Introducing “a.void”, a Jam game created by five Microsoft software developers.

It is a musical spatial memory game. Collect colored orbs to collect points while avoiding the obstacles that align with the music.

Choose your movements carefully, as the obstacles appear at your previous positions.

Play it here (Unity Web Player)

Ludum Dare page

Pheeeew! Finished our first Ludum Dare submission: “Dr. Vile in The Greater Good“! After working on months-long projects, it’s amazing to think that this game didn’t exist – and wasn’t even planned – 72 hours ago!

Congratulations to every Ludum Dare dev and whether you completed what you wanted to complete or not, you have much more now than what you had three days ago!

Enjoy Dr. Vile in The Greater Good and please give us your feedback! We may expand this game further, add more features, and who knows what else!

Since one of us did programming (and music!) and one of us did art, we’re planning on writing two post-mortems! Stay tuned

>> Dr. Vile in The Greater Good – Entry Page <<

So I actually sat down and made a game with no time limit or anything! It’s a small one, but at least it’s finished unlike the other billion projects I left lying around.

Here it is on Kongregate:

The Corruption

The Corruption is a First Person Free-Running game where you have to run from the approaching darkness. Uses Shift/RMB to run and C/Ctrl to crouch.

Please give it a play and if possible a rating.

Happy Gaming! <3

New monster and zone almost done!
Check out the video:

I’ve been working with physics and lighting.
I had some problems to optimize the entire theme of light and shadow with the mobile hardware, because some older devices do not support anything but OpenGL1.1 and the ones supporting OpenGL2 only have two lights (hardware acceleration) dynamics, and are directional.
I also had a hard time trying to coordinate all the events of the generation systems and balance enemy load, these are synchronized via environment variables with the AI, once you load the level you meet certain standards for each part phase, it run macros that direct action through the gaming experience.

I made ​​several models in 3DStudio and Maya, textures with Photoshop and it has been more difficult than I thought, but also a lot of fun

I’m making a summary of what I’ve done since the last update:
- Added a compass (triangle in front of the avatar) to know where to go next
- Creation of optimized materials compatible with light and shadow
- Creating a new enemy: mini skeleton, with its animations, etc..
- Creation of a series of doors with different animations, particle systems and so on, that are synchronized to provide a consistent flow to the game
- Including transients and environmental sound effects are played according to a given priority
- resource optimization: its a need to use the least number of objects in memory and AI’s possible, it’s an art to know how to do this and mantain the FPS high, almost between 40-60+

In six days I have to submit the game to the markets.
And it is working in Blackberry PlayBook, iPhone4+, iPad (1,2,3), Pc (win,linux,mac), etc

Here is the video from these days progress:

Now I could export the game to iOS 6.0. It works with iPad3 and iPhone5!
Bad news are that the game in iPod/iPhone 3G will not be available and in iPhone 3GS too slow…
I’m trying to make this better. Here is the discussion in our engine forum:

http://www.stonetrip.com/developer/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=26748

I have made this video:

EHS 4 October

to show the current progress of the game in about 2 weeks.

Player has animations, touch control pad,physics,low poly geometry, etc

The first level consists in 2 rooms and a mage tower, all the game is related to magic and mages!, i am a bit worried about fps, with 5-7k polys for each part of the full scene (rooms and tower), 4 particle systems of 16 elements each one, collisions, object occlussion, physics, AI, animations (no lights , no shadows), the game is running at 40-50fps…
I am wondering if I would need to reduce the meshes again! Or remove particles, occlussion ,etc, so I can add bloom fx, lights and more action to improve gameplay and game itself: graphics, sounds, music, attack,fx,etc

Our comp entry is here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=5234 Also embarrassingly, apparently Aqualution is a soap brand name so that’s probably not going to stick.

Evolution is actually one of my favorite game mechanics, but I was completely at a loss for what could be implemented in only a few days. That was the biggest hurdle.

A lot of game mechanics fell by the wayside and the idea of evolving powers turned into just growing into a bigger newt and surviving a hostile environment. I got most of the art done that I wanted to, but Alex of AvibeGames didn’t have enough time to code everything in and make it functional so we worked with what we have ready in the framework. Jack did the music and got it to us very quickly for the few songs we needed for gentle ambiance. It was a pleasure to work with my team and friends, I learned a lot about how to make pixelart and it’s likely this project will roll into a bigger post-Dare game or another one.

Things we succeeded at:

• Making a nice atmospheric sidescrolling game
• Simple and varied enemies
• A health and EXP system
• Smooth water floating and dashing physics

Other things that got the chopping block:

• Icebergs
• Key/Door unlock mechanic
• Longer bosses and levels
• Moray eel and giant octopus

I always look forward to Ludum Dare, succeed or fail, as motivation and a learning experience every time. Even if you don’t finish, I think it’s important to post your work—you’ll get valuable feedback for later from your peers.

The secret to my success this time was remembering to take breaks, but not too many. Sleeping, cranking the music up full blast and getting shit done. And sometimes I didn’t, so I’d rush to make up for it, but I’m proud of what we have to show already.

Instead of copying and pasting my post from my own blog, I will write one just for LD!

The most important fact, as with any Ludum Dare, is that I was able to finish! I originally thought I wouldn’t have enough time to get it done, so I threw in the towel roughly 8 hours before. I had second thoughts a few hours later and quickly rushed back into coding. Thankfully I had just enough time to finish it!

Even though this was my first time making a platformer, I’m feel that it isn’t just another run of the mill platform game. I wanted the torch to be part of the player so those moments are more intense when you aren’t holding the torch. I think this worked quite well, but sound effects and a sound track really would have helped the atmosphere.

I usually use 8bit graphics, but I wanted to simplify them further so I wouldn’t be hung on graphics during the competition. I wanted to be spending more time with the actual level design. So I opted for 8×8 sprites scaled to 4x times their size. While it gave the game a cutesy feel, it made text feel awkward as it looks huge on screen. The furthest I’m going to go next time is 2x or I will scale the graphics in my image editor instead of doing it through code.

As I said before, this was my first time making a platformer and I was worried about it being too easy. From the feedback I’ve been given so far, I’ve found that it’s far from easy. There was also an issue near the end of the level where players thought they need to make a blind jump, when in reality they had missed the hidden passage. I’ll make it more obvious in the post-compo version. ;]

Speaking of post-compo, I’ve already added/fixed a bunch of things. Notably I’ve fixed the physics for both the torch and the player so things should be much smoother. I also added much needed particle effects to the torch. I should be releasing it sometime in the next few weeks!

Until then…don’t drop your torch.

>>Torch Play and Rate!<<

Gonna writeup my game idea that sort of synthesized while I slept last night.  I feel the fun and scope of this game will be something I can pull off in 48hrs in Flash.

What I’ve got so far:  You will literally be playing as a cavern in an action / shooting gallery type game.  Your weapons will be stalactites which you will click on to let drop.  They will regrow and be various sizes as well.  You will also be able to click on steam vents on the floor that will shoot up a rush of hot vapor.  These will also have a recharge rate and various sizes perhaps even growing in various spots as the cave floor changes across game rounds.

You will be attacking against all manner of cave life, native and alien.  There will be the usual bats, snails, blind fish etc as well as various human archetypes one might find in this genre.  The lost teen(s), the hiding criminal, the cave explorer, the national geographic expedition etc.  Eventually if you incur enough rancor with the outside world you will be visited by the demolitions expert who will attempt to blow you up by placing charges.

I want to keep this in the realm of action/arcade instead of defense genre.  I think it will be more fun to interact with the cavern and very analog based ‘reload’ concepts (like watching the steam recharge in the vents and watching the stalactites regrow from the ceiling) versus a ‘recharge bar’ artifice.

Left to figure out is just overall cave layout(s) and round / difficulty escalation.

I’m picturing a really cool looking drippy cavern. The drips could even help with guiding the aiming of your rocks and stuff by helping lead your eye at the correct gravity setting to hit your targets.  I’m thinking mouse based click-controls to launch various attacks but I don’t want it to be a click heavy game.

I think the humor element could be high in this game as well if I handle it right.

Here is a current rough mockup for color reference:

Finally, my game is finished. If I had more time, I would’ve added a lot more stuff. But I am too tired of this game, so I am just going to release it now. If you have any problems, comment!

Made by: Game Maker 7.0

Difficulty: Depends on how you play.

Length: I never finished it, but should take 30 minutes-1 hour.

Screenshots:

A battle:

A screenshot of the map screen, taken from the beginning of the game.

Game:

http://host-a.net/kaderli/Lost%20Roads%20Release.zip

Source Code:

http://host-a.net/kaderli/Lost%20Roads%20Source.gmk

We cheated! We were two ppl working on SokoBomb me (drZool) and dr Elak. Yes, but we told so up front when we begun. Anyways the compo game is a randomly generated sokoban adventure… minus adventure. And the postcompo game is a puzzle/action adventure, without randomly generated rooms. But with whitty npc’s and melting icecubes

The original entry with random levels are here

The post compo beta/demo of the game with hand made levels can be found here including a video of the gameplay. We did enter Swedish Game Awards with it, but did not place.

Here are screens from compo entry:

First random generated level. Note to self: improve difficulty.

Dr Zoolak in a mean mood. Random-generated level.

A visit to cubicle hell, random style.

Here comes post compo screens:

Soko showcasing the latest in weapon sprite fashion.

Refraction in action.

Who farted?

Better put your shades on, those are real hardshadows.

No smoke without fire. Creeping features abound!

Pathfinding up and running, so are the conveyor belts.