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

Im about done for today’s work on the game. Made some progress, theres a player sprite which runs around, and a basic environment (road with buildings either side and an intersection) along with some cars that randomly spawn and can drive into you (blood splatter included), now I have other things to tend to

A friend of mine might be getting involved with the game while I’m away for the next 10-20 hours, so progress might be made (hes been working on music for it today). Then tomorrow will be time to sit down and start finishing things! Ive purposefully aimed pretty low with this game, I’ll just get as much done as possible and enjoy it.

Either way, the game Ive been wanting to make for this is effectively ’GrandTheftAuto re-imagined for the NES’. I hope to have at least 1 gun, cars to drive/steal, blood to splatter and sidewalks to drive down, maybe even some simple kinds of missions. We’ll see!

Some screens:

Car driving past

Might also mention, I 3D’ized the gamepad texture recently released as well, so now theres 2 controllers in the scene (which adds to it nicely I think!)

So iv’e decided to make a charity game and upload it to Staticvoidgames. I’m basically going to make a never ending mario running mash-up game. I think ill use the original sprites off the nes to keep with the theme as well.Well time to get coding

kix

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!

Just Entered Cancer Wars into the October Challenge!

Please play it and let me know what you think, because all ad revenue goes to Cancer Research UK!

I thought I had the October Challenge covered put an existing game up for it that is already earning money and make it for charity!

Cancer Wars is on Kongregate

And to date for this month it has made $0.35 from 207 ad supported plays so I only need about 389 new plays to earn that 1$ this month!

Please play it here http://www.kongregate.com/games/Arowx/arowx-cancer-wars-v0-5!

Because cancer effects 1 in 3 people and all revenue goes to a Scientific Cancer Research Charity!