So, uh… I just finished my game. I made it with Game Maker 7, and it took aaaaaaages because I was essentially learning how to make games. At this rate, I’m glad I made it, even if it did take me a little under five days to make (eek!).

I’m really happy with it. It’s a game where you pick dialogue options. Try not to give Ted’s Mom a reason to hit him.

Any tips or criticisms are warmly welcome.

Yoyogames play/DL page
Download Link

Nothing done yet; my laptop spent the weekend in the service of a higher power.  I’m going to get started on something tonight, though :)  Better late than never…

Better late than never! Took me a little under 72-hours, but finally managed to finish this to a point where I’m happy to release it. It’s a flash game, so you can play it here:

http://phuce.com/uploads/queens/release/

Thoughts before I crash:

• Flixel is awesome.
• Not having a level editor to use with Flixel is not so awesome. I am now very competent at adding and subtracting multiples of 32 for manually typing in levels. -cry-
• Pixen… ah, pixen. Also not so awesome. Only good pixel editor I could find on Mac (I normally dev on my Windows box), and it had a ton of issues. Wouldn’t export sprite sheets correctly, kept crashing. I ended up having to patch the src for it multiple times over the weekend.
• Someday I will learn to finish gameplay before art.

Fun!

Done! Started this one on Sunday morning, so just about managed it in 48 hours.

This is a game for two players, seated at one keyboard. Playing alone is not recommended. Once you’ve found a second player, play it here!

I fortunately have no real experience with domestic violence, so it is more on my feelings about people treating the ones they love poorly.  Just general misdirected meanness.

Early today I decided I hated how the game was turning out and gave up.  Then later, a friend said something encouraging and I had to come back and at least get it presentable and post it.

PLAY IN BROWSER LINK

for those interested:  Source Code

Trust me, this looks awesome when in motion with zombies attacking from all directions

DOWNLOAD LINK (.exe file for windows (should work in xp/vista/7), also includes source code (copy data/ directory to src/ and run MLD_10.py))

Alternative download link (in case first one doesn’t work: megaupload, so this might not be a very permanent link)

You are the lone survivor of… Uh, an zombie attack.
Stay alive for as long as possible! Beat your record!

Aim for the head for massive damage, shoot to the body to slow Zombie down and shoot to the legs to cripple them.
Don’t forget to conserve ammo!

Controls: A/D for movement, W or S for moving up stairs/ladders (hold down when you want to use a stairway/ladder), mouse1 fires pistol, mouse2 throws records, ESC quits, enter toggles fullscreen (800*600 pixels only)

Bonus controls: F prints fps, C counts all the zombies and prints their types to console, N adds MAX_ZOMBIES zombies (300), M adds one zombie, K kills all zombies that aren’t roaming (only zombie dogs can roam)

———————————————————————————

Finally! I spent three hours figuring out how to use py2exe, fixing a problem with fonts and trimming the package (py2exe created files worth 40 MB (exluding the temp build/ directory), I got it down to 8 MB).

Second and third house added and fully functional, including a line between the two houses (with corresponding semi-stupid Zombie AI). Also added health pack, 5 new sounds and re-wrote 600 lines of code to make it look better. Also did some simple docstring documenting. Difficulty is now well-adjusted, getting over 300 seconds is really hard: my record i 327 seconds. How long can you survive?

This is my first LD, and I must say that I have enjoyed it very much. Not so much for the community feeling (which is really bad: I guess it’s because this is just a mini-ld) but for the forced time limit (…which I broke by 7 hours. Oh well!). I have spent around 28 of the 48 hours (well, 34 of the last 55 hours) actively working on this game. I started with nothing but a 40-line code skeleton for pygame (which I had created some weeks ago). I didn’t like the theme domestic violence, but it gave me inspiration to use a house.

I made the game with following:

SciTE - Text-editing

MS Paint - Creating images

Python 2.5 - Language

Pygame 1.8.1 - Graphics and sound library

Kebab, bananas and water - Little time for eating

http://rapidshare.com/files/249814080/domestic_abuse.exe

Mirror 1: http://www.badongo.com/file/15744729
Mirror 2: Link: http://matt-shaffer.com/Plain%20Savior.zip
[ Windows only ]

Plain Savior is an interesting little platform game with the usual set of deadly tiles. You are in your company’s building, and suddenly decide to destroy anything and everything you can. (I will definitely expand this game in the future)

Game created by Matthew Shaffer 2009 for MiniLD #10
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HOW IT WAS MADE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Created with Game Maker
Sound FX created with SFXR
Graphics created with MSPaint
Everything was created in 48hrs

Featuring:
7 sound effects
6 levels
3 enemies (One of which is progressively created and stalks you)
4 destructible objects

NOTES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Arrow keys to move and jump
* ESC to quit
* R to restart the level (Or just die)
* Jump on stuff to destroy it
* There’s a certain number of people & objects that have to be destroyed
each level, but it’s not revealed. It’ll make a sound effect and activate
the portal when you meet the requirements.
* All statistics are generated after each completed level.

System requirements:
Windows 2000+
DirectX 8+
8-16mb video ram
500 mhz CPU
128mb ram

(These are estimates. May run on less)
If you want to run this from a VM, install DX first or it’ll whine it can’t find a DLL.

Feeling suicidal? Press escape or beat the game, then make your way to the portal on the right side for a rediculously challenging level.

I’ve been working on the framework most of the weekend, and it has come a long way. The game is simple enough that I should be able to whip together tonight, but I’ll likely not hit the deadline. Mainly this Mini-LD was an excuse for me to develop the new framework. And it’s coming along nicely. OpenGL 2D vector graphics, sound synthesis, keyboard/mouse etc.

I think my game idea is pretty keen, so if I don’t hit the deadline I’m still going to finish it up.

I give up theme, you win. I just couldn’t keep up my motivation. The theme made it impossible for me to come up with something fun to play. I also think the RPG ideas was flawed because I couldn’t figure out how to earn xp without it becoming too gruesome.

Lesson learned: some themes just aren’t meant to be fun.

So I have this great idea for a game for the theme. I had a pretty good idea the last few days, but I hit a major snag and… yeah. But it’s okay! Because I’m working on the new idea now. I should be able to crank something out tomorrow morning, so let’s hope the deadline is none-too-strict. I just wanna get it right for the theme, y’know?

The game /might/ be called “After School”, and it’s a realistic depiction of Domestic Violence (I’m not having houses try to kill you, for example)

It’s my first ever game. :/ WD to increpare for picking such an evocative theme.

Work has been going along just fine. I wish I made more journal posts… Oh well.

*Added Feet damage system: shoot the zombie in the foot and it’ll move slower (both short-but-high-slow and low-but-permanent slow). Slowdown for player when attacked is permanent unless you heal it with band aid

*Added items (ammobox, records pickup, band aid, beartrap) + itemspawner

*Added sounds (right now I only have sounds for firing the gun and getting hit/hitting zombies)

*Added different types of zombies (”fat” and “dog”, I might add “bat”) + zombiespawner

*Added “stumble” functionality. Zombies are slowed down at random intervals

*Added roaming functionality. Right now only dogs roam, starting randomly (and lasting for 4-20 seconds) when the player isn’t on the same floor (dogs can’t walk up stairs).

*Added patrol functionality to dog. If the dog isn’t on the same floor as the player, the dog will go to the nearest stairway and patrol there (moving back and forth randomly)

*Added bullet collision

*Added player/zombie wall collision

*First house 90% complete (yes, it doesn’t get any better than this when I only have 48 hours). Added new floor, stairway down to ground floor, small cellar (not the best camping place…)

*Added health and feet status meters, also shows how much more ammo/records you have

*Added time attack. Try to stay alive for as long as possible! Right now items doesn’t respawn, but zombies do, so getting over 170 seconds is near impossible

Download current version HERE (beta, this’ll be final only if I die or something. The third house has no working ladders/playercollision)

(previous version HERE)

Python 2.x and pygame is needed (I’m using Python 2.5 and pygame 1.8.1). Unzip everything and run MLD_10.py

Controls: A/D for movement, W or S for moving up stairs/ladders, mouse1 shoots pistol, mouse2 throws records, ESC to quit

Bonus controls: F prints fps, C counts all the zombies and prints their types to console, N adds MAX_ZOMBIES zombies (right now it’s 350), M adds one zombie, K kills all zombies that aren’t roaming

As probably a good portion of LDers were contemplating, what to do about the theme? I decided to go with a mixup of being the domestic abuser and saving others.. but the whole “saving others” and future AI cop system, is well non-existant.

Here’s a screeny of the game so far:

Ah yes, plain graphics. Even though using premade graphics is allowed in this miniLD, I don’t have any premade so it’ll have to do.

It’s got walking, jumping, bouncy pads, enemies, and destructible objects.

Making decent progress on the mini-LD. I asked the actors to pose for a quick photo:

This was a though theme for me. I had lots of ideas, but I keep worrying that it would be too emotional or gruesome to be fun. My worst fear was belittling of those who are victims of domestic abuse. But, I’m moving forward with the idea that play is sometimes about experimenting with real world problems. So, I’ve decided to make an RPG. You must steer the battered woman to a successful resolution of her situation.

I’m using SilverLight, Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Blend 2.

I’ve done some prototypes:
Configuration and Setup Test
Talent Level-up Screen Prototype
Room Navigation Prototype

Feedback is encouraged.

A zombie game. You are supposed to stay alive from the zombie attack while picking up survivors. You have a pistol, but ammo is scarce.

Design is 99% complete, AI is 95% (Am I in the same height as the player? Then attack, else find closest stairway that goes in the right direction… repeat for each zombie. Oh yes!), Graphics 50% (Just have to create a better looking house and some survivors plus an ammo box), x-axis collisions 0%, shooting-part 50%, sound effects 0%, menu 0%

Zombies just love to march. Surprisingly, I get a solid 60 fps even when there’s 100+ zombies on screen thinking how they should eat that delicious player

I had a hunch an increpare mini-LD would squeeze an art game out of me

anyhoo its done, but dont go into it thiniking it will be the feelgood game of the LD

Play online

Download source (.FLA)

The theme is Domestic Violence.

Let’s put a not-too-strict deadline of midnight sunday GMT on it.  (I’ll have a hectic weekend, so might not get my entry in until monday, say).

Assets, code can be premade/reused, &c.

Anyone notice this yet ? jSfxr: a Java applet by eigenbom, inspired by Dr Petter’s sfxr.

This could turn out to be a handy tool for those last minute sound effects (although for me, sfxr does just nicely) .. except it seems to lack a save-to-WAV function …

Thought a few of you might be interested in another time limit compo. To keep it relatively short: GameJolt.com just announced a competition to push their ad revenue sharing program, which entered beta today. The contest lasts a week and the theme is “Shocking!”. Three winners will get accepted into the beta, and one will recieve a steam game. More information can be found on their forum.

Some of you may also have seen this via the gamecompo mailing list, if you’re signed up for that. I hope to enter the competition myself, though I’m a bit pressed for time.

Okay, I’m pushing this late in the month to the weekend 27/28.  But it will be then :)  I’ll announce the theme that friday.

Peace out,

S

Increpare, can you give some details about the date of Mini-LD #10? I want to produce some stuff to be (mini)reviewed