https://inkbunny.net/journalview.php?id=82430

Thought I should write a small post that will help people understand the theme/logic of my #LD48 entry
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=rate&uid=21211

The game by itself is intentionally not self-explanatory.
I see couple of people getting back to me trying to reason about some design “suggestions” … some were really good, and then some made me feel that people are thinking in a quite different direction / not thinking at all.

So here’s what I’ll do mysteriously help all confused gamers

Explaining some design with FAQs.

Q1. The game doesn’t have much controls and is confusing.

Did I forget to mention tough choices?
No I didn’t.

A1. Meant to be so. The theme was “minimalism”
When I thought of the game design, I thought of vagueness and scope for making people think when they play the game. Everything converges when scores are shown.
Yes, I could have made a big 5 stage coin collecting platformer, but that’ll be out of theme and nothing new to experiment.

Q2. I did not select the Red Girl but I still got % on perverted scores

It’s not wrong to be attracted to sexy dressed girls, now is it?

A2. Those are just one of the places where I want people to think. On a second thought, you should be thinking all throughout the game.
I was kinda serious when I wrote this in game description.
“You are supposed to make “choices”, which sometimes are difficult than a “RedPill vs BluePill” question in real life! ”

So here’s my question to you, WHY do you think choosing the red dress girl would mark you as a pervert, but the purple dressed girl will not?
What is wrong you are attracted to skinner/sexily dressed girls? Is it really wrong?  It’s a choice and a personal preference IMHO.
The girl in red dress could be a very kind and good human, while the girl in purple dress could be shady. Who knows?

These are not meaningless messages friend.

The other problem here is people are trying to “assume” some stuff about the algorithm behind it but are fixing their thoughts to a linear assumption.
The algo is complex.. it considers stuff from real world.  What could be an act of kindness in a particular level, will be a goofy choice in another.

So “Think”.

Q3. The sounds are too loud
A3.  Yeah I’m terribly sorry about that. My bad.
Laptop speakers aren’t that great.. although I  tested my sounds at 100% volume while mixing.. I still hear less
Point noted and will remember that for my next game. Thank you

Q4. Any tips on how to play the game?  In other words how do I fake it to make scores look clean.

What game?

A4. I am not going to tip anyone on how to fake it , but yes I can help to reach a point where you can make ‘clearer’ decision on whether to fake it or stick real.
Here’s my mysterious way of helping you guys.. remember 3 things while playing the game
1. Watch the level “name”
2. Level ‘name’ is a ‘situation’/'time’.
Evaluate the both choices along with the level name.  It’s not just about choice1 vs choice 2 .. its choice 1 vs choice2 vs levelname.
3. Think a lot.. get real life decisions as examples to help yourself .

I’d be happy to answer any other queries you might have.
Please leave your valued suggestions in comments

For now, I’m gonna go and play games of other participants and earn some more knowledge.
Signing out.

So I decided to do Tower Defense type of game. Again I wanted too many in too little time. I’m happy with what I came up with. Take a look: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=5974

Sample gameplay

Hello people of the blagosphere, I have this website on to which I shall probably put my games what I make, and probably some thoughts on game design and coding should I have any of note. I started it about a year ago but it quickly failed as my co-conspirator walked away. But yet, here I am, back to put some more games up there.

As for the quality of these games: Expect very little. I’m not really putting myself under any obligation to make games here, so it will just be whatever ideas capture my fancy. Also the art will be forever bad unless I can find someone to do it for me, which is unlikely since pretty much everything I post on there will be free and open source. No cash incentive, you see.

With that said, thanks for listening to my nigh-incoherent rambling.

Hello everyone! I am here today to share with you a game that was born here, in the Ludum Dare, as a warmup game, and now I completed it as a fully playable game with everything a real game needs; Achievements, story, infinite mode, unlockable weapons, highscores, etcetera, etcetera!

Promotional poster

The original game, formerly ‘Earth Defenders’ was a crappy minigame I made as a warmup for my first Ludum Dare, under an interesting mechanic: A 360º Space invaders twisted clone. at the moment with my little game design skills and motivation it ended up being fun, but not fun nough, and definately not as pleasant!

So, three months ago and three years after that initial minigame I decided to completely remake it from scratch, I dumped every bit of that old minigame and started writing this new, enhanced version of it, with High definition graphics, a touch-screen friendly interface, and cross-platform. The result was Earth Defenders HD, and it is now complete

You can obviously play it on Google Play for free here:

Enjoy it and dont forget to share it with your friends, thanks everyone!

Hi guys!

It was a great time for me (and I hope for you too)!
Quite a bit, I want to talk about my LD25 game. The first day I did not do anything. I sat and tried to think of a visual style (at this moment I have not thought in any genre will game). I have not been able to come up and went to sleep. Came the second day and I woke up in the afternoon. Yes, I had very little time. But I ran out of time and I finished the project. Game (not really a game) was very short. But I had time to do it. Art, music, and animation.

And I was working in the bathroom. The house was very cold.

I hope you enjoy my game!
Everybody all the best!

PLAY CLOSE MY SIDE

Panda7, my October challenge game is finally finished. Sort of.

I started on 1st October and finished 10 minutes into the 1st of November.

This is the first game I’ve completed and by completed I mean the first game I’ve gotten to a decent playable state.

On Development

Hi guys,

22 days into October challenge, and here is an update on the current version of Vox. Version v0.19 has just been released on Desura and IndieDB, so I thought I would share a post on here to list some of the new features and updates to Vox.

http://www.desura.com/games/Vox
http://www.indiedb.com/games/vox

Here are the newest features:

• More Enemies in the world.
• Flying enemies.
• Skeleton archers shoot you from a distance.
• Skelebobs chase you and try to kill your with their deadly swords.
• King Slime boss spawns when you kill too many of his little slime buddies.
• Interactable NPCs.
• NPC movement behaviours – waypoints, world navigation and player follow.
• Questing system.
• Treasure chests.
• Signposts.
• Particle editor in the game.
• Particle effects can be added to character parts. i.e head, body, feet, etc.
• particle effects can be added to created weapons and items.
• Undo feature added to creation mode.
• Much better character creation screen in front-end menu.
• Ore deposits that can be mined for ore.
• Collectable items (hearts, coins, ore).
• Damage text popups.
• Improved HUD graphics.
• Experience bar and leveling up.
• Gradient background and better sky rendering.
• Clouds.
• Better intro animation.
• New custom frontend music and game music.
• Smoother mouse controls.
• X360 gamepad support.

Here are some recent videos demonstrating new gameplay:

Gameplay 1 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnTiGdZay4s

Gameplay 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfU-07RV-VY

New Intro – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq6bR9-OmZU

There is a free version to download and test and I would really appreciate it if people would be willing to try this and maybe provide some feedback. As always I am really curious to hear peoples opinions and suggestions. I really like player feedback and love to hear what people’s opinions are (Unless of course they are just the 500th person to state that Vox looks similar to Minecraft or CW ).

Thanks.
AlwaysGeeky

So I may have jumped the gun a little for the October challenge as I posted my game Vox to Desura a couple of weeks ago and it is already selling and making money…

http://www.desura.com/games/vox

It is hard for me to believe that I started working on Vox as an entry into a Ludum Dare competition only a few months ago and it seems to have come along so far since then, I am really glad that I got involved in Ludum Dare and I dont think I would have ever made a complete game, that is selling for actual money, without getting involved in LD.

I will continue to use the October challenge time to further gain more insight and knowledge into the business side of making games and use it to learn about different ways to market and monetise a game… and use the challenge as an opportunity to do that side of development, since I am a programmer and my knowledge of such business is limited.

I am also constantly improving and adding new stuff to Vox, (since it is still in pre-alpha stage) so this will take up lots of time too.

I can offer advice for other people wanting to use the Desura publishing route to publish and sell your game as the process was fairly easy for me and it seems the Desura guys really want to create a system where it is easy to sell your indie game.

Good luck guys!

Hi people,

Just wanted to let you know that I have put Vox on the Steam Greenlight process.

http://www.steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92967555

What was originally started as an entry into the Ludum Dare competition a number of months ago, during the april competition, is now being made into a full ambitious game!

Would really appreciate it if you could visit the game page and hopefully show your support (favorite and rate up) and this would make me very very happy indeed, and I would be forever indebted to you!

As always if you want to follow my voxel engine tutorials or articles, they can still be found at the site:

https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/

I am happy to hear any feedback you guys have, or answer any questions you might want to ask.

Thanks!

AlwaysGeeky

Our comp entry is here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-24/?action=preview&uid=5234 Also embarrassingly, apparently Aqualution is a soap brand name so that’s probably not going to stick.

Evolution is actually one of my favorite game mechanics, but I was completely at a loss for what could be implemented in only a few days. That was the biggest hurdle.

A lot of game mechanics fell by the wayside and the idea of evolving powers turned into just growing into a bigger newt and surviving a hostile environment. I got most of the art done that I wanted to, but Alex of AvibeGames didn’t have enough time to code everything in and make it functional so we worked with what we have ready in the framework. Jack did the music and got it to us very quickly for the few songs we needed for gentle ambiance. It was a pleasure to work with my team and friends, I learned a lot about how to make pixelart and it’s likely this project will roll into a bigger post-Dare game or another one.

Things we succeeded at:

• Making a nice atmospheric sidescrolling game
• Simple and varied enemies
• A health and EXP system
• Smooth water floating and dashing physics

Other things that got the chopping block:

• Icebergs
• Key/Door unlock mechanic
• Longer bosses and levels
• Moray eel and giant octopus

I always look forward to Ludum Dare, succeed or fail, as motivation and a learning experience every time. Even if you don’t finish, I think it’s important to post your work—you’ll get valuable feedback for later from your peers.

The secret to my success this time was remembering to take breaks, but not too many. Sleeping, cranking the music up full blast and getting shit done. And sometimes I didn’t, so I’d rush to make up for it, but I’m proud of what we have to show already.

Quit my job, moved into my parrents basement (till I find a new suitable apartment), looking forward to go indie, full time. This being said, I have no excuse to not be in this round. Missed LD23 due to the crunch time brought by the need to release NOVA3, and I felt bad! With any bit of luck I can use the LD24 game as my first, crappy-ish , debut game. Good luck everyone, and may thy pixels and voxels, vertexes and computer specs turn out to be just as awesome as you want them to be!

Going to use the following tools:

• LOVE2D
• Lua Development Tools
• GIMP (+_ paint.NET)
• Ubuntu 12.04 and a virtualized Windows 7 (for paint.NET)
• SFXr

P.s. had no idea how to name the post, so I went with “that”!

Edit: Forgot to mention: Not sure about livestreaming, but drop me a line @zapakitul on Twitter or G+ , if you are up for a Hangout!

Here are a few videos I put together showing progress of my game Vox…

http://www.facebook.com/VoxGame

This is a direct continuation of the voxel engine/game that I made for Ludum Dare #23.

Hope you like… feel free to ask me any questions or comments yo might have?

Alwaysgeeky

So I recently added water to my voxel engine and have been playing around with it…. one thing I have found out is that water is sooo much fun to code, it’s tricky to get a decent simulation and hard to get something that is stable and looks nice, but once you make something you are pleased with, you just wanna play around with it so much!

At this rate I might have a full voxel engine ready by the time the next LD competition drops… be able to spend the full 48 hours on actual gameplay and making a game to suit the theme…. that should be fun.

Here is the link to my article/guide/tutorial site for voxel engine resources:
https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/

AlwaysGeeky

Starting to add more and more functionality to my voxel engine and it is starting the slow evolution into a game, with fun elements. I’m still aiming for daily videos showing progress and hopefully each one showing a new feature or something cool.

My guide/tutorial site is taking shape, but I am still coding lots and lots and finding it hard to put a massive amount of time into writing articles. More will come with time though…
https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/

I have some questions for the community and gamers.

• What sort of creating tools would you like to see in a voxel sandbox game?
• Do you think it would be good to offer a library of common objects that the player can import/export to re-use as they are creating?
• What parts of a game would you like to customize (and share with others)? Your character model, weapons, items, NPCs, quests, particle effects, world regions?

Also anyone who has played Minecraft (or other sandbox games) can probably help me by answering a couple of questions below:

• During the creative parts of the game, i.e crafting, building, customizing… do you prefer to still be emersed in the game while in this mode or do you prefer a more abstract tool/interface? For example when crafting or building in minecraft you still have to walk around as the player, rather than having a fly around ‘god-mode’ when you can craft/build with a mouse pointer.
• Is there anything frustrating about collaborative creating, Do you wish you had more control over allowing others to modify what you create, tools for information exchange?
• How much do you think a sandbox game should be released with actual story content? i.e should the game already have a main quest, completion goal, or just be totally open?

Thanks
AlwaysGeeky

Been working away on my Voxel engine that I first created during the last Ludum Dare and just created an SSAO shader (As per requested by Vigrid) and I am so pleased with it, I wanted to show it off and also show my general progress…

I have put up some more videos on YouTube too:

Please checkout my channel.

Also people have been asking for guides and tutorials, I am in the process of making these and posting them here: https://sites.google.com/site/letsmakeavoxelengine/home so if anyone wants to learn about making a voxel engine, or even follow in my footsteps, I am documenting my steps there…

Enjoy

AlwaysGeeky

Surprise!

Since the post about my greatest weakness, I’ve started a new project I thought I would never finish. I just called it “Parkour Project” because the main thing I was trying to implement was climbing and free-running. However, all my story ideas would’ve taken 5 years to implement. (Some stuff about un-corrupting a futuristic city with hovercraft)

So half-way through, I thought I should do the folks down at Ludum Dare some justice, and decided to do Isolated Assault 2. However, that meant I had to make everything from scratch again, because my current “Parkour Project” was using a completely different character set up. It took a long time, but I finished the character controls and improved the enemy AI and sounds.

The demo is now complete (the first 2 levels… I’m working on the others right now)

I’ll explain the rest in the FAQ, but why don’t you read it while the demo is downloading? :3

Mac Demo

PC Demo

FAQ

Will there be music like what we heard in Isolated Assault?

Yes! The traditional looping music track over the entire level is back, but I’ll also be including a new music system that plays certain tracks based on character situation and position. The original Isolated Assault track has been remastered and put into the first level. I will be mixing in orchestra sounding tracks with dubstep tracks (what I’m used to). This has been a fun new experience writing music in a new style, and also it’s interesting mixing in dubstep and orchestra to make one awesome music-packed game!

What’s this whole battle arena about?

The battle arena has changed since the build of the demo (sorry) and is currently under heavy development. I’m adding music, new spawn codes, and enhanced weapons, so be ready for the next demo!

When will the full game be complete?

Well considering I’m only on level 3 right now, and considering there’s going to be more than one chapter and a cool new story to implement… NOT SOON… However, new demo versions will be constantly built and I will constantly keep you guys updated on Ludum Dare and Unity Forums. I’m not actually sure if I should let you see more than the first chapter before it’s done… give me a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Certainly an idea I have is that as I make the levels, I release the demo versions, so you can play it as its being made. (The continue button should work with multiple versions of the game)

Will the final game cost money?

Probably not. Most likely not. If this game gets on Steam (see below) they might recommend I make it cost money. But I don’t really want to do that because I owe you guys something, and making money is not important.

What’s your favorite changes from the original Isolated Assault?

EVERYTHING! Mostly the cinematic scenes though. It’s cool to match music up to voice and animations, so hopefully the taste of cinematics you get in the demo will be extended!

What are the controls and stuff?

Information like that can be found in the README file. (And also the credits)

Thank you all for supporting the original, and thanks for helping make a great LD that got this series started. Yep, I said “series”! I was sort of hoping to get the final version on Steam, but I have no clue what they’re looking for and the submission page looks very… professional. Any ideas? Do you think I should just submit and see what happens?

Anyways, any other questions can be asked in the comments, and be sure to stay tuned for updates!

Thanks Ludum Dare! <3

So I have been busy adding new features and playing around with voxels, in the aftermath since my Ludum Dare game, when I initially created the voxel engine for my entry.
(My Ludum Dare 23 Entry)

I have just added support for dynamically loading and unloading chunks and also a simple fog renderer so that load popping in the distance is somewhat hidden from the player. Started using noise functionality to generate a nice flowing landscape but I need to play around with noise a bit more and get used to terrain generation before I make anything look good. (Mountains & caves! )

I am thinking of doing a series on creating a voxel engine and maybe posting a step by step guide/tutorial about voxel techniques to the LD site so that others might be interested in also playing around with voxels and cube worlds.

This always ends up happening to me the further into development I get and the more gamey that my creations become. I usually find that I end up just playing around with what I have made and experimenting with stuff in-game much more than writing more code. lol

Does anyone else notice this with themselves or have a similar problem when making games or writing code?

Also, I find that the more sandboxey or open world or experimental the thing I am creating is, the more I tend to play around with it. The second I implement any kind of 3D physics into whatever I am creating I turn into a 12 year old boy and just spend hours and hours messing around with what I have created and being fascinated with what you can do with physics…

I made a 3D physics engine for my final dissertation during my masters course and I swear I could have coded about double what I finally ended up with, if I hadn’t spent so *many*, *many* long hours into the early morning just playing around with different physics properties and making fun stuff happen in my engine…

I guess that’s one of the problems with coding stuff/games that you truly want to, you end up making the thing you want to play so much, that you just end up playing it half the time!

It’s been a couple of weeks now since Ludum Dare 23 and I wonder what everyone has been up to… I know a lot of people have been updating and improving their games that they entered into LD23 and that is great! It’s super awesome to see people actively keeping up the interest in their game development.

I thought long and hard about what I should do with my entry, post-LD, and finally came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t directly be making modifications to my game or adding stuff/making it better. Since I didn’t really have a grand design plan for my game as I was creating it and most of the gameplay ideas came about quite abruptly during the 2nd day, I decided to let it stand as it is and move onto other things.

So…. I have been spending the time since the competition making my voxel engine even better!!

I have been doing a lot of the core voxel engine related programming that I didn’t get a chance to do while I rushed to get something playable during LD:

• Octree support
• Culling
• Rendering optimizations
• Player movement
• *Proper* collision detection
• Loading/unloading scenes
• Editor ^_^
• Terrain generation
• Etc..

I am going to be keeping a dev vlog diary of progress I make and uploading a daily video of features to my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3899B2CEE4CD4687&feature=plcp

If anyone wants to keep track of my progress, or see my videos on general game development, and if you like my YouTube channel then feel free to subscribe, I have lots of cool gamedev stuff planned and could really do with more subscribers.

I’ve also been thinking also that I might make a public release of my voxel engine (with all the improvements), if anyone would be interested in that…? I am probably going to be using it to make something for the next LD competition, but I haven’t fully committed to that yet, we shall see how things go.

Anyway, it’s so nice to see all the activity from the Ludum Dare community still going.

Cheers.
AlwaysGeeky