I didn’t do the latest Dare, I had exams. But still, I have a few things to say.

First of all, for y’all doing HTML5 games, Clay.io is awesome! Not only do they host your game, but also give you an API for adding Advertisements, Leaderboards, in-game purchase and whatnot!

Second of all, I reworked a bit SpinTurret, a game that I made for a Mini-Ludum dare, that weirdly resembles the current theme! It is a simple 2key game, the first of mine that I could call finished. I have also adjusted it to work on mobile. I didn’t finish polishing it yet, but here it is: spinturret.clay.io .

Grass juice, nature’s best supplement and energy drink!

And oats are ok I guess.

” I’m in. ”

Messing with compasses is fun.

Platform: the html <canvas> with javascript

Tools that I will maybe use:

• gedit
• gimp
• lmms
• audacity
• abundant music
• blender
• node.js

I will probably listen to SuicideSheeep on Youtube (great chill-out music). 

I hope that this time the theme would be something highly spiritual, esoterical, metaphysical, or occult. The more interpretations, the better.

“The Initiatory Ceremony/Voyage”,  ”The essence of reality”,  ”Higher dimensions/realms”,  ”Sacred Geometry”,  ”The Illuminati whatnot“, etc…

Also, I propose that this time’s mascot would be a jellyfish, and particularly the Turritopsis nutricula, the Immortal Jellyfish that can reverse its ageing process and possibly obtain immortality.

I have noticed this trend. When I spent alot of time programming things from scratch, I usually had much better academic performance in mathematics without studying too hard. Last year, after having a burn-out because of my 10 hours per week of swimming lessons and after quitting swimming altogether, I had lots of free time open. So I started learning javascript and making some really interesting stuff, learning tile-based game design and physics. And guess what? I got the best math grade in school at the end of that year!

On a seperate note, I had a busy week, giving in my IB personal project and going to the Montreal Science Fair. But now it’s over, and I will spend more time on my projects. For instance, I want to advance a web drawing program/game that I was making. I am also going to participate in the next Ludum Dare.

P.S. How do you change your profile picture? I want people to recognize me!

Here’s what I’ve been working on…

http://rnd.atspace.tv/PixelDrawer/

hint : you can draw on that thing.

I have just realized that out of my 1 year and a few months of JavaScript, I never actually learned web design! I started to learn JavaScript practically at the same time I started to learn the <canvas> api. I know basic html, but I got in the game really late, and I started doing canvas before I could manipulate divs. I messed with node.js websockets, and I don’t even understand html forms yet. Shame on me.

Now, at the stage I am with my project, I’m doing the frontend UI, and html buttons, css, jquery and stuff would be really helpful, yet I am still noob at it. I’m going to concentrate on the parts that I know I’ll do well, and then, maybe I’ll collaborate with somebody.

<rant> On a side note, organising code in JavaScript is difficult! The way the inheritance works just isn’t natural, and there is no consistent way of managing packages. The browser way and the node.js way are incompatible! </rant>

http://rnd.atspace.tv/PixelDrawer/

I’ll just leave this link here. It is an early pre-pre-pre-prototype.

I got the main interface to a working state (try scrolling) today.

>> Play on my home server >>

>>Play on my home server>>

So I started making an online multiplayer thingy. How hard can it be? I asked myself.

Well… PRETTY HARD! Making a game on a single computer has became pretty straightforward to me, but making a game on multiple computers is much more complicated, since I had to synchronize the characters, and make sure to remove and add characters when they connected or disconnected. I used js for both client and server (node.js) and used sockets.io to do the realtime communication. My code is certainly a huge mess! I had a chunk of code for the client, a chunk of code for the server, and a chunk of code that both had access to, not speaking about libraries.

Anyways, it’s a beginning, and I’d like to see some of you made try it, to make sure the port forwarding and everything is correct. The link will be valid until I will shutdown the computer or my IP adress changes.

>>Play on my home server>>

The link will be down

When I was new to game making, I have been dreamed of making a massive multiplayer online role-playing game! And seriously, who didn’t at some point? So lets help to make that dream a reality!

We should have a mini ludum dare at some point called the Online Multiplayer Game Challenge, People would be able to make anything from a open world multiplayer game to some online app. anything that uses some server-side (or peer-to-peer) connection. The point of this jam would be to learn how to make something with computer networking — just that. To experience something new in a supportive community.

Since people would be learning something new, this jam should be longer than usual, 3 to 5 weeks with the last week for submitting the game, and 1 to 2 intense playing weekends afterwards.

This is just a proposition, and it would be good to know what you think about it. It would be also good to know what the Admins think about this. 

Additionally, since probably people would host their game on their own computer, to prevent having their computer running all the time, we should plan when to play wich game. We could have some kind of up-to-the-hour calendar (Google calendar?) where people would mark their disponibility during the submission week. That way, they wouldn’t need to host their game for much more than 12 (?) hours (to pass through all the time belts). Even if the game would be hosted on a server, this would be a great thing, to have as much players as possible at a certain moment in time.

Humans were always fascinated by fire!. I made this now in a bit less than 3 hours and I’m proud of myself! This is my first animated pixel (actually second, my first was a shitty running person).

Graphicsgale is a great program for this kind of work and I found out it works fine in Ubuntu using Wine (something I had often problems with). The free version doesn’t export to gif, but you can export a series of images and convert them from command line with imagemagick (example here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1034104) .

Hello. I have seen beautiful pixel art in the games here. I have been doing pixel art myself for some time, but it was always static. Now I think I should learn animation. I usually used Gimp to create graphics, but Gimp has close to no support for animations. So… what program do you use to create animated pixel art?

Layers, filters, or anything fancy isn’t necessary. All I need is a pencil tool, preferably a color selector, and a dynamic preview to see the animation. It seems like not much, but I don’t know any program like that. Also, I would kind of like it to be free~~~

Thanks in advance.

I’m excited to see the results, but not because of my game. I know it wouldn’t get a good rating, it sucked. I’m actually excited to see WHAT games actually MADE IT to the top three and the top ten for each category. I’ve seen some good games and I made some predictions.

I didn’t make a good game, but hey, I played some really good games during the holidays, and I hope to see them rewarded.

We are all so excited, certainly, so LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN!!!!!!!!

People post the best games they saw, or the most innovative, or something…

There has been alot of original ideas in the contest, and now, I’ll post the WEIRDEST ones. Games that make you go WTF:

BEWARE as some of these are pretty OBSCENE!

 Mitt Romney and the Case of the Sex Doll

This is a weird adventure game, where you play as Mitt Romney. The art and the music are really obscure. Play at your own risk here

You are the Evil Overlord

In this game you play as an evil overlord and all you can do is yell at your minions that are trying to defeat a hero. The whole game is choosing what to yell at them. It is actually pretty fun, and interesting stuff can happen. You can send your goat… Play here

The Filthy Coward

Here, you are some guy that goes in public removing people’s clothes. Your mission is to be as rude as possible without getting caught by the cops (which don’t really do much) Anyways it’s here

Gin Monster Bob

This is a drunken stealth game. You should get to the kitchen without bumping into anything and it all moves. Play it

Fisticuffs

This isn’t really a game, but a hockey fighting simulator. Bet for your favorite team – the Dicks or the Pussies – here!

If you know any other weird games, post them in the comments!

Go!

Code thief title screen

This was my second Ludum Dare, and I guess it wasn’t my best. I made a weird game, you should play it, it won’t take even five minutes: here. Lots of things went wrong.

What went wrong:

School: It was the last weekend before the holiday vacation and I had a ton of schoolwork to do for the last week so I couldn’t participate, even though I checked the site often without any purpose. The whole game that you see, I did it after coming from school on the Monday. I had about five hours to make it, from 4:00 to 9:00.

Fever: I came home from school on Monday in such a terrible state. I should not have done the jam. I should have just slept. But I somehow forced myself into my madness.

My Computer: My brother has kidnapped my real computer to play some shitty fps in his room, and I was left with a small netbook running Linux Mint. Before, I wouldn’t think it was possible to devellop on it. The problem is that now I would not be able to play most games on this computer. Even most flash and html5 games lag. I should go find a baseball bat now. 

JavaScript: I had spent a bunch of precious minutes tracking down a NaN (Not a Number) bug. At the end , it was because I did:

Math.random * 5            instead of :               Math.random() * 5

Basically I multiplied a function by a number, and Javascript accepted that! “Ok, I’ll just give you a NaN. You’ll have to go and find your error yourself.” The problem is that NaN propagates like wildfire trough all variables that have contact with it, and it becomes impossible to get to the source.

I think I’ll try out TypeScript, Microsoft’s new typed JavaScript superset that is made to avoid these problems, as well as to add classes to javascript. Now I’ll need to get an IDE.

What went right:

some things went right

I knew my javascript and my apis: It wasn’t my first time using the <canvas>, so the number of times I needed to search on Google has been reduced.

Offscreen canvases: Call them as you want, These let you paint stuff before painting it on screen. I used it to make the “motion blur” effect. I was impressed by the performance of these.They were pretty performant.

- *um, sir, anything can be performant in a 640×480 resolution…*

-”OOOOHHH, SHUT UP YOU!”

Here’s a great theme for the next compo: Conspiracy Theories!

You see, its great because of all the possibilities and engages you in such absurb situations:

-Apocalypse

-Illuminati

-Aliens

-More aliens

-The music that is played on the radio

-The games created on Ludum Dare that are then resold by the organisers in a parallel universe for great profit. !!!

-etc…

Anything is possible, and there are some really weird people on the internet. Also, the dinausours had feathers and could fly!

It seems that I am falling out of the challenge. I’m in 11th grade, and lately, our teachers have been buriing us in projects. English, French, History, Ethics(lol) not counting all the exams.

Since my game is a Halloween theme game, I wouldn’t probably have time to finish it, challenge or no challenge.:(

And then, as to add, I have been arguing pretty severally with the JavaScript garbage collector, I don’t even know what is the reason. And yeah, I am making an html5 game, that should be ported to mobile, so performance is key. And anyway who makes such a stupid language where the garbage collector causes more problems than solutions? Why do garbage collectors even exist? Aarghghg!!1!!!!1!11!!RAGE QUIT!!!!

Hey guys!

I’m a bit late, but I want to say that I will maybe participate in the challenge with html5.

I have a few started games, but none of them are in a good state, and I know their code is REALLY messy, so I thought it would be easier starting a new one. It’s a casual game about squashing pumpkins in an infinite field. In pseudo-3d. Since it is Halloween related, I better finish for next week.

Also, what’s up with HTML5? Is anybody else making their game in HTML5? Can they be profitable?

Finally, it would be hard for me to really participate since I am in sec 5 here in Quebec and our teachers are overwhelming us with projects for our first reportcard. So maybe… maybe?

Hello world!

PLAY MY GAME!!!!!!!!

This was my first Ludum Dare and I made something I’m proud of. It just happened so that on the weekend when I decided to make a game in 48 hours, friends and family came from the whole world to see us, and unrelatedly, our local house of culture held a festival with free shows and free wine and cheese. Anyway, even if I couldn’t code all the time, I had fun. I wanted to submit to compo, but nothing was ready in time, so I “jammed”.

After I finished my game and submitted it I have found out that my commitment is supposed to extend after the initial 48/72 hours. After that there is testing and evaluating, wich is difficult work! I try to play each game as thouroughly as I can and give a nice constructive or encouraging comment. Some games that are flash or html5 are easy to test, since there is no downloading, others are more hard.

Anyway, I have made a game about a Mexican that chases overgrown flies in a biotech laboratory with a bat, and candy falls out, so…

I used html5/javascript.

What went right:

-The Ludum Dare and its community : It is so awesome! I would have never done what I did without it! The IRC channel was pretty friendly when seeking advice. I have also seen some really great games out there, lots of innovation and lots of fun. Lots of great ideas.

-Modular programming : This was the case or never that proved that modular programming and object orientation and inheritance was the way to go. I have passed most of the first day creating my “game engine” if you shall permit, made all the base “classes” (the base prototypes to be correct, but nobody would understand), and other boring work, but the last day was the day when I turned this everything into a “game”. The modularity of most of my code made it really easy to add stuff, and would make it really easy for me to extend the game!

-Graphics : I have made a nice set of graphics, even if not totally complete, is well integrated, where no image that shouts out, or so it seems to me, but you can go and check    …

-Flies reproducing: This is kinda’ related to modular programming, but the evolution system I made for the flies could be easily transformed to add more parameters or even to make a separate species.

-Time lapse: This may seem quite ordinary, but for me, viewing my time lapse seemed so empowering! Like watching your past self code in fast-mo!

-My super-duper optimised javascript binary array grid manager that I made for the compo seemed to work really well. It makes things faster and more memory efficient by using typed arrays. You can find an explanation in my previous post: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/08/23/binary-data-in-javascript/ I am thinking about submitting this to git-hub but I’m using mercurial, HELP!

What went wrong:

-I Got ideas late : the moment I saw the theme, my brain seemed to stop working. It took me roughly 24 hours to actually get the real idea. The first day I was actually just building a generic tile-based environment. Only when in the evening I got tired of doing math and started doing graphics, I got the flash for the idea I currently have.

-Time : I didn’t have much time, and my timelapse showed that I spent part of my first day just watching videos and listening to music on Youtube. I should use time-management next time. And motivate myself with a great idea early.

-Not really a game : well, even if it is a game, nothing happens if you kill all the flies. There is no end and, like, no beginning. I wanted to add an intro and something that happens at the end, or maybe a boss or something, but I didn’t have time.

-No goal there are candies in the game but they give you nothing, yet.

-No audio : I was going to add music. in fact, for the last few hours I was working on a song to add to the game. Unfortunately I didn’t finish it untill the next day, and then I also realized that adding music in html5 is still really complex.

What’s next:

-Music: I have my song already, but I should integrate it and see what people think, yet it is hard to make it optimally work on all browsers.

-More evolution : making flies fly away from the player would be good. Also adding different types of flies.

-Level system this would take some time to integrate, since I would need to redo the whole code.

-More graphics

Would I be able to make a full game based on this? What I hoped was that Ludum Dare would push me on the path to eventually making a great game. For now on I play other peoples games.

Play my game:     http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=13310   and comment and rate please.

As I promised in a previous post, I made a library that facilitates the use of typed arrays in JavaScript. The library is here. This is great for tile based games in JavaScript because it permits to make easy to use grids that use less memory. You can have Grids of 8bit, 16bit, or 32bit signed or unsigned integers. It also has a compatibility mode that makes my library work on browsers that don’t yet support typed arrays by using a image data pixel array instead( but it only works on 8bit unsigned grids). I was going to post  a demo but my free provider is down for some reason so..You can use it like this:

var map = binaryData.Grid(100,15,8,false) ;//make a 100×15 8bit unsigned grid initialised to 0.

map.set(2,2, 25); // set the (2,2) to 25

alert(map.get(2,2)); //should get the (2,2) and alert 25

map.paste(3,3,

[[0,5,5,0,0,5,5,0],

[5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5],

[5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5],

[0,5,5,5,5,5,5,5],

[0,0,5,5,5,5,5,0],

[0,0,0,5,5,5,0,0],

[0,0,0,0,5,0,0,0],

[0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]);  // not really obvious here, but pastes a heart mde out of 5s on the grid at position (3,3).

map.forEach( function(value,x,y) {/*put your drawing routines here*/}); // forEach can also be executed only on a defined area of cells like this:

map.forEach(function(value,x,y) {/*blabla*/},2,2,10,10)// executes the function on the 10×10 cells that start at (2,2)

//by drawing only the cells on the screen, you can greatly optimise side-scrollers.

this is enough. Once atspace.com will be back up, I will post a small demo, and maybe a documentation. And maybe move my thing to bitbucket or github or something.. herpderp.. but that will be tomorow. night everyone..fgHRWf3x zzzzz

So, yeah. This is the first time I made a game for LudumDare and this is the first time I made a game so fast. Phew… I did take more days then I was supposed to, as I did many other things on my weekend. It is hard to imagine what a REAL Ludum Dare would be like! But… my game is finished, or almost finished. I could have took some time to add more kinds of enemies, prettier graphics, maybe a level mode…

Anyways, this game pretty fun to play. It is about a turret who’s mission it is to…kill coloured rectangles! It is an infinite survival and the longer you play it the harder it gets! I had much fun creating the different “waves of enemies that might appear at random. It gets really intense!

I thought about a game mechanism where you almost don’t control the gun. You only control when it shoots. So basically missing might mean dying.

The point of the game is to collect points by killing enemies. I also made a “multiplier” system. So the more enemies you kill in a row the more points you get!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-34/?action=preview&uid=13310