Command-line tool that generates a single *.as file containing all the embeds of the folders passed.

An example of what this tool can make is found here.

This will help you if you, like me, like to store all your embed on a single “Resources.as” file. Every time I make a couple of assets I don’t want to add them by hand, so I run this application and it’s automatically done and embedded. It also handles *.tff (setting fontName and embedAsCFF=false as optional).

Usage

You can run resmaker -h to get the available list of parameters, but it’s really simple: you specify a bunch of folders where your assets resides (separated by comma), and where is the file Resources.as (will be created), and it will recursively iterate the folders. Remember to use always absolute paths.

For example, the sample I linked above was done using:

resmaker c:\Projects\LD22\assets -o c:\Projects\LD22\src\Resources.as

If you use it, let me know! It was originally made as a Python exercise, but as I found it very useful, I decided to share.

Download link here.

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…

Play It | Rate It

Origin

When I heard Alone was chosen as the theme, a set of bizarre ideas immediately appeared in my mind. I really wanted to explore about the feeling of being alone, about the psychological effect of it. Also, I had read The Knock recently so I wanted to explore more about that subject.

Development

The tools I used included:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Lightroom
• Adobe Flash
• Flashdevelop / ActionScript 3
• as3sfxr »
• Aviary »
• A standard Digital Camera
• Some burned papers
• A friend (lol)

The art is rather simple, I took some photos of my house and I asked a friend to model for me. We did some shots of him walking, but because I lack equipment (tripod, marks, etc) the result looks a little bad. I did my best to correct the photos in Photoshop. The room is a part of my house, that isn’t even a room, but I couldn’t take a picture of a real room because the camera angle was too short. I applied Exposure and Posterize to all the images.

The programming was done entirely in ActionScript 3, using some features of my own library, but the vast majority was to be made from scratch. I used Flashdevelop because I’m really fast with it… Just press Ctrl+Shift+1 and it’s like magic!

What now?

I think I’ll work more time on this game. I’ll add more puzzles, make an easy mode, add language support, and maybe more rooms to explore, or explore more about the story. For example, what happened upstairs?

This was my second time on Ludum Dare, and I think it was a really good experience. I don’t think there’s something that went wrong, maybe next time I’ll add more features to my framework, like effects, sound support and embedding support; but at the end I managed to do what I intended to do.

What are you serious???

For over 6 hours I have been fighting to figure out why I’m getting NOTHING displayed on my tiles. I mean the arrays are right on spot, so what gives. I am also being thrown off since I have never built a “game” before in flash and I have NEVER EVER USED CLASSES. Yeah you heard me. No classes. Ok so that was completely lame, but I found that I was setting the tile back one frame too many. There is no freakin 0 frame. What they hell, such a stupid noob mistake. The only reason I found it is because I decided to push past it and keep working blind as if I knew that it should actually work. Well it was working EXACTLY as I programmed it to work.

So I most likely wont meet the deadline, but I am obviously learning tons and tons that I wouldn’t have had I not participated. Which to me is efffing awesome. Having a blast with my primary level game and happy that I am getting somewhere with it.

Cheers

Piss in my grits

Seriously!! WTF???

So… yeah… I know that my skills LAG far behind many of the guys and gals here, but gessh power supply and HD troubles on top of it all. Good nite this is ludacrsipy-cream-donut-loving-anarchy. I am frustrated and I am not going to quit, but I did want to vent a little if anyone cares. I am trying to keep a log of progress (which isn’t s#!+ at the moment) through camtasia. However everytime I load my game and it’s assets one of my HD’s fails. I think it’s been traced back to a power supply issue. Can’t get one big enough to fix the issue in time, but I’ll just keep trying to power through and see if I can make due on my due date. If not I will still try to finish the game.

The decision on the game is to make a tile game that has 49 pieces. The lone hero only need make it to the door on a “randomly generated” side. Up to 10 tiles will be randomly “decayed” at game start. The hero will then score by picking up artifacts (up to 5 per level) and getting to the door. A 15s timer will count down for each level. This timer will decay random tiles increasing with time until 15sec is up. If the player doesn’t make it to the door or the 15s timer runs out the player DIES! As in Rougelike. As in not to come back or start a new game type. No save game bs. Each level boosts the score by it’s level number times the type of artifact gathered during that level. So if you get a 700 point artifact on level 3 you score 2100 points for the level.

By the way I am still in basic build time due to the issues so far. So nothing is even working at this point (LAME) .

Yes thats right, I have submitted my entry for the Ludum Dare.

Now I’m going to hide under a rock… =P

You can check it out here

-KunoNoOni

Inspired by the shortest short-story ever written, by Fredric Brown.

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…

Thus ends the first 22 hours of Ludum Dare 22 for me. It’s almost like I timed this! (no I didn’t)

Unfortunately, lacking any of the graphics, sounds, or narrative kind of reveals my game to have precious little game in it. Here’s hoping the rest adds something it’s missing right now, or I can think of a neat and quickly implemented little mechanic to spice things up a little.

You can get access to the prototype HERE!

Just a title for fun

I just set up my very basic flash file in flash cs5.5 and documented with camtasia, now it’s time plan the game. The theme was announced as “Alone”, thank God it wasn’t freakin kittens. Once I figure out how to Rougelike an alone game then tomorrow it’s off to start building some classes and coding in the basic game.

Some Thoughts:

• The main character dies for good and we start over.
• No ASCII characters in final game. Hopefully 2d graphics.
• The theme is alone, but others were randomly generated, anti-hero, dream and decay. I hope to incorporate these as well in the concept
• Plan game tonite Dec 16
• Begin Coding tomorrow Dec 17 after Motorcycle ride.
• Work out bugs Dec 18
• I hope to random generate the worlds (last item).
• Build any graphics and turn in Dec 19

My first LD is LD #22

Just to really get started on how confusing this is to begin even before a competition I’d have to say geesh. Now that that is out of the way there are about 5 hours left before the theme is announced. I’m really hoping for “dreams”, but can deal with quite a few of the themes especially “falling”, “random generation”, “underground”, “teleport”. The one that I think is just plain no fun is kittens. Sorry just hate that as a theme. Looking forward to making one an easter egg. I am also hoping to keep the style very rougelike sans ASCII +1 graphical. We’ll see.

So I am thinking flash AS3 as the development platform and black and white silhouette as the atmosphere.

5 hours till theme announcement and beginning of code writting

This will be my fourth Ludum Dare! Just as always I’m looking forward to a weekend of no sleep and lot’s fun. ;]

Weapons of Choice

Language: Flash ActionScript3

IDE: FlashDevelop

Graphics: Paint.net

Engine: FlashPunk (with some personal changes)

Additional Library: Polygonal Data Structures

Additional Software: Chronolapse

Workspace: ASUS i3 4gb laptop with Hanspree 22″ LCD monitor for an extended desktop

(Yes, that is a paper Creeper)

Here’s how I’m going to win:

Language: Actionscript 3

Library: Flashpunk

IDE: Flash Develop 4.0

Graphics: Photoshop CS5.5

Sound: sfxr and Audacity

Music: FL Studio 10

Timelapse: Chronolapse

Here I go!

I’m entering for the first time, so I’m basicaly a LD virgin.
Anyway I don’t think it will hurt, but it will probably be a bit awkward…

Programming: AS3 ( FlashBuilder )
Library: Flixel
Graphics: Photoshop
Music: Nanoloop ( iPhone )

This is where I’m from:
http://g.co/maps/rqp65

And this is what I’ll drink:

I’m in for my third Ludum Dare. The last two have been incredibly fun, so I don’t want to miss this one! For LD 20 my entry was Diamond Hollow and for LD21 I made Glissaria. Each time I’ve made sure to create a timelapse, and this one will be no different. However, I also plan to stream my progress live this time right over here. Also, I’ll keep updates on Twitter, so feel free to follow me if that’s your thing. And finally, I have a circle of LD people on g+, so add me there so I can stick you in my ever growing circle!

I’m going to stick to my strengths with pixel art and flash. Going to try to brush up on music this time, so I can at least have something listenable. I might try to find a music generation program simpler than Fruity Loops due to me being musically challenged. More formally, the tools I will be using are:

Programming: AS3 (Flash) via FlashBuilder (Eclipse)
Library: Modified Flixel (extra plugins such as a flixel bitmap font library, etc)
Graphics: Photoshop
Music: FruityLoops (unless I find something better)
Sounds: As3sfxr + Audacity
Other: Fast food, sleep, cats, alcohol

Last time I was overambitious, writing 3 games in 1, most of which I had no experience with. This time I’m going to play the safe route and make a platformer. It’s something I have experience with, is easier to make art for, and will hopefully mean I can create a full game in the alotted time. Let’s just hope the theme lends itself to a platformer. Also, if kittens wins I will cry because I can’t draw a cat to save my life.

One Of Two Partners In Crime

Good luck all. =]

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll state up front that the main reason for this post is because someone told me I couldn’t get trophies if I hadn’t written a blog post. I have no idea if we’re too late for any awarding, but what the hell.

I haven’t really felt the need to talk about my game, EscapeOut, because it wasn’t a particularly interesting process. Relying on a 20-min show-off video by Photon Storm about how to make a brick breaker in 20mins, I stumbled my way through Flixel and came up with something that put a little spin on the core concept. The theme of LD21 was Escape, so how else does one apply that to a brick breaker? Easy: something on the screen has got to try to get the hell out of dodge. From there it was a simple leap in logic to the eventual core mechanic. I won’t say what that is because I don’t like to spoil the game. In fact, I really liked setting friends down in front of EscapeOut with no instructions to see if they can figure it out. The game has no instructions for a very intentional reason.

Judging by the comments on EscapeOut, forcing players to discover the game’s mechanic paid off. I’ve been a very bad LD participant: haven’t blogged, haven’t played many of the entries, haven’t used the IRC channel except for a couple technical questions. Mostly this has been due to time; I only managed to spend half of the 48 hour timeframe coding, due to oversleeping and family obligations. So, I was quite surprised to log on today and see the comments and ratings left for EscapeOut. A few people really seemed to like it, more than I ever could have imagined. Even more shocking, the game was rated #54 in humour. Seriously, a game with no instructions, no words other than “YOU HAVE DIED” and “YOU ESCAPED”, no characters, no narrative, and even no sound effects or music, ranked within the top 10% of humourous games in the entire Ludum Dare 21!

I guess this really goes to show that an intriguing mechanic can turn a relatively bland experience into an interesting one, even if only for a few minutes.

Looks like people are still writing post-mortems a week later, so here’s mine!

Development:

I woke up last Saturday and checked the theme on twitter. I didn’t really expect the theme to be ‘escape’, but I had a think over breakfast and got a cool story idea, sort of inspired by an episode of an old TV show called Porridge. I started off with a dull blue wall tileset and made a prison cell in DAME.

Drawing tilesets in Graphics Gale.

Once the character graphics were done, I threw together a system which scans the DAME project file for game entities then places them on the map, since I didn’t have time to get to grips with the complex export system in DAME. Eventually I had little Rick running and jumping around in his cell, and I spent the rest of the day composing in SunVox and using Tweener to arrange the introduction text and events.

I didn’t actually start on the gameplay or levels until Sunday, when I decided to construct a small jungle full of spiders and spikes. It took most of the daytime to create the enemies, tiles, and music which left me with the evening to work out how to bring everything to a close. I stayed up right until the deadline designing the last area and finishing the game off, but I managed to squeeze in another tune, bringing me to a total of four songs!

Making the soundtrack in SunVox.

What Went Right:

• Considering this was my first time using DAME, creating the levels and making them work in Flixel was surprisingly painless.
• I’ve practised a lot with SunVox, so I can churn out decent music fast!
• I had a nice storyline idea and managed to keep it short without ruining it.
• I’ve been practising with Flixel and FlashDevelop for quite a long time. Even though I hadn’t released any Flixel games before this one, I was very comfortable with my choice of language and library.

• I missed a few details, for example there is no wall on the left side of the jungle, so you can fall off the screen and be stuck forever.
• Quite a lot of people heard strange hiccups in the music playback. I have no idea what’s causing this and I can’t hear them myself, but I added a standalone download which should hopefully fix any audio problems.
• I made a couple of bad design decisions, there are quite a lot of blind drops into enemies. I thought the levels were short enough not to need checkpoints, but it looks like I was wrong.

I’m really pleased with the amount I managed to get done in two days! If you’re interested, check out the entry itself here.

Oh, and if, like me, you don’t want to hand pick entries to vote on, I made a small bookmarklet for you:

javascript:var a=jQuery('table tbody tr td a');window.location=a[Math.round(Math.random()*a.length)].href;

Add this link to your bookmarks bar, then go to the view all entries page and run it, you will be taken to a random entry page. :] Happy rating!

So LD21 was my first ever Dare and some things went okay and some didn’t. I definitely learnt a lot from it, and I’m keen to keep making games and work on my entry. I thought I’d do a brief little writeup.

Blatant self-promotion link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=rate&uid=5119

The game

The Daring Do! title screen

I’m pretty pleased with the game I produced: “Daring Do!”. It’s a sidescrolling running platformer where you play an intrepid archeologist. Each level is short and follows the same formula: grab the glowing golden idol and get the heck out of the temple before the whole thing caves in or you get crushed by the giant boulder coming after you. Avoid pits and arrows along the way. I wanted to keep levels short so it kept you wanting to play; that just one more level feeling. I’d like to add an ‘infinite mode’ in a future update, though. I’m also planning to add many, many more of the normal-style levels, as well as a lot more trap types: crumbly blocks, falling debris that you have to dodge, spike traps,and perhaps even some bad guys and collectables. I would’ve liked to get more of these in during the compo, but just ran out of time. Also, more work is needed on sound and sprites.

Daring Do! gameplay - pick up the glowy idol and prepare to run!

The Bad

The main thing that went wrong was that I didn’t spend enough time on day one thinking up a concrete idea. I got a rough topic in my head of a Breakout bat escaping from a game of Breakout, and rushed off and started making it. I built a simple little Breakout clone really quickly, and then spent a fair amount of the rest of the day trying to script together some kind of in-game cut scene explaining your escape. At this point, I realised I’d spent far too long on an ‘intro’ without having any idea at all about what the core gameplay would be after your escape. I became somewhat disillusioned with the idea and stopped working.

My first game idea, a breakout clone where you actually break out.

I woke up late on the Sunday with the intention of giving up, but I felt that I’d be very disappointed in myself if I did so. I chatted with a friend about what to do (thanks @triard!), and a new idea was born, that which turned into Daring Do! This one I felt I could run with: a simple gameplay mechanic that can be easily extended by the addition of more traps, levels, etc.

Daring Do! gameplay - outrun the boulder, avoid the arrows, jump the pits!

The Good

I’ve only recently gotten into Flash development, but I absolutely love working with FlashDevelop. I use a Mac as my main machine, so I had to run FD in a Windows virtual machine which was pretty slow – this infuriated me on numerous occasions as I sat there wanting to code but having to wait for my computer to catch up with me. For future LDs, I’ll have to run Windows natively somewhere, as the VM was almost unworkable. I wish there was a Mac version of FlashDevelop.

Flixel is also brilliant, although I was kind of learning as I went along so got a bit hung up on things that should’ve been easy but I didn’t know how to do yet. I’d like to spend some time with FlashPunk, too, to see how they compare. Writing my game in Flash made it super easy to test, to send to friends for comments, and to upload for other LD48ers to play.

As for my other tools, I used DAME for map editing, which worked pretty well, bfxr (fantastic tool!) for sound effects (although I somehow forgot to give my main character footsteps!) and had a brief attempt at creating some terrible music with FamiTracker.

Next time

I’d certainly be up for taking part on Ludum Dare again – the feeling of satisfaction having built something in such a short space of time is brilliant, and I love the community feel of the event. I’m so glad I didn’t give up after day 1! Next time, I’d spend longer ensuring I had a great gameplay idea before starting. Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay, that’s what it’s all about. In fact, I’d probably recommend trying to spend some time during the final round of voting thinking up some ideas for each of the top-voted themes from previous rounds, just in case they come up. Having a solid idea from the start would allow me a full two days to make my game – next time, I’d plan for day 1 on the engine and gameplay, and day 2 on content and tweaks. As I had to cram all of that into one day this time round, the content was a little light.

At the moment, I’m really enjoying looking through everybody else’s entries. There are some truly, truly brilliant games in there – not are they fun to play, but it’s nice to be able to find out how things were implemented. It’s a great way to learn.

I’d really appreciate it if you’d take the time to check out my game and rate it and / or leave a comment.

Creating a game is a passionate experience. Doing it in 48 hours is equal parts divinity and torture. As such, a lot goes down during the development process, laughs are had, tears are shed, and ultimately you arrive at the end product – your game.
Well, maybe I’m being overdramatic. But you definitely learn a lot upon completing a development cycle, even one as short as two days. The post-mortem is a great way to share that knowledge, imparting wisdom upon those who seek it. In this I’m going to examine what was successful, what were failures, and what just plain drove me nuts during my development of The Man Who Sold The World.

Play The Game Here

The Good

Level Design Workflow (or “Levels are the meat of the meal“)

I had an excellent workflow for creating levels in TMWSTW. One of my favorite aspect of game design is creating levels, so I made sure that process would be as smooth as possible. This meant creating a method of designing, developing, testing and finaling levels in a minimum of time.

The first thing I did was create the character and camera systems, including physics and collision detection. This allowed me to get right into levels, as I knew how my player acted and moved within the first wee hours of development. The result was over a dozen enormous, hand-crafted levels that made it in-game; not only created, but tweaked and tuned for an ideal gameplay experience.

I had the time to fully explore what I wanted to with my level designs, creating many worlds in different environments, and even get experimental with more abstract locations. The process was effective, informative, mentally invigorating and, most importantly, fun.

Source of Inspiration (or “Why the Repeat Button is Your Friend“)

You’ll notice upon launching TMWSTW that a splash screen reads, “Inspired by David Bowie’s conceptual album and story, ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars’”. That’s there for a reason – it may sound silly, but I listened to David Bowie’s “Greatest Hits” album on repeat for nearly the entire Ludum Dare – having it on repeat allowed those songs to be constantly in my consciousness, influencing my design choices. Having that aural feedback not only encouraged me to keep working, but did wonders for keeping me focused and following a coherent vision for the game.

I did the same thing when I developed Nyan Cat FLY!, listening to the Nyan Cat song during development – I’ve spent over 100 hours of my life listening to that atrocious tune, but it helped the game reach its final state. Nyan Cat FLY!, like the meme itself, is cute. TMWSTW is, like the story it’s inspired by, an epic tale about the decline of humanity.

Plus, Bowie is pretty rocking, and helped me get through the long hours of the night.

Audio Design & Implementation (or “If it’s there, use it!“)

I’m proud of the audio in TMWSTW. I spend a liberal amount of time creating game audio tracks, and like to think I’m getting better at it. I primarily use Sony ACID Music Studio 8, of which I’m lucky enough to have amassed a liberal amount of assets I can use to develop custom music. However, that’s just so much bandwidth-drinking data unless you can get it to actually sound off in-game. Flash is notoriously awful at handling audio effects, and I didn’t want to struggle through creating my own audio manager in AS3.

This is where external classes and APIs come in. Guess what – you’re not the only programmer in the world, and other people have come across the same problems. I wish I’d realized this sooner, especially for audio. Matt Przybylski has creating an amazing tool in the AS3 Sound Manager v1.4, which controls the sound in TMWSTW (and all future AS3 krangGAMES projects). Unfortunately I implemented this system fairly late into development of TMWSTW, and had already lost time trying to foolishly use my own code. Had I gone straight for Sound Manager, I could’ve saved plenty of time and effort. I won’t make that mistake again, and if you ever use audio in AS3, I highly recommend looking into it.

The Bad

Unclear Art Direction (or “Know Your Limit, Play Within It“)

By no means am I an artist. I have a confession to make: while my LD19 entry PRIOR won 8th in graphics and was lauded in being beautifully stylized, the art is only the way it is because at hour 47/48, I realized, “Oh, this game needs some better art than the debug stuff.” I then proceeded to slap a gradient texture on every background I could find.

However, that was not the case in TMWSTW. Forgetting that I’m not an artist, I -wanted- to make custom retro/pixel art for every environment in the game. Ultimately, I lost several hours of work to something I ended up simply not using. The pixel environment art I made was ugly, low-quality, and took far too much time to develop (especially including the process of moving from Photoshop to Flash, then implementing it into the game). I finally abandoned that vain attempt, and moved to Flash-generated stylized art, similar to PRIOR (though, thankfully, with a bit more color. I’m kinda getting sick of black-and-white, and actually spent a few hours on the art this time.)

The moral of the story: Don’t be something your not. If you have to, do it in the easiest way possible.

Misallocation of Time (or “Why Your Brain and Time are NOT Friends“)

In Ludum Dare, time is not just a commodity, but a deceptive bastard of a resource. What I mean is, your psychological interpretation of time is never representative of true amount of time left. Even when you KNOW that you’re running out of time, you can still very easily lose track of it and waste it on badly prioritized endeavours.

If you’ve been reading this post-mortem through, you know how much time I lost working with audio and Photoshop (more on Photoshop in a moment). This happened primarily because I misjudged both the amount of time required on these tasks, and the amount of time remaining. Admittedly I’m vastly unfamiliar with Photoshop and couldn’t make a proper work-time estimate there to save my life, but that’s a poor excuse for losing the number of hours that I did. Estimating time and collecting those estimations into a proper timeline is incredibly difficult, and it’s all too easy to misjudge that and stray too far from the path of your development.

I suppose the best method to avoid this tragedy is to quantify everything you have to do objectively, at the beginning of development. What I’m going to do for the next Dare: create a task list of everything I need to do and estimate the time it’ll take to do it. Then add 15% to those tasks. Then reserve at least six hours for polish and miscellanea, and strip away everything of low-priority that pushes me over the 48-hour timeline. Hopefully, that’ll keep me on time.

Lack of Sleep (or “Quality Is Better Than Quantity“)

Here’s an unsurprising truth: you lose sleep in Ludum Dare. There’s no way around it, making a decent game in 48 hours will suck away time like nobody’s business. Spare time doesn’t come from nowhere, so if you want to make a decent product, you’ve gotta cut something away, and sleep is the most obvious victim.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s nothing wrong with that, at least from the Dare’s perspective. Staying up late can be fun, as any eleven-year-old would attest, and the constant flow of energy and creativity that arises from game development is exceptionally invigorating.

But there’s an fine-yet-extremely-important line between sacrificing sleep and neglecting your needs. Time limit or not, your brain needs sleep, even if only for a few hours. Staying up too late under a naive notion of “If I sleep, I won’t have time finish” is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do.

Lack of sleep will take its toll, a far worse toll than spending three-hundred minutes unconscious will. Your focus will drift, your quality of work will decline, and your overall product will suffer for your self-negligence. Taking a four-hour powernap and a shower upon waking up will do far more for your product than an extra five hours of half-baked development, followed by more hours of ever-increasing tiredness. At one point I was falling asleep at my computer – it sucked, and my game knew it. So learn from my mistakes. Go take a nap.

Either that, or adopt the Uberman Sleep Schedule.

The Ugly… Sotra

Theme Interpretation (or “Livin’ By Your Own Rules In Someone Else’s House“)

The theme for Ludum Dare 21 was “Escape”. I’ve noticed that people tend to treat the theme differently. Most people take it literally, which is fine, and often produces some pretty excellent gameplay experiences (such as NMcCoy’s excellent “Planetary Mission“, which I recommend trying out). Others view the theme in a different light, more like a guiding star than a criteria point.

This is how I viewed it in TMWSTW. Make no mistake – “Escape” is the dominant theme in my game, and it’s represented metaphorically through the player’s final actions in the game. This is not some kind of excuse for my game design, nor is it an attempt at being a pretentious douche. It is simply my interpretation of the theme, and how I chose to represent it through a video game.

Ludum Dare Compo Rule #3 states “Games must be based on the theme.” Ludum Dare is all about rapid development, and creating a product out of unfiltered passion. Basing the entire development cycle on a theme, like what the Dare has done, is ingenious, and manipulating that theme in your own fashion is an exciting thing. No matter how you interpret the theme, you’re taking a universally acknowledged concept, and making it your own. So do so however you see fit.

F**k Photoshop (or “No, seriously.“)

Please, bear with me for a moment while I depart from a more eloquent dialog and instead relinquish to the world a personal opinion that I hold, in the most base and understandable form possible:

F**k Photoshop.

For real. I love Adobe, I’m a huge fan of Flash (as anyone who knows me can attest), and the entire Creative Suite is a great product. But Photoshop and I have a beef, and I’ve gotta address it. I’ve stated on several occasions that I am NOT an artist, and as such I don’t pretend to have any level of skill in Photoshop, or Illustrator or even creating advanced artistic elements in Flash. But I do know a thing or two about product design, and creating features for users of all skill levels.

In this case, the chip on my shoulder comes from Photoshop’s inability to mass-modify colors on different layers, and then export them. You simply cannot find-and-replace colors on multiple layers (or at least, after a few hours of forum-sifting, I couldn’t find a way). As my player character had many different layers for animation, this was a huge issue. I could simply place a layer mask that changes all layers beneath it, sure, but then you can’t mass export those assets – the layer mask is not included in the export, and only default images get created. Ultimately I made a keyboard macro to duplicate the layer mask, combine it with the layer below, export that layer only, delete the layer, and move the original mask down to the next layer. Lather, rinse, repeat – a major pain.

I lost over four hours to trying to change BLACK and WHITE to ORANGE and BLUE. Four hours. Now, feel free to go off and rant, “You were using a poor method/That’s easy to do if you know how/there’s technical reasons it can’t be done/You’re a PS noob!” or whatever other retorts you may have. My point is, usability design has to take novices into account – a program SHOULD be intuitive enough that users can perform simple tasks. And replacing one color with another should be a simple task, and it is, if you’re only working on a single layer. I’m no slouch when it comes to finding solutions on online forums or hunting for methods of completing tasks, but when it takes you over four hours to jury-rig an impromptu solution to a presumably simple issue, I’m left at the conclusion that Adobe dropped the ball. Photoshop is a great program, but it’s far from perfect.

</rant>

Scope, and Knowing Yourself (or “The Uplifting Conclusion“)

I think I’m masochistic. Maybe that’s more than you wanted to know, but that’s the only explanation for the decisions I make during Ludum Dare. I’m constantly pushing myself beyond my self-determined reach in terms of development. In Ludum Dare 19, I crafted a facility larger than a standard city block and populated it with a complete, twisted back story. In LD20, I created a fully-functional level editor and allowed players to not only take the game into their own hands, but record the fruits of their labor and share them around. And in LD21, I wove a Universe. With David Bowie at my side, I explored love, spirit, daring, and the fate and frailty of humanity.

Those lofty reviews aside, the point is I established the scope of my development as HUGE. I did this intentionally, for a few reasons. One reason is, I simply love creating stuff. “Stuff” is the correct word there: I love creating levels, NPCs, obstacles, stories, music, everything that goes into a game experience. So I set ludicrous goals for myself, and push myself beyond my reach. It’s risky, and it isn’t for everyone, but it’s how I generate the best personal results (usually).

The point I’m trying to make here, is be true to yourself and your habits. Take every bit of advice with a grain of salt, and find your own best practices. Biting off more than I can chew works for me, but it can be catastrophic for others (just as trying to do pixel art nearly did me in, while some people are savants with retro graphics). We’re game designers. Only through creating games can we get better at our craft, and only by being true to ourselves can we really create a game. Anyone can build a game, but to really create an interactive experience, you have to play to your skills, nurture your muse, and be true to yourself. That’s where games come from.

In summary: David Bowie rules. F**k Photoshop. Thanks for reading. <3

<3 Nick Yonge
Founder, Director, MCS-EOOEJ, krangGAMES
www.kranggames.com
nick@kranggames.com
Facebook ~ Twitter

Check (and rate) the game here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=1947

Making a game in 48 hours is never easy, but thankfully it was less hard this time. Mainly because I decided to use tools I was more familiar with, instead of using the weekend to learn a new tool or framework.

I started the weekend with the idea of making a super-hero canabalt. Something that lends a bit of variety to the one-button run genre. A constant threat from the rear, a path that makes it difficult to stay out in front and some kind of upgrade system.

I structured my development a lot more than usual, with index cards and a vague agile methodology (and the entire living floor). I tried to sleep well during the weekend, getting 6 hours on Friday night, and 9(!) on Saturday. I also ate well, cooking rather than the usual takeaways, and only drinking one energy drink the whole weekend. (I did manage to polish off 5 pots of coffee though, which was around 25+ cups.)

What Went Right™

Organisation – I didn’t feel stressed much at all during the weekend. I managed time for music and even some graphics polishing at the end (not much mind, I’m not an artist and it’s hard to make faeces shine). All in all, I always felt like I knew what I was doing, what I had done, and what I would have to do.

Tools – I normally take a sackcloth-and-ashes approach to development: “If it can’t be done on the command line, then… you’re lying, because everything can be done on the command line. Fiend!” – But this weekend, I used FlashDevelop and worked on windows most of the time. FlashDevelop really is unparalleled when it comes to Actionscript coding.

K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid) – I nailed down the initial mechanics early. Platformer with tilemaps, jumping, double jumping. I did it all with multi-coloured squares too, sprites were an afterthought. I didn’t try to invent a new genre, and I didn’t try to rewrite the entirety of FlashPunk’s BitmapData handling (see: LD #19). I took a simple idea, and made it.

Asset Pipeline – I learned the workings of D.A.M.E. very early on in the weekend. Got familiar with its output format, its awkward, awkward tools, and it’s habit of refusing to write to CSV on occasion because it believes MXMLC is still holding on to the files (although this is more likely Adobe’s fault). I got much better at using Graphics Gale for initial pixel pushing and animating, and then using Photoshop to touch up and bake in some vague lighting.

Emitters! – Who doesn’t love little objects that fire random things in random directions? More Emitters, I say. More. I wish I could have Emitters every day of the week. My next game might be made entirely out of Emitters.

Guinness – Thanks to my first point, Organisation, I afforded myself an hour on Sunday for a few relaxing pints of Black. Boom.

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Graphics, expanded world. Powerups.