Crap, already behind. It’s 2am and only half of my narrations are written. I have to go to bed. I am setting a goal of finishing all of the writing by 2pm tomorrow. Then I’ll have 12 hours tomorrow (until 2am on Sunday) to finish all audio. If I accomplish that I will manage to stay on schedule.

Hope things are going well for everyone. I am not going to have much time to peruse these forums until after the contest this time I’m afraid.

I have done about ten ludumdares. I always try to do something new in each contest, to push myself in some unique way. Sometimes it might be learning a new programming language or utility or other times it might be trying a new game genre. One of my favorites was when I did a text adventure using inform 7.

This time I know exactly what kind of game I want to make. I only need to know the theme.

The game is going to be a cross between a ‘choose your own adventure’ (remember those old books?), an old time radio broadcast, and a podcast of a dark science fiction story (something in the realm of Scott Sigler’s Infected).

The game is going to have little or no graphics. Instead all work will go into the sounds of the game. I have had a difficult time choosing a platform. I want it to run on the web so people will actually play it. But the platform has to support sound really really well. I have chosen Unity Pro even though it is way overkill since it supports sound well and then I can run it on my iPad/iPhone eventually.

The first night I am going to spend the entire time writing the story.

In the morning I’ll do a redraft and then I expect to spend at least 3 hours recording all the narration. My attempt is to make this recording as professional as possible, and from my tests I think it will sound great, like broadcast quality great. I will use Logic Pro 9 to record with a Mac mini (to minimize background noise I can’t use my pc). Then it will go to cubase 6.0.2 for a ton of processing and I will come up with a custom musical score for each narration. (I expect probably 20+). This I expect will take all of sat day and night.

Sunday morning I’ll put together a quick program in unity that will play the narrations and offer the users choices. It will be about as simple a program as there could be. Hopefully I’ll get it finished in time to test properly and give it some polish.

That’s what I’m doing. Good luck to all entrants!

I’m considering using JavaScript for this LD. Searching for good game libs on google is frustrating. What is the best / easiest lib available these days? I’m looking for something like flashpunk.

Thanks!

Finished a song about zombies AND Ludum Dare…

Enjoy!

The Ludum Dare Zombie Song
http://soundcloud.com/roseseatmeat/the-zombie-song

Hi all,

I have been really getting into making music lately. I have cubase 6 and a lot of nice tools to help me now, including a nice pair of KRK studio monitors.

Anyways, I would love to make a soundtrack/sound for your ludumdare game. Of course it is completely for free and if you don’t like the song I make feel free not to use it (no offense taken at all). I have accepted a dare to release a new song every day for one year, starting today. So any songs I make will be included in the 365 I have to make of course and so I want to keep all personal rights to the music.

Here is song release #1 which I whipped up today:

The Universe is Getting Colder
http://soundcloud.com/roseseatmeat/the-universe-is-growing-colder#

Follow me on facebook or twitter if you want to find out when the new songs release (there will be a lot of them!).
Twitter page
Facebook page

Email me and I’ll be happy to make a song for your game. I would like to know what the genre of the game is, what you are thinking the music/soundtrack should sound like and also I’d like to play the game if possible to try to match the music to the game as closely as possible.

email: RosesEatMeat@gmail.com

I’ve been working on a game this weekend for the mini-compo in xna 4. I’m not going to finish it, but I will probably spend the next two weeks or so trying to finish it up because it seems like a pretty cool idea.

It’s a steampunk game about a flood destroying the earth in 2012. You have to prevent the waves from destroying the datapods which contain all of the information of mankind (think of the them as google servers). So you lay out girders and use funky steampunk machines that shoot steam to try to prevent the datapods from becoming ruined in the flood. I’m hoping to build maybe ten levels to start. The water will be particle based.

Right now I am working on all of the prologue and menu screens and so forth. Might work on the music tonight. Here is a screenshot preview:

my game this contest:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Dogstar669/in-the-darkness-i-shall-fall

This was the first time I used a toolkit like Unity to make my game rather than writing it all in code. I chose to do this because I knew I would be limited on time; I had two long Christmas parties scheduled for that weekend. In essence, I only probably had about 12-15 hours to make my game.

Well, thanks to Unity I think the game came out pretty well considering how limited my available time was. It is a pretty fun game (though super simple) and there are five levels and some cool sounds and music too.

My determination after using Unity in this contest, after having written code in all my many past entries, is that clearly those that use Unity and the like have an unfair advantage in the game competition. In fact it is not even close. I spent almost no time writing code and completely leveraged the physics and other aspects of Unity that came for free in the toolkit. Instead I could spend all my time in 3DS Max creating levels. I love the fact that I have finally done enough video courses in 3DS Max to actually use it effectively for the game competition! Besides the music and sounds effects, all my time was spent creating levels and testing levels (probably 50/50 time spent on each).

I think as a result, for this contest to actually mean anything, we need to consider separating the game toolkit entries from the code entries. I can say from actual experience now that there is no comparison between the two, and comparing what one person does in code is just not in any way fair to compare to what another does in a toolkit such as Game Maker or Unity. Let’s maybe consider this for next time. Why bother to rate at all if the competition is fixed, right?

My levels were static, so I created them as one gigantic model in 3DS Max, rather than assemble them from prefabs in Unity. I think this saved time as well. But it limited what I really could do on levels (no moving platforms and such). But I accepted that I wouldn’t have time for any extras anyway. I just wanted a basic game, simple but fun, with a win case and a lose case, and i think I accomplished my goal. I love how Unity handles levels. It makes it so easy to build additional levels once you have one finished.

To give you an idea of how easy it was to create new levels for my game in Unity. This is all I had to do. Save level1 as level2. Delete the level1 terrain model. drag in the level2 terrain model. Scale the terrain to the appropriate size. Place the player at the starting position for the level. Place the win marker where I wanted it in the level. Save the level again. Play and test. That’s it. Took about one minute to setup and begin testing a new level.

I wanted to spend no more than one hour on sounds and music. So I quickly assembled a kind of new agey tune with my Axiom Pro 61 keyboard, Cubase 5 and Omnisphere. The sound effects for falling and winning were actually tunes I created with the keyboard and Omnisphere as well. I really like the falling sound for some reason. I was pretty happy with the sounds and spent no longer than an hour on them. And Unity made it less than trivial to bring them into the game.

At first, I wasn’t planning on having a start screen, but then before going to bed on the first night, I thought I would give it a try. My goal was to spend less than 20 minutes on it. I quickly sketched something out on paper with pencil (my favorite way to draw) and scanned it into photoshop. I love to draw, but I’m not very good at it, but I do much better with pencil than the mouse or tablet. The only way I can really do decent computer art is to create something with pencil and then use illustrator pen tool to redo it to make it look decent. Didn’t have time for that here. Wasn’t really happy with my little sketch, but didn’t have any more time to allocate to it. So what I did was I tested a few different filters and found one that made it look like it was night and I thought that it at least conveyed the idea of the game and gave it a bit of style. The text really needed to be redone, but I just didn’t have time for it.

With Unity, it was easy to add buttons, but I had no idea how to make buttons that would fit the art, so I didn’t bother. Had to move on. Think I spent probably about an hour on the start screen including art and the coding of it.

So I then spent the rest of the time creating the levels. One level I created I didn’t use because I tried to create rolling hills, but for some reason I couldn’t get the lighting to show that the hills and valleys even existed. It made it impossible to get through the level because the player couldn’t tell you were trying to go up a hill. I tried a black and white checkerboard texture on the level floor (ala marble madness) and that showed the depth, but the lighting was off, so the player could see the entire level at once. I didn’t have time to mess with it any more so I just decided to try to keep the levels more or less flat (although there is a slight depth here or there, nothing too outrageous). If I did a new version that is one thing I would definitely add because I think I could create much more fun levels with more bumpy terrain and curves and stuff.

Anyway, I’m happy with it. It’s on kongregate. I’m already getting some inquiries on companies interested in it. And I’ve already made my $1+ from advertising!

Hope you enjoy and I hope the powers that be consider separating out the code entries from the toolkit entires, because I can now tell you having done them both, that the amount of work needed to make a game with these toolkits is just a small fraction of what is required to make a game with all code.

Thanks to information provided by bernardfrancois (thank you!), I have released my Unity game competiton entry on Kongregate.

It is kinda like Marble Madness played mostly on ledges in the darkness.

You can try it here:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/Dogstar669/in-the-darkness-i-shall-fall

*** I have fixed the problem with the jerkiness in the web edition. Please don’t review for this compo on the version submitted to Kongregate as I have published some fixes and tweeks to levels on there. The windows version is the one to review.

Wow, can’t believe I finished my game! And I think it might actually be sorta fun! That has to be a first

I have to thank Unity. I probably worked about 16-20 hours on the game. Spent most of the time designing levels with 3ds Max and testing them in Unity. So much fun to build a game this way. Music and sound effects were created using Cubase 5 and Omnisphere. My voice was recorded with Soundbooth CS5 and a Shure microphone. I sketched the intro screen with a pencil and scanned it into photoshop and then ran it through a filter.

It was cool because I had time to try to do all the things I like to do, such as pencil art and music composition. Unity REALLY makes a difference in a 48 hour setting.

So far I just have the Windows version. If you like Marble Madness, you might like it. Will try to create other versions later.

Try it Here:

In the Darkness I Shall Fall
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=258

Came up with a quick idea for my game, the title of which is ‘In the Darkness I Shall Fall’.

I wanted something simple and physics based that would leverage Unity.

I decided on making a Marble Madness type game played virtually in the dark (there is a small light that follows the player and a small light indicating the goal).

I built a test maze simply in 3DS Max and it worked great. The game is so simple (and thanks to the awesomeness of Unity) that it is already playable. There is a win condition, and lose condition, and plenty of challenge.

I am going to make the test maze the first level and I’m going to try to come up with at least five more.

I am trying to keep it simple stupid so I doubt I will try to add eye-candy or add a bunch of different objects. I’ll just work on adding some more interesting levels, because it seems like the challenge and fun is there already. Controlling a ball on a ledge is fun.

I may add a timer and add difficulty which will control the time you have to finish the maze. Your ball can jump a little by pressing the space bar, so it will be vital to take shortcuts in order to finish the levels on hard. Will only work on this after I finish at least five levels.

Going to take a break and work on some music and effects for the rest of the night. Getting tired.

Here’s a screenshot of the game so far:

It’s raining outside in usually sunny California. Going to be hard to get going.

Don’t fear, I have assembled all of the final entries from Ludum Dare 18. Just browse through them and find one that suits you. There’s nothing better to start with than an actual working project. Java? Flash? C++? C#? Unity? There are great source code examples for all of these. Pick one and use it for your framework. Why not?

My recommendation:

If you are interested in doing a platformer, take a look at Notch’s entry Metagun in java awt. So basic, straightforward and compact, I still can’t believe the code does so much.

Download the whole batch of source code entries here (warning, over 1GB):
LudumDare18.zip

I’m looking forward to the competition next week. I have successfully negotiated the time needed from my significant others.

I am in practice mode right now, trying to get familiar with Unity.

I plan on using the following tools:

Cubase 5 for music and sound
3DS Studio Max 2011 for modeling
Photoshop CS5 for textures and images
Will probably use my Canon 7d to capture some interesting textures, images and skyboxes

Unity 3.1 with C# for game development (alternative might be XNA if I have a change of heart at the last minute).

My goal this time is to create a simple 3d game with physics. I’m not going to worry about menus, etc. Just focus on gameplay (other than music which is a definite must for me). What I’m going to try to do is create a game that is playable and finishable as soon as possible and then just keep adding features/polish until I run outta time.

Lets see how it goes. Good luck to everyone! I have two broken ribs but thats not going to stop me this year so no excuses for you either. Just do it!

Hi, I’ve been working on music lately. Practicing the keyboard, going through lessons with Cubase, playing with tons of instruments. Trying to learn how to score a video game.

Anyway, if anyone wants a song for their October Challenge game, I’ll be happy to do so at no cost. Credit in the game will be sufficient. You only have to use it if you like it.

I’d like to play the game or at least know as much about it as possible, including your thoughts on what kind of musical score you expect the game to have. I can do chip tunes, dramatic film scores, whatever fits the game.

Here is a sample of something I just finished. It is my rendition of the Ultima Wanderer song (from Ultima 3).
Ultima Wanderer MP3

If interested, let me know on this thread. Thanks.

Just wanted to let people know that the source code for every single compo entry has been verified and is available for download.

That’s 172 games, all with source code, for your learning pleasure.

I’d like to request that if you did a jam entry to consider uploading the source as well, if you can, because it is just cool to do so.

Greasemonkey, I’ve noticed in the comments you have spoken against using flash libraries such as Flixel and FlashPunk for retro games with pixel art.

I was wondering why and what you would recommend instead (anyone else is welcome to chime in if you have an interest in the subject of course)? I think people like those libraries because they are so damn easy – no dll hell, etc. Is there something better out there?

I was pretty impressed with what notch did with just the standard java in making his pixelly platformer so I’m sort of torn about whether a framework is really necessary or useful.

Ok, I have downloaded and verified the source code of every entry in the compo.

All sources available guys, thanks!

Also, people are posting their compo source code counts on this thread. I am going to try to do some reports based on the source code for statistics on things like language used, framework used, average lines of code, etc. Anything you can add here about your source would be helpful.

Well, it didn’t work out for me this time. I put in more time than I think I did for any entry, but just ran into too many problems that slowed me down along the way.

The game is ‘Inception of the Borg’. It is about how the Borg came to be. You play the AI program that eventually becomes the Borg. It is a kind of piracy in space. Your ship is an assembly of modules, CommandModule, ShieldModule, LaserCannonModule, etc. As you defeat other ships, you “assimiliate” their modules, growing and improving your ship. The gameplay was to be similar to Star Control.

I think to get this thing done with my skill level I needed a higher level framework. I should have chosen FlatRedBall over SFML, or at least I should have brought in a physics engine. I might try porting it over to FlatRedBall to see if I can progress further with it.

I leave you exhaused, having suffered 30 hours of futility, with just this intro song and these screenshots. Nooow, muuuust sleeeeep.

Intro Song
http://www.bitjets.com/BorgIntro.mp3

Screenshots

Ahhh, the best laid plans…

My game idea is coding heavy and light on graphics. So I’m just probably going to try to get a jumpstart on the code tonight and start the graphics and then music tomorrow morning.