I’ve been going around trying to test and rate some of the games. One thing that I like is how this competition heavily encourages you to rate games, so your own game gains visibility. I feel this helps create the great community for this competition.

I’ve personally been checking my entry page every once in a while to reply to every comment and thank them for checking out my competition, and check out their game if they have a submission. I feel like I really want to give back to the community, and really like getting constructive criticism.

I remember there being a lot of complaints on the IRC chat after the theme was announced. I personally really liked the them, because it forces you to cut out unneeded elements from your game until you get straight to the core of the game. That, at least, is my interpretation of the theme. I feel like if you really embrace the theme, you can get a lot out of it, no matter the theme. It really gets you to think outside the box, and outside your comfort zone.

Intro

IceBreaker is a minimalist free-pause RTS-ish thing (probably better described as an FTL-like, though bearing little similarity) set in a Cyberspace similar to the one portrayed in William Gibson’s Neuromancer (a book which changed my adolescent life and is at least partially responsible for my getting into programming).

I didn’t get much (okay, any) journal-writing done during the weekend, though there’s a vague run-down of events in the project’s github page.

So consider this (rather large) postmortem post-hoc overcompensation. (and apologies in advance for the spam)

Blender was extremely helpful for rapidly producing the future-retro look very quickly, even the sprites were tiny renderings with wireframes

You can’t quite tell, but it’s a stripped-down RTS:

• no resources or buildings (instead you have gestation periods for replication)
• since you can’t build unit factories, you instead have to replicate (and be vulnerable), but if you’re standing still you will heal
• there /are/ classes, but they are restricted to *strength* (hit amount) and *vitality* (health)
• it’s meant to be broken down into very short levels, generally with you collecting/destroying something which is being protected.

Statistics

• Four litres of coffee consumed
• A whole forest of tobacco
• 3,617 lines of code
  • That’s 60 A4 pages if printed out
  • According to Wolfram Alpha that’s:
    • about 17.8 metres ( 58 ft ) tall
    • 6.6 storeys high
    • and about half the diameter of the Hindenberg
  • Very sore wrists (hush, you!)
• somewhere between 3 and 6 hours of sleep

What went wrong

1. strong underlying system
   • unlike my last two LudumDare attempts, I knew what I wanted to do very quickly, I wrote about three pages of ideas and then stopped when I realised I’d already made my mind up to do the first one.
     However I didn’t flesh out the details as much as usual and so started building the basic framework while pondering, knowing I could change the details later on.  This resulted in a lot of code ( ~60ft worth! ) that, whilst extremely useful was probably not necessary to get the basics of the game done.
     I remain convinced that it was doable within the alotted time period (the post compo version is only an extra 4 hours work, with the last 3 mostly being unnecesary tweaking)
2. not enough testing of environment
   • I did more preparation than previously, but I wasted time on a few things which could have been sorted out before the compo:
     • setting up the live stream stole about 1-2 hours, admittedly I was feeling a bit braindead/overwhelmed/uninspired so this was a better utilisation of time than say, nothing.  But this should have “Just Worked”
     • Final builds (I’ll get to that)
3. using an unfamiliar framework and language (again)
   • In my first LD, I used AS3/FlashPunk which I’d picked up a couple of hours before the compo.  In the second, I used Java/LibGDX and didn’t complete – whilst I had familiarity with Java I was very very new to LibGDX and as a result spent wayy too much time googling.  This time was a fair bit better (Haxe is quite similar to Java/AS3) but I still had little to now experience with either it, or HaxePunk
   • HaxePunk is quite nice, but unfortunately not quite “there” yet for me, I wrote a disproportionately large amount of patches to the library in order to get basic features to work normally.  This stole quite a bit of time, but it was far too late in the project to change ships.  I look forward to using it more though.
4. refactoring at the halfway point
   • despite having most of the system quite well designed in my head, I had to stop and write a vast swathe of code on day 2, partially to undo the odd choices of my sleep-deprived self the night before
5. sleep (braindead 6+6 hours)
   • I should have done it sooner, and more.  I’m quite good without sleep, but I ran rampant on the code-base when I  started getting exhausted.  Much time was spent rectifying this spaghetti.  I’m not sure how long I actually slept (somewhere between 4 and 6 hours), but I easily lost 12 hours to silly choices and then the bleary-headedness upon waking.
     

     an early screenshot complete with pointless UI and ugly tiles

6. didn’t demonstrate theme clearly enough (despite following it)
   • I had basic gameplay down very early in the project this time, but the sleep-spaghetti resulted in about 10-12 hours of programming which left me (effectively) where I started
7. planning
   • I actually planned quite well in a lot of ways, but some very fundamental (and rudimentary) aspects were overlooked initially, resulting in much confusion and wasted time
8. submission process panic!
   • I tested my environment this time to avoid this exact thing.  However I discovered (at submission time) that whilst my project ran perfectly in the Flash standalone player, it would silently fail completely in-browser.  It turns out all I had to do was add “-web” to the build command, but it took me far too long to discover this!
9. no end-game detection or automatic level progression
   • despite “shipping” with a few levels, the submission process issues resulted in my missing the 20 minutes that I needed to finalise this important factor of a “short-level based game” and the gameplay suffers for it.

What went right

1. strong underlying system
   1. Yes, it’s a dirty trick having this in both sections.  But I maintain that the approach was a good one, early efforts resulted in the tutorial system being a mere 45 minutes to implement, and most new features were added extremely quickly
   2. I used JSON for most of the configuration of the game, allowing rapid prototyping of enemy AI, character attributes, menus and the tutorial system)
2. using Haxe and SublimeText 2
   1. This was a pretty awesome combination, I look forward to being able to justify the $70 license for SublimeText2 (this was my first real experience with it, and it was wonderful).  I have been using (shudder) Eclipse for a while despite my lack of appreciation for IDEs in general so it was nice to have a “real” development environment again.  However I’ve gotten rather dependent on Eclipse’s easy mass-refactoring, and you can really tell (names of things changed through the course of the project and thus there are some things named Agents which are actually Actors and so forth)
3. the game idea
   1. I think this concept is pretty sound, and I enjoyed playtesting it.  Definitely building some more levels and a little more “Juice” and thrusting it in the face of anyone who walks by
4. music and art
   1. There were a few times when my brain completely went on strike, so it was good to change gears and work in Blender or Renoise to build some of the feel, having these elements in game was also fantastic for morale.
   2. The music was made in about 5-15 minutes for each of the two tracks
   3. Art was quite quick too, despite a few false starts
5. tutorial system
   1. I’m really happy with the tutorial system, which could also double as a mission introduction system.  It hooks into game events and each dialog of the tutorial can have a number of events required before it appears, or disappears making it very easy to make a clear (and importantly, responsive) tutorial.

The in-game tutorial system is quite smart, if a little overenthusiastic

Last words

Thanks to everyone for an awesome experience yet again!

Project source (github) | Project page | Live stream (twitch)

I strongly encourage you to try out the Jam/Post-compo version after you’ve rated, as it’ll be a lot more clear what I was trying to achieve

So the 48-hour compo is over and I had a lot of fun making my game. So now I’m going to be playing a load of your games on Livestream.

Come and hop in if you want to watch, maybe suggest your game, whatever!

www.twitch.tv/jellycakes1

Cubecatcher is game with a simple principle:  You control a red cube with WASD or the arrow keys.  Use it to collect coloured cubes and score points. Small cubes are more difficult to catch and thus count more.

But beware! If you collect cubes that do not correspond to the active colour (indicated by the menu colour), you will loose points!

Randomly flying potatoes count 50 points, often winning a level.

After passing a level, you can retry on a harder setting.

Tools used: Unity3D, programmed in C#, Illustrator (textures) and NanoStudio (sound).

Play & rate: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?uid=18208

Here’s my entry:

The Sentient Cube

It’s like Katamari Damacy and Crazy Taxi put together. Although I call it an Action game, it’s more puzzle-y than it looks. To spice up things a little bit, I did add a few power-ups and physics changes.

Also, obligatory potato screenshot:

My entry is complete! Minimally.

Match Set Game

Check it out!

Combining both the familiar appearance of the common potato with the radical contrast of sheer empty space my work explores the rift that exists in our post agrarian society.

The gestalt appearance of this tuberous crop, familiar to many as a common food can serve as a metaphor for the existential struggle of existing in a post industrial society.

The apparent contradiction of audio poetry references the numinous ‘eyes’ that cover the surface of the food, transposing eyes and ears to provoke introspection.

Please play and rate.

Hello, everybody who care about this. This is my progress of my game, but I’m not sure if this is right with the theme, what I plan to do is that this Mr. Sphere shrank of size and now must fight a giant potato (because the Mr. Sphere is tiny, of course)

I think this game is going to be like an advanced platformer test

You can watch the stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/redstone_dust/b/396159283 .
You can play the game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20856 .

I’m not worried about the competition/winning bit of this event. I kind of just wanted to make a game. Forcing myself to add stuff after I finished it, for the most part, feels kind of dumb. Especially with a theme like Minimalism (which encourages MINIMAL features and art). Hopefully next Ludum Dare, I will be able to make my own engine. Hopefully! Thanks for having me, and I will see you guys next season c: ~!

So, spent lots of time and work on the sort-of-game idea I had for the theme. Math was involved and sketching occured, evidence can be found here:

All in all, I feel pretty good about how the game is coming along, haven’t started making it look good yet. Gameplay goes first.

If you want to try it out, there are two builds available here:
Windows 32-Bit build
Linux 64-Bit build

There are a couple of command line switches you can use:
-f Fullsceen
-b Rebind all controls before starting the main loop
-r WxH Specify resolution
-m 0-100 Specify music volume
-s 0-100 Specify sound volume

Standard controls are WASD, and if you’re using -b then you can bind to both keyboard and joystick controls. It’s been tested with both an original Xbox Controller S and the Xbox 360 controller.

Also, I know that something is strange about collisions, at times they don’t seem to register at all. This is a bug that I’ve spent too much time trying to track down, and so sort of decided to leave it there until it becomes a more pressing issue.

If you happen to have a 32-bit Linux system, then you could try to build the game yourself. The source is available on Github (C++) and it uses CMake to build, you might need boost and SFML 2.0 (Don’t know if the RC works since I’m using the latest git myself).
There’s a small issue with the CMakeLists file so you might also have to set Kunlaboro_BOOST to On in your cmake cache for it to build properly.

Hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this (And maybe even enjoyed what exists so far of the game). Please comment.

This is Ace, reporting to bed.

I’ve already loaded the level editor with every (I hope) object, and some of them are functional! Just gotta polish the graphics, make sounds… and create every goddamn level. >_< Since it’s going to a puzzle, that only make things harder… >_<

Oh well, I hopefully can do this. xD

After most of the first days frantic coding, I’ve taken a short break to cook myself something simple.
I’m a bit amused at myself when I realize that an advanced omelet is the simplest thing I can think of to cook…

Eggs, shredded cheese, finely chopped ham, fresh basil, thyme, and just a dash of coriander.
Topped with mozarella and tomato.

Damn, this is tasty.

Also, here’s a small screenshot of my game progress:

This is my very first try on a Jam, been watching Ludum Dare Compo for a few times now as one of my friends participate in them.
I’ve been to the Danish, Game Development Camp, last summer which was excellent, but that is the closets I’ve been to such an event.

My tools,
Language: Java
Framework: Slick2D
IDE: IntelliJ IDEA
Sound: Audacity, bfxr. Going to record my own sound properly.

But hoping for the best!
Oh yeh, and here is my current progress of my desk (As I’ve been working for a few hours now. Just forgot to write this post)

A few post-it. Secondary screen for Livestream I’m watching and few other neat stuff.

I’ve been wanting to Ludum Dare for a while, but I can’t code for beans. Seriously. The last time a bean asked me to write a function, I just froze up. Mostly because my beans were talking to me. So instead, I’m going to “compete” in the Game Jam alongside a code-savvy teammate or two, but will otherwise be following the rules for the solo Compo.

We’ll be dual-screen streaming over here, as soon as the theme is announced: http://www.gamefetch.tv/?ch1=hitchh1k3r&ch2=solifuge

Hybrid Compo-Jam Rules are as follows:
1) You can work alone or on a team.
2) All game code and content must be created within the 48 hours (72 if we blow it).
3) Games must be based on the theme.
4) All publicly available libraries and middleware are allowed.
5) All content creation, and development tools are allowed.
6) Source code must be included.

As for the project specs:
Language: Java
IDE: Eclipse (with Saros plugin)
Libraries: LWJGL and Slick-Util
Sound: FruityLoops, bfxr, audacity
Graphics: GraphicsGale, maybe PaintToolSAI
Food: Leftover Chicken Penne Rosa (from scratch; I cook better than I code)
Beverage: Excessive ammounts of Chai Tea.
Palette:

First LD48 however i have watched 3 times excited to be the one actually coding this time.

Tools:

• Language- Java (+ a little xml for particles and other things like that)
• Libraries- Slick2D (LWJGL)
• Art- Paint.net / Pickle
• Music- Not sure yet will have to look through tools on ludum dare site
• Livestream-OBS (http://www.twitch.tv/jacobbev)

I’ll be participating in this, my 6th Ludum Dare 48-hour competition! This weekend is something to be excited for, and prepare myself mentally and physically for. Let’s start with the basics:

Programming: C++ in MSVC++ Express 2008

Library: SFML 1.6, for Windows only.

Sounds: Audacity, SFXR, PXTone

Ingesting: A power smoothie made from the finest vegetables.

I’m going to give progress updates throughout the weekend. On this blog, on twitter (@feyleafgames), my facebook (for friends & family), and most likely youtube (because I assume everyone wants to hear my dashing voice!) Saturday early afternoon will be a break-time to spend with my son and my girlfriend. They are important, too ^_^

Viva Ludum Dare 26~

–Benjamin

I always see lots of game competition online and never really paid attention to it but now i think it’s about a good time for me to try this out. This is my first ever anything. It’s not say I don’t have any interest in game development but i do! I was just  afraid of trying but I want this to be my first and not last experience! Very excited to see what others come up with too!

My current tools that I will use for the competition are:

Construct2 – HTML5 Game Creation. I think this is the first piece of software I bought that was game related after Game Maker.

Browser(s): Chrome + Firefox for testing the game out.

Pyxel Edit – For teh pixels ;P

FL Studio – For the music and SFX

I hope with the time I’m given that I’ll be able to have something that works! lol

EDIT: It needed more pictures.

Not much to see here.

Ahhhhhh! ExciteD!

Starting April 19, the 5th Hack-a-Jam Game Development Competition will begin!

This competition is held every 2-4 months, and this is the approximate 1-year birthday. Because of this, I am offering a prize to the winning entry. This prize is free advertising (one month), on both of my main websites, which have decent traffic.

What is the Hack-a-Jam?

The Hack-a-Jam is a game development event/competition where you must create a game within a set amount of time. The time given in each competition varies, as it could take two days, four days, or even just 30 minutes. Different from other game jam events, the Hack-a-Jam uses a multiple-award system, meaning there is no “Overall Best Game”. This allows for us to give awards to the best games, and not make a decision between two games which are equally amazing. The theme will be a suggestion voted on from the community through many different voting sessions. Another thing you could do to win certain categories is make things such as dev logs, timelapses, etc. You can them post them or links to them in the Posting section of the Forums.

What are some possible winning categories?

Most Psychedelic Visuals
Most Deaf People After Hearing The Game
Most extra items (dev logs, etc.)
Most Rage-free
Most rage-induced
Most Suggestive Content Without Crossing The Line
Shortest Game
Best themed
Most Things On Screen Without Lag or Crash

What are the rules?

Since we are a laid back community, you could probably get away with most of these rules (except major ones, like turning in your entry a whole 24 hours late…). Here are what I would like the community to follow, however:

1. All game content must be created within the set time. Note: You can use other music, placeholder graphics, etc. as long as you are allowed to!
2. Your game is not required to follow the theme, but would greatly improve your chances of winning. Unless almost every other game is not following the theme, it is almost guaranteed that your game won’t win anything.
3. You must work alone, and you must create everything included in the game.
4. All game creation tools are permitted, such as Unity, GameMaker, Photoshop, Flash, Paint, etc.
5. All external game extensions/DLLs are permitted. If you want to make it multiplayer (if you are using GameMaker), go ahead and use 39dll.

You can visit our website at http://www.hack-a-jam.com/. From there, you will want to head over to the Posting section, and sign up for an account (you can use Google, Facebook, etc.). Good luck to everyone!

Starting April 19, the 5th Hack-a-Jam Game Development Competition will begin!

This competition is held every 2-4 months, and this is the approximate 1-year birthday. Because of this, I am offering a prize to the winning entry. This prize is free advertising (one month), on both of my main websites, which have decent traffic.

What is the Hack-a-Jam?

The Hack-a-Jam is a game development event/competition where you must create a game within a set amount of time. The time given in each competition varies, as it could take two days, four days, or even just 30 minutes. Different from other game jam events, the Hack-a-Jam uses a multiple-award system, meaning there is no “Overall Best Game”. This allows for us to give awards to the best games, and not make a decision between two games which are equally amazing. The theme will be a suggestion voted on from the community through many different voting sessions. Another thing you could do to win certain categories is make things such as dev logs, timelapses, etc. You can them post them or links to them in the Posting section of the Forums.

What are some possible winning categories?

Most Psychedelic Visuals
Most Deaf People After Hearing The Game
Most extra items (dev logs, etc.)
Most Rage-free
Most rage-induced
Most Suggestive Content Without Crossing The Line
Shortest Game
Best themed
Most Things On Screen Without Lag or Crash

What are the rules?

Since we are a laid back community, you could probably get away with most of these rules (except major ones, like turning in your entry a whole 24 hours late…). Here are what I would like the community to follow, however:

1. All game content must be created within the set time. Note: You can use other music, placeholder graphics, etc. as long as you are allowed to!
2. Your game is not required to follow the theme, but would greatly improve your chances of winning. Unless almost every other game is not following the theme, it is almost guaranteed that your game won’t win anything.
3. You must work alone, and you must create everything included in the game.
4. All game creation tools are permitted, such as Unity, GameMaker, Photoshop, Flash, Paint, etc.
5. All external game extensions/DLLs are permitted. If you want to make it multiplayer (if you are using GameMaker), go ahead and use 39dll.

You can visit our website at http://www.hack-a-jam.com/. From there, you will want to head over to the Posting section, and sign up for an account (you can use Google, Facebook, etc.). Good luck to everyone!

I started doing the LD back at 22 and haven’t stopped since because it’s really helpful in getting me to actually make a game.

Here’s a small history…
LD 22: Didn’t complete a game but turned it in.
LD 23: Bug killed the game 8-hours before the end of the jam. I just couldn’t get it out.
LD 24: Did as much as LD 22.
LD 25: Finally finished a game first time. Both in the LD and ever.

My team was so excited last time around about getting the game finished that they don’t want to do another LD in fear of failing and it ruining the feeling of LD 25. I, on the other hand, believe that these failures and successes can only help get us to our goal of making bigger, better, games. With that said, this is the first time I’ll be going at the LD alone and not with my team. So this is a true LD for me this time around. I hope to finish, but even if I don’t, it’s just another thing to help me hopefully get to the point where I can finish by myself.

Programming Languages: Monkey, NixScript (my scripting lang)
Editor: JungleIDE, Notepad++
Graphics: Graphics Gale, Photoshop
Sound Effects and Music: bfxr, FL Studio, or public domain music/sounds
Library/Framework: XAddon (my lib/framework), FontMachine, Monkey-JSON