Since I don’t have too much time on my hands today, after I get back home I’ll do this:

I’ll find myself a nice music tool that supports my digital piano without a hassle, so I can make some music for my team’s pyweek entry. I’ll also familiarize myself with the software to make creating and editing music feel more doable next ludum dare.

I’ll also try to set the last bits of tools up for pyweek, created the packaging scripts already!

Update 1:

I decided to go for option 1, the ultra-simple 3d modeller.

The other options didn’t set my “ooh shiny!” reflex ablaze, although they are probably significantly more doable in the time frame.

In the same vein as Ludum Dare I have given it a Latin name – Carpe Lutum (Seize the Clay).

I have put all the woes I had with Flex in LD12 behind me – i had so much trouble because I was trying to treat it like normal Flash, and it will resist you every step of the way if you try that. Use it like an app platform and it purrs like a kitten.

Here is a screenshot of my interface as of hour 5:

So, the compo has started. The sort of ideas I have:

• HUD editor/library. Basically, this would be a GUI editor/library with no support for direct interaction, mostly just pretty ways of displaying data.
• Start work on a multithreaded scriptable game engine. I kinda want to learn some multithreading and scriptability, so I’m thinking maybe I could start building an engine that does those.
• Library for making replays of a game. This requires close integration on the game’s part so I’m not sure if I could quite make this into a reusable library, but I think this would be an interesting feature to implement. The idea would be that this would be useful for both debuggin and as just a nifty feature on its own.

Hey there Sports Fans,

Our special “Tool” making Mini LD weekend has now begun.

I’ve received a few requests from people asking when the start time is. Well, if you haven’t started yet, now is a good time. And if you have, keep going!

There’s no fixed end time, but I will be making a news post on Monday collecting a summary of the various entries and efforts. Again, you’re not required to share your tool, but do share your progress with us.

If you didn’t catch it, the theme for Mini LD #3 is “Tool”. In summary, build something to help you (or everyone) make games quicker/better, and talk about it.

To learn more, see the announcement.

http://www.ludumdare.com/…/mini-ld-3-theme/

Good luck, and see you Monday.

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

I like the tool theme, but I don’t really have much time for MiniLD #3, since I’m trying to get a Flash game finished for the meez-inside contest. It is nice that the LD is going on at the same time, just to set the mood, so I’ll have the IRC on and watch the posts here.

However, I’m not skipping this competition completely. For this game I’m using a tool I made myself, Tile Studio (tile/sprite/map editor), and there are some new features I want to add. Also, there are a couple of small bugs in the program, which really need to be fixed. So I’ll be improving Tile Studio this weekend.

Good luck to everyone!

As LD12 was my first entry and I started with no tools or pre-conceptions (and failed quite spectacularly!) I have several smaller ideas which I can play about with instead of aiming for one big one.

Ideas:

- Ultra-ultra simple 3D Modeller for very low-poly models

- Asset Management and loader (Graphics, sound, models)

- Maths libraries (I suck at maths though)

- Multiplayer server? (already written the main guts of this in PHP, just need to get it finished and working)

- Tile/map editor for my RetroRemakes entry.

Well, seeing how it’s most important to finish an entry for LD, i guess my first candidate is more or less done. I’ve done a log wrapper, becouse i needed something to debug my program, while im doing the other thing (i prefer log text over poor debuggers). If i don’t make it, i guess ill tag ASLW as final.

I’ve got two ideas for this weekend.  I’m pretty sure I’ll do #2, but it sounds hard, with lots of math.  I don’t like math.

#1 – Pixel Editor

This is a unique idea.  It’s a paint program, with features intended for pixel art, lots of zooming and whatnot.  So what’s special?  Well, it can ‘render’ in various ways.  Think of the Puppygames type of look – big pixelated things, but they’re done up all nice in photoshop with glowing outlines or whatever.  You can take your pixel creation (zoomed in to at least 2x) and render it with several different effects, saving your work in a 32bit png:

- An outer glow around it in whatever color you like

- ‘Tetris blocks’ (each pixel is a shiny block rather than a single color)

- An overall highlight, treating the whole shape as one huge tetris block – if a pixel has no left neighbor, shade its left edge, if it has no right neighbor, brighten its right edge, etc

- ‘Piping’, highlighted stripes on the internal edges of the shape

- Other!?

I think that would be a really cool tool for making that nice modern-retro art.  Almost a SFXr for graphics, in a way.

#2 – Hitsuji Editor

I saw people talking about doing this in the chat too.  They called it a manikin editor.  I just want to take the concept of the editor I made for my long-ago LD entry Hitsuji and make it nice and more powerful, so you can do freeform creations instead of sheep holding swords.  The concept is to make models by stringing bitmaps together with pivot points, then you can rotate and translate them all (scaling would be nice too).  Then you make animations for them, and it stores it all much like a 3D model, only it’s 2D.  Then obviously you can put that in a game and animate it all nicely and smoothly.  I love how it’s trivial for such a model to transition from one animation to another.  I could see a lot of potential for games made with these types of characters.

#1 sounds a lot easier than #2, and it’s more original.  But it’s definitely not as useful…

So for my tool project I’m going to work with some other tinypy folks to help get the GSOC sandboxing project finished and get a release done

tinypy is a minimalist implementation of python in 64k of code. Over the summer Denis Kasak has been working on getting tinypy sandboxed so it can be useful as a scripting language for games (or whatever). We’ve very close to being finished, and I think with this final push, we’ll be able to get the project wrapped up

I’m going to be mentoring that, as well as closing out a few bugs that have been found in the parser over the last three months. I’ve been pretty busy with my iphone stuff, so this will be a good chance for me to catch up on things.

I’ll keep you posted.
-Phil

…before the event even started! Hacked together a 2D Vector class in python so I won’t have to worry about the license and bloat in other libraries. Yay.

You guys are free to use it in any way you like, you might want to mention me in the credits for making an awesome, easy-to-use vector class but that’s completely optional.

Feel free to look at it and laugh at my mediocre python skills.

SOURCE: Vector.py

Update: I also made a nice build script that packages my source directories into a zip, but that one’s not for sharing, bwahahahaa! (It’s custom-made so I think you’d make your own faster than actually trying to modify mine to work with your projects.. )

I’ve been thinking about Mini-LD #3. I’ve decided I want to make one of these:

• A C++ wrapper library around an older C library,
• An editor/loader/file format for data in Chipmunk, a physics library
• An editor for a game with a concept of levels but no level editor (or at least finished)

I’ve started already on one of the first one – a set of classes to simplify interaction with the SDL graphics library.

The last one I’ve made before – and for a Ludum Dare entry! The Castle Smash Map Editor has a thread at the Hamumu Forums, but all the download links there are invalid. I don’t have a real website to put it on, so unless you people have any ideas, you can download it from MediaFire here. The zip actually includes Castle Smash, because that’s just the way I did things.

I think, given the current state of things, that I will go for the second choice. Good luck to everyone else who participates, and have fun!

My first miniLD, and such a great idea from PoV.LD’s max my productivity, so this mean i will have a tool that i need created very fast.

I’m curently jugling the idea of a “Cave story” side scroler. For this i need a tile level editor. And allthough it will be made for a side scroler, it could be usefull for any kind of tile based level. Ill se how far i get with it over the weekend.

Since i have been working on this project allready, some of the stuff will be premade, but i hope it won’t brake the spirit of the competition. I allready have the file format somewhat done, and im was already doing the ingame loading part, and i do want to finish that befre the compo, im not going to just drop it all and let it sit for a few days.

I will however do a lot of the interface stuff myself, thats just how i am. I will use a partialy created library from me, that will covers messeges to GUI objects (i will post the source before i start). The objects don’t realy exists yet (just the container object),  so that will probaly be the main thing.

As for the levels, the idea is, to make a tile world, build from particular levels.  And when you move from one level to the next, it’s neighbour load into the world, without loading screens.

Let give the thing codename  TLM for now. Maybe add an x or z when i’m done.

PS: I created a tile picture thingy, and before saving it in jgp i played a bit with the settings. From a crips, clear, few color picture, i got that monster, but i thoght it was more amusing than the plain tile thing.

Here it is.  Bright and early Monday morning, the theme for Mini LD 3 is:

Tool

You’re welcome to take our regular open interpretive approach to themes, but I’d like you to hear me out first.

There are a ridiculous number of possibilities for this theme, but I’d like to focus on one.

Think back to Ludum Dare 12, or any compo prior that you’ve entered.  In making or planning your game, what “something” would have saved you hours of work, or allowed you to do that wilder game idea of yours?

That’s what you’re making this weekend.

Now because this is a Mini LD, you’re not required to share your source.  You’re welcome to collaborate with someone, and are encouraged discuss with others in IRC.  And to shake things up, I’ll throw in the added note that you’re not even required to share your tool.  You’re encouraged to, but if you’ve got some proprietary tool that you’ve been meaning to make, this weekend is looking pretty good.

What I want from you though, is to talk about it on the blog.  Your file format thought process; User interface considerations; What problem you’re solving; How much you hate mappy; And so on.

Tool development is a secret art of game development.  Not that it’s particularly difficult, just we don’t really talk about it.  That’s my goal with this Mini LD.  To get some genuine discussion out there for arguably one of the most important secrets of game development.

And hey, if we get ourselves another sfxr in the process, that’d rock too.

So take the week.  As much or as little time as you need, and think about what you’d like to make.  What problems you’ll need to solve, any preparations you’ll need to make, and so on.  Then join us this weekend and make it happen.

Since this is a Mini LD, and the theme is known early, I doubt I can control the start time, or random bursts of inspiration.  You’re encouraged to schedule your work for a convenient start time the weekend.  However, if preparations go too well, tell us all about it

I’ll be collecting and posting a summary of this week and weekends events on the Monday.  Please let me know in your posts what you’re actually making, and that you did (or didn’t) finish.

Not sure what to do?  Here are some suggestions:

• Map Editor (Tiles, Elements, Polygons)
• Data Editor (Numeric Data, Points and Polygons)
• Menu Editor
• Animation/Particle Effect Editor
• Font Editor/Builder
• Sound Effect Maker, VST Instrument (if sfxr isn’t enough)
• A File Format (with loader and saver)
• A wrapper library, or generalized interface for several libraries (compression, image files, etc)
• A process for managing content (graphics, audio, maps, dialog/text/localization, etc)
• Write an article
• Crash course yourself in a topic (physics, trees, sound synthesis, a programming language, etc)
• Ask the chat room (#ludumdare on irc.afternet.org)

Bottom line, pick something to either benefit you, or benefit the community.  Good luck.

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)

If you can’t get enough of Ludum Dare, then get ready for Mini LD #3 coming up next Friday (September 5th).

This one is hosted by myself.  Hosts get the privilege to do some pretty wacky changes to the norm, which I’ll be  abusing on several fronts.  The first, you’ll be getting your theme extra early.

Theme announcement, Monday September 1st.

In IRC, I’ve been hyping this one as a “very different” theme.  One that I think really suits a few extra days to think about.  Then we convene as usual on the Friday, and make it happen.

Stay tuned.

I’d also like to encourage any LD veterans to consider signing up to host a Mini LD Compo.  It’s pretty straight forward.  Sign up, show up, announce a theme, and write a few posts to round out the whole thing.  Your usual #ludumdare administration will be glad to help.  To learn more, see the Wiki.

http://www.ludumdare.com/wiki/mini-rules

And to sign up, see the Wiki.

http://www.ludumdare.com/wiki/mini-host

We’re still looking for someone to step up and take October.  Got a great theme that hasn’t done well in theme voting?  Here’s your chance.

See ya next week.

- Mike Kasprzak (PoV)