What would be a good interval to take timelapse shots during a Ludum Dare compo?

In case you still care, I found a solution to mrfun’s problem with requiring a wordpress template (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2008/09/07/where-is-the-world-are-you/). You need to insert Javascript that adds an event listener to the document’s onLoad and onUnload events. I’ll explain in more detail and in a cross-browser way in just a moment…

– EDIT –

Ok, first get core.js out of this archive: core.zip

Use a <script> tag to load it into the page (this can be anywhere on the page)

After the load/unload functions have been defined, add this code:

<script>
Core.addEventListener(window, “load”, load);
Core.addEventListener(window, “unload”, GUnload);
</script>

And you’re set.

Anyone know of a good direct-linking free file hosting thing, or could help me with one? I need a place to put my stuff…

Well, this is kind-of compo related, as I’m devoloping my library thing the wiki says I can have. I keep getting these warnings when compiling:

1>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\vc\include\xlocnum(590) : warning C4312:
‘type cast’ : conversion from ‘uintptr_t’ to ‘void *’ of greater size
1> c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\vc\include\xlocnum(566) : while
compiling class template member function ’std::istreambuf_iterator<_Elem,_Traits>
std::num_get<_Elem,_InIt>::do_get(_InIt,_InIt,std::ios_base &,std::ios_base::iostate
&,void *&) const’
1> with
1> [
1> _Elem=char,
1> _Traits=std::char_traits,
1> _InIt=std::istreambuf_iterator>
1> ]
1> c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\vc\include\xlocnum(1367) : see
reference to class template instantiation ’std::num_get<_Elem,_InIt>’ being compiled
1> with
1> [
1> _Elem=char,
1> _InIt=std::istreambuf_iterator>
1> ]
1>c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\vc\include\xlocnum(590) : warning C4312:
‘type cast’ : conversion from ‘uintptr_t’ to ‘void *’ of greater size
1> c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\vc\include\xlocnum(566) : while
compiling class template member function ’std::istreambuf_iterator<_Elem,_Traits>
std::num_get<_Elem,_InIt>::do_get(_InIt,_InIt,std::ios_base &,std::ios_base::iostate
&,void *&) const’
1> with
1> [
1> _Elem=wchar_t,
1> _Traits=std::char_traits,
1> _InIt=std::istreambuf_iterator>
1> ]
1> c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 8\vc\include\xlocnum(1373) : see
reference to class template instantiation ’std::num_get<_Elem,_InIt>’ being compiled
1> with
1> [
1> _Elem=wchar_t,
1> _InIt=std::istreambuf_iterator>
1> ]

Anyone know what’s going on, or how to fix it? I’m using SDL and VC++ 2005 Express.

And also, anyone know an easy way to keep <pre> tags inside the column thing? I had to find where it went over and make my own line breaks… And I don’t know if it’ll still look right if you have a different screen resolution. Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Aiee! I give up… I’ll just use some other type of formatting…

Alright, so I’m at that point in my life where I’m cooking my own meals. Problem is I have no idea what to cook and not much experience. I’ve been experimenting but I’d like to expand things faster. So here’s the game, I list all the foods I currently have access to and you name something non-simple that I can cook. General instructions appreciated. Preferably, something I can cook in 25 minutes in the morning, toss in a sandwich bag or some cellophane and eat it at school.

Foods after the jump.

(more…)

whachu lookin at??

I’ll enter the next one, ok??

Hey folks! It’s time for another 48-hour game development extravaganza!

Ludum Dare is a regular community driven game development competition. The goal is, given a theme and 48 hours, to develop a game from scratch. Ludum Dare aims to encourage game design experimentation, and provide a platform to develop and practice rapid game prototyping.

Here’s the time-horizon:

- July 19 - July 25: You may submit themes to the wiki
- July 26 - Aug 2: Themes will be edited for awesomeness by the #ludumdare regulars
- Aug 3 - Aug 8: Various rounds of voting. Check back daily so you don’t miss any!
- Aug 8 - Aug 10: Ludum Dare #12 !!! (Starting at 8pm PST)

Links of honor:

www.ludumdare.com - the super awesome website, refresh hourly
irc.afternet.org #ludumdare - the compo IRC channel, waste your time here
www.ludumdare.com/compo/ - the compo blog, be sure to sign up here
www.ludumdare.com/wiki/ - the compo wiki, submit themes & read rules here
www.ludumdare.com/planet/ - the compo planet, read about our exciting lives here

See you in the races!
- The Faceless LD Management Team

Hey, I’ve just finished porting my Ludum Dare 8 entry (Galcon) to the iPhone / iPod Touch!  Read all about it here!

For the impatient, here’s a screenshot:

For anyone who doesent have a webhost, I set up a little spot where you can upload your LD and mini-LD games.

introducing the toybox you can keep your games in ^_^

There are 10 months of the year that lack an LD contest.  This simply cannot stand.  It is a blight on the game development community.  I feel that by filling those months, we will attract more regulars and more interest, and LD will be more popular.  But on the flipside, LD is a special event, twice a year, a big deal.  If it happened every month, you’d only have a small percentage of the contestants in any given event (and very little overlap, so you’d never get to know anybody).  And so the proposal:

 The LD48 Mini-Contest.  All that I am about to say is just the proposal and up for discussion as to what is right or whether it’s just stupid in general.  This is just my original basic idea for it.  It runs once a month, on the first weekend.  It does not occur in April and whatever other month Real-LD happens in (shouldn’t there be an official month for that too?).

There is no theme voting - the host simply dictates the theme.  Themes for this are encouraged to be different from the type that LD48 uses, though the host does whatever they want.  Basically, I’m picturing setting up a specific challenge for people, rather than a general theme.  Like we might finally see the “no graphics” theme in the form of “Make a game that communicates with the user only through sound.  The player can communicate back by any method you want.”  Something like that, but also something that can be shorthanded to one or two words if needed (”Audio only”), so people don’t have to explain the theme every time they talk about their game to other people.  Other challenges might be things like “Here’s a set of tiles, make a game with them”, “A maze game featuring zombies that is 64k or less zipped” (blah, I wouldn’t enter that one), or “You just got the Fight Club license.  Deadline is in 48 hours.  Go!” (I could see that one with a lot of movies… Office Space!)  If people don’t like your challenge, who cares?  There’s a new one next month.
Host also dictates the start time, so that he gets to announce the theme at a time convenient for him rather than at 4am.  Contestants have 48 hours from that start time to finish their project, just like in LD.

Rules are relaxed - you can use anything you want to make your game, start with any code.  If you just want to mod your existing game, go for it.  It’s almost the opposite idea as LD is - instead of seeing what you can build from scratch, we want to see what you are capable of with unlimited resources (and very limited time).  Content is just as unrestricted, just keep it legal.

The source code rule is equally relaxed (and rightly so, since you can use code that you’re not allowed to share anyway!).  We’d really like you to post your source, but it’s optional.

People sign up on a list to host this, first-come, first-serve.  You can sign up again only once your last hosting is off the list.  This means Fydo gets to run a Kitties contest.  Hosting is entirely simple: just come up with a theme and announce it when the time comes.  Phil’s amazing wordpress code does the rest, letting people upload their entries (well, links and such) and shutting it all off when the time comes.  All mini-LDs would go in one wordpress category, maybe, so we didn’t keep adding categories all the time.  Don’t have that bit worked out at the moment.

Hosts can participate in the contest too, even though they know the theme in advance.  We’ll trust their integrity.  Probably hosting would have some simple restriction on it, like you must have been in 3 real LDs previously (or you must spend at least 70% of your life lurking in #ludumdare), so we don’t get a flood of people signing up and disappearing.

After the 48 hours, the entries are up for voting, and you don’t have to have entered to vote.  You just need to be signed up on this site, to encourage people to check out the entries and see what they think.  The voting (which Phil of course implements for us!) is simpler than the full-on LD, maybe just 1 category: Awesomeness (maybe Gnarliness, or Radicality, or maybe it shows it with a random name each time, or does the host get to choose the category too!?).  You rate it 1-100, so it’s kind of like grading a paper.  Voting can simply remain open until the next Mini-LD (or actual LD) starts.

Of course, each of these mini-LDs will get a much smaller number of competitors, and nobody would do them all (well, somebody would, I bet you, but not many), but they are a nice option for the bleak wasteland of empty existence between LD48s.  I don’t think they’d detract from the bigness and participation of the real LDs, given their smallness and unofficiality.  My hope is that they’d pull more people in for those.  And we always have people in #ld saying “boy, I need a new LD!”, and with this, there’d always be one of sorts around the corner.

And yeah, it’s more work for Phil to get it up and working, but that’s what he’s here for, right?  What else is he good for?

Discuss.

PoV told me to make shapes and make things out of them, so I did.  I also added notations of what shape made each sketch.  Pardon the complete absence of quality, this is a photo of my sketchpad.

I noticed some talk last night about syndicated blogs and how to get your posts removed. The best way to do that is to start putting your posts into a “ludum” category or something, and then I can set this site up to syndicate that category instead of your whole blog.

However, I think it’s cool to have all your posts, even ones that aren’t really game related at all. I mean, it’s the off-season and it’s fun to read whatever the other LDers are doing, etc. So I wouldn’t worry about being off-topic. This way you just get a better readership, etc.

While I’m at it, if you have competed in a couple LDs and want your blog syndicated, send me an e-mail or something and I’ll be glad to add you.

Being the jerk I am, I usually take any opportunity I can to pick on Uhf.  I set out initially to create a seizure animated gif to respond to those syndicated Uhf posts (I see hypno, and I start thinking seizures).  However, in analyzing the character, I ended up with a sketch I kinda like.

So there ya go Uhf, fan art.  See, PoV can be a nice guy sometimes.

Hello world!

I’m really excited to announce the first release of IndieLib game engine. It has been a lot of hard work for several years in which I have been working in this project. What started like a hobby has become in a quite robust 2d engine that I think can be useful for the gamming community, specially for the indie game developers. Because of that I want to offer it to all you for free, hopefully it will be useful for some of you.

The main purpose of IndieLib is to make the things easier for the game developer, specially for those of you that love trying new game mechanics and fast game prototyping. I was really shocked for that brave guys of the Experimental Gameplay Project and the things that I see everyday in TigSource. After seeing what these developers were able to do in just one week, I decided to start working again in and old project called LooverLib and to try to pack in the same engine lot of useful features for being able to make games really quickly using c++. What I wanted was that anybody that know a little of programming would be able to give expression to their ideas faster and easily. I know this first release hasn’t accomplished completly this purpose, but I hope to be in the correct way.

IndieLib is a c++ 2.5d engine for game development and fast game prototyping in a really easy way. Internally it uses Direct3d for hardware acceleration, but doesn’t use DirectDraw or ID3DXSprite, it directly draws textures on polygons. The engine is focused in fast 2d rendering, but also allows you to use 3d models. You can read the main features of IndieLib in the FAQ.

Do you want to see the engine in action? Well, you can just check some screenshots or to download the IndieLib_1.0_SDK and to run the tutorials that are already compiled and ready to try.

But an engine is nothing without documentation. For that, I spent lot, lot of hours documenting all the methods and making some tutorials (more will come along these months):
- Api Reference
- Wiki tutorials

I really hope that the engine will be useful for some of you and that you will make incredible games using it. I invite all you to join our forum, and I would be really happy if some of you want to contribute helping me.

Just click and download the IndieLib_1.0_SDK and start making games!

Regards,
Javier López

Here’s a green box.

Here’s a red box.

Here’s a yellow box!

Here’s George Clooney.

Here’s George Clooney in a yellow box!

Today I’m standing in for my RSS feed which seems to have gone haywire. By the look of things it’s still refreshing even though I removed the xml file!? Phil?

Anyway, updated the page with two more projects from 2007. Go see while they’re hot… uh, pretending they’re not already 4-6 months old.

If there is an LD11.

OK, at the moment I’m learning how to code in C++, is that a recommended language to be used in LD11?

I’ve tried to look at the pros and con’s, and found:

Pros:

1. It is Object Orientated, which may persuade me not to use plain structured and a loop.
2. It is a compiled language, so it should be easier to make it cross platform
3. It should run faster as well
4. It is great for text based games

Con’s;

1. I’m not great at it
2. I have no idea how to GFX in it
3. I’ve not touched the language since 2004, and the whole thing was different back then.

At the moment it looks like the pros are greater than the con’s, but, is it a better language overall?

I mean python is written on top of C++, so that means that the person who made Python can’t of been to happy with C++ if he made is own one, either that or he was bored.

If python is written in C++ then That could mean that it is an ”improved” version of C++, leading me to think that that is better.

However, I already know python, so it would be a good learning experience for me to learn C++, and someone gave me a Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, so I’m trying to learn that. (Not the average item on a 12 year olds list )

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Also, I may be making a text based game next time, is it worth it?It would take less time, I’d imagine, and I don’t know how to do GFX in C++.

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Please replyas a comment, awaiting your replies.

Meow!

Theme: “Running out of time!”

Time is ticking… but she doesn’t care.

What is your favorite theme?

You must sign in to vote.