Good question, title. Well, here are my goals so far as to what I’m going to do next.

MY GAME RATING-

This is basically all I’ve been doing lately around here. So far I’m at 47. My goal is to reach 100 so I can get a gold medal of coolness. I would be a lot farther along, but I started rating a bit late, and I don’t always have time, blah blah blah, excuses excuses, ect. So yeah, maybe I’ll make another post of my favorites later on.

MY GAME-

I see a lot of people around continuing development on their games to turn them into a full release. I have to say that my game, Empty, will not have it’s development continued directly. It’s far to glitchy to build upon, it’s sort of annoying to play, and I don’t think I can do much more to it’s current engine to make a better game. What may occur in the future is that the game’s core mechanic ideas will be taken, balanced out into a more full game design, and then completely rebuilt from the ground up. I am really much more attached to the idea of the game then the game itself, so I feel this is the next logical step.

MY CAREER-

To be honest, I feel that I can barely say I have a career at all. I know this sounds like I’m being down on myself, but trust me, I’m not. Empty, to me, does not feel enough like a game to me for me to call myself a game developer. If I wanted to, I could probably call myself one and get away with it, but I don’t want to lie to myself. There’s nothing anyone can say to change my mind on this. I will not be a developer until I feel I can truly call myself one. And when will that be? When I make a game that feels like me.

MY FUTURE-

I’m definitely going to start a blog up soon to post my games on and just write (I’m sort of into writing). I’m also going to do the next MiniLD, and all the ones after if I can. So0n, hopefully I’ll have a game that I can be proud of.

I suppose that sums everything up. Well, back to rating!

Hey, everybody, I’ve seen quite a few people reviewing games, and I figured, hey, why not? Here’s a list of the best games I’ve played:

Tiny Religion- A game where you’re in charge of a civilization that needs to find out how to please their picky god. The tasks he likes and doesn’t like is different each time. It’s pretty sweet.

Extensionism- Probably the moodiest game I’ve played. It’s got some glitches, but not as many as mine, that’s for sure. You have to move the lamp like things to expand your world and shrink those of others. It’s kind of evil sounding now that I’m writing it…

Disregard All Humans- Short, but fun. Who hasn’t wanted to possess control of an ever-growing, jumping lizard?

Nina Nueve- Very innovative. Involves mechanics where losing brings you back a level, which you sometimes need to do to go forward. Leave it to Jonathan Whiting, am I right?

T in Y World- Anyone seen this? Epic ASCII game where rules can be edited in the level design.

Petri- A game where you star some bacteria thingy… It needs some ratings, it’s actually quite interesting.

Tiny Civilization- One of the only simulation games that doesn’t bore me to death. Very immersive.

Aether- My favorite thusfar, very nice game that seamlessly intertwines a missile shooting game and a platformer. The graphics are nice, and it feels really balanced.

Well, that’s that. Back to playing!

I wasn’t going to do one, but I’ve decided to write a short little thing on it. My game was titled Empty, and it’s bugs make it impossible to beat, but it’s got some good stuff going on.

Progression-

The idea I first had was a man inside a small screen that could only jump around in his world. It would be mainly story based, about how pointless it is to be alone with no one to share your ideas. After going a bit less than a day working on that, I realized it needed something more. My first idea was to transform the whole game into a scrolling world, where you started in the window I created, but then escaped against the will of your creator. I started working in Tiled, but after a while, I realized I had no idea what I was doing, and I liked my old story idea much better. So, I went back to that. I realized it needed puzzles, something else to illustrate how worthless it all was. I really wanted something that felt like the puzzles in Jonathan Whiting’s Craequ. I didn’t have time to come up with something cool like that, though, so I decided to go with something already invented: the sliding puzzle. It seemed like a great idea, where the man could reflect on how pointless his purpose is. Plus, the puzzles could be made harder through the fact the blocks aren’t always reachable, giving it a nice fresh feel, or at least that’s what I’d hoped. You can be the judge of that.

Pros-

• The mechanic idea was pretty sweet, I think. Puzzle Platformers can be the gateway to loads of awesomeness. My idea of sliding puzzles controlled by jumping was pretty original (as far as I know) and it worked pretty well. It could have had some more smooth transitions to it, but hey, this is the pros section.
• The graphics were pretty nice by my standards, to. The noise effect was something I accidentally discovered during the competition in paint.net that I thought just completed the feel of emptiness. The title screen was cool looking, if I do say so myself. I do wish I had time to give the player a human look with full animations, but the square ended up kind of complementing the aesthetic I had going on, so it was cool.
• The music was something I can’t believe worked out so well, but it did. I wanted to compose something original, but by the time I got around to it, their was an hour left, so I simply generated something in Otomata. It ended up really complementing the puzzley thing, and despite being repetitive, it was not very obtrusive and does not get too annoying.

Cons-

• The game probably should have the option to, you know, win…
• For a game inspired by story, the story could have been much, much better. I should have found a better way to convey the feelings of your character, but the length of the screen limited the length of the messages, and thus, I had to hope for a kind of “narrative subtlety” feel. Yeah… didn’t work.
• The collision detection is scrapped together terribly. It’s possible to get inside blocks in more ways than I can count. This wouldn’t have been as hard if I could make the blocks tween from place to place, but yeah…
• The controls were kind of annoying in the end. The sometimes impossibility of moving the inside block turned from an interesting twist to an annoying limitation. Plus, the clinging on the walls was slightly awkward, and the middle of the character had to be touching the block for the move to register. Very annoying.
• Finally, the game had an awful interest to hardness ratio. It was all difficulty, with no learning curve at all. There was nothing to convince people to play more.

Well, I learned a lot this LD, and I look forward to the next time I can show you all what I can do!

Hey, guys, I decided to take a couple of hours to fix the typo in my game that made it impossible to beat. Of course, this opened the gateway to discovering more and more glitches, and eventually, I realized the whole thing was severely messed up. So, I suppose I’m saying that you shouldn’t even consider rating it based off of the Post-Compo version because it’s got lots and lots of fixes. Of course, you probably weren’t going to anyway.

Changes Include: That one Typo Fix, Detecting Wins Works Correctly, Messages appear in the right order, Game Quits At the End, And (for testing purposes) Secret Skip Level Button Added.

So yeah, basically, this LD was a failure for me. Oh, well. http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11003

Hey, turns out, the first level of my game is unsolvable.

Bummer.

It’s true, though. I ran it through an 8 puzzle solver and found out there was no solution. I just made one typo, apparently, that broke the entire thing apart.

If I could, I would fix it, but it’s too late for that. Basically, the game can not be beaten in it’s current state. I apologize for wasting anyone’s time (although not many people have played it, anyway.) It’s ridiculous that just mixing up two numbers in an array can cause this. I could plead for a special competition exemption to fix it, but I don’t see the point. So, go check out my game, and face off with the odds (0:1) by trying to beat it! I mean, hey, Chuck Norris can! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11003

P.s. If anyone right now is thinking about giving me an “Epic Fail” award for this, you have my approval.

I’m kidding, no mistake, I’m actually quite proud of myself. You know, other than the fact I haven’t even  beat it…

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=11003

There you go. All the info’s on the page.

Okay, I am waaaaay behind schedule, but I don’t really care. I’ll finish it tomorrow for sure, I just may have to cut some things.

Aside from today’s forum post dilemma which I’ve been trying to make up for, today also made me realize doing a timelapse was not in my interest, because A: it makes me kind of nervous and B: I don’t feel like it. Also, three hours today ended up being scrapped when I changed my mind on whether or not to use a scrolling tiled map. Ah, well, the damage is done.

I’m not very good at this thing, am I? To bask in my failure (needs love.exe to run):

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/74538317/empty.love

https://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8914&p=55064#p55064

All right, so, my game is now called “Empty.” It’s about you, just a single physical being, who has just been conceived, along with your static 125×125 universe. You long for a purpose in the empty place, when you discover the puzzles…

Here's my fancy little title screen.

Right now, I have two different ideas, and two different games that I have in my files. (One of them is a backup copy of the engine before I thought of my second idea.) They both involve a small screen, but one has a scrolling world and the other a static one. I can’t decide which I like better. I know that I’ll end up submitting something, though, because both concepts are very basic. I just have to pick one.

I know it’s probably already been conceived, but I’m definitely doing a game within a small window. Why? Because it makes my job much easier in the art category, for one, and for two, I think I can put some nice twists on it.

More to come.

I just wanted to make sure my hastily written personal library was posted so I could use it. It includes the advanced tiled loader by Kadoba.

As of now, my tools are…

PROGRAMMING- Love2D
ART- Pickle, Paint.net, PyxelEdit
SOUND- Musagi, SFXR, Aria Maestosa, Otomata
TIMELAPSE- Chronolapse
TILING- Tiled, Advanced Tiled Loader

I’m not very good with tiled, but we’ll see.

Alright, you read the title, you know what’s going on. I might try and restart it, but I don’t know.

So yeah, I’m done working on my warmup game. It’s nowhere close to finished and it is completely unplayable. But the thing is, I don’t care. It was not a waste of time, that’s for sure. Yes, I know that technically, Warmup Weekends are not timed, so I could keep going. But I don’t want to. It’s supposed to be something that takes a few hours, and I don’t want to waste time fixing my buggy, poorly planned code.

You see, my mistake was that I new that I would need enemies to interact with other enemies, but I didn’t plan for it. I programmed an entire entities system in which it the entities are local, that is, unable to be referenced by outside code. Therefore, it is impossible for an entity to hit another without serious complications.

So, if by any chance you’re still reading this, I’d like to make a list of what I did learn.

PLAN AHEAD

Otherwise, you’ll have to edit your base code over and over until the whole thing is a mess.

GET ALL YOU CAN DONE BEFORE THE COMPETITION

Now that I’ve done this, I know for sure that I’m writing a personal code library before it all begins. I can’t afford to spend three hours on a black screen again.

GO WITH WHAT YOU’RE COMFORTABLE WITH

I think my main mistake was using a really specific theme generator. I had to make a beat ‘em up game. I don’t really play those, they aren’t my favorite, and I had no idea how to make it until after I thought about it. It was a huge mistake that I should have seen coming.

With all this said, I secede from Warmup Weekend for now. Like I said, I might scrap together something completely different with the remaining time until the Compo and submit it, but it’s not likely. I’m definitely not walking away with nothing, though. Ludum Dare, here I come!

Alright, so, I had expected to have enough time to finish my warmup over the weekend, but I hadn’t realized that others would be on my laptop as much as they were this weekend. (Don’t worry, I’ve got next one reserved!) Basically, it’s not done, but I think I can justify a few extra hours tomorrow.

The idea is that you’re an anti-virus program combating viruses in a way sort of like Brawl, protecting the CPU in the arena’s center. You have to punch them off the ring to kill them. The objective is to beat all the viruses, which generate randomly through a period of 15 minutes.

All this work is making me realize I should probably write a personal library for the competition. I spent way to much time on programming basic entity systems yesterday.

You’ll see my warmup entry tomorrow, hopefully!

Alright, I think it’s time I quit procrastinating by slaughtering themes and begin my warming up. I plan to spend some of today and tomorrow working on it, and then, seeing how I do, work on the areas my skills need improvement in until the event. I seriously have no idea if I’m ready for this, but we’ll see, I suppose. I’ve also decided to scrap Aseprite from my toolbox and replace it with PyxelEdit, due to the recent discovery that it is the most awesome pixel art editor I have seen in my life. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll be using The Jahn’s game idea generator right now as I write this to decide my little warmup theme. Alright, here it goes. My warmup will be based around… *drumroll*

MUSICAL BEAT ‘EM UP GAME WITH A PSYCHEDELIC THEME

Uhm… I’ll count that as a trial run. The real one is:

15 MINUTE BEAT ‘EM UP GAME WITH A CYBERSPACE THEME

Much better. I’ll try and update my progress.

Good evening. (Do me a favor and pretend that was said like Count Dracula would. It just does it a comedic justice.)

So, the idea for this post stemmed from a conversation Gurglor, Jeremias and I have been having on this thread. We’ve all been discussing what aspects of games and gameplay that are really important, both in psychological contexts and, um, normal ones. I thought it would be interesting to bump up the conversation to it’s own post so that we could start a larger discussion on the subject.

So, what layer of playing games is most important to you? What do you want to explore? Why do we play?

Hey, all! If you’ve read my last post, you’ll know that I’ve been holding out on the I’m In thing for a while because I wasn’t sure what I’m working with. Well, I’ve decided I’m just going to go ahead and choose the tools my gut tells me to.

PROGRAMMING- Love2D. I feel like I’m comfortable enough with it to scrap something together in two days. It also turns out that the official 0.8.0 version rolled out today, which could not have been better timing.

GRAPHICS- I’ll mainly be working in Paint.net, but I might call in some help from Pickle and maybe even Aseprite.

SOUND- I’m confident with Sfxr for sound effects generation, and Audacity if I decide to record something, though I doubt it. I’ve also gone with Musagi for music with Aria Maestosa as a fallback in case I have some troubles with it.

TIMELAPSE- This whole thing just wouldn’t feel complete without a timelapse, now would it? Chronolapse is my choice here, simply because I’m not aware of anything better.

Well, glad that’s out of the way. I’ve been trying to exercise myself each day in a different area of design so that I’m completely ready for my epic showdown with destiny. I’ll be trying to update my feed more on that. Until my return.

Hiya, everybody, how’s it going? I’m not only here to issue you a friendly greeting, but also to say that I am planning to enter the Ludum Dare for my first time! I’ve watched previous events on this site before, but I’ve finally gained the courage enough to join in for my piece of the fun.

Now, I could make this my “I’M IN!” post, but A.: I feel like putting it off until I’m sure of my tools and B.: my psyche rejects the impulse to do what everyone else has. I’ll just introduce myself a bit and see where it goes.

Okay, so, first off, I’ve never actually made a real game before. I’ve been learning all sorts of programming languages for the past couple of years, though, just to try and meet this end. For most of that time, my tool of choice was Flash, but I never really accomplished anything with it, other than endlessly buggy collision systems. I even once put this one dumb question on stackoverflow… nevermind, let’s not talk about that. I mostly blame it all on a lack of enough time with school and everything to really get anything done.

Well, I had been planning to use Flash in the upcoming LD23 for a while, until a couple weeks ago when I discovered LÖVE. It appeals much more to me, as Lua’s errors are far simpler to decipher, and the language is so easy for me to pick up. In short, I’ll probably end up throwing my experience to the wind and developing my entry in LÖVE.

I also have a personal goal for myself: to make friends here. I like discussing games and concepts with others, and so I love the opportunity to do it with all of you. I’ll make my I’m in post soon. Until then!