I have been working on my game some more since the competition version.

New features include:

• Improved player control
• Improved physics & collision handling
• Enemies now have a bit longer line of sight, making them harder
• More logical levels, no more unexpected death drops
• Some new tiles and graphics
• Flickering and occluded lights
• A preloader

Play it here! –> The Secret Documents

I’m mildly baffled at the audio ratings my game recieved.

[ - - 5  3 2 - - 4 - 1 1 - 2 2 1 - 2 1- -]

First off, look at all those dashes. My game certainly had audible sound, and my game being made in game-maker, I see no reason for it not to work. I do however appreciate the amount of dashes I got versus the amount of ones, Protip: make sure those headphones are plugged in.
Although I may be biased, my audio certainly deserved more than a one.  This makes me mildly angry because those ones are mostly either
A) I’m on mac/linux and I’m jelly because I can’t play it but I’ll vote anyways, I’ll just give audio 1/5
B) I don’t hear audio, has nothing to do with the fact my volume is turned down. I’m in a bad mood so I’ll rate 1/5 instead of n/a
C) the game only has one song and one sfx, I am completely ignoring the fact that the game really doesn’t need any more than that and rating 1/5 because there aren’t 50 songs and/or they’re not chip-tunes and all pixel art games need chip tunes

I also got a lot of dashes for community, which is almost more gobsmacking. Remember people, there is a handy button for viewing the person’s journal

The humor category also bit me hard, as I didn’t make a funny game. Which make memad at the category, as I’m sure I’ve said before, giving a game props for being funny is great, but we shouldn’t be forced into making a funny game, and we shouldn’t turn a cold shoulder to more serious or neutral games in the process.

Anyways, </rant>, I think I’m just disappointed because I got 95% praise in the comments, and then I get on the computer today to see this. I’d really appreciate it if people commented for reasons other than to congratulate as well. Being told your game is great is good and all, but nowhere near as helpful as some good ‘ole constructive criticism. A few people commented that the game was “missing something to make me really enjoy it” and it frustrated me that they offered no solutions (as in, I had to sit around for a week and figure it out myself).

I’m really happy with the game I made, but this puts a bit of a damper on my desire to work on it more.

also whoever rated 2/5 for graphics. . . just . . .

We didn’t get the full blown all-1s parade like last LD, but it did appear on my entry. What makes this particularly horrible, however, is that I didn’t get many legit votes, and would have scored 4.10 for audio rather than 3.82. ARGH.

What we did get, however, was a lot of all-N/As and even more all-N/As-apart-from-community. I got one and two from those respectively.

IT’S NOT COOL.

People who do that should get suckness points rather than coolness points, and whoever gets the most suckness points (above a certain threshold) should be banned from voting until they’ve removed all copies of Game Maker from their computer (and possibly Unity and whatever else is “the easiest way to make games for Windows”).

In fact, they might as well be tortured by being forced to program a game for an old console in assembler. Like what I did,  except done by someone who probably can’t even code in BASIC.

So, back to the topic.

If it doesn’t work, DON’T VOTE.

If you think the guy’s a complete idiot, PRETEND IT WAS MADE BY YOUR BEST FRIEND (I’ve yet to find an unexplained all-5s vote but these would be awesome (actually I think I just did on Coffee Forever)).

And now for the ultimate question: How do we stop these stupid, stupid votes?

I have finally found a solution to the effect I was  trying to go for. The finished version of Lunarium should be coming soon. I just need to get another obstacle out of the way.

It’s official. Ludum Dare 19 has finally ended. Here are your results:

Top 20 Competition Games

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

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?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-19/

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

Ludum Dare 19 Jam Games!

Ludum Dare 19 was our 2nd run of the new combined Competition and Jam event, and the results do not disappoint. So in addition to the 242 entries created by individuals for competition, there are 43 more games created teams or individuals that decided to take an extra day to polish their game. Be sure to check those out here:

ALL JAM GAMES (43) <--

[ ALL COMPO GAMES (242) | ALL GAMES (285) ]

Wow!

So THAT was Ludum Dare 19

We are keeping score here, and again, the latest event managed to annihilate our prior best … IN DECEMBER of all months too (our historically lowest month). Back in August, we were impressed that we inched 10 ahead of our prior best, with 213. This time, we were just 15 entries shy of 300! And if you look at the theme voting, more than 600 people cast a vote for the final theme!

And THAT was Ludum Dare in 2010

Lets crunch some numbers…

Event Games: 203+213+285 = 701
Mini LD Games: 2+21+2+6+14+24+9+7 = 85
October Challenge: 24
Total Games for 2010: 701+85+24 = 810

Thanks to Sos for helping me with the math.

Seriously, every single one of you that participated, whether you finished a game or not, you’re awesome. Phil and I (Mike/PoV) took over running Ludum Dare in 2007, and every event since we’ve been constantly impressed at how much it’s grown, and continue to be amazed that it keeps growing so much. What will 2011 bring? Will we break 1000 games?

A big thanks to all of you for helping us make 2010 such a fantastic year.

More Ludum Dare 19 links

Lots of timelapse videos to dig through. I still haven’t had a chance to watch them all, but I’ll give them a browse soon. I’ll try to do that this week.

- Keynote!, starring Some Bear Thing — With Special Guest Mjau
- Ludum Dare 19 Timelapse Videos, list assembled by Fififox
- Entry counts in the final minutes, by me
- LD Census, by demize
- Wallpaper of all entries, by ExciteMike

Interesting Tags: montage, motivation, foodphoto, food, deskphoto, desk, timelapse, bear

Ludum Dare at the Game Developers Conference

Attending GDC? Stay tuned! Like last year, Phil and I want to get a whole bunch of us together somewhere, perhaps more than just once!

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

Ludum Dare 20 – Coming April 2011!!

Like always, stop by again in April for our next regularly scheduled event. We’ll try to have a date nailed down before GDC (Feb 28th), so we can brag about it at the conference. Again, don’t forget the mailing list, and Twitter.

January Mini LD #23, hosted by Jonny D

Fans of LD19′s Silly Themes, take note! Jonny D has a surprised planned just for you. Tune in this month for a very special Mini LD.

Suggestions

If you have any suggestions for us (website, observations, etc), 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 2010 such an incredible year for Ludum Dare! We’ll see you again in April!

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

Source code now up on my entry page (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=rate&uid=3023).  Post-Mortem coming soon.

Hey all,

If anyone out there is bored and wants to help out, could you make a list of all the timelapse videos from Ludum Dare 19 for me.

Thanks to Fififox, we have an epic list of timelapse videos. See the comments for the master list, and if you were missed, just post a new comment.

I am going to try to warm up for upcoming LD’s and Mini-LD’s by giving myself a challenge. I have a game that I will try to make in the time between tomorrow morning (Morning in EST, that is) and the time I leave for my first class in this semester. (Which is on Monday) If I really need to, I’ll also give myself the time between getting to campus and going to the class.

For those who would like to know a bit about the game I am making, information about it follows the break.

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my game this contest:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Dogstar669/in-the-darkness-i-shall-fall

This was the first time I used a toolkit like Unity to make my game rather than writing it all in code. I chose to do this because I knew I would be limited on time; I had two long Christmas parties scheduled for that weekend. In essence, I only probably had about 12-15 hours to make my game.

Well, thanks to Unity I think the game came out pretty well considering how limited my available time was. It is a pretty fun game (though super simple) and there are five levels and some cool sounds and music too.

My determination after using Unity in this contest, after having written code in all my many past entries, is that clearly those that use Unity and the like have an unfair advantage in the game competition. In fact it is not even close. I spent almost no time writing code and completely leveraged the physics and other aspects of Unity that came for free in the toolkit. Instead I could spend all my time in 3DS Max creating levels. I love the fact that I have finally done enough video courses in 3DS Max to actually use it effectively for the game competition! Besides the music and sounds effects, all my time was spent creating levels and testing levels (probably 50/50 time spent on each).

I think as a result, for this contest to actually mean anything, we need to consider separating the game toolkit entries from the code entries. I can say from actual experience now that there is no comparison between the two, and comparing what one person does in code is just not in any way fair to compare to what another does in a toolkit such as Game Maker or Unity. Let’s maybe consider this for next time. Why bother to rate at all if the competition is fixed, right?

My levels were static, so I created them as one gigantic model in 3DS Max, rather than assemble them from prefabs in Unity. I think this saved time as well. But it limited what I really could do on levels (no moving platforms and such). But I accepted that I wouldn’t have time for any extras anyway. I just wanted a basic game, simple but fun, with a win case and a lose case, and i think I accomplished my goal. I love how Unity handles levels. It makes it so easy to build additional levels once you have one finished.

To give you an idea of how easy it was to create new levels for my game in Unity. This is all I had to do. Save level1 as level2. Delete the level1 terrain model. drag in the level2 terrain model. Scale the terrain to the appropriate size. Place the player at the starting position for the level. Place the win marker where I wanted it in the level. Save the level again. Play and test. That’s it. Took about one minute to setup and begin testing a new level.

I wanted to spend no more than one hour on sounds and music. So I quickly assembled a kind of new agey tune with my Axiom Pro 61 keyboard, Cubase 5 and Omnisphere. The sound effects for falling and winning were actually tunes I created with the keyboard and Omnisphere as well. I really like the falling sound for some reason. I was pretty happy with the sounds and spent no longer than an hour on them. And Unity made it less than trivial to bring them into the game.

At first, I wasn’t planning on having a start screen, but then before going to bed on the first night, I thought I would give it a try. My goal was to spend less than 20 minutes on it. I quickly sketched something out on paper with pencil (my favorite way to draw) and scanned it into photoshop. I love to draw, but I’m not very good at it, but I do much better with pencil than the mouse or tablet. The only way I can really do decent computer art is to create something with pencil and then use illustrator pen tool to redo it to make it look decent. Didn’t have time for that here. Wasn’t really happy with my little sketch, but didn’t have any more time to allocate to it. So what I did was I tested a few different filters and found one that made it look like it was night and I thought that it at least conveyed the idea of the game and gave it a bit of style. The text really needed to be redone, but I just didn’t have time for it.

With Unity, it was easy to add buttons, but I had no idea how to make buttons that would fit the art, so I didn’t bother. Had to move on. Think I spent probably about an hour on the start screen including art and the coding of it.

So I then spent the rest of the time creating the levels. One level I created I didn’t use because I tried to create rolling hills, but for some reason I couldn’t get the lighting to show that the hills and valleys even existed. It made it impossible to get through the level because the player couldn’t tell you were trying to go up a hill. I tried a black and white checkerboard texture on the level floor (ala marble madness) and that showed the depth, but the lighting was off, so the player could see the entire level at once. I didn’t have time to mess with it any more so I just decided to try to keep the levels more or less flat (although there is a slight depth here or there, nothing too outrageous). If I did a new version that is one thing I would definitely add because I think I could create much more fun levels with more bumpy terrain and curves and stuff.

Anyway, I’m happy with it. It’s on kongregate. I’m already getting some inquiries on companies interested in it. And I’ve already made my $1+ from advertising!

Hope you enjoy and I hope the powers that be consider separating out the code entries from the toolkit entires, because I can now tell you having done them both, that the amount of work needed to make a game with these toolkits is just a small fraction of what is required to make a game with all code.

I’m a big fan of the analytics so I thought I’d share a few. I also wanted to share this clever comment from a guy named Mario… and a princess named peach…

(comedy gold that)

Up until LD19 I never really used my site. As such, I had no views. What that means is that every view since the start of LD19 has come through this website from my LD entry. If you head over to http://www.thefunkvan.com/ now this is what you will see:

And if you dig into google analytics this is what you will see:

Great stuff

Happy new year everybody =)

I’ve got a couple of game development-related new year’s resolutions for myself, and I thought I’d share them.

First of all, I’m going to finish things that I start. I will allow myself to shelve things, but I will finish them. I leave too many neat things unfinished. Enough of that.

Second, I will make things other than scrolling shmups and platformers. I make too many of them, and I need to broaden my experience beyond that stuff. I will still make some of them, but it won’t be all that I do.

Third, I will complete at least one mid-sized project. I want to accomplish at least something this year, and a good, mid-sized game seems like it would be the thing to do.

Finally, I will improve my artwork. This doesn’t just mean making my art look better, but being able to draw things that I currently have a hard time drawing. (Such as characters in isometric perspectives)

I’m hoping that I can hold to these, as I think they’re things that I really need to do.

Peace

— Mr. Dude

Yep. You can get them here :

My submission entry

Nothing else has changed there, just added binaries for the  two platforms.

Also, if you downloaded the linux version yesterday i had uploaded a version with a debug library linked in accidentally. This affected performance greatly, please update to the latest!

The lack of comments on Rosetta seems to suggest it falls on the wrong side of unintelligible or just not very entertaining. Going to try and make a new version in the next couple of days that addresses some issues and adds a few things.

After staying 2 weeks at home I finally came back to my office. And what was awaiting me? An XMas-Gift by Philhassey himselfs.

So, what was in the Box? A bottle of maple syrup, 5 packages ‘microwave pork rinds’ and a photo of himself and the cool goat that pulled his coach in the ld#17(?) keynote.

I’m quite curious about the microwave pork rind….

Thx a lot!!!

PS: Hope there will be an secret santa next year again! It was fun! Thx for organizing!

EDIT: I finnaly ate some Pork Rinds and I have to say it is really good! Wouldn’t have expected that way! ;D

I’ve added a post-competition build of my game to the links on the entry page. It’s mostly bug fixes but also a few simple improvements and a draw engine overhaul.

New Features:

• simple detection of being stranded without fuel with a popup message
• permanently show a flag over explored planets to make it easier to tell where you’ve been.
• Fuel is consumed over time as you travel, so if you are interrupted by an enemy ship, you only pay for the fuel you’ve used.
• improvements to the shop prevent you from being able to waste money on refills for things you’re already full on (like fuel)

Engine:

• Entirely new draw manager, allows for limited view regions and camera movement (disabled in this build)
• Better UI management for windows and text

Bugs Fixed:

• fixed purchasing to negative money in the shop
• fixed bug where you could travel off screen in the right circumstances
• fixed bugs related to shopping or exploring at the same time as being attacked

All in all, pretty light, but I hope to keep improving it in chunks as I have time.

Check it out

Happy new year to all of you!

I think my thoughts are sufficiently settled for me to write a blog post about how things went.

How things went: Things went well! I’m just about past the amazement that I actually managed to complete a game in 48 hours, and not only that, some people seemed to find it fun. It’s the first time I’ve went into an LD while in any fit state to do so. (LD#18 was 5 hours of focused work on a so-so concept, followed by me falling ill for nearly a week with something that had been creeping up on me for days.) I’m just lucky that my mistakes were partially countered by my good fortune.

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Hi all,

I am like everybody there trying to do my best to rate all the games I can. However, due to personal constraints I fiund it really hard.

The fact that I use a linux netbook at home allows me to rate the following kinds of games : linux based, flash based, wine compatible.

The problem is that there’s no way to know if a game fits these categories before going to the game’s page. I have to click on a page, scroll down ( thanks to my netbook super high resolution ) and discover if I can actually play the game.

I know, I know I could wait to go back to my office and launch all your wonderful submissions on my 90″ 3D extraLED screen on my wonderful Windows 7 mega pro 256 bits edition . But I am on holidays !! So I must wait next week to take time to do so.

Now, now, the idea I had is to be able to browse the game by label or tag. So I could know if the game works on linux, flash, mac osX, win7, unity, etc…

So I could focus on trying the games faster than light ! Well I would have to scroll down of course, but this would be really much better .

Okay, that was the idea. Please feel free to destroy it as much as you like or consider it is my 50 cents to the next ludum dare rating system…

2.0 ? Noooo, much better