Ever since I was a kid I had something with video games, whether it was making silly card games with pieces of papers or making lame interactive stories in power point, I always looked for a way to create them…bla, bla bla! I don’t have time and nor do you to read the story of a 16th year old who always has dreamed about being a video-game designer, and has gone through everything form Modding to Unity 3d (which I guess is the case in many of us!)  so I’ll go to my point

When the charity game jam was first announced I told myself “Cool I’ll give it a try”…and finally, the day arrived,  November 24th at 12:00 A.M. I hadn’t read the rules or the jam’s theme until that moment. When I found out it was a NES theme I got excited and started working immediately.

After some minutes of thinking about my game, I found this book called “Mitos y Legendas de Guatemala”  (Myths and Legends from Guatemala) which is a compilation ghost stories and urban legends from my beloved country, Guatemala There I found this famous legend of a diabolical dog called “El Cadejo” who wanders the streets at midnight looking for drunken people, whose souls he devours. But there is another type of Cadejo, the white coated one, who instead of having a feast on it, protects the human soul from being cursed or stolen by demons and other supernatural beings. That’s how I came out with the simple story behind my game: You’re a white Cadejo who has to protect the soul of a drunken man from incoming hordes of  black Cadejos who are trying to devour it. 

Since I’m not good at 2D games in Unity, I decided to use an old tool called Game Maker. Everything (except the music and sound effects) was made from scratch for this game. The music is from ‘Retro PC Games – Tokyo Japan’ and for the sound effects I used SFXR. The barks and growls are from Nine Tails and Venusaur from Pokemon I would have loved to use my own FXs but I don’t know a thing about creating 8-bit sounds!

At the end of the post there are some screenshots of my game. You can look for it at the funkytron as “El Cadejo: A Guatemalan Horror Story” or if you don’t feel like it, go directly to the mini-site where you can download the game (just a simple .exe ) and watch the first five minutes of gameplay! I’ll be adding more levels and a boss fight at the end. If you are interested, follow me on twitter (@Hyde_WS) so you can know when the update has been done.

In conclusion, I LOVED the Charity Game Jam. It was a great experience and I learned a lot, I’m definitely in for the next Ludum Dare. I hope you enjoy my game and If you feel like giving some feedback and constructive critics, please do it

The Charity Game Jam was a huge success. Our initial fundraising goal was $250 and as you can see, we destroyed it! Mission accomplished. Achievement unlocked. Boss battle won. Princess saved. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, EVERYONE! I’m humbled and grateful for all your enthusiasm, hard work, and generosity. Should we do this again next year?
Play The Games Here! | Keynote Video | Announcement Post

It’s after the time, but I really wanted to add high scores, so they’re in! Let’s see who can beat me at yak-based urban demolition! As always, go to http://charitygamejam.com/ and then click the cartridge that says “YAK”.

And now, the post-mortem:

What went right:

• I chose something simple. This is by far the biggest help. I tend to want to do something fancy, with lots of procedural generation… this time, a simple game, which I had plenty of time to do.
• I used a language I was comfortable with, and which made me productive. I don’t know AS3/Flashpunk as well as I could do, but I have made things with it before, and this helped a lot.
• I found simple solutions for things. The city is a simple grid. You destroy the buildings where you land so you can’t get stuck in them. The enemies are helicopters, so I didn’t need to do any pathfinding.
• I made music, sound, and art that I’m pleased with! It’s nothing amazing, but the NES theme meant that I didn’t try and spend ages making it look and sound great, I could  just make things simple.
• I added little touches as I went along. As the game was simple, I had the time to add shockwaves, tween animations, and little people who run away, which made it more fun but didn’t take that long to do.

What went wrong:

• Not a lot! I could have been more prepared sound-wise – I had no experience of musagi, or audacity, so fiddling with those took longer than it should have. But it wasn’t a problem in the end.
• I didn’t get time to add the building variety I’d hoped to. Very few of the city blocks were planned to be empty grass. I wanted tower blocks and things, but by the time I could have tried adding them, it would have meant breaking the code probably.

What I’ve learnt:

• I can actually make music that I don’t think is terrible!
• I can make a 48-hour game with a decent level of polish!
• Heinous is pronounced “Hay-nuss”.

I just submitted the 48 hour version of my Charity Game Jame game, “Dolphin Story”. I followed Ludum Dare compo rules – all graphics from scratch with the Gimp, engine is Unity + Orthello 2D. It uses the NES palette.

It looks awesome inside the Funkytron … but in reality it’s not really finished yet. There are still two scenes to be made to finish the mini-chapter of this mini-adventure game, and sound is still to come. I plan to do this over the next two days.

I went against all sensible advice and used Orthello 2D for the first time for this compo … as a result I ended up wasting some time wrestling with it, but now I have the simple ‘point-n-click’ adventure base code written expanding it should be easy (famous last words ).

You can play directly it here, or find it in the list on http://www.charitygamejam.com. If the Unity plugin starts flickering (like an old TV with bad vertical hold settings – authentic !), blow on the cartridge then try reloading the page. I’ve no idea what’s up with that.

I finally got the game done and submitted with 20 minutes to spare! I had a really fun time making the game as always. The game came out great and I only cut a few things from the final version.

Here’s an in action shot:

You can try out the game here: Play and on the Charity Game Jam site.

I recommend Firefox because the sounds don’t work in Chrome >:(

Good Job Everyone!

Whoohoo! I managed to make a game that actually feels pretty complete! This is unusual for me.

Heinous Yak Destruction is now available to play on the charitygamejam.com site. It has music, explosions, helicopters, and an actual lose condition! Huzzah!

I didn’t quite get the time to add online high-scores in. The backend is there, just not the stuff in-game. I’ll fiddle around with it tomorrow and hopefully get that included.

If I had more time, I’d have liked to add more buildings – I’d hoped to have big tower blocks and shops as well as the tiny houses. Never mind.

So i’ve finished my mario game. The levels are procedurally generated, with a little variation, and the aim is to get as far as you can. You can find it here at Staticvoidgames. Anyway i had fun and i live streamed an hour or two of coding so if you can be bothered check it out. I hope everyone else has as much fun as i did.

Kix

Hey guys, things are going great. I’m about halfway done on the game and with sleep, I’ll have about 8 hours on Sunday to finish. I still have to finish level selection, more levels, and a merchant screen to buy in-game upgrades but I think I will get it done.

Here’s a progress shot:

You can play the test build here: Play

P.S. I recommend running it in Firefox, Chrome has weird scroll bars.

Well, it’s 9:30pm over here, so I’m stopping for today. (Yup, I’m hardcore and I know it. ) As always, the current state of Heinous Yak Destruction is here.

I’m pretty pleased! I’ve got some sound effects, you can smash things, and there are little people who run in terror. So for tomorrow that still leaves the… bits that make it a game rather than just a toy. Some kind of difficulty or time limit, probably in the form of the military coming in to destroy you. Not entirely sure though. Oh, and music! Which I might not get done, to be honest.

Not many people seem to be updating on the blog today. I feel like I’m spamming, but I last posted several hours ago. Where are you all!?

Heinous Yak Destruction is going fairly well. I’m quite pleased with my little yak character. Turns out that small size + only 3 colours per sprite = really easy art.

If you feel like being a giant yak, wandering a randomly generated (but currently rather dull) city, you can play here. I update the version on the site every so often.

Currently you can’t destroy anything, so you can start the game stuck in a building. Press ‘r’ until you get a city that lets you move.

Still to do:

• More buildings
• Heinous Destruction!
• People running in terror
• The military coming and trying to stop your aforementioned heinous destruction.
• Sound
• Music

So basically, all the things that make it a game rather than a remote-controlled-giant-yak simulator.

I’m finally giving this jam a serious go, after not really doing much in the last few LDs. Hooray!

‘Heinous Yak Destruction’ is a name that came out of http://videogamena.me/ a week or so ago, and it’s going to be a b-movie-style “Giant Yak Destroys a City”-em-up. It’s just before 11am, I have the basic Flashpunk stuff set up, so let’s do this!

Off to get some sleep, so I can stay sane and keep my efficiency up.  The main menu is done, I made it fully functional, and the framework for the game state is starting to come together.  I was also getting the physics manager written a little, and figuring out what variables I need to track for movement and player control.

Here’s some screenshots of the “art” I’m trying to work on now.  I’m not very good at this.

I’m going to try to get some more scenery laid down in the Game state (Weapon Racks, Stands with crowds, etc.) then get to work on the movement and physics.  After that I can work on the spyglass where you see the enemy knight coming at you, and eventually spruce it up with some more details.  We’ll see how far I get tomorrow!

The main menu is up and running, though none of the buttons work yet.  I have each element loaded in dynamically, and I’m using a TrueTypeFont I borrowed from a free font site.  Music I made on Otomata plays when you load!

Here’s a screenshot of what I have so far.  Not too pretty, but the theme is the NES!  I’m not worried too much about art yet.

Next, I’m jumping right into the game.  I’ll come back to the main menu later and fix up the credits, exit, and add a volume adjuster.

Hey guy, I’m about an hour into my Charity Game Jam game and I’ve tried running my HTML5 project in the funkytron. I’m using Game Maker: Studio Professional with the HTML5 plugin. For some reason, when running it in a chrome browser I get weird effects like scrollbars and blurry sprites:

However running it in Firefox is fine. Anyone else have similar problems? Or is it just how chrome works?

We’re off and running in the Charity Game Jam MiniLD!

The theme for this game jam is the Nintendo Entertainment System.  The funkytron that McFunkypants wrote up can embed HTML5, Flash, and Unity games.  Unfortunately, I’m once again writing mine in Java, so I’ll use the image overlay he sent out in the e-mail.

5 minutes before the jam started, I was sitting here still wondering what to do.  I decided on a jousting game along the theme of Joust, but not at all like it.  I’m hoping to have the camera centered on the player and his horse, and charging along the jousting arena.  The player will control his speed, and the angle of his lance.  The combination of speed (power) and lance position (accuracy) will determine how well the player does!

Last game jam taught me a valuable lesson: Don’t expect the game to come out remotely how you want.  Well, I’ve got a concept and I’ll get as far as I can toward it.  We’ll see how it turns out!

I’m using some of the framework from my last game, Creature Ranger.  It’s available in my earlier blog post (from LD24).

I’ll post some updates as I go.

Good Luck LDers!  Lets make some games, and support a worthy charity!

I’m 50 minutes late but am about to start on my Charity Game Jam game. As there are no categories for the charity game jam, I am assuming this is also the MiniLD #38 challenge so will post my progress reports in this category until told otherwise. I am probably going to be biting off way more than I can chew this time, as I am aiming to create a NES-Style RPG. The scope of the game will be fairly small and it will be built using the gamejam library I am creating for use in future game jams. This library is in a rather pitiful state as the time that was suppose to go towards working on it ended up going towards Torchlight II and Defender Quest but the scrolling map code is there so I shouldn’t have to worry too much about the dungeon/world maps.

Tools are Flash Builder, Flash, Fireworks, cfxr, audacity, starling framework, and tiled. I am in the PST timezone so my roadmap is to get the game skeleton finished tonight, get combat system finished tomorrow morning, rough world and dungeon maps tomorrow evening, artwork and fine-tuning on sunday. Now I better start coding.

Was into the idea of this Charity Jam right from the moment I first heard of it. Maybe its the awesome theme, maybe its the fact that its for charity (which already doubled the initial funding goal) – Just noticed McFunkypants has increased the funding goal because of this, good move

Either way, I’ve gone ahead and started my day by donating, every bit helps, so I suggest anyone who is able to donate.. To donate!

Now for the game jam side of things. I like the idea of the template, but wanted to use the BGE (Blenders Game Engine) for this LD (as I do for most Ludum Dares), so yesterday I thought Id come up with my own 3D template, you can see the end result below.

Turn table of 3D Funkytron

*Edit* Removed gif, was unoptimized and bugging out my browser, click the pic above to see it^

This version was more of a ‘proof of concept’ for myself, as I wasnt sure how well the screen projection would work (if at all). So yes, that game you see on the screen you *can play*. Its effectively a 3D game, looking like a 2D game, projected onto the flat 2D screen of a 3D Funkytron in a 3D game world <- this is the kind of thing I think up when I say to myself “lets keep this miniLD nice and simple!”     -_-’

Everything worked as I wanted though, VideoTexture (the BGE module responsible for projecting that realtime display onto the Funkytron screen) works wonders.  Then, to further complicate everything, I decided it would be a good idea to use the Burster plugin with this game. For those who dont know BGE too well, or havent heard of Burster, its effectively a web plugin which lets you use run your BGE games in-browser. It complicates things because Burster has a bunch of restrictions, mainly on what python functions/modules you can use. A bunch of them are blocked for security reasons.

Thankfully, it works, so you can play this template version right now! Controls for the game, along with instructions and links to download burster are all on this page - http://www.delta-edge.com.au/GameTest/game_test.html

Feedback on if this works for you would be great! Also just basic feedback on how annoying/easy it is to download/install Burster and get the plugin running would also be handy. Thinking of using this plugin for future Ludum Dares depending on how it goes for this one.

The only downside to Burster is no Mac support, but 32/64bit Linux & Windows are both supported.

Also, as with any Ludum Dare, I’ll be providing the source code/files for the project, starting with the template (would be great to see others using this!)

Template download: http://www.mediafire.com/?qkfr3ijlfoqwkqz (Youll need Blender 2.64a to open the .blend file and edit the game) – This game is using the Blender Game Engine (BGE)

Download template^

Template scene setup

So thats all for now. The LD starts in <1min, so I have a game to make! I’ve got a friends going-away party happening tonight, so Ill really only have the next few hours and the final 24 hours to work on a game, most of today Ill be afk. And Ill post about what type of game Im planning later as well!

UPDATE: www.charitygamejam.com is LIVE!

See also: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/10/25/charity-game-jam/

Please join us on Friday, November 23rd at 5PM PDT (midnight GMT) to kick off the first ever Ludum Dare Charity Game Jam!

UPDATE: www.charitygamejam.com IS LIVE!

This year, we’re going to be fundraising for a wonderful charity, the Make-a-Wish foundation (www.wish.org). These fine folks do small acts of kindness for children who are suffering from terminal illnesses.

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