I am VERY happy with how the scrolling and zooming came out. Now various screens, fixing 1 bug (how do I get the thing to work without me having to click on it beforehand), and then the actual puzzle design. (And yes, that means I’m not going to make sounds). And since this isn’t the real thing, it can wait. I am almost certainly not finishing this by tomorrow, but you will probably see it before next Monday.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

I have the game engine finished. Now I just have to make zooming and scrolling around the map, make all the title/instruction screens, name the damn thing, and design and implement all the puzzles (levels). And there’s no sound at all. Oh boy.

Anyway, here’s what the game sort of looks like right now:

As you can see, my drawing skills are not that good.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

P.S. I might make a level editor. Very tentative here, but I might.

So, I’m more or less finished with my LD0 catch-up entry: Dog.

I’m too tired to package it up as a proper download right now, but if you want to check it out via source, it’s available here. You’ll need Ruby, Gosu, Chingu and Texplay, too.

I’m also too tired to write proper instructions. The truly adventurous can attempt to figure out how to play by pressing random keystrokes until something happens. Otherwise, I’ll add a Readme tomorrow.

In any case, I will say that I had a lot of fun working on this, and I’m looking forward to LD1: Guardian! Though, I’ll have to take a different tack on it, since I won’t have adequate contiguous time anytime soon.

Okay, status update for my LD0 catch-up, since I have to take a break to run some important errands. So far, the game looks like this:

You can move your dude around, and instruct the dog to move towards you or stop. The blue walls, only the dude can cross, the green walls, only the dog can cross. The weird red is supposed to be a door that only opens when both the dude and the dog are standing on the pink area at the same time, but I haven’t coded it yet.

Not 100% sure how I’m going to implement the fetch command, or make it necessary for that matter, but we’ll see. As for ‘speak’, well, I need monsters to scare away. So there’s still quite a bit of work left.

Here’s hoping!

OK, here goes nothing. I’m starting to make my game (which I will call Minion or Champion or something like that) right NOW.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

Okay! It’s time for me to make my LD0 (Indirect interaction) game. I will spend as much time as I can muster today doing this.

My idea is a game involving the player and their dog. The  only actions the player can take are the move around the map, and issue instructions to their dog (like, come here, sit, fetch, or speak). They have no agency to act on the world, and must overcome all obstacles through the agency of the dog, thus, indirect interaction. Also, the dog isn’t very smart and can’t navigate mazes themselves.

Given the time constraints, I forsee having very simple graphics, probably no sound at all, and only a few levels. I do hope to implement the four commands I noted above at the very least, and come up maps such that each command must be used at least once to complete the game. Other than that, everything is icing.

Here goes!

PS: Ruby, Gosu, Chingu, Pixen, and some basecode stolen from my other projects, same as always.

Once again I’ll be hopping in on this one. Hope to be able to dedicate a fair amount of time to this one.

As usual, resources will be:

• Language: Ruby
• Libraries: Gosu, Chingu
• SFX: SFXR (or some variant thereon)
• Music: Autotracker-C (or none at all)
• Graphics: Pixen, Photoshop

What I do will depend on the theme, but I’m strongly leaning towards doing a platformer of some kind. I’ve never done one before, as I tend to do top-down action/puzzle games. I actually have a neat idea, but it’s too early to say whether it’d fit the theme or not.

On another note, Uhfgood and Mikhail Rudoy have inspired me, and I’m going to (attempt to) do a Ludum Dare catch-up series. I’ve got Monday off, and though I have some errands to run, I think I can fit in an LD0 (Indirect Interaction) game. LD0 was only 24 hours rather than 48, so fitting it into my schedule is reasonably easy. More thoughts on Monday.

Anyone who has read some of my previous posts on here would know that I was going to make games for all the old LD themes. Well I’m still doing that! I have a vacation this next week-and-a-half-ish and I plan to get at least my LD0 catchup done. Now I agree that that’s not so much for 11 days but I’m not sure whether I’ll finish even that as there is practically a literal ton of work for me to do. Here are some of the things I plan to do this vacation (and I might be forgetting some):
- LD0 catchup
- study for my SATII English test (this will involve at least two practice tests and therefore at least 2 hours)
- study for the USAMO math exam (this will involve taking at least two old tests and therefore at least 18 hours)
- go to the Queens Hall of Science (at least 2 hours commuting + at least 1 hour there)
- write a small math paper
- do all my Homework
- visit some colleges
- clean my C drive and install all the stuff I want to have but don’t
- start learning to use Unity 3d, Python, and LaTeX (not necessarily in that order and with Mathematica as a much lower priority)
- there’s a very small chance that I will go back and make my miniLD24 game idea
- figure out a way to make music for the games
- read a large variety of books which I’ve had lined up for a while (i.e. Lord of the Rings, Elementary Geometry from an Advanced Standpoint, some physics book about non-Newtonian fluids, The World is Flat a Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, etc…)

As you see, I’ll be extra busy. And this extra-business will carry over well past the vacation. The two days after vacation is USAMO and the second is also college night at my school. This is not to mention that I have tests in a lot of my classes. And after working through USAMO, will I get some rest? Not until after LD 20! I have every intention of participating in that as well (but of course shit happens sometimes so I won’t be too disappointed if I don’t finish).

Anyway, that’s what’s going on in my world. So thanks for listening to (or rather reading) my rant, and if you have any suggestions for how to do some of the programming or sound stuff from the list above, please comment.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

Final version of LD catch-up #0 – same as in previous post but included here for completeness.

Okay a brief readme:

Who am I?

Keith Weatherby II otherwise known as Uhfgood

What is this?

It’s a game made in 10 hours based on the Ludum Dare #0 (beta) competition with the theme of Indirect Interaction.  It was a 24 hour test compo, and since I have only about 2 hours a weeknight to spare I decided to do this one within a week.  My upcoming games will be about 3 weeks or 30 hours.

The rules are simple move left and right and dodge the rocks.  See how many levels you can pass.

The source code is copyrighted by me as well as all content including the lovely <ahem> art.  Source code is free to use as you like (although I doubt you’ll even care to use it).

It was written with FlashDevelop and the Flex 4 SDK as well as Flashpunk.  The FlashDevelop project with flashpunk is included in the source distribution.

Here’s the source.

Timelapse will be forthcoming.

Well, I finally know what I’m going to be making. The problem, if you can call it that, is that it actually has potential to become a fully formed game. So we’ll see about how much time I take (probably more than 48 hours), and we’ll see about whether I make everything myself (probably no, and I’m referring particularly to music).

I have a lot of stuff going on, so it might be some time before I finish, but I hope it works out to be what I think it could be.

Edit: In fact, it might be quite a while  until I do any of it. Chances are that I won’t even start within the next two weeks.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

And now the link to the semi final version – HERE

Well here it is… the next screen.  This time with rocks!  And a demo

Demo here: http://www.gamesafoot.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/LD00.swf

Tomorrow I hope to add some sort of gameplay, I guess with time running out, I’m going to make it continually speed up and allow you to hit the rocks thereby restarting.  Or something like that.

I’m finding it especially hard to come up with actual game play or game mechanics for Indirect Interactions. So to give you an inside view on what I am thinking (and this isn’t just from the last couple of hours; I have thought about this for a couple of days before my last post), here are some of the ideas or directions I might be coming from:

1) Rube Goldberg machines

I like this idea but I think it might be too much for a supposedly 48 hour contest. (And wasn’t LD0 a 24 hour thing anyway?). Also, I think it has been done enough. Thirdly, there is an implementation issue. Unless I think of some really good system, I would have to either make all the objects have defined input and output (making everything systematic but hindering player creativity) or hard code every possible interaction (either this is a huge amount of work or I don’t have many objects). Finally, I would have to make realistic artwork (uh oh).

2) Hit men

If this needs explaining, instead of killing someone, you interact with them indirectly by hiring someone to kill them. Disclaimer: this is my math teacher’s idea; I was bouncing ideas off of people and this is something he thought of. Now I don’t have much of an analysis for this, but I do have a problem: I’m not sure what kind of game this would be. After all, if you control the hit man, this becomes direct interaction. So what is the actual game play mechanic? Choosing who to hire for which job? Doesn’t sound very fun.

3) The butterfly effect

I just don’t know yet. But here is a big thought: butterfly effect implies time travel. Maybe (and I haven’t thought about this scenario much yet), you were sent back in time by a government to step on a specific butterfly to cause a natural disaster in a country you are at war with. You arrive about 100 years late, and now in order to complete the mission you would need to step on all of that butterfly’s descendants. But you can’t step on other butterflies because they might cause anything. Then again, this is just an old game mechanic with a new story put to it. Maybe this game isn’t what I want, but I’m not discarding the butterfly effect yet.

So there you go. I’ll keep thinking and what happens, happens.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

It seems that Uhfgood has started something. In his post here, he stated that he would be catching up with everyone who has been here from the beginning of LD. He will spend 3 weeks, 2 hours a weekday making games for each of the LDs that he has not participated in.

I will be joining him.

I intend to work through all the themes just as he does, but I will do it slightly differently. First off, I won’t limit myself to any specific period of time per game. If it takes 2 months, then OK. If it takes one weekend I’m happy with that too. I will try not to turn the games into full blown projects; they should still be on the level of something completable in 48 hours + idea development time. But if they do get blown out of proportion, oh well. Similarly, if I fail at making some specific theme, then that’s too bad (but I’m moving on).

I will be using Flash, and if I turn out anything presentable, I will try to sell it or get it sponsored. Therefore, I will not publish my source code. In addition, since I’m hopeless at art and music, I will not strictly follow the whole “everything made by you during production” rule that we have for LD.

Now about themes; because I draw a complete blank on some themes, I might deviate a little in a direction that my brainstorming brings me to. For instance, I am not sure whether I will be able to find a game idea for LD0 so if I come up with something in the process of figuring this (the fact that I can’t come up with an idea) out, I will make that something despite being off theme. I will keep you updated on every game I am in process of making for this LD catchup, whether on theme or not.

I will be putting the games up on… well actually I’m not sure where I will put the games, but when it gets to that, I’ll let you know.

And another thing. I intend to start completely from scratch at the start of each LD, but this decision might change.

In fact, any of this might change. We’ll see how everything works out, and I’ll post my thoughts on LD0 Indirect Interaction soon.

–
Mikhail Rudoy

Well it took the whole two hours but I finally got a tilemap up and running. The tilemaps in this game are going to be dynamically generated. but at least we have something resembling a river. The first one is the regular screenshot, the second one is an error. I’m using Flashpunk and apparently the tilemap seems to be getting created correctly, or at least the map array is.

This time I added two basic “bank” rectangles (just to show where they are) until I decide what will go int he background. And two cloud images (which are merely two colored rect images, I’ll be updating the images in the coming days). You can actually move this left and right but it doesn’t do much other than that.

I had to actually “re-learn” flashpunk a bit here… but I finally got my first screeny up. What I came up with for indirect interaction is a game like Toobin’ where you navigate rapids in an inner tube. But since you can’t directly control the player, I decided that you would use the winds to change your direction. But instead of an inner tube I decided to use a raft, maybe like Huck Finn traveling down the Mississippi River and you have to navigate things like sharp rocks, whirlpools, waterfalls, dangerous crocodiles and the like. Although I haven’t set up a definite plan for that yet. What you’re looking at is a rough raft graphic (just a brown rectangle) on a blue river (although I plan to change the blue because that’s too much of a sky blue.)

Most of the time I don’t participate in LD’s because I’m usually busy on the weekend.  So I thought why don’t I have my own LD compo.  So I asked some of you how much time you spend on average… so it’s pretty common to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-35 hours of actual dev time.  (Dev time can include planning time).  So I thought how much time can I spare per day, and the answer comes back to me, 2 hours.  Okay so then I ask myself how long, and then answer comes right back to me, 3 weeks.  Actually this was through careful deliberation.  I figure about 30 hours is a good roundabout figure and something I could actually manage if I were to participate in an actual LD.  Of course this presumes using up most of my available time, and 2 good 8 hour sleeps.  I was thinking about also trying on weekends (but this was when I was going to do 2 weeks).  So here’s the plan:

I will go through each LD theme and build one game in about the same time as it takes to do an actual LD compo by spending 3 weeks per game, and 2 hours per night starting around 9:30 pm – 11:30 pm pacific time.  I will not be doing mini-ld’s at this time.  I will more or less follow the rules of LD.  By essentially making everything from scratch, except I will probably use a premade helper library.  I’ve decided I would do these games in flash so I can immediately put them onto IndieFlux in the games section.  Originally I wanted to use the lua-based LOVE engine but instead realized that flash may make it more readily accessible to people.  I’m thinking of actually porting it to LOVE later but we’ll see how this goes first.

And… that’s… it…

Thanks for your advice thus-far (those who I’ve talked to in #ludumdare).  I’m going to start tomorrow (Monday, March 21st, 2011) with the beta ld which was 24 hours, and thus I will do one week (about 10 hours, hope I can make something by then).  (Indirect interaction).  So see you then!

Keith

Oh no! All your pocket money fell down the sewer! What now?

Just flip out your favourite magnet, tie it on a yarn and try to retrieve all your coins. The coins are attracted by the magnet. Wouldn’t it be easy to have common sewers like everybody else…

Can you retrieve all your money?
One rule of the contest is to give away the sourcecode. It’s inside the .zip with the binaries.

Duh, forgot the link:Click me!

LD48 #0 was a 24-hour competition with the theme “Indirect Interaction”. To celebrate that, I created Castle Smash, an RTS game where you have no control over your units. You just make buildings to create them, and decide where to build bridges. Their “AI” tells them what to do. Yes, it’s a lot like Majesty, which I had not even heard of at the time. This is a 2-player (at the same computer) game, with no single player option at all.