Per the rules, my personal library is located here.

I will be using C# and XNA, but cross-compiling with JSIL to make a javascript build.

I’ve already done islands (LD17), as well as exploration (LD16), so I hope I don’t end up with deja-vu.

Guardian Angel Devil is a solo jam game Play it here

The original game idea popped in my head when I saw the theme “Guardian” during voting, and when “You are the Villain” ended up the winner it came up again with a nice twist at the end. The idea is a take on the “chosen one” trope, as in the hero, Blake, is a young farm boy and he is the only one who can retrieve this evil artifact from the dungeon. Since you, a small demon,  are the villain, of course, you pretend to help him since he’s clueless, because you want to take the artifact for yourself after he retrieves it. You have cards you can play to provide various effects on the battlefield and Blake does all the dirty work of fighting.

The Good

JSIL:

I wanted to make a web game, and was about to use silverlight again when I heard about JSIL. It meant I could code in XNA but then export it to Javascript. I spent some time porting my silverlight tile engine to XNA that played nice with JSIL, which wasn’t too hard as long as I found workarounds for the methods that JSIL hadn’t implemented yet (Particularly having to read xml tile maps with an xmlReader because XDocument and XmlDocument weren’t implemented.)

Juicyness:

This came from a video that someone posted before the compo. Even though I didn’t manage to animate combat attacks, a simple particle effect and sound effect worked pretty well to make the game feel more finished, and took far less time than animating each frame.

Gameplay:

There are three different ways to finish, and all are possible. Plus it plays out a bit differently each time depending on which cards you get.

The Bad

Use of time:

By the end of the compo I only had a fairly generic RPG with the villain walking around and the hero equipping items and attacking, so I ended up entering the jam. I think I may have been able to squeak by on compo time  if I had planned a little more efficiently. I plotted my time out fairly in depth to see where I was using it and this is what happened:

Ideas: 2 hours  compo

Art: 4.5 hours  compo (about 2 hours thrown out)

UI Programming: 4 hours compo

Level Design and programming: 7 hours compo/1 hour jam (Some of this was unused)

Programming walking around the map: 2 hours compo/ 1 hour jam due to JSIL issue

Programming combat: 4.5 hours compo/ 1 hour jam

Programming items and equipment: 2 hours compo

Programming/Drawing cards: 4.5 hours jam

Sound: 1.5 hours compo (very good bang for the buck)

Conversations: .5 hour jam

If I could do it again I could have saved some time on art by deciding my style better in the planning stage. I also could have shaved some time off level design by only implementing things in the maps as I went. There was a bunch of tile flags in the final room that went unused because I didn’t have enough time to implement the cutscene I was planning. I also wouldn’t have bothered making JSIL builds until after the compo ended because it was really just a port. I lost a bit of time implementing something and then finding out I’d have to do it a different way to appease JSIL.

Bugs:

There are a pile of gameplay bugs (Not breaking and most of them work in the player’s favor) mostly due to the rush at the end to get 23 different card types working.  I think some of them might only be in the JSIL port but I haven’t had a chance to look into them.

GUI:

This game had quite a bit of GUI work and not very good base code for it (I intend to rectify that in my library before the next LD). And I didn’t have time to code proper window backgrounds so the text is a bit hard to read at times.

If you haven’t done so yet, Play it here

In my game you play an imp who is impersonating a guardian angel helping a rather clueless “Chosen One” retrieve an artifact, so you can take it from him after he gets it. The demon will eventually be able to spend resource points to play “fate cards” and interfere in the battle so the hero will win, because otherwise he’d die because he’s really weak and doesn’t know how to do anything. I have very very basic gameplay in, as in the hero can battle monsters but the interference of the imp isn’t in yet. It’s written in XNA but also translated to javascript with JSIL so it runs nicely in the browser (After fixing some bug weirdness with how JSIL handles TryParse). Also: Gratuitous goats on the starting screen.

I’m planning on taking part in LD this time, having skipped the last one because I didn’t like my idea much. I first thought I’d  use silverlight again, but still not many people have silverlight 5 and silverlight 4 has a lot of limits. My husband, Spridios on LD, clued me in to JSIL which can convert C# to javascript and has XNA support, so I spent some time converting my tile engine over to JSIL compatible C#. There are a bunch of inconsistencies and things not supported in JSIL’s implementation of C# but it works well for what’s implemented.

Language:

• C#/XNA
• Javascript

Libraries:

• My Simple Tile Engine and XNA Framework
• JSIL – To convert the C#/XNA code to javascript.

Tools:

• Photoshop for graphics
• Tiled possibly if I need complicated maps
• OpenMPT for music
• Audacity

I haven’t participated since LD#18 so I figured I should join in for the 10th anniversary. I’ll be going with Silverlight this time, and some basecode that I haven’t touched 2010, other than updating it to Silverlight 4 tonight and making sure my test project worked. So this’ll be interesting.

This is my basecode , basically an empty silverlight app and a library with some tile classes that build on top of this library: http://writeablebitmapex.codeplex.com/

This is my messy/buggy framework (I always seem to find a bug to fix in it every project I make)

I will be using C++ with Ogre. Assets will be made with Blender and Photoshop.

This will be my first LD since LD18 so I hope to finish something this time, and get sound in which I have never managed before.

I will be using C++ with Ogre, CEGUI and OgreOggSound (If I can get sound in), and my framework. Photoshop and Blender will be used for assets.

The player now has a skeleton companion and clicking him will let the player control him with the mage on AI. The peasants seem way too weak now.

Still lots more to do so this will end up being a jam game. Maybe I’ll have time to fix the sound library compilation or find a new sound library.

More a mage than a witch but there’s now combat!

Finally got past my compiling issues and got stuff on the screen. The sound library wouldn’t cooperate so I’ll probably have to submit with no sound, though this is looking like it will run out of time for the compo anyway

I stupidly decided to update my Ogre installation and have had hordes of problems getting CEGUI to compile with the new Ogre so while compiling over and over I worked on graphics.

This is the heroine of the game. She is on a quest to become a lich and uses the bones of her enemies to make skeleton pets to help her on her quest.

This is a rendering from Blender because right now all the “gameplay” I have is the title screen I made before I tried to update ogre. This may end up running till Monday and be a Jam game =\

Freshly cleaned! I could barely see the bottom of the second monitor before because of the pile of books…

Here are my previous Ludum Dare Games

I’m most likely going back to my 3D roots for this compo. I will use C++ with Ogre, CEGUI and OIS. I will be using my framework that was used in LD16 which is here.

I thought this would be helpful since there is no in-game tutorial and the game may be a bit complex. The compo page for the game is here.

General Tips

The queen will randomly select a trade good to retrieve for the quest. If she asks you to get 5000 gold coins then reload. You will need to visit around 100 islands to finish and you will get bored.  Bananas might also get tedious (around 26 islands) if you are in a hurry to vote.

More after the jump.

(more…)

I managed to finish Voyage of the Queen.

I decided to try something 2D this time rather than my usual 3d to get something a bit more cerebral and less action.  It was written in silverlight which made it really easy to make nice GUI screens but I was doing low level blitting to do the boat sailing graphics. I had more plans for this game such as gaining crew, having more events other than pirates and upgrading the ship but the tile engine took more time than I thought and I didn’t really get around to the actual gameplay until Sunday. It was a little scary at the end because I had a really obtuse error message (Thanks Microsoft) that resulted in crashing at the trade and ship cargo screens about an hour before finish but I managed to fix it in time.

My compo entry is here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-17/?action=preview&uid=1128

I’m writing a sea trading game where the player trades goods between islands and tries to bring back a requested amount of a specific trade good to his home base as well as avoid pirate attacks. I currently have the boat able to sail around the map and visit various towns and a rudimentary trade screen. 10 hours left!

I’m writing the game using Silverlight and the WriteableBitmapEx class to allow blitting.

I was meaning to have the player go in and explore the tomb to find the skeleton leaders and defeat them, but I ended up spending too much time texturing the skeleton to build a proper battle system. It ended up being a game about a thief who runs around the tomb grabbing treasure, but then I didn’t have enough time to give the player a way to escape the tomb. So now it’s about a suicidal thief who runs around a tomb grabbing treasure.

Voting Page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-16/?action=preview&uid=1128

I’m making some sort of dungeon exploring game. I have a randomly-generating dungeon now and it is explorable. Now I need to populate it with something to make it more interesting to explore.

I will be entering using C++, Ogre, CEGUI and OgreOggSound if I get around to using sound. I have a framework (well more like a collection of helper classes) based on the needs of my previous LD entries located here (Just the headers and libs). It requires Ogre, CEGUI and OgreOggSound and is a bit rough and messy right now.

48 hours later, Dragon Genetics is finished. Dragon Genetics teaches the principles of genetic inheritence including dominant/recessive genes, epistasis, and  sex-linked genes. It uses a browser-like window to explain concepts and the player can click on links to get more information on a word. The player gets a set of missions to breed specific dragons by choosing the parents.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/?action=preview&uid=1128

The game was written in C++ with Ogre and CEGUI. I found the new version of CEGUI nice since it’s able to embed widgets in strings which is what I used to make the information browser. For content I used Photoshop and Blender. Most of the gui graphics are a CEGUI default. Also this is my second Ludum Dare (First Mini) and also the second time Photoshop has refused to work correctly during a Ludum Dare. I think it may have been a memory issue this time though since it stopped crashing on startup after I closed the visual studio with CEGUI source and an extra blender window I had open…