It’s a 3D version of my LD17 none-entry reworked for the MiniLD28.

The aim is to get it looking like this…

This is what I like about LD it gets you to build up your game development skills and push the boundaries of what you can do!

This is it in the game so far still a WIP thought!

Play via Kongregate (English Leaderboards)
Play via MiniJuegos (Primary Sponsor) in “HD”

I always intended to revisit this game post-compo but it took many months before I actually did anything about it. The talented musical stylings of Amon26 and exquisite pixel-artistry of Paul Veer made the game come to life. As for me, I rewrote a lot of the code and tweaked the controls significantly from the original release.

Actually going through the process of releasing a game, finding sponsorship and distribution was hugely rewarding. I learned so much that will put me in a stronger position if I decide to do another sponsored Flash game. Financially, Roller Derby 20XX was a break-even proposition. I was able to pay the artists and FGL’s 10% cut. Which is fine. The experience was far more valuable to me than any monetary gains.

Ludum Dare has been a life-changer for me. I don’t have much free time and I’m not disciplined enough to spend an hour or two on game development every day. But I can free up a weekend and know that I will have something prototyped after 48hrs. Sometimes these prototypes are worth expanding on.

I recommend to anyone: take one of your compo entries, polish it up and throw it up on Flash Game License. Just experience what it’s like to go through that process.

Total investment in Roller Derby 20XX: About 150 hours. Value gained from the experience? Priceless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut-CXi8UDYg

No, that’s not a typo. I never got around to editing the video from my LD17 attempt. So I had a little time left this evening and thought I’d get it up today. Go me. This is going to be a two part video becuase I did take a lot of footage. I seriously did try to crop it all under 15 minutes but couldn’t crunch it enough. So, after I upload the second part to this, I’ll upload my LD18 timelapse. Does anyone know what I do with the screenshots Chronolapse takes? Is there a program or utility I can use?

(please note I juu-uust uploaded it so the early views may have quality sufferings)

ARH!! THEY'RE COMMING!

Sadly i wont have time for making a tutorial level, so here goes:

• Walk with WASD
• Look with Mouse
• shift to fire colour beam
• space to lob “droplet” enemy into the air
• Choose fire color with Q, 2 and E to get Blue, Green and Red respectively.

kill enemies by firing a beam of matching color into them. shoot both eyes of the “walkers” to destroy them. shoot your beam through an enemy of a any color to mix the two colors and thus being able to take out other colors than your standard Red/Green/Blue. When in doubt of color mixing, look at the paddle you for guidance.

The goal is to defend the big flowerish thing in the middle.  the “droplets” wont hurt it very much, so don’t worry TOO much about them. They’ll hurt you though. go close to the flower to heal. take note that you’re draining its health by doing so. The big “walkers” will take a huge bite out of the flowers health if they get a chance.

Play here:

• Win: www.zigs.dk/resources/files/unity/colour_win.rar
• Mac: www.zigs.dk/resources/files/unity/colour_mac.zip
• Web: www.zigs.dk/resources/files/unity/colour_web.html

Can somebody confirm that the mac version works? Any comments, rants, horror stories welcome.

todo:

• sound
• graphic cues
• optimize
• bug hunt
• music

probably not gonna have time to do music, to be realistic.

Edit: I’m also in need of a name…

Play it here! Please!

Instructions on how to find the demo on a 360 here.

Some screenshots and a slightly wry (sly?) video that deliberately tries to misinform the viewer about the game here.

It costs less than a dollar to buy.

And 4th in Innovation, Community and Theme.

So close to a medal! Thank you so much for your votes, and comments.

About the comments, they are very very positive, and this is extremmely rewarding. You all point out very clear downsides, that I am going to list here.

You big enthousiasm gave me the will to rewrite the game. Take your comments in account, try to make it better. More optimised, more fun, more functionnal, more beautiful. It might become my first full fledged game. And that would be nice.

Controls are awkward

True. As I wrote, I designed them with a gamepad in mind, and that was probably a bad idea. First because everyone doesn’t have a gamepad, and second because as it’s been pointed out, mouse controls would be a lot better.

Also, there are far too many controls. Moving, rotating, zooming camera is already 8 buttons. Could be reduced by suppressing the “strafe” left and right controls and probably still be functionnal. Given the height of the hills, we certainly need camera rotation, to reach “behind” them.

In the same vein, the “beacon” and “boat” shortcuts might be removed. They allow for faster play, but are confusing at first.

However, mouse controls were a lot harder to implement (I’m still not sure how to do the inverse transformation to get from screen to heightfield cell), so I went for buttons.

Solution: go for mouse control, as in classic RTS. Mouse to select buildings, mouse buttons to bring up menus, mouse at the edge of the screen to scroll. Mouse wheel to zoom. Maybe mouse in the top corners to rotate?

With of course keyboard equivalents for the poor chaps who still one one button mouses… Wink wink nudge nudge. And good old RTS keyboard shortcuts.

Gameplay is a bit confusing

Some of you mentionned this, and the fact that 3 pages of manual is too long. I can understand that, especially when you have 204 games to grade. Guilty as charged. When I decided to make a strategy game — with different types of buildings, each with its specificities — the game became inherently complex. And not “casual” anymore like many of the LD entries. That’s a choice that probably rebuked many players, and a risk to take. On the other hand, the only remaining ones were the most perseverent, and they seemed to find the game worth the effort. And graded well. Thanks again!

Solution: as suggested, inside help could be useful, as well as tooltips, maybe even tutorials. And pictures in the external manual.

Polish

Shading is a bit off at night time, menus sometimes disappear under water, aiming precision is not great, beacon rings should be visible at all times, colors didn’t get unanimity, etc.

Obviously, in a limited time competition, some polish gets left out. Especially since the technical part was quite challenging to me. All that would be corrected/improved in a post compo version. Notably, I would like to:

• replace my lousy 3D icons by 2D, maybe have a HUD à la Warcraft, or just a bring-up menu.
• use 2D sprites as well for the dezoomed view, instead of OpenGL square dots.
• more eye candy. My lightnings are a bit lame, the uniform water is not that nice. could use a sky in zoomed views. Maybe more gimmicks on the land so that it doesn’t look so empty.
• sound effects.
• longer music, maybe different themes.
• different environments, colors themes, etc.

More gameplay

No one commented on that, but I was thinking about it in my postmortem. Although many of you found the game enjoyable as it is, my intention was in fact to make it multiplayer.

• cooperative mode. 2+ players share the same ressources (max number of stuff) on the same map, and try to save as many people possible, together. Allows for more micromanagment and interesting strategic interaction.
• competitive mode. 2+ players share the map and people, but have their own ressources/buildings. In the end, the winner is the one who saved the biggest number of people.
• versus mode. 2+ players play on totally independent games but with an identical starting point. Other players can be displayed as “shadows”. There is no interaction at all between players, the point is to see how many people is saved by each player, given the same map.

Now I’m not sure a solo campain would be interesting. There are few types of buildings, one type of guys, and the point of the game is to control them indirectly. There wouldn’t be heros, or real stories behind.

Of course, there could a be a series of tutorials, introducing the buildings one by one. Or I could radically change the whole thing and add lots of unit/building types, and make it a full fledged RTS with military and bloodbaths and whatnot. But that wouldn’t really uphold the original concept.

I could, later, make a wargame out of this, in a sequel. But for now I’d just like to remake *this* game, since you seemed to like it so much.

Technical notes

I’m not really sure what i mean by “rewrite”. Of course, the LD code is pretty much unusable. Globals everywhere, fake OOP with ugly shortcuts, last minute patches that became core functions, etc. Also, it’s written entirely in Lua, and performance is probably not excellent. That means I should probably move the computation intensive parts to C (or a C based language such as Objective-C that I happen to know): heightfield generation and altitude interpolation, drawing calls, etc.

Sadly I don’t really know where to put the limit, and I haven’t really experimented yet with C-Lua communication and design. For now my library is mainly a wrapper that makes low-level functions available to Lua, and everything from low-level to logic is in Lua.

Might be an interesting challenge. Might also be one of these things I get sucked into and in which I roam around for ages in technical desperation.

The good things

You mentionned awesome, fun, damn cool, interesting, great visual style, atmosphere, “perfect” music, great feeling of doom.

Mission accomplished. Thank you a billion times.

Stay tuned for a possible remake, and see you during the next LD!

SOME OF MY CREW STARVED TO DEATH

I’ll miss you forever, Frank!

I love that guy. He was a last minute addition but did add a bit of humor to an otherwise morbid game.

triplefox says …

Match-3 never felt so “life-or-death” before. I played longer than I thought I would, mostly to see if I could actually get a good result. Finally got one after cracking open the code and seeing that it requires 2500 points on day 1.

Something that bugs me though is that it should become easier to survive as more people starve :/

Not displaying the points needed to complete a round was a bad choice. By the time I realized that, however, it was too late. And yes, I thought about that too. Unfortunately I was well into the weekend and too far along the game when I thought about that, and decided that although hit didn’t make sense, I couldn’t think of a way to fix that problem without changing the gameplay. If I did it again I would’ve made people get weaker, not die, and therefore they need more food to keep alive (although it would eventually come to a point where everyone else died, so it was a dead end story that only dragged down the game).

KavuDX says …

When the instructions came up I had a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT idea of what the game would be, and was a bit disappointed when I saw that it was some kind of Match-3, but it ended up beeing really fun, and I kept playing for a while.

Good Point: The drag and select mechanic was very creative!
Bad Point: No sound besides the cries of help from my crew inside of my head.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear in the instructions what kind of game it was, but I’m glad you though it was fun! And thank you, I ‘ve never seen that in a match-3 game before and I thought I’d try it out. I’m working on exploring this mechanic further and I’m currently working on a new game that I’m going to put a lot more thought and polish into, including some music and sound effects my friend is helping me out with.

Daniel Zoran says …

The game was a lot of fun, not sure about the theme use, but I played it and enjoyed.

Thanks but I don’t see how it doesn’t fit the theme.

fydo says …

I liked the drag-to-select feature.
Also, any game with beards is OK in my book!

Me too! And yes, beards are awesome.

eli says …

I’m on the same page as Kavu. It feels like the instructions are for a different game.

It was very addictive, but I realized I just wasn’t getting any better at it, so I stopped.

Yeah sorry about that :/ And In my new game based on the same mechanic, I will be adding a lot more to the gameplay to keep it interesting and fun to play even as you progress.

xeon06 says …

Great interpretation of the theme.

Thank you! You seem to be one of few who think that way.

Endurion says …

Neat It uses the same mechanic I have in a never finished game of mine. Dangerously addictive.
Polish’er up and add music/sound!

Working on it

jovoc says …

I like that you tried to put a twist on this type of matching game but unfortunately I think the changes to the formula detract from the gameplay. Why make the user drag over each tile instead of just selecting all adjacent foodstuffs? And not sure what you gain making R and D manual operations.

The theme worked surprisingly well here. It really added humor and narrative to the game. Esp. like the bugs. Ewww. Overall fun but gameplay a little odd.

I liked the drag-to-select mechanic because it added a sense of challenge where you didn’t just need to find a match, but chose how to clear it. In a match with 6 pieces together, you could clear all 6 or clear 3 then three (which would actually give you more points the way I had the point system set up). Plus I think that I adds more thought to clearing because you can’t just click around randomly to get clears. But I’d like to hear more about what you have to say in regards to your view on the flaws of the mechanic.

As for the R/D buttons, an earlier version of the game really relied on the strategy of using deliveries and randomizing manually, but that changed as the weekend progressed, i just forgot to change that as well.

Hempuli says …

Addicting, but quite far from the theme, I think.

Again, I don’t see how its far from the theme.

philomory says …

Interesting core mechanic; Some extra status info would be good, but overall I liked it. Addicting enough that I played for quite a while.

Thanks! And yeah I realized that it was lacking some status display.

IK1985 says …

not a bad little game, i agree with a lot of the comments that it could of done with some sound, apart from that it was really good.

Thanks Like I’ve said previously, I’m working on a game with sound that will have the same core mechanic but will hopefully improve on most of the flaws of the LD entry.

Thanks, and nice videos

Hempuli says …

This was very fun to play! It was really satisfying to see the forks take pieces of the islands. The targetting was quite awkward, though.

Satisfying and satiating! Yes, I agree that targeting is a problem. It was really more of a work-around to save time than a real mechanic. Unfortunately I had to stick with what I had.

shady1024 says …

Very dizzy now… Great idea and well executed. Would have like another element of some kind. After three islands I was a bit bored (not to mention full). I like the targeting. Without the spinning or the cross-hairs it would have been too easy.

Thanks. It was supposed to have more than the mindless eating of islands, but of course that never got programmed. The crosshairs and spinning were not really meant as a challenge, but now I see how it plays a role. The spinning was just to make the depth more apparent, the crosshairs simply to aim.

philomory says …

The audio is really awesome. Not much in the way of gameplay, really, but, I really dig the sound.

Spent some quality time with sfxr and musagi to get that done. Strangely enough, I’m usually weak on sound and music, but I guess this time I was inspired. Glad I did it, too; I probably wouldn’t have had time to implement major gameplay upgrades even if I hadn’t spent the time to make the audio what it is.

pekuja says …

What a strange approach to the theme! Feels kinda WarioWare-ish to me. I also started button mashing after a few levels. It gets a bit boring. I finished at around 400 forks I think.
The controls are a little bit difficult because of the perspective and low mouse sensitivity (which I have maxed out in my OS so it’s not just my system). It’s also difficult when you can’t see behind hills. Perhaps a higher point of view would be better?
The music was fun and chipper.

Agreed on the WarioWare. Seems like it would make a nice minigame if there were four colors of fork, each player trying to eat as much of the island as they can. I can really imagine this in one of those games, especially a Wii one.

As for the boredom… I originally only had 3 levels, which seemed like a good amount during my limited play-throughs. My brother commented that I should add a few more, and I did… turns out I probably should have left it how it was.

Mouse sensitivity is something I just forgot about (it’s high enough on my computer + mouse that I can get across the island pretty easily)–I could have simply added the ability to use the +/- keys to change it. Wish I had thought of it.

The point of view was actually supposed to be a challenge, for the exact reason you stated. I should have made it more obvious where the cursor is though–you shouldn’t feel like you’re losing your mouse cursor!

Spiridion says …

I thought the controls were ok, just not nearly sensitive enough. While trying to get the mouse to move faster I confused your mouse handling code a bit, as the mouse froze up. Not sure what I did to get it working again (either waiting or moving the mouse wildly back and forth). I also would’ve liked to be able to move the window. Oh, that sounds so negative. I actually liked the game overall, played to completion in a 455 fork clickfest!

Not sure about the mouse bug, but I’m pretty sure it would be glfw’s fault. For sensitivity, though, and not providing a way to unlock the mouse, I am totally at fault. Play testing would have been a good idea. Glad you didn’t find it too bad though!

Endurion says …

Hilarious!

Only nitpick is the mouse control, it’s moving… weirdly. Having the mouse follow the on screen cursor would probably be better.
Other than that, this is made of win!

Mouse picking is verrry hard to do. I gave up after an hour, and didn’t look back. Even so, if I were to continue development that issue would be top on priorities. Glad you liked it!

Tozy says …

Mouse control is perfect (maybe you changed it after the other coments), no problem with that.
At first i was like =) look at that fork with a piece of island!
Than I was like =( nothing new, the “take a piece of island” effect starts to fade.
But then I started to fork-rain and it was =D

Thanks for the laugh. I can imagine seeing someone playing my game with those expressions.

Seems you have the common complaint of shallow gameplay, which is very valid.

Rolf says …

FORKSPAM!

First Iceland… then Britain… and then THE WORLD! MUAHAHAHAHA!!!

cptalbertwesker says …

A really quirky concept I love it! The game seems to run a little slow on my computer, but the rotating screen was really nice and you were almost pulled into the game, funniest game I’ve seen so far, absolutely inspired!

Thanks.

Didn’t try it on slower computers that much, and didn’t try the final version on slower computers at all. The changing color and chunks of island combined might have increased the lag amount. Even then, the worst of the computers I tested isn’t that bad, so it would probably have been slow anyways.

SonnyBone says …

I wish this thing controlled better because DAMN is it ever unique. THANK YOU!

I wish it had better controls too. For the next compo I should actually implement a mouse pick method before trying to create one in an hour. And no, thank YOU for the comment!

First I would like to say thanks to everyone who took the time to play my game. My music took 15th place this time. I look forward to next time when I will add sound effects as well.

Now for the responses to the comments….

ickylevel says …

Cools musics.

Thanks! This compo I spent about 1 hour making the game and 3 hours making the music. (yes I did not get the full 48 hours. I was just too busy.)

eli says …

Great music and variety!

Graphics were cute, could have used sound effects. The start-over gameplay is a bit frustrating.

I would like to apologize for the start over gameplay. I originally planned to have enemies and a life span. neither of which got implemented. So I ended up doing something quick so I could put it up.

Cooshinator says …

Nice music, but the graphics seemed kind of crappy. Other than that, I did enjoy the idea of “Just move around find the lightning bolts”. It was pretty calming

Tenoch says …

Great fun! The simplest ideas are sometimes the best.

Never managed to beat the second level though, these rotating ones are nasty. Adn sometimes the collision detection is a bit severe.

But the great music made me want to finish the game!

If you got to the 2nd level you got to hear all the music. I should of made the rotating ones move at 1/2 or 3/4 their current speed to make them more fair.

Endurion says …

Nice. Simple idea, and the second level is actually harder than one might think.

The 2nd level I spend about 5 minutes making. I took the other level and just changed a couple things… I feel a bit bad for making the game so hard. Next time (If I get more than 4 hours I will have a easy medium and hard mode)

31eee384 says …

Awesome music. But I’ve got to agree with others’ critiques: the restarting levels deterred me from finishing the game.

If you don’t mind me doing so, Diet Chugg, I rehosted your game here:

http://galacticgaming.net/hosting/ludum/SkyLands.exe

Thanks for re-hosting the game for me. I gave you an award for that one. I think next time I will host it on Game Jolt. Just found out about it and I think it would be nicer to use.

jfroco says …

Excellent audio. Simple and fun gameplay. Restarting after dying impeded me to finish the game.

Sorry…. really should of got the life system finished. I had it about 1/2 way when I just ran out of time. Curses only having 4 hours to work on the game.

Tom 7 says …

Not bad. I played through to the “end” (hint: you can see the “end” by pressing the cheat-key ‘esc’ at any time ) and it was challenging even given the simple goal. The biggest hazard was getting stuck on a wall, because if that happens and there isn’t a whirlwind coming, you have to use the cheat key to start over from the first level. Nice, weird music.

Most people find the music I make to be very weird. My last compo I entered into that’s all I got about my music. Some liked it and some hated it.

frosty says …

I really like this. =) Great music. Neat back story. The graphics are rough but fun. I especially like the main character hover dude. Overall good work for a 48h entry.

I’m glad someone noticed the back story. It really wasn’t in the game much, not near as much as I planned. Also Thanks for the trophy, that is the first trophy I have received and it is much appreciated.

SonnyBone says …

I liked dodging the stale bugles and picking up the fruit snacks with my GOLDEN FLEECED SAMUEL ADAMS ON A HOVERBOARD.

LOL! what a hilarious interpretation of my game. I really liked your entry btw. It was really humorous.

Codexus says …

Nice music but restarting the level made the game no fun :/

yep this makes it pretty clear, I will make sure my game next time will not restart you over and over.
Now for my own commentary on the game.

Likes:

1. My music rocked this time. Taking 15th out of 204 entries just made my day. Next time I will have sound effects too because I found out about sdfx and that will really help out.

2. I liked the ragged pictures for the lightning and whirlwinds. I used photoshop for them and I thought they looked pretty.

3.  I liked the back story for the game.

Dislikes:

1.I hated the restart level feature. I really wanted to have the life features in game but never made it in time.

2. Not enough time working on the game. Man that really frustrated me. I had a date this weekend, work this weekend, and went to my grandmas the weekend of the compo. It gave me nearly no time to actually work on the game. (I had other things too but those were the highlights)

3. No ending… really bothered me. It made my game feel incomplete. Which it was but I don’t want it to feel this way.

4. Not enough levels. It really should of had 5 levels with 5 songs to accompany the game.

Update: More final version released, (includes fix to the double jumping issue mentioned in the comments), here’s the mod db page for it http://www.moddb.com/games/island-hopping/

Thanks to homework and all sorts of unexpected junk these last couple weeks I wasn’t able to get this ready until now, I still have yet to make a web interface for viewing the high scores or a tutorial, but whatever…

Here’s what I’m calling the version 1.2 beta, it’s probably fairly buggy and missing things, but I think/hope it is significantly better than the compo version.

Tutorial is listed as an option, but I never got around to it, so just ignore it for now. Also, keep in mind that this is my first attempt at online leaderboard stuff, so I might disable it at any point (or it might break) due to unforeseen events.

[Download Link]

Released a more final version on Mod DB: http://www.moddb.com/games/island-hopping/

Changes:

• Improved double jumping (also double jumping is removed for hard and insane modes)
• Online high scores
• Local high scores
• More options (toggle music, allow internet access, field of view, etc)
• OGRE dialogue thing removed in favor of ingame options
• Jumping is now mapped to all letter keys, up arrow, ctrl/alt/shift/enter/space and mouse clicking
• All of those above keys also restart the game now (there is a 1/2 second delay to keep you from clicking right through it though)
• Misc bugfixes
• And probably more but I’m drawing a blank now…

Anyways, I’d appreciate any feedback, and I hope you enjoy it! I’ll probably keep working with it for a week or two, so suggestions are welcome.

Top 20

You can check out the top 20 games here (including ties):

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-17/?action=top

Winners are decided by the Overall category. To see the complete list, hit the “Show All Entries” link at the bottom.

Categorical Top 5′s

Here at Ludum Dare, being the best game isn’t the only way to win. Games are rated in 7 additional categories, with a special “Coolness” category highlighting people that went above and beyond to be sure you got a vote.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-17/

*NOTE*: You can click on the titles of the categories for Top 20 style lists per category.

Ludum Dare 17 as Screen Shots

And since it looks cool, you can see screenshots for the full list of 204 entries here:

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

And that was Ludum Dare 17

What an incredible turn-out for our first competition of 2010! When the smoke cleared, we had 205 entries, but I received a request by the author to remove one. There was also a brief blackout (?) with one of the entries, bringing us down to a total of 203, but that mystery entry came back (somehow). Hooray!

Numerical nuances aside, HOLY COW! We did over 200 games! Congratz, and thank you everyone for making Ludum Dare 17 such an incredible success!

Ludum Dare 18 coming August 2010

Our previous record was 144 entries in August of 2009, and the way things are looking, Ludum Dare 18 should eclipse that. Continuing our regular 4 month schedule, Ludum Dare 18 will be in August, date to finalized as it gets closer.

If you haven’t already, you can sign up for the mailing list, and we’ll keep you informed. Also, you can follow Ludum Dare on Twitter, or subscribe to the NEWS RSS Feed.

Big news for Ludum Dare 18 (Compo and Jam)

We have some big changes planned for Ludum Dare 18. You can check out my introduction to the new Ludum Dare here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/04/28/future-dare/

Mini-LD #18 “Blind Date” this weekend

Can’t get enough Ludum Dare? This upcoming weekend, tune in for MiniLD hosted by SpaceManiac. Details about the upcoming mini can be found here.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2010/05/07/mini-ld-18-blind-date/

Unfamiliar with the Mini-LD? Mini-LD’s are smaller competitions hosted by Ludum Dare veterans. They’re held monthly in the off months between our major competitions. Tune in to the website every month for details on the latest Mini-LD competition. Curious who’s up next? You can check out the host list on the wiki.

Suggestions

If you have any suggestions for the compo, we continue to collect them in the comments here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/08/30/suggestion-post/

Thanks everyone for coming out and making Ludum Dare 17 such an incredible success. See you in August!

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

The hit soundtrack for You are me now has been released, courtesy of Indie Funk Electronic Newbie Records.

• Intro/Extro
• Island Theme

If you haven’t played the game yet, it lives on the Megastructure development blog.

Questions, comments, and criticism are all welcome (Ludum Dare entry page). Thank you to all those who have commented! I have learned much, and next time will be even better.

This is how Sid Meier creates a game in 48 hours:

Game Godfather Sid Meier and the 48-Hour Game