So, decided like 5 days ago to work out what tools I’d need and do this….

Didn’t work out what tools I’d need though.

So let’s do this.

Using C++, probably Gosu, if I need art I’ll head to GIMP, if I need music sfxr/Audacity will get looked into.

My goal: Have something that can compile when I’m done. Secondary goals of having it do things and be a game. Actually being fun will get to be a tertiary goal.

I’m in, for a most variable definition of in.

Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu

…HERE I COME. So original.

Following my success in MLD#22 (yah), I shall be going for LD#19. The time is (as for many) just right – end of the year, no stuff to do…

Also, let’s keep up this random tradition of saying what tools shall who-ever use, shall I?

• CODE – AS3.0 – Flash CS5
• GRAPHICS – Vector – Flash CS5
• GRAPHICS – Bitmap (maybe) – Photoshop CS5
• SOUND – … digital? – sfxr / as3sfxr / MICROPHONE (yeah, I am a beatboxe… oh whatever)
• MUSIC – ambient – Logic Studio 9 (if I will have enough time for that)
• IDEAS – neural – mHEADmod3.599 (meannetSim)
• NOTES – verbal – Text Edit 9.5321.12348g (MOST RECENT)
• COMMUNICATIONS – cut – EVERYWHERE
• COMPUTER – good – iMac
• okay, i will stop

Timelapse is coming, but I wonder if I will continue using that lame Gawker… It crashed trice the last time, so I lost like an hour or more of material… I HAVE iShowU but I can not find any way to make it record time lapsing… Ideas?

LD always seems to be coinciding with something, but I’ve managed to clear two days for it (might sleep instead).

So unless my daughter decides to create havoc I’ll be playing with you guys.

Gosu + Cpp = Joy, and a with some luck a game as well.

sfernald sank his teeth into the game engine for my LD#16 entry – the light in the end of the tunnel and the results came out swinging!

He’s used the game engine better then then me, making some winding, fun, hard to beat, acid-filled caves.

Check it out:

Source:  http://www.bitjets.com/thelight2.zip
Win32 exe:  http://ippa.se/games/the_light_2.exe

Maybe I’ll make a sequel too since the original game was so tiny. Actually I already started hacking on it. Some ideas/goals:

• The collision detection wasn’t perfect (for example you couldn’t jump while running into an obstacle)
• I’m thinking level-building from One big image instead of several small, but there’s quite some things to work out before that’s possible.
• More interaction with the world, could be levels to pull, buttons to push, doors, modification of terrain or living enemies, not just acid pools/drops.  Preferable additions that don’t complicate the level building to much, now it’s basically drawing a new image and creating one class — liberating easy.

All right, so, I’ve managed to work out how to participate without a) unboxing and setting up my computer just for the compo, in the middle of a move, or b) leaving little software dev turds all over someone else’s computer, the solution being, use entirely portable (as in USB-stick portable) software for development. In this case, allinoneruby.exe, notepad++, mercurial (the command-line part only), pidgin (for irc), and whatever graphics software is already on this computer (such as MS paint, probably). This is made even more delightfully awkward by the fact that I normally do my work on a Mac desktop, and now I’m on a PC laptop. Should be awesome.

I should also add, in addition to my previously announced use of Ruby and Gosu, I may make use of chipmunk for physics, and I may steal some code out of an earlier project of mine, Operation Lambda. I anticipate using application-level code like menus, user preferences and resource management, not any gameplay code.

All that being said, this is still a busy weekend; nothing like 48 hours will be spent on this project.

Finished my entry for the LD#15. It’s a pity I didn’t have enough time to include all the features (enemies, power-up’s, lots of blood, stalactites…) I thought at the design stage, but at least it is playable. I think I might continue the development, though.

I’ve had lots of fun! This was my first LD and I’m really satisfied. See you in the next one!

Title screen

The Evil Dark Cavern Which Leads Straight To Hell

In my game I had some problems with gosu’s rendering of tiled graphics. jlnr was so kind as to quickly fix some bugs, so here is my updated LD14 entry:

Download: Evacuation v1.01 (Windows binary + Ruby source code)

Bugfixes include:

• background and road tiling
• bunkers no longer getting placed under houses so villagers can’t enter
• sound glitch when game is won

Bummer, too late for the binaries torrent

Hiiii,

Here it iiis:

Windows version: http://www.raschke.de/julian/temp/ld14_final_win_jlnr.zip

Mac version: http://www.raschke.de/julian/temp/ld14_final.zip

Source code: http://www.raschke.de/julian/temp/ld14_src.zip

Not much content—sorry—I lacked direction and worked much more iteratively than before. Only really worked productively during the last hours. But I managed to do some nice little tricks using just a 2D lib

Enjoy!
(Reuploaded the next day because the original wording was unintentionally offensive in one instance. Didn’t touch the rest.)

Finished my game now. There could be some more polishing but I think it’s fun to play and turned out much better than I expected yesterday.

Download: jsb_LD14_evacuation.zip

(It seems the gaps between some tiles are an issue with my GPU, please report back!)

I hope all of you had a great time, I definitely had. Now, finally some sleep!

Here it goes, Mac-only and without source so far:

http://www.raschke.de/julian/temp/ld14_demo.zip

This is my moment of triumph. I fear the level design will show that my concept is not THAT well thought out

UPDATE: Windows binary added.

Well I was counting on working down to the last minute, but I have to quit for the day so this is going to be the final version, 5 hours before the deadline. The game is “done” in the sense that you can win and lose, but I wouldn’t really call it complete, there’s a list as long of my arm of things that need to be fixed up and added. All the art is placeholder, which especially hurts. Spent waaaaay too much time on the tech.

So overall, success! I made a game in 48 hours. This was my first LD and I had a blast, I’m definitely doing this again. And I’m definitely going with a simpler game next time. I think Solar Lift has some good ideas, but 48 hours wasn’t near enough time for me to experiment and pull those ideas out into a polished, enjoyable game experience.

The game is written in Gosu with Ruby. Intro is lacking, so here’s instructions: the goal is to rescue stranded people off the plummeting planets before they are consumed by the Advancing Wall of Doom. WSAD moves, left mouse shoots, spacebar fires your super laser blast. Rescuing people charges your laser, bullets are unlimited.

>> OS X Download <<

>> Windows Download <<

Source Code

Last night I wasn’t too happy with my mockup:

But I even switched to C++ because it allowed me to add some features that I wanted to do for a while. Also, I ate delicious tempeh burgers:

And suddenly, my game looked a lot better! I also had some ideas for more interesting gameplay last night, so today I’ll hopefully be more productive:

Say hi to my desk, which I hope to see only when I do Photoshop work:

Other than that, coffee shops and the university will probably be where I am most of the time, meeting up with pythong and mathias. Wee!

Tools

• Ruby (1.8, sadly)
• the Gosu library—<plug>just released version 0.7.13!</plug>
• TextMate
• Photoshop + Wacom
• cFXR
• MacBook
• actually
• I’ll make this list
• a bit longer to make it look
• like I am well-prepared

So be very afraid! … *runs to the mall to buy some pizza*

After having participated in LD5 some years ago I’ve finally found the time and motivation to enter again. Once again, I’ll be using jlnr‘s Gosu gamedev library for Ruby. As my coding skills are a bit rusty at the moment, I hope to regain some programming and time management practice (apart from enjoying a fun contest!)

Here’s my pretty basic workspace:

The compo will start at 5am German time so i think I’ll go to bed early and sleep til 8am. Also hope to resist any persuasions by my friends to go out Saturday night

Will be posting updates here, maybe some on my twitter. Good luck to everyone!

Hey folks- finished my game:

• Windows build
• Mac build
• Source (linux build instructions in readme, requires Gosu available from RubyGems)

CONCEPT:

You’ve received 4 scrambled images of possible cryptids:

Use your Crypto-Computer ™ to unscramble them!

You have 1 minute to complete your task before the
evidence is lost forever.  You will receive a
30 second bonus for each cryptid you discover.

Each cryptid image is made up of 4 individual pieces.
Unscramble each cryptid by clicking on the numbered boxes
to rotate a distinct piece of the puzzle image.

* Left mouse button for clockwise rotation.
* Right mouse button for counter-clockwise rotation.

Enjoy!

Here is a current screenshot from my simple cryptozoology puzzle game.  It is coming along fairly well schedule wise.  I have 3 of 4 crpytid puzzles completed and just need to draw one more so that is good.  I still need sounds and maybe score a little game soundtrack for it too later.  Need a menu, perhaps highscores just for practice coding that and still searching for a title I like.

I’m glad that I finally picked a game scope that allowed me to have something playable early on and really gave me time for polish, tuning, and asset creation.  As this is my 4th LD (2 full, 2 mini) maybe I’m FINALLY learning something about scope.    If anything, I probably went too far on the side of simple but we shall see.

I decided to participate after all.  I think I began around 8pm EST.

A mysterious screenshot of my cryptozoology game..   Time to go to bed.

Here is the final mini-ld #6 version of Monorail for windows.

STORY:

You are the Hero trying to reach the head of a runaway train to get to the locomotive.  You start at the caboose and work your way along fighting off the bad guys who have taken the train over. You have to be careful not to fall off the train cars or get swept off the left side of the screen with a disconnecting train car.  Also, don’t get shot!  You can get hit 3 times before you die.

CONTROLS:

Use left/right/up arrow keys to move and jump, spacebar to shoot

Use Gamepad stick and button 1 to jump, button 2 to shoot.

BUGS / FEEDBACK:

I’d love to hear any bug reports or feedback as I’ll be developing this game for a while longer still.  I listen to all suggestions and do work on these projects long after the compo deadline.  I will likely post an updated version before too long that is post-compo.

THOUGHTS:

This was my 3rd attempt at the 48hr competition format.  I think I am fairly pleased with the results.  I love how these competitions really let you bootstrap a concept in a really short amount of time.  I spent 35hrs of the past 48hrs working on this game!  While some people might not ever get why anyone would want to ‘work’ so hard on their weekend– it is SO worth it! 

Well.. my working title is evolving a little from “Monochrome Train”.   Anyway, here is the update:

I have been working like mad during this miniLD#6.  I worked 12 hours on Friday, 17 hours yesterday, and now I have a little over 5hours left to at least wrap up the gameplay.  At this point I’m going into triage mode again like many LD format competitions force us.  In a last minute rabid attempt to cram and adjust all the critical features that will turn a project from a demo into a  game.  This being my third LD type event I have yet to feel that I’ve suceeded within the timeframe.  Not sure this time will be any different yet but at least a big difference is that this time I have been able to play my game a LOT more during creation.  Probably to the detriment of the timeline a little.  I guess that is a good sign though.  Anyway, 8am EST is almost here and that is when my crunch time begins.  I have made a critical todo list to accomplish during this time and we’ll see how it goes!

CRUNCH LIST:

• score file handling to support matrins compo requirements
• detecting most primitive form of ‘you win’ condition when reaching locomotive at head of train
• enemies – spawning, moving, fighting, dieing, dodging (of some type)
• simple player / enemy animations for the logic I have coded so far (right now there is no animation)
• simple event sounds
• tiny train like soundtrack loop (update: DONE @ 9am)
• how to page?  I am confused on this because due to the matrin framework requirement– I was planning on using his idea of the 400×400 image in his framework to provide how tos… but I also want people to be able to know how to play if they just download this level from the blog without the loading framework.. so there is the connundrum of sorts.
• animations for train wheels and locomotive parts and steam cloud

Current screen shot above and current windows build here.  Use arrow keys (left/right/up) to move or gamepad stick with button 1 to jump.

Seeya all on the other side!

If you look closely.. you see the hero of the monochrome train!

I have now added three train car types of various heights.  You can now fall off or in between cars and die.  The train cars detach from the train when they hit the left side of the screen.  The velocity of the car is transfered to the hero so he drifts with them correctly.  He can now jump between all the cars with the jump from lowest car to highest being possible but tricky.  The game is over if you fall off and die or if you get swept off to the left of the screen.   You are supposed to advance to the head of the train but there are no enemies yet or win condition.  Only death…. and that is not handled gracefully.. if you ‘die’ the game ends abruptly.

For the brave, here is the current windows build exe.

Use arrow keys to move left, right, and jump! ESC to quit.