Today, I’m away all day. I did check the theme this morning and I’ve been thinking about what to make, but haven’t decided what to do yet.

Anyway, here are a few pics I made:

Here is a picture of my desk. Now I should sleep a little before it all starts.

Here are my previous attempts at Ludum Dare, most of them never finished:

I’m planning to do the normal LD. However, I’ll be away for most of Saturday (again, playing in an orchestra), maybe on Sunday evening I’ll decide to go for the jam instead.

Anyway, I’ll probably make a Flash game, here is what I’m planning to use:

• Code: FlashDevelop and either Haxe/SWFMill with my own base code, or Flex with Flixel.
• Graphics: Tile Studio, PhotoImpact, InkScape
• Music: MilkyTracker, NoteWorthy Composer
• Sounds: Nero Wave Editor, Audacity
• Timelapse: ETL.exe and VirtualDub

I’ll take my sound recorder along on Saturday so I can start recording sound samples (lots of instruments there). And I recently bought a smartphone, so I’ll be able to follow how things are going when I’m away, and perhaps post.

I finally added a main character to my game. It can’t do much, except walk around and jump (BTW: the jump sound is a glissando on my cello). The game isn’t finished unfortunately, you can’t complete it.

I also made some background music, using the sound samples I recorded earlier.

• Play the game here: http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/ld/MonkeyIslands/
• Source code: http://sites.google.com/site/mikewiering/LD17_Wiering.zip

I just spent an hour recording all kinds of sound samples inside (musical instruments) and outside (birds, things falling into water, etc). I hope I’ll have time to do something with them. I want to make a MOD file with music. Next time I should do this in the beginning when I’m still thinking about the theme.

I still need to make a main character.

I added a few layers with waves, now it looks more like water.

I really need to start working on some game play. But the weather is really nice, so I’ll go for a walk first, and perhaps record some sounds.

I’m working on making it look like these are little islands in the sea, still needs some waves.

I added a background layer (which is the same as the foreground, but mirrored) and tuned the colors some more. Not sure what to do at the bottom where the water starts.

I didn’t have much inspiration for the theme, but eventually decided to make a simple platform game. I was planning to use Flixel, but had trouble getting some basic stuff to work, Flixel has changed a lot since last time I used it. In the end I went back to haXe and my own code base.

I’m using my new Wacom tablet with Photoshop Elements and it feels great! Here is my first screen shot:

This time I don’t have any concerts or rehearsals, so I hope to be able to spend lots of time on LD17! This time I really want to finish something that’s playable and has sound/music.

My tools:

• depending on the theme and my idea, I plan to use FlashDevelop and either Flixel with AS3 or my own code base with Haxe and SWFMill (the newest version has support for mod files based on BadSector’s FMP), perhaps box2d or physaxe, or perhaps BlitzMax / Blitz3D
• Tile Studio, PhotoImpact, Inkscape, Photoshop, GIMP
• Nero Wave Studio, bladeenc, audacity
• MilkyTracker / NoteWorthy Composer
• instruments: keyboard, cello, double bass, guitar
• my ZOOM H2 audio recorder for recording sound samples
• ETL.exe and Virtualdub for time lapse, ManicTime for time/app logging
• FireFox with ChatZilla
• digital camera
• I just bought a Wacom tablet, I might use that, but haven’t really had time to practice drawing with it yet
• food & drink: almost none left, so I’ll have to do some shopping tomorrow

Good luck everyone!

I just made a timelapse video, you can watch it here. I removed the parts where I was away or asleep. The music is from a concert I played on Friday (from Brahms’ 2nd symphony).

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buC_zbkgDHU

Edit: programs I used: FlashDevelop, Tile Studio and my new pixel editor which is still work-in-progress.

Well, my game isn’t half of what I’d planned, but it’s at least playable, just one level. Jimmy was going to be a mouse, but I didn’t have time to draw his sprites so now he’s that yellow thing. As you explore the level you will find power-ups that will help you get further. There was no time for sound unfortunately.

I had never used Flixel before and I’m glad to have tried it out. I did spend a lot of the time learning it, so I could probably have done a lot better if I had studied it before the LD started. This was also the first time I used as3 instead of haXe and I must say I do prefer the haXe language.

Anyway, I’ll probably use Flixel again next time, and then I won’t have to learn it first, so I might actually finish a complete game…

You can play the game here:

• Play Jimmy’s Adventure

Now I’m able to import maps from Tile Studio into Flixel. I still have to make a game out of this.

I hardly got anything done yesterday, I had to do some shopping and played in a concert.

When I returned from the concert I played around with Flixel for some time and it looks like it’s pretty easy to use. I hope I can get a little game finished in the next 12 hours.

Last night I had a concert and a party after that, and I was home just before 3.00am, when it all started. I like the theme, I want to make a game where you explore a level and keep getting extra abilities so you can go back and explore more.

I wanted to at least get something working with Flixel right away, so I downloaded the newest version 1.40 of Flixel and the Mode demo. Two hours later I was still not able to get things working. Turned out that Flixel was just being updated and already had changed twice since I downloaded it. The new version 1.41 did compile without errors, but the Mode game doesn’t really work like the example.

I just woke up and now I’m going to try to use Flixel and make something. If it doesn’t go well now, I’ll go back to haXe.

I have two concerts this weekend, but I hope to have time to make something.

I’d like to try out Flixel this time, but in case I get stuck or something, I’ll use my Haxe base code again.

Good luck everyone!

I just finished porting sfxr to Haxe, but as a library instead of an app. Instead of generating a WAV file in sfxr and storing it in your SWF, you can now generate it while your program is loading, or the moment you need it. Why? To save space in the final SWF and to provide more flexibility, like being able to vary a sound a little depending on something in the game.

http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/ld/sfxrhx/

There are several ways to use it:
- you can start with making a sound in sfxr and save it as a .sfs file and use the load() function
- generate random sounds in your program and simply save the random seeds of the ones you like, use create(), randomize() and mutate()
- if you need to fine-tune a sound, you can also edit the individual parameters in your program
- use generate() to create the wave file in memory
- finally, use play() at any time to play it

Here is my timelapse video for Cave Miner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmhxYSmflg

You can play the game here: http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/ld/CaveMiner/

I finished drawing my main character in Tile Studio:

And here he is in the game: