It’s been many hours since Ludum Dare #22 started. To be honest, I was really hoping for teleportation.

So, just a recap, i’m doing a browser game using javascript/canvas. I want to do something darker than i’m used to.

This is where i’m at at the moment http://www.stickymill.com/alone/alone_v0.01.html

Screenshot gallery http://imgur.com/a/6jLGr

• Language: Javascript / HTML5 Canvas
• Art: Adobe Illustrator / Adobe Photoshop
• Audio: If there is audio, i’ll be using sfxr and any modifications to that with Audacity
• Base Code / Libraries:
  Asset Manager from the Google I/O presentation for pre-loading images.
  My base template
• Screenshots: I’ll set up to take periodic screenshots, a word of warning though, I can’t guarantee it will be completely SFW

“I’m in” video saved, cat got in the way, all good.

I’ll be using HTML5/Javascript/Canvas. Using Chrome, may have to install Firefox and IE to check compatibility.

Also it just occurred to me that my WordPress name and my handle are not the same.

I am nogbog aka Colin Capurso

First time was really fun, so taking part again would be twice as fun!

I was going to use FlashDevelop with Actionscript 3 and AIR framework, but I need more practice before I can rapidly create games with it.

So instead, I am going to use:

Hand drawn graphics using Systemax PaintTool SAI, animated with SmithMicro Anime Studio 8,
music and sound effects using Fruity Loops, possibly with using freeware instrument samples to compose simple tracks, plus original sound effects and voice (if necessary)
GameMaker HTML5 for overall development using my game codebase.

Windows version will be surely available and HTML5 as well -if there are no annoying performance issues and code compatibility problems.
My codebase is nearly fully polished & will be posted before the compo begins.

To play my first Ludum Dare entry, go here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5234

I’m in again. Having learned nothing from crashing and burning last time, I’m going to (attempt) to learn a new environment and language as I go (Get Moai/Lua). (original choice of technologies abandoned as it’s too hard to embed in the browser) I’m using Javascript and the HTML5 Canvas, no external game libraries, (depending on the theme) only programmatically generated graphics, and only a limited knowledge of web technologies.

Expect some unplayable, cryptic piece of crap to follow.

…this my unexpected goal: buy the Impact framework http://impactjs.com

My name is Floriaen and I am actually writing a HTML5 game during my free time.
Of course, instead of sleep.

I am on Twitter: @floriaen there is some goodies inside!

Thanks.

So I chose to make a game with HTML5 / Javascript using the JawsJS html5 gamelib.

I used the <canvas>-tag since I wanted to make a freeform level with pixelperfect collisions, basically I made the whole thing in graphics gale, could as well have done it in paintbrush.

The new HTML5 <canvas> tag makes it easy to get the data in raw format, basically an array with RGBA values. From there on it’s to check collisions.. 1 pixel at the feet is a decent start.

The most annoying thing is probably the audio-formats that’s supported for the new <audio>-tag.

Safari doesn’t play OGGs for some lame reason, and Firefox doesn’t do MP3s. So all audio has to be provided in 2 formats.. also you wan’t detection at asset-loading time etc. I could have lived without that cruft.

Otherwise Javascript has become amazingly fast, I think V8 is faster then ruby and python. All browsers come with good debugging possibilites.

Javascript doesn’t have the traditional classes and inheritence, but rather prototypical inheritence.. which can be confusing at first.

What I love is the dynamic nature of objects in Javascript.. basically all objects are big key-value storages (hashes).

So you can whenever you want just set a new flag/property on whatever object.

/* Player.dead has never been defined or used at this point */

if(player.dead) { … do sometting …} // won’t throw any error.. played.dead will just return undefined

player.dead = true

if(player.dead) { … do something .. } // played.dead is now true and code will be executed

The biggest upside with javascript is ofcourse ppl not having to download anything. No virus-scan etc etc. Just instant gaming. And the big players are making the javascript engines faster on a daily basis.

Play my Javascript game here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=108

Here’s a teaser-shot from the game, you start in the “west prison” and have to find your way out of a huge castle.

It took me an hour and a half to come up with anything to fit the theme of  ”ESCAPE” but once I forced myself to sit down with a marker and a piece of paper, I soon had a simple little thumbnail sketch of what I wanted to make.  I’m using an ultra-simplistic concept that fits the theme and I’m quite happy with it. As my first progress report, I’m happy to say that I’ve finished implementing the basic gameplay mechanic. I’m using HTML5 and box2dweb and am creating a physics puzzler for web, windows exe and android (compiled to .apk using PhoneGap). It took me about two hours to code the entire thing from scratch.  I’d never tried any work with box2d before, and I stumbled with bodies and fixtures and sensors but I’m really happy to say that my basic gameplay testbed and proof-of-concept is complete: we have a “main character” that can bounce around and the engine detects when you touch a “key” which unlocks a “door”.

This means that I am “done” the low level engine and have the rest of the weekend to make it look pretty!

Not quite sure if I’m in, 50% certain I can get enough time to try. Then I also need to be inspired by the theme, 40% chance since I’ve got trouble with that recently. Now when it comes to getting done on time, I’d give me a 5% chance, I really suck at that. Finally this would be my first Ludum Dare, which adds another factor of 10% on success chance. These completely made up numbers leave me with a 0.1% chance of success, hooray for that.

I thought about using Ogre/SDL+OGL and a custom toolset I’ve built together with a friend of mine, but decided agaist that because I can’t do anything web-based this way (at least not until Ogre gets NaCl support). For now I’m using play’N (which was known as forplay until the recent name change and is still in alpha stage). While I might have to write code in Java I already have in my C++-toolbox, being able to easily export the game to HTML5 is worth a lot for me.

Hey LD48ers,

Just wanted to post a quick heads-up about my cross-browser Javascript game dev library, jsGameSoup.

I think you will find it a very quick way to make a game and get it in front of players! For example, I made this demo in a few hours.

Have fun!

The Contrasaurus launch was a big success yesterday, getting onto both the front page of Hacker News and the Programming Reddit. We even got 57 Facebook likes!

We received quite a bit of feedback, some positive, some negative, a lot of it useful. We also received a donation!

Something I wish I had done earlier would be to write down my expectations and try and guess what kinds of feedback we would receive, then compare that to the actual feedback and try and improve my intuition for what players care about. It is all too easy for ones mind to pretend it knew it all along once the evidence is in, so next time I’ll be sure to write down my hypotheses.

Another thing I learned is that not all feedback is equal. Some tells more about the player than the game. There will always be negative feedback and trying to modify the game too much to accommodate it may, in some cases, dilute the experience such that no one really loves it. On the flipside though, be sure that there is actual real positive feedback supporting the tradeoffs you are making. Our main one was that we chose to emphasize “being an awesome dinosaur, crushing your enemies” above “having balanced and tactical gameplay”. That’s not to say that there is no balance or tactics, just that “being an awesome dinosaur” came first in our priorities. In some cases it caused the gameplay to suffer and in an ideal world where we have infinite time the game would be extremely excellent in both regards.

The feedback we received often mirrored that choice. The players for whom “being an awesome dinosaur” was important really loved the experience. The more hardcore players who didn’t care about “being an awesome dinosaur” and wanted more complex and tactical gameplay were often disappointed. Some striking examples:

necromian

The gameplay literally consists of the character holding down the left mouse button and holding the right key. Once you get the jetpack you pretty much can’t die. The level design is non-existant, as every level (that I’ve played so far) is just a flat surface with enemies being constantly spawned on it. Overall, I think that you need to work on this game a lot. Currently, I’d say that it’s too boring, and few people will play it past the third level.

yummyfajitas

I can’t even begin to describe the awesomeness of controlling a jetpack powered dinosaur wielding twin chainsaws while fighting communists all to the midi-encoded tunes of Lady Gaga. The plotline was truly amazing, I totally didn’t see the ending coming.

Another interesting decision was that we chose to go the HTML5 route, rather than using an “established” platform like Flash. I think that, for us, it was the right decision. We don’t have much Flash experience, and if we’ll need to learn a new platform anyway we might as well go for one that appears to be rising rather than one that appears to have plateaued.

There are still tons of problems with HTML5 today, primarily cross browser audio, and crazy nearly impossible to reproduce crash bugs, as well as the standard cross browser web crap. The biggest pain was all the crash reports of running the game in Chrome, even though that’s the environment where for us, in development, it worked nearly perfectly. Additionally it was pretty much unplayable in FF, except on super-powerful computers, had control issues in Opera, only usable in IE via Chrome Tab, and crash reports on any of the browsers were not uncommon. This is the biggest issue right now with HTML5 but it is an issue that is currently being resolved and hopefully quickly.

In the end though the actual technology doesn’t matter at all to the player. The only thing that matters is that they can play the game reliably and enjoy the experience without issues.

Brian Gruening

the best flash game i have EVER seen play it http://contrasaur.us/

So there is my montage. It has been really fun looking at all the other montages people have been posting.

SO MANY GAMES WERE CREATED HERE AND THAT IS AWESOME!

I’ll either be using Flash IDE and ActionScript 3.0 from scratch or HTML5 and Javascript/Canvas via Akihabara game framework if I am feeling adventurous enough to use LD to learn a new tech. Depends on whether I’m gonna do the compo or the jam. Will probably wait to see the theme announcement to make up my mind. I’m worried the jam might not quench my competitive spirit especially since I missed the last April LD.

The thing I am pretty excited about is that a few of us New Englanders are getting together tomorrow to develop in person over in Portsmouth New Hampshire.  If anyone else is in the area you’re welcome to join us! We’ll be picking out a non-crowded cafe over there tomorrow and about 4 of us will be getting together so far. Pretty psyched about that part for sure!

Long live Ludum Dare!