I hope to participate in this upcoming LD, never have before!

I’m BlueShaman, I will enter a project made with Processing. I like procedural stuff so I think that’ll feature in it if I can manage it in 48 hours.

Wish me luck. Or not, I doubt anyone is reading this. Good luck to everyone else entering!

‘wonder what the them will be?

Going for my third LD entry. So far each one has been progressively easier as I get a better feel for the time constraints and workflow. I feel LD has become a bit of a benchmark on how I’ve grown as programmer. I love it.

The tool list hasn’t changed from last year much

Code: FlatRedBall (C#/XNA 4.0)
Sound effects: Sfxr
Art: GIMP / Corel Draw / GraphicsGale
Music: Audiotool

Target platform will be Windows again. I’m hoping this theme is a bit more focused, as the previous theme was basically a non-theme.

Also for anyone who enjoyed my previous entry, I may be porting it to Windows Phone 7 soon, followed by android.

I intend to participate in LD21, and seeing as its going to be my first attempt at the competition my entry will probably be a disaster x3. In order to abide by the rules of the competition, I need to declare a substantial personal code library I will be using. The following libraries are all written in C++, with a bit of C and assembly. Two are open-source, and all can be used freely for non-commercial purposes, but only the open-source ones are anywhere near stable or at all useful.

• bss_util - Utilities library with various high performance structures.
• TinyOAL – Simple, easy to use sound library.
• PlaneShader – 2D graphics engine
• TeV Engine – 2D game engine that ties together PlaneShader, TinyOAL and Box2D and provides higher level abstractions to simplify lower level tasks (or will eventually).

If anyone is really, really curious about PlaneShader or TeV Engine in their currently unstable forms, I can probably arrange to send a build to you, but without any proper documentation it is likely to be useless. One of my goals with TeV is to build a very powerful, high performance engine that is conducive to extremely rapid prototyping, and I hope that my experience with LD will help me develop the engine further so it can be of use to other contestants in the next competition. Until then, however, they are unstable and difficult to work with.

Missed the last couple minis even though I had intended to enter. But I’m going full board on Ludam Dare. Already pre-allocating the time with the wifey.

This time I plan on using JavaScript for the first time. I’m going to use ImpactJS. My goal is to make a simple but fun puzzle game. I’m going to keep my ambition in check this time so I can allocate as much time as possible into just making it fun. My intention with JavaScript is that the game will work on every computer, tablet and smart phone out there. Hopefully ImpactJS is up to the task there.

I’m hoping the theme is fun. Somewhat silly is cool. It seems like most the themes end up being so generic. It would be nice to really have to put a lot of thought into the theme.

I am getting really excited about next week’s Ludum Dare.  Before theme voting begins, everyone should think for a bit and come up with some fun themes to add to the list.  I personally find that voting for themes is such a hilarious experience when I’m reading them out to my family and we collaboratively decide what to vote up or down.

As most veterans know, EVOLUTION always comes in the top ten.  Always will.  Nobody knows why, but it must be all the scientists among us.  Other common top tens include KITTENS.  Therefore, I propose a mashup of the two themes:

Kitten Kitten Evolution

Now that, I dare say, would be an awesome theme – like Dance Dance Revolution but indie style!  =)

Nope, nuh uh, completely doubtful. Of joining this months Ludum Dare. The next one maybe, not this one though. I have too many projects to finish.

Have fun y’all!

(unless, I think, well, maybe, if I can get a thing working…ack! stop thinking about it! *flees*)

Hey folks! Pyoing is live on the app store. I didn’t do much to it past the compo version, but my friend / co-worker Yann at Lucky Frame made the sounds for it. He also spent all day yesterday throwing together this amazing promo video and website.

I guess I can do a bit of a post mortem? Eh?

So about 12 noon, uk time I decided to throw my hat into the ring on this LDmini. I was otherwise just watching tv that weekend, and wanted to muck about with my game engine a bit more. I spent about two hours working towards getting something like Rampart in place, where you could place bases, and then you would be able to chuck cannonballs from your base. That seemed to fulfill the war theme, and was something I had been interested in making since the last LD.

At around 4, I went out to have a BBQ and did that until around 5:30pm. It was nice to get away from the compo for a bit and kick a ball around, and eat a ton, etc, etc. While I was there I talked to Yann (the man in the gif above) about the game, and he suggested a few things. First that I should just make crossfire, forget all of the ramparts stuff. Second he asked if I was using box2d, and I said “no, I think I can figure out the physics just fine thanks”. When I got home I spent about 5 minutes banging my head against the idea of doing the physics myself, and then about 20 minutes setting up box2d. I think I went to sleep that night with all of the basics in, except for the win / lose states. You could chuck around the balls, etc.

The next day, I got started on it and first put in the win / lose states. Then I did the full game loop with the beginning and ending screens. It was nice to have a tweener library around to get cool animations for everything without much work at all. I play tested it a bunch with my partner, and decided to add the limited shots mechanic. That made the game a whole bunch more even, and about strategy. After that, I still had some time, so I did the retina display version of the game. I had the graphics pretty well integrated with the box2d stuff, so I had to retune everything for the larger masses that were flying around. This resulted in the retina and non retina versions of the game playing slightly different. Hopefully this is not a huge problem. The last thing I did was integrate the audio engine, and throw in a few sfx. They were not super great, but good enough. I think I finished everything up by around 11pm. I want to say that the whole process took about 11 hours of computer time to get finished.

The next morning, Yann did all the sfx over again, and it made everything better, and we submitted to the app store. Done

The final thing was all the promo video, which is basically a scene for scene rip of the crossfire video. That took about a day to do, and we had to learn apple motion. Our greenscreen was a pink blanket purchased from a charity shop around the corner:

Anywho, thats about it! Here are a few promo codes, if you could please post the one you use in the comments, that would be great! If you don’t get one, let me know and I can post some more:

A4PE3LMF7AL6
EYJJWAFXKRNL
NFMN6LNJKKMY

If you’re new, or looking for a new tool, you should check this out:

http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/

Man I’m sure I already annoy you guys with my game [ ], but.. but.. STORY!

Yes, level 4 DOES bombard you with bullets, but these bullet hells won't happen too often

So yeah!

P.S: If you wonder why he knows what date it is know: Just pretend he saw a calendar or something for now, I’ll integrate that into the story a little bit later

OMG! IT'S SO PRETTYYY!!!!!!!!!!!! MY EYES!!! THEY BUUUURN AGAIN!!!

So up there is level 3!

You may notice a few new things:

+ New bushes!
+ Directional sandbags!
+ Reset Button! (I actually only added it, because I was annoyed to restart the game, just to play the level again ^///^)
+ The factor of thinking, before doing! (I messed up on this level 2 times myself [I'm such a shame])

• Metal Crates (they’re invincible now!)

I think I may have created a really, really good level!

So, that’s it for now. :3

In the last few days, after doing Mini LD #28, I’ve changed my mind about which tools I want to use for Flash development.

For a long time I’ve been using the open source HaXe compiler to build Flash 9/10 swf’s, but I ran into some show-stoppers with it. The biggest is that I can find no sane way of making a preloader work with external API’s (Kongregate, Mochi, etc.), and some other lesser issues with compatibility. This isn’t a big problem for LD, but for anything I want to publish it’s a huge problem.

The best solution is a change of compiler, and main library. As far as I can tell, the best alternative (for Linux, and my code style) is the Flex framework with Adobe’s mxmlc compiler. While it’s slower and not completely open source, it should get round most of the big problems, while still running on Linux and not needing a specific IDE.

At the same time, I’m also starting to use Flixel, because it provides neat ways to do most of the tedious work for me (I hope that’s not cheating ).

The first test will be if I can re-write my Mini LD entry using the new kit. So far I have an almost working core, with stats, players, SFX and AI.

Current public build: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16895250/flixel_sea/build.swf

So I’ve finally successfully installed VS 2010 express and I’m ready to practice some c++. So this time I wanted to ask for a recommendation from people that are familiar with c++ and graphics libraries like allegro, openGL, directX…
So my question is: What graphic library should I use for a 2D game? What is better and why? etc.

Rub a dub, can you give me a buck?!

Nah, I worked out a little bit of story!

Here’s the first page of the diary (drawn in MS Paint):

I usually write stories in this style. (Don't mind the blank site, that's for entry 2)

Well, BAM, there it is.

- Folis

Hey guys, I just wanted to show you guys a comparison between my first game and one of my latest games:

Compare my first game Ghosts and Diamonds,

http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/87819-ghosts-and-diamonds

to one of my latest games, The Struggle for Humanity:

http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/179700-the-struggle-for-humanity

Hello!
I wanted to ask people that are developing games in c++ for a little help.
I’m familiar with the c++ language and studied it once, and I want to write a game in c++ in this ludum dare.
I’ve tried to install visual studio 2010 and 2008 but they both keep failing (due to some odd setup memory leak) and also I’ve tried to install eclipse++ but I had a problem with the libraries.
So can someone please give me a good c++ IDE that he is familiar with, or maybe someone familiar with my problems and can help.
Many thanks for help.

I really enjoyed making this entry =). It was very fun, and even though this was my first Ludum Dare competition, it wont be my last for sure!

I’m going to turn Vile Artillery into a full game, add new enemies, new artillery, add a challenge mode and an arcade mode with online highscores. Many ideas come to mind but I’ll try not to be too ambitious; my plan is to work on it as much as possible for one entire week!

Hopefully it’l turn out as a fun and polished game.

Pretty! Also, I'm a sucker for details, so you may find a few of them :3

Woop, level 2 done! It contains enemies, crates and walls! AND DETAILS!

Yeah, It may look a little bit overloaded, but I love it! You need those crates now. Or you’re instantly dead.

So, nyah! There you go, on to level 3 *epic music*

Also a little shout-out to Mr. Sir. McFunkypants for motivating me to do this!

Good intentions, poor planning.

With a pretty good idea in mind, I started on my entry after dinner Sunday evening.  I only got as far as the splash screen and sprite graphics before I ran into a Processing file IO bug and threw in the towel.

The idea was:  Air Conditioning.

Hi, cool guy!

As my game already received a lot of positive feedback, from various players, it seems a good idea to take my Mini-LD project further, possibly to a fully playable game.

I already redesigned ALL graphics and the first level got a makeover.

The new first level, doesn't look as bad anymore, eh?

Above is the NEW first level, which has quite a few features added.

+ Hedges (as horizontal blockade, it stops bullets.)
+ Fence (the vertical blockade, this DOESN’T stop bullets, so it isn’t exactly the safest spot to hide at)
+ Walls made of sandbags (Hiding spot)
+ New Graphics (Looks almost like glittery rainbow-unicorns *_.*)
+ More Crates (Because this game is all about them it seems..?)
+ More enemies (The harder, the better ^_.~)

• Same movement system

- It’s only the first level. (I’m slow..)

I am also possibly gonna rename it, if I can come up with a better name. (You can post ideas, if you have any )

Also, if anyone wants to test anything I’ve got so far, you can catch me on IRC quite often.

Soo, that’s it!

I hope my plans work out.

In case your interested – total dev time: 12 hours.

I’m off to go swimming.

- Folis

P.S: Your game should never look like that;

AAAHH, my eyes! THEY BUUUURN!! ARGH! *dead*