The game:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=15943

Here’s the walkthrough (spoilers):

Tools used:
Engine: Unity free
Graphics: Photoshop, Flash, SAI
Animation: Anim2d
Sound: FL Studio + Massive VST + Goldbaby drums

The main goal was to field-test my animation system – animation editor and animation playback libraries for Unity.
The animation editor looks like this:

A lot like Flash with layers and nested animation clips, but with float frame values, “bones”/layer hierarchy, double keyframes for sprite changing.
And here’s the usage in Unity:

Fun thing is that you don’t have to manually import textures/sprites for animation, you just drop them into folder named “Sprites” and the system automatically picks them in editor, makes a library in Unity and stores textures into atlases (for now i’m using TK2d for atlas generation, but later i might remove this dependency).

In runtime there are 2 ways of playback – “rigid” – switches frame immediately, and “interpolated” – with possibility to crossinterpolate multiple animations, and overlay multiple animations. Rigid is faster and more useful for simple things like bullets, ui elements etc. Interpolated mode allows to smoothly switch between animations for characters. With overlayed animations in interpolated mode i could make the character shoot in 4 directions while standing, running or jumping, also landing squish was an overlayed animation too, so you could see the character counteracting the landing impact while continuing to run and shoot. And another fun thing is, it can be called with 1 line of code, like:

if(just_landed) anim_inst.OverlayAnimationReuseLayer("land", "stand", ...);

You can use different shaders and materials in one animation, it will create different meshes during playback, and if you use one material it will use the automatic batching.
Anyway if enough people are interested in this system, i’ll release it later.

I also used my polygon editor with some adjustments:

//that’s how you not use it, since physics only works good with convex polygons

In the last day i was kinda tired and sad, so i decided to screw around with FL Studio for some time, and made a simple electro-screechy thing using 4 Massive channels and funk-drums. I think it gave me motivation to finish at least something playable. It’s the first time i’m doing game music.

Wat left:
- I’ve spent most of the time fixing bugs in animation system, finding a way to correctly sort sprites by depth, learning how to use materials and shaders. In other words i ignored most advices about using only reliable tools that you are familiar with (again).
- I like to do detailed sprites and was anticipating to draw something with shading and stuff.
- The game is too short, with very few game objects and only one level (too little time was spent on actual gameplay, most of it went into technical stuff and debugging).
- There are severe memory leaks (materials and meshes) that i haven’t noticed (due to my poor knowledge of Unity) and that may crash your browser.
- It was too stressful.

Wat right:
- I did fix a lot of bugs in animation system, and made it work.
- I learned how to shader.
- Now i know how not to update procedural meshes and materials.
- I’m still new to Unity, and i’ve learned a lot from this jam.
- I did music.
- I managed to finish something playable, YAY!

Timelapse:
!MINIMAL DISCO WARNING! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

It’s still clunky. oh well.

At least it works!

I’m using it to create the levels in the game right now.

level editor is working

map[0] = ' 111 ';
map[1] = ' 111 ';
map[2] = ' 111 ';
map[3] = ' ';
map[4] = ' 1111 ';
map[5] = ' 111 ';
map[6] = ' ';
map[7] = ' 111 ';
map[8] = ' 111';
map[9] = ' 111 ';
map[10] = ' 111';
map[11] = ' ';
map[12] = ' 111 ';
map[13] = ' c 111 ';
map[14] = '11111111111';


…Is operational and online, and located here:

http://software.o-o.ro/urth-level-editor/

Lord Kitchener Wants You*

 To make levels!

But seriously, I’d appreciate feedback on the monster.

You can currently make and test levels and save them online. Loading other levels will become available in the next few days for testing purposes.

______________________

*Lord Kitchener doesn’t really want that, but I do

I finally got around to create a primitive edit mode. So now I can start building the level.

A shame I have no good ideas for it.

gotta be honest here, I started two days ago so I’ll submit what I have so far.

I’ll finish it off some other time and upload it here <3

really not used to making editors for stuff, but I think I’m blundering through pretty well:

(heres a link to a web version so you can play with what I have so far)

use the arrow keys to move the cursor, and click the tile types to alter the current tile.

—

didnt quite think the tile thing through, so I’ll have to have a way of having more than one plane per tile. after that I’ll be getting on to textures

so I’m going to be making a tile-based level editor… a 3D one… kind of. I guess really its 2.5D but whatever, heres a mockup of the interface:

to tell the truth I’m still working on the bits of it that build the level, but I guess that grows up with the editor, so hopefully it will all fall into place and if not, I’ll learn something

—edit—

so its started coming together:

Okay, there’s now a ship editor that loads and saves!  You can’t actually choose which tile to use (of course, there is only one tile… but you can’t erase it!), but you can load, save, and exit.  And it shows you the waterline.

Pretty classy ship, huh?

Yay! I have a working editor! Im using director and layout out sprites and rect at positions and various sizes.

And here is an ingame view of the map, after a little playing

I had some framerate issues, was only stuff intersecting at load (Phew)

Fully functional level editor!  Lets you draw the map, and saves and loads.  And check out that hardcore artwork!!  Hopefully I will update that later…

This was my second entry, and the first time that I got something playable. This is still one of my favorite games from LD, even though the graphics are a little simple.

TIE is a puzzle/platformer, where must build a roadway across a series of ice floes, while avoiding the exploding sheep.

You can find the game here:

http://www.vickijoel.org/ldgames/TransIcelandicExpress_U1.zip