Play them on Kongregate.com

The idea is to progress these games polish them and improve them over time.

So don’t just leave your LD game on the shelf go back to it improve it, enhance it and get it out there where people can see, play and enjoy it!

I’m not sure if they’re allowed to do this, or if this happens every LD, but I got an email today from a website called Softpedia, telling me that:

Alone, one of your products, has been added to Softpedia's database of
games and gaming tools.

I was quite surprised, and checked the website, to see my game there, along with “Roger the beer dwarf”, the next game in the list of games from LD20 was also there.

http://games.softpedia.com/get/Freeware-Games/

If this is a regular occurrence, then could someone tell me how long it usually takes for them to take the games down after you’ve requested it?

For MiniLD 26, my entry was successfully planned and completed. Usually neither of these things happen.

So, just how finished was Minerbot 2? I’ll go through the checklist that drZool had us make.

• Player ship able to move through the asteroid world. Certainly.
• Collectors can be shot, and attach to walls. They aren’t exactly shot, more “placed”. Still a yes.
• Collectors send beams through ore pockets, mining them. (Just like Minerbot’s collectors did it.) Yep.
• Collectors have to recharge, and have a maximum capacity. Yes, you have to wait for collectors to recharge in your toolbar, but they don’t have maximum capacities. I felt at the time that it wasn’t a very good gameplay choice, so I didn’t implement it.
• Upgrades have effects on their respective stats. They sure do.
• Ore and gems are generated randomly, and when collected add to the commission received. Yep.
• The flow works as shown, with the exception of contracts. Yep.
• There is a way to end the “mining round” to upgrade and select new contracts (if possible). Yep. Although the way I do this will change with future versions.
• Configurable controls for those with weird keyboards. Yeah. It’s in the options menu.

This MiniLD went great, and finally made me start the sequel to Minerbot. There’s still a lot to do before I release the full game, but at least now I have a place to start.

So who ever came up with calling these analyses post-mortems?  My project certainly isn’t dead.  I certainly have a lot to say about it though.  For reference, play it here.  If you don’t care how I personally performed, scroll down to Product to hear my comments about the submitted game itself.  For the Tl;dr, scroll all the way down to the conclusion.  Otherwise, prepare for a wall of text!

(more…)

Well submitted had fun making it but not really working as fast as I would like, guess I need more practice. Or to limit my time playing the games I’m making!

Did not manage the full win/lose feature I was after or the shield cube snap to grid feature, but have to draw a line somewhere and near midnight on day 3 is pushing it a bit.

Check out my Magix : Elementus entry and let me know what you think.

I finally found the bug that caused Tracy to shoot the wrong way the first time after changing direction : it was, of course, the use of the wrong variable. That’s what you’ve got when you do not sleep on a bug !

Well, it’s uploaded now and I also modified a little the level design so you can’t jump into the fire if you’re not careful. If you use the web version, empty your cache before reaching the link ! (the MacOS version is now a zip file as the windows version).

Play: Now with basic colour of magic system

Keys

Red
movement wasd
levitate z
toggle v
cast c

Blue
movement cursors
levitate m
toggle .
cast /

Next Golem AI

I posted my game in the compo..

It is not complete..
More details in the compe page

smashy smash

Phew.

Tuning the game is really absorbing, ate up two hours just like that.  I really enjoyed Doing this Mini-LD.  Thanks for organizing it!

Took me long enough, but there’s finally an ending condition that at least pretends to care about what you did.

Is drillship the best word for that thing?  Rocketmole?  Ground ramscoop?  Rocket drill?  Rocket auger?

Hey guys, unfortunately not going to finish this on time at all – it didn’t help that I double booked this weekend with having my mate visit!
It’s nearly 5 am in England and I have a Software Engineering exam on Thursday, so I’m going to hit the hay and start revising!

I got as far as having most of the lower level bits in place, things are starting to come together… I might see if I can finish it over the coming days!
Here are some screenshots of what I have so far:

I defend the silly amount of time I spent on the title screen by saying I built it out of low-level parts... that's legit, right?

You, your fine hat and your accomplice have a nice chat with a scientist...

So yeah, this competition has been lots of fun to take part in! Hopefully I’ll sort my time better for the next one!

I got the main gameplay working!  It’s not got any win condition or anything like that, but, uh, you can drive a spaceship around under the ground and punch your way out of the crust.  Also the spaceship has some pretty nice thruster effects if I do say so myself.

No idea when the actual deadline is, I’m doing to set myself a deadline of 4am my time, 8 hours from now.  Then, whatever is Done is Done!  Next, adding the win condition.

So, I’m throwing in my hat for this MiniLD. I had a pretty awesome mockup (I thought) and was happy with my ideas for the game, but it really hasn’t worked out as smoothly as I’d hoped. However, this MiniLD was definitely a net positive for me, for several reasons.

What I learned

Music Creation

I finally found a music program I enjoy using that’s both stable and makes it easy for me to compose: SunVox. I’ve probably spent a total of  10 or more hours on music this time around, most of which was split between getting used to the software and getting used to composing again. I’m going to keep working with this program, and see if I can’t get faster before the next MiniLD rolls around… maybe I’ll have a chance at finishing then.

What I need to work on

Collision Response

The single largest roadblock to me finishing wasn’t actually the music; that was more of a symptom. I probably would have spent about an hour or two on music if I hadn’t hit a brick wall in my code. The biggest thing that tripped me up was collision response. Having worked with Pygame before for my LD20 entry (LD20X6: Initialisms), I was already familiar with its collision detection system, so I went in pretty confident on that front. However, knowing that a collision has happened and knowing what to do about it are two entirely different things – and I’m still a bit fuzzy on how to actually implement collision response in a 2D platformer. I’ll probably figure it out in the next few days, but it’s a bit weird coming into this from a mostly 3D background, and having to adjust to a pure 2D system, especially since most 3D frameworks already have a built-in way of dealing with collision response… here, I need to either implement it myself, or find another library to add to the stack.

Coordinate Systems

One other big issue I’ve been having with my entry is the fact that when you’re just moving a Rect (in Pygame) you can’t really move slower than 1 pixel per frame, since all Rects store integers instead of floats. This necessitates some sort of scaling in order to track things correctly. The easiest way to do this is to treat everything as having a coordinate system that is 10 units per px or something like that so that you can move slower if needed. However, I didn’t realize this until I had already implemented most of the Actor class and its two subclasses, Character and Zombie. So… so much for all that code. I started rewriting Actor, but got distracted by the music about halfway through, because I found it increasingly difficult to wrap my head around what I was doing, so I basically ended up spending the rest of Saturday on music alone.

Next Time!

Hopefully I’ll be a bit better prepared next time around; in the meantime, I’m going to work on implementing collision response in a 10 unit per pixel coordinate system, and see if I can get that working reliably. (basically, continuing this MiniLD game) Also, I’m going to try making more music in Sunvox so I can get a little faster at that, and hopefully not waste as much time feeling my way around the system next time.

So with that, I bid good luck to all my fellow contestants, and look forward to seeing your finished games!

Well, that was fun. And hard/tiring.

Anyhoo. Dirt Driller is complete! Go play.

Once I have slept enough I’ll check my screencaps to see it this makes an interesting timelapse.

-Matthew

Due to internet trouble Saturday, I’m still far from Done, but I did the best I could.

Find my entry here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-26/?action=preview&uid=3023

Post-mortem coming tomorrow.

My head is about to explode if I don’t get some rest, so I’m submitting it now.

I’m very glad that I could complete everything I said I should on the opening post.

You can play it here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-26/?action=preview&uid=2503

I have finally finished Silhouette Skater after what seems a very long weekend.

I managed to incorporate most of the features I aimed for except for the detonating player unfortunately. I will carry on with this project in the future and add extra levels and features etc.

Please play the game if you get a second and post you death count in the comments section. I would like to create a little score board.

Screenshot:

Didn’t manage to completely clear this weekend of distractions, but fortunately it’s a holiday weekend and I’m willing to go for a 72-hour time scale. Gonna try to get everything mechanical pointed in the right direction tonight and fill in the game content tomorrow. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like right this minute (very similar to my earlier mockup).

Finally, I’ve got a full level running, with music, sound effects, fully playable, traps, dirty things… Ok, I’m going to bed, I’ll tell about the timescale later…

Just before I go : here’s the link to my entry : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-26/?action=preview&uid=4277

Sorry no web upload just yet.

Well as it’s a long weekend here in the UK I’m going to continue working on Magix: Elements…

[Done] Toggling of spells Absorb / Emit / Launch / Golem
[Done] Spell Icons working
[Done] Casting of spells launch items absorb cubes

Have all the basic elements in place but need to add…

[] Golems Move towards Enemy
[] Golems Battle Enemy
[] Golems Break Down Obstacles
[] Magic usage limiting actions
[] Magic level bars working
[] Launched Spells blow things up
[] Emitted Shield Cubes snap to world grid
[] Win lose state – Inflicted Zero magic = Lose

I must admit I have been a bit relaxed as it’s a mini LD, but I think I have an interesting idea here and it will be fun to see how it plays.