Hi, ChainedLupine here.

I never did a post-mortem for my Ludum Dare #19 entry, called Introspect.  So, instead, I finished the game, published it, and only six months later did I write a post mortem.  Wow, am I lazy or what?

I wanted to share the news that my wimpy little Ludum Dare entry was brutally stripped to pieces and then slowly re-assembled over five months into a full featured game.  It was released not too long ago on Kongregate.com and quickly shot to #3rd of the highest rated top new games!  Just a week after release, it received badges and is now sporting nearly 200,000 plays!  (It actually has 10x as many plays as that, but if you want to know why I don’t count those, then check out my blog post linked below.)

So for those who might want to hear some advice from someone who managed to turn a shoddy Ludum Dare entry into something playable and successful, I recommend you check out the entirety of my post below.  I cover everything from the Ludum Dare version all the way up to the final released copy, and then some of the post-release problems I had.

Click here to play Legend of Kalevala!

or

Click here to read the Legend of Kalevala Post Mortem!

To everyone who puts in their valuable free time to working on Ludum Dare, a much hearty thank you for inspiring people like me.  And to those who participate:  Let’s keep having fun and mak’n games!

You can also check out the review for Legend of Kalevala on Jayisgames.com.

Well, my entry “Introspect” is done.  Kinda.  Mostly.  I did hit most of my goals this time, but due to a family holiday get-together, I wasn’t able to entirely complete the game.  But unlike my last two Ludum Dare entries, it is playable all the way to the end.

You can explore the level and collect all three abilities for your alien character.  There are some unusual dead-ends in the levels which would have contained pieces of the character’s story and purpose.

Click on the image to view my submission.  If that doesn’t work for some reason, here’s a direct link to the playable game.

Updated with 3 minutes to spare! I added a title tune and a Memory Orb pickup tune.

Ugh.   Mouse-hand is breaking from doing all this level work.

Clicky on the image if you want to give it a try!

Warning: Some exits crash the game, because the levels they point do not yet exist!

Here’s another build for you!

Level transitions and game-state saving is working.  All of the dialog code is in place, too, and you can now collect memory orbs.

Now that I am done with all the core game play stuff, it’s time to start working on levels and toss in another enemy or two.

Here’s the latest build of Introspect.

No time for talk!  On to phase 2!

Alright, I’m back, and after a quick breakfast I will be on my way to pick up my fellow LDer.  After that — We’ll be both back to work!

I’m happy with my progress so far.  While I’ve taken perhaps a bit more time to work on the graphics than I should, it’s given me something quite nice to look at so far.  The basic controls are done, I just need to start adding in the rest of the game play mechanics.  Obstacles to completing the game are next on my list to do.

After that, I’ll be spending as much time creating levels in Tiled as I can.

Alright, been kinda quite, but I’ve got a working level now.  Gameplay mechanics are far from done but at least I got something to show for it.

I need to pick up the pace.  I’m spending too much time on art.

And this time, dammit, I will have an opening title.

I’ve got some sketches of the weird main character. Let’s meet him/her now!

My design idea is discovery of both gameplay, and both of yourself (as the game character).  I’m starting out with something alien and unusual looking, so you don’t have any preconceptions of the story or what is to come.

Well, I fixed some bugs in my Astar routines that are a part of my basecode, and now those changes have been pushed into gwslib.

I also tossed in some state machine stuff in case it is useful.

gwslib is available right here. To recap what it is, check my basecode post.

I’m ready!

Alright, now that I have some time to finish this up, I am declaring what I will be using, and sharing my basecode. Actually, baselibrary.

I’ll continue to develop in Actionscript3, using the Flex compiler. My IDE will remain FlashDevelop, as I am quite happy with it since I discovered the FlxDebug plugin. My graphics library will be Flixel.

Graphics will be drawn in Photoshop, or InkScape if I end up doing vector art.

Sound? I am not sure yet. SFXR is always there if I end up being lazy, but I might try something different this time.

Basecode? Some. It’s a hodge-podge of miscellaneous stuff, mostly for Flixel. For example, a simple class for drawing status bars, and another for creating scrolling text displays. The kind of crap I end up duplicating over and over, so I just stuck most of it into a separate library.

I’ve been working on a Tiled loader for Flixel. It’s pretty much feature complete*. The nice thing about Tiled levels is that they are more than just tilemaps, but can contain any amount of meta-data in so-called “object layers.” It’s decent if you’re into 2D tilemaps.

Anyway, here is the library as-is: gwslib Note that I use the fast SHA1 available here.

I wrote some Astar pathfinder stuff to go along with that, but it’s a bit broken at the moment. I will try to get it working before tomorrow afternoon.

*As long as you use the QT version of Tiled, and don’t use isometric tiles.

Winter-y greetings to everyone! I’m all excited for this festive Ludum Dare. I know it will be tons of fun.

This will be my third Ludum Dare. I’m not a veteran yet, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of things. I more-or-less follow Sol’s tricks and tips, plus or minus some of the more saner advice. *cough*

In fact, I enjoy it so much that I’ve had great success applying the Ludum Dare method to my projects. It’s great to get a prototype up and running in a mere 48 hours.

This Ludum Dare will be different for me! More on that later, when I figure exactly how it will be different. What I do know for sure is that I’ll be doing my Ludum challenge along with a friend. We haven’t decided yet if we’re going to team up for a Jam game or do our own separate projects. Either way, it should be fun.

I’ll post about my tools/libraries later, as I intend to release my Flixel code base with lots of improvements over last year.