (Tested with Chrome and Firefox, Safari does not work, yet. No idea of Opera or anything else)

I was slowed down by Chrome, because it does not fire any SVG-animation events. If anyone working on webkit reads this: please fix this soon. Next thing to do is making towers attack creeps and creeps die.

TODO:

• Creep Health
• Attacking towers
• spawn and goal
• player health
• money
• usable UI
• creep evolution
• tower evolution
• nicer graphics
• sound

Nice to have

• graphics displaying traits of creeps/towers
• traps/attacking floor tiles

Ok, so this is the forth time I’m competing in LD48, meanwhile the number of the LD has reached half of the number of hours the competition lasts, to me, this is an anniversary.

I achieved better results the less my game tried to be, so I want to keep it small again, probably a simple platformer.

Tools I plan to use:

• Basecode/Engine: none (ok, a website containing nothing but a canvas element and a link to a js file, maybe, because copy-paste is faster )
• Coding UI: PSPad
• Language: HTML5 + Javascript
• Image Manipulation: Gimp
• Audio: Audacity, sfxr, a microphone

There may be more tools coming my way, that I did not think of, yet. I will add them to the list and make a new post if it happens.

Forth time I entered, forth time I finished, feels good.

Revamped graphics a lot, worked around terrain tiles.

Now it has:

• basic plattformer engine
• multi jump
• keys and doors
• enemies
• target gates
• opening an win level (although not very creative)

Have fun

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=3996

I’m really looking forward to play all your cool games

Background Music and first Sound Effects online, also some tweaks here and there.

http://rialgar.de/LD23.xhtml

Tested under Chrome, FF, IE and Opera, best with Chrome or Opera, IE has no sound.

Still to do:

Character Sprites

Enemy Sprites

Terrain Graphics

Death Animation/Sound

Have a look on the collision, I sometimes get stuck in walls. (At least introduce a “back to last checkpoint” key)

so hey, It took me a while to use the graphics on the circular environment, terrain-tiles will be pain in the ass…

But however, here is a Demo (warning, no learning curve, this level will probably be the last in the end.

http://rialgar.de/LD23.xhtml

(Tested with IE, Chrome and FF, best with Chrome, FF and IE tend to lag and tunnel you into walls)

Demo above

OK, basic Engine is running, I implemented a simple key/door System. Nevertheless, there are still no real graphics, so you can’t recognize keys. Next are some enemies, then some graphics, then some sounds, and somewhere in between some levels.

I will probably upload a demo as soon as keys and doors have graphics, which will be in in 3-4 hours.

keys and doors

I lost some time to a lack of inspiration. I decided to go simple an make a “Little Planet” Plattformer Thingie. I made some progress on the basic rendering and will write the Engine next, no Idea how to replace the bright Colors with Images, yet. That will hopefully dawn to me until I come to this point.

bright colors

10 years anniversary, I would not dream of missing that

I will write A javascript game, as Java Applets are a pain in the ass right now. I will use the following tools:

Eclipse, Gimp, Anvil Studio, Pickle, Bfxr, GraphicsGale

No base code, no frameworks, but lot’s of HTML5 probably

(well, the Website itself is made by my friend Xeno)

Have a great weekend of coding everyone

Somehow I missed the badge… so here it is now:

find the kitteh!

Added a second level, it has buttons

http://rialgar.de/LD22.xhtml

I CAN have multiple colors of buttons, just didn’t use them, yet

TODO:

story

levels

a name

music / sounds

I decided to make a simple platformer, in the time I had today, I created a bunch of simple graphics and the basic game engine. Will finnish tomorrow, if you want to take a peek, heres a demo

http://rialgar.de/LD22.xhtml

Just ignore the “Impressum” link, it’s just a nasty thing in german law.

I’m in for the third time. Will have to cut short on time, I’m taking an archery course on Saturday. Anyway, I’m using:

Gimp

Audacity+sfxr

Anvil Studio

Eclipse

gonna make a java applet again.

Base Code