http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=232

What went right

• Finished something playable, check!
• Aim of making prototype I can later improve and release as a good game, check!
• Minimalistic, check!
• Idea came to me pretty quick, Google helped to find lot of inspiration that I remembered
• Made a game close analogues of which I don’t recall, check!
• Had loads of ideas and FUN, check!

What went wrong

• Photoshop after reinstall of drivers hangs because of color modes or something, did not check that before compo, obvious pitfall, ended up using Paint7 which sucked, then Pixlr, then Paint .Net
• Did not use Flash stuff for UI using bitmap icons instead, bad result and eats more time as its not WYSIWYG enough
• Did not slept enough, slept 18 hours in 3 days which is BAD, as now start of working week is ruined
• As usual ,went for quite experimental game which is impossible to polish in 48 hours to have good game play
• First day went so good that I was too calm on second day thinking all is good, while it was not -_-

Lessons for next time

• Learn to use AudioTool or something similar with license allowed for LD
• Check all the tools, even ones that worked yesterday
• Find ways to work in more stable and motivated way, aka more sleep, less slacking around even if I think that I am doing good
• Start making levels as early as possible, doing it too late, as usual

22 hours behind computer in two days zzz
And its 5am here and when uploaded only 3 minutes were left…

Well tomorrow small bug fixes, sources, and postmortem, but now sleeeep.

Well, this time around my participation is going so good that I am calming down and  loosing pace ;(

Anyways went for a walk

Finnaly weather is good.

Also had great lunch:

• Brie cheese with fresh bread and radish 
• Kvass
• Melon
• Dark chocolate

So, with such nice kick back to work!

So, 2AM here and I am up since 8am… Weird I am not dropping dead yet.
Though I was making breaks and clocked something like 10 hours behind computer so far.

Anyways, satisfied with progress so far, almost all tech stuff done, adding sounds and stuff.
Basically for tomorrow tuning sounds and making tutorial levels is left, + there is bunch of bonus features to try to add.

Also as I use Adobe AIR both Android and Web version coming up fine and without slowdowns.

Good luck everyone and till tomorrow ;)

Nothing better then getting inspired from incredible D&D monster book drawings to draw my own minimalistic…. eeee… pixels! -_-

Actually just drawing to help me understand conversions from one space to another when zooming in weird engine I am building

Well if you google you will find it but still sharing
http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/

Pretty cool one, still will need some editing at least to make it loop.

Not sure I will be using this but can be a great thing to add some music at the last moment

I am off to a quick start, not really playable yet but somewhat working already!
Off to a little break.

Holy Moly! Its minimalism o_O
Who would have expected that  48 hours contest games will be minimalistic o_O
As usual LudumDare theme voting does not stop surprising as sidekicks almost always win It second choice all end up agree on right?

Anyways good morning everyone, I am eating my minimalistic breakfast and brainstorming ideas that start to excite me.

Brace yourself

From where I come

Haven’t participated for a while as was mostly interested in non game dev for some time.
Participated before a dozen of times and here are various previous results
Some finished, some not.

Plans and motivations

Actually this time hoped to participate in Jam version with one designer but he ended up too busy these week…

Participating again with aim to try do something for mobile phones using Adobe AIR/Flash as main tech.
Have only some experiments with AIR, actually participated in Global Game Jam in January making Java/Android game prototype.
Yeah native is cool with all performance and access but it definitely not good enough for quick prototyping.
So, I want to stress and squeeze all out of AIR this time around!

Tools:

• Target platform: Android(I own one duh) and may be Web, depends on kind of game I will be making
• Coding: FlashDevelop, AS3
• Art: Flash(animations, UI) and Photoshop(pixel art, textures)
• Sound effects: as3sfxr
• Music: probably none, depends on the time + if I find easy enough tool for quick generation of some music

Any advices on music generation apps?

As most people say they find my game too complex decided to make a little video of my passing it and give few advices.

Here is the video:

And some advices:

• Use space to pause the game and issue many commands at once
• Remember about center of mass when you try to push
• Relaxed parts absorb shocks, stiff ones bounce, so its a good idea to be relaxed when you don’t want to bounce, or stiff all parts when you want to push with maximal force
• And it is space, if you are flying in right direction just relax and wait, no need to go crazy and ruin your right direction

Hope this will help some.

Go to the entree page and try yourself

Have some things to do tomorrow, so will not have full 48 hours to work on this but am planing to make something simple. I hope

As usual my tools will be Flash, depending on theme may use Box2d. That’s it I guess

Well I am off to “polishing” my tools using old LD entries and other experiments

Well adding features for my game idea and codding found a flaw with algorithm for collision detection I was using. Sadly some features were dependent on some features of that algorithm so quickly switching to other algorithm is not an option aether. So spending time for now reading about similar algorithms and thinking on how to fix it or write a different one with similar structure. Considering that 14 hours are left that probably means I am out of LD18 Epic fail on my part

Here is my lunch, cola, bread and some Olivier salad

As for game/idea/progress here is a screenshot

Basically I am going for something top down with massive amount of creatures. Want to finish basic game mechanics and technical stuff today and spend tomorrow adding graphics and sounds and polishing it, may be adding some more features. Will see how it goes by the end of first day. On game mechanics front nothing special, did not got any particularly good ideas so going with what I got

Also setting is mostly undecided, initially wanted to go for insects but now thinking to switch to spaceships

So here is my breakfast

As for idea, don’t have any in particular that I like at the moment. Theme seem to not inspire me to anything original with mechanics that were not overused already… Infestation games with zombies… Some top down arena survival games with possession mechanics. Or again top down survival games but with dodging and using enemies to kill each other. Mostly things I played hundredths of times already and making one more does not inspire me at the moment. Thinking hardly on what to do with theme like that.

August LD is LD I never miss. Was waiting for it since beginning of summer This year I managed to take a 2 week vacation around it meaning today is first day of it. Starcraft2 kind of eat big chunk of it though

I participated in 6 LDs so far producing something playable only 2 times. Have bad habit of trying something technically complex and new for me which ends up eating too much of my time… Kind of doubt that this time will be different but hope it will

Tools? That depends on the theme and my idea for it. Probably Flash for assets and interface, Flash develop for coding + my own code  snippets but majority being coded a new considering my programming knowledge/style. There is chance that I will decide to use some engine/library depending on the idea. They include Box2d/Flixel/Flash Punk. But I kind of doubt that as I do not have good enough knowledge of them to feel comfortable with them. Same goes for Unity 3D, started checking it out few weeks ago but since then interest faded a bit + did not had much time for it. Still chances are pretty slim as I find 3D games to be a hard thing to fill with content in short amount of time.

Checked today an Alchemy port of Box2D from here, from looks of it it seems easy and fun thing, a WYSIWYG physics tuning that allows seamless Flash animation and Box2D physics combination. But only from the looks of it. Still things to learn and code to write for each separate case of such Flash/Box2D binding.

P.S I sure hope Swords or Swordfights wins

Hey there. I participated in 4 LD’s before and so far score is 2:2 Two finished games in some unfinished but still useful prototypes.

As for this LD, I am little bit sick right now + will be busy with some other things so chances of me producing some game are very slim but there are some. Depends if I will like the theme and will have some small casual idea for it that I can finish in half of time or something.

As for tools then as before Flash, may be some engines like Box2D/Pushbutton/Flixel etc but I doubt it as I am aiming for something simple.

What went well:

• Obviously I got good game idea
• Physics turned out well
• Game mechanic was fun
• Interface turned out to be simple, not buggy, etc. For 12h spent it is weird

What well wrong:

• Failed to make more complex graphics because most I tried made it lag fast
• Made mistake of making game time constrained. Should have been some ind of resource constrained. Thing is that most fun is aiming probe well and exploring planet or even few in one show. Time constraint rather made you shot a lot of average shots instead of aiming really carefully which is bad.
• Probably 1/3 of time spend was spent on things that did not work… Would have been good to spend it more on polishing core mechanics and game aims.
• I added only a mouse-wheel based zoom. That was a mistake as Mac users have problems in Flash with that (tough I head Flash player release on 9 December 2009 should have fixed that, can’t confirm)  Also users playing on notebook without mouse had problems too…

What now:

• Well firstly I think I will make one more version of it removing time limit and adding some “probes per planet” limit. Should make it more fun. May be I will try adding a little bit more graphical things.
• As for large game based on idea I think I will but it on hold. Needs a lot of content and thinkering on technical sides of it(there are some). Exploring idea for enemies and war, AI, etc. I have some other game ideas that have less of such complications so for time being I will not make it in to a full game. In time being I welcome anyone to try and make their versions of the idea Just bother to send me a note/mail. Would like to see it  and play it
• Need to add alternative to mouse zooming.

Longer version of how it went

Day 1.  Well woke up and read the theme. Started brainstorming for ideas and (more…)

Screenshot

So yeah here is first screen shot I am posting.You can see sun, two colonized planets, and 3 other planets that are not yet colonized + many moons

Progress

Unfortunately I am bit tired from long week + have many other things piled up from week so I had only some 8 hours to work on the idea… And it progresses very slowly   Also some technical parts of it gave me problems as I have pretty large maps that should be zoomed out/in a lot and still look well and do not lag… Ending up with pretty simple representation in vectors because of it. Also fog of war without lags took some time and looks very simplistic… Ahh… Anyways I almost finished minimalistic part and will probably switch to doing interface/start menu/game over/help screens soon.

Idea

As I wrote yesterday I went with space exploration theme based on my older idea for a game. It basically is based on single game mechanic of lunching rockets in a solar system with more or less real gravitation physics.

I picked this theme because it scales well and seemed as minimal part of it would not be that technically complicated. Well I was little bit wrong… Anyways at max this idea would give me kind of civilization+rocket physics combo. You have mother planet from which you can lunch satellites to find new planets and explore their environment and territories, then prepare colony ship for some territory on planet surface (say ocean or mountains or something) and start lunching probes trying to land them on the territory you want. When successful you lunch colony ship on the same trajectory, if you miss you loose the ship, if you hit you get new colony which you can then expand getting new lunch site + resources + experience etc etc. You can expand the idea in any direction like adding meteorites, aliens, etc…

And idea minimum would be some more casual game where you need in short period of time to colonize as many planets as possible without any resources/ship types/experience and level up complications. Well in the end I am going for this minimum Other things to do and damn how slow and unproductive I am this time Spending hours on some things worth 15 minutes…. Well at least I will have something playable this time.

Well back to work.

Well in this LD I promised my self to keep things technically simple as usually I spend some 70% of time trying something new. This time I want to reuse some old code/idea and try to keep it smiple.

Well first thing that come to my mind was to reuse this experiment Alone In Darkness So some dark caverns exploration with a twist of not seeing much all the time. Other then that traps, treasures and stuff… Buuut I don’t think that it is such a good idea… Lot needs to be done technically and probably making graphics for it won’t be so simple aether.

Another direction of my toughs was space exploration and I think I will go with that. I had idea for such game for a long time but it is too complex for 48hours so I will be cutting that idea down to simple elements for next few hours and trying to gather some prototype code together too see if has any promise at all. Wish me luck while I wish you all luck with making cool games in next 1-2 days

Well will try to participate. Last time went experimenting with some ideas and was not able to finish a game in time. Rather ended up with some toy.

This time I am not shore how much time I will have and how creative my mood will be so probably if I will try making something it will be simple/small with intent to finish something.

As for tools as usual Flash AS3 + my code, probably will not be using any libs except for may be some Box2D in case theme and game idea will need some solid physics.