Ah, finally got this out of the way. Was dragging my heels on this post-mortem as I didn’t feel like I had made any significant mistakes this time around, so there wasn’t a ton to reflect on. However, I haven’t had a ton of comments on my entry. So hey, if you’re in the festive spirit, give the gift of criticism!

In between zooming around from NS to NB this past weekend, I knocked out a Ludum Dare game. Neat little randomly generated retro style platformer. Posting this both on the Ludum Dare site and my own blog. So LDer’s enjoy an expository preamble!

Click to play

Preamble

So if you’re unfamiliar with Ludum Dare it’s an online, solo game development competition. They release a theme and you have to develop a game using that theme in a forty-eight hour timeframe.  A large list of themes is created and after a few rounds of voting , the list is culled to a dozen or so final themes to vote on. After the final round of voting is complete, the theme is released and a sleepless, hectic weekend begins. I was rooting for “Randomly Generated” to be selected as the theme and was already salivating at the prospect of making a roguelike.

Over the last few years the only games that really stick out to me as being actually fun and life destroyingly addictive were the new wave of roguelikes. Spelunky, Transcendence, and The Binding of Isaac have taken a mostly inaccessible genre and made it almost casual. If a player can get over how masochistic these games are, it really scratches their drive for mastery. There is nothing that can foster that “Just one more turn…” effect better than these games. But I digress, this is a subject worth a post all on its own.

Spelunky was a harsh mistress

The weekend of this Ludum Dare coincided with a friend’s Christmas party I few hours away. I didn’t want to lose six hours driving back and forth so I opted for twelve hours by train. After packing everything for the trip I settled in and waited for the theme reveal. “Alone” ended up hedging out Randomly-Generated by a few votes.  Even though I was bummed over my pet theme losing, I figured I could still work Randomly-Generated into my concept. What I roughed out, was that you were a monster created by the government, you wanted to escape their pursuit and be left alone. I pegged the gameplay as a platformer with randomly generated level sections. I wasn’t sure about combat and mechanics but I was hoping it’d grow organically throughout the competition. My main goal was to produce something playable that had some random level generation in it.

(more…)

Moving Day is finished! Play it!

Features include:

• infinite running… to the LEFT!
• pixel-perfect footsteps! (such a waste of time ^-^)
• gliding physics
• a token kitten
• You can win! (temporary ‘feature’)

This was my first Ludum Dare and I will probably be back for more! I really appreciate the motivation provided by the community and time limit.  I did record a timelapse, but I’m undecided if I will post it. I’m not sure if there would be much interest in watching a noob such as I.

Things I learned in the last 48hrs:

• How to animate a run sequence
• Flash + FlashDevelop + Flixel is a very pleasant and forgiving coding environment.
• premature gameplay tweaking is about as evil as premature optimization.

Hopefully someone will enjoy Moving Day, now I’m off to play some of the other entries!

Yay, like my fourth time competing in a Ludum Dare and I actually submitted something this time.  I had more plans I couldn’t act on, but at least I got something done this time.  So, what did I learn from all of this?

• Don’t change the base idea of your project the last day…
• Planning everything ahead of time to make things simpler on you later will not prevent you from cutting corners like crazy when the deadline looms and writing code you will not be proud of
• Kittens, while not the BEST theme, probably wasn’t the worst one either…
• There are no good free music generators that you can find for free easily.
• Converting a MIDI file (from Wolfram Tones) to an MP3 is much more difficult than it should be
• I am very very rusty at pixel art

Still, I am happy to have gotten something running and submitted, and do plan on adding the rest of the features I didn’t have time for and cleaning up the code so I am not ashamed of it anymore in the upcoming days after the deadline is up.  And hopefully by LD23 I will know what exactly what all I need to bring to the table.

This is my first participation in LD

looking forward to this!

Target platform: Unity 3D Webplayer

Code: C#

Art:

• Photoshop/ProMotion/Maya

Sound:

• BFXR / CFXR
  

Hoping for a Kitten theme, but i’ll roll with whatever it is :3

Just a heads up that I’ve been out of town since the end of the compo, and will be posting a post mortem when I get back (in a few days).

I’m sure everyone has been holding their breath in anticipation!

A door as envisioned by a post-modern programmer/artist

Ok, here is what happened since my last post.

[OPTIONAL SAD STORY]

I was supposed to start working on the project yesterday after lunch but didn’t find the inspiration and was tired as hell so before writing a single line of code I took a short nap that somehow became a ~3hrs long sleep. I woke up around 6 PM and after coming back to my senses (around 6:30PM) I sat in front of the computer so I could start working on the game. I settled with Monkey as the programming language and made some progress with the code… but as the night fell I started running into some problems. I was not satisfied with the overall implementation of a few things and although I tried a few alternative ways I was not getting the results I wanted. My goal was to finish the game that night so I could spend the few hours I would have available on Sunday to make music/sound and better graphics.  Around 3 AM I discovered (by checking facebook) that DST  was to be resumed that night… so it was 1 hour later than what my clock was telling me. Having my time cut by my “little” nap and the damn DST, and frustrated because I was unable to achieve the results I wanted for the game, I decided to give up on the project.

I woke up this Sunday a bit before lunch, a bit depressed for having abandoned the project.

My sister entered my room and asked me about the competition and I told her I gave up on it last night. I remained on bed a few more minutes and then started thinking on my plans for the day.

I discovered I had nothing better to do, so after a few minutes, I decided to give it another shot at the project. I rescued the files from the recycle bin and started working on it again. Don’t ask me why I did that… I didn’t have a single reason to resume the project… in fact, it was quite unrealistic to even think it was possible to finish the game in the remaining time having already lost like 50% of the estimated time I had. But I was not in a hurry for finishing now… I was .. just curious to see how far I could go with it…

[/OPTIONAL SAD STORY]

I actually got trolled by the clock. I checked the LD page and made my schedule according the remaining time it displayed. I should have grown suspicious that it was still telling me that the compo would end around 10:00 PM despite the DST, but I wasn’t thinking on the DST in that moment.

I managed to finish the game code around 8 PM, so I had like 2 hours to make some music. After trying a few programs from the LD tools page and realizing I didn’t have time to learn any of those I settled with composing the music with my DS (and the DS-10 Synthesizer) and record it on the PC with a stereo cable. It worked fine. I made the special FX with SFXR on my computer.

I wrote the sound manager module and then rebuilt the project. It worked fine except for one thing… background music was not looping. I tried a few things but given the time constraint I ended up giving up on it, leaving only the special fxs.

With like 40 minutes remaining until the end of the submission deadline I uploaded everything to my website and tried it on the browser.  It worked fine except for a minor thing… I was loading resources in the moment you need them, so the first time you face an open door, or any of the game screens, the game freezes for a second or so in order to load the image/sound. BAD.

I coded a quick and dirty image manager class that I could use to keep a cache of previously loaded images. Then replaced all loading calls for cache calls and added a few calls at the beginning of the code to cache the most heavy images (so they were already loaded from the start) and then uploaded the game again. Now it was working fine. As I didn’t write a cache for sounds you may miss a few sounds if they are too slow to load, but that shouldn’t affect the experience.

With only 18 minutes remaining until the end of the competition I finished uploading the game and submitting it into the compo. I was done.

I felt so relaxed that I kicked back and checked the IRC…. only to find that it was still 1 hour and 18 minutes until the end. Damn YOU DST!! LOL.

—————–

TL;DR? Managed to make the game. Don’t ask for the graphics as I had like half the time I was supposed to have (which was already around 1 day total). Had some problems but fixed them (although some compromises were done). Total time was around 8 hours including “art”, “sound”, and “music” (which was not included for technical reasons). Also, I’m bipolar.

HERE IS THE GAME!

P.S: You need to correctly avoid/enter 50 doors to win the game. Good luck with THAT!

(Can’t get embedding to work…)

Here’s the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhWYc-e4Zmk

Look for the submission for more info! I’m done.

My first Ludum Dare was a success

Hey everyone!

I’ve submitted my game to Ludum Dare. If you want to check it out, here’s the link. Screenshots:

Anyway, my game is submitted, but not done. I’m sure there will be code that needs fixing, which I’ll do during the last few hours. I’ll post my post-mortem after the 48 hours is done.

This is the first Ludum Dare I’ve actually completed with a game that resembles finished. Ah, that first time feeling Technically, I did attempt LD 20, but that failed miserably.

After the 48 hours is up, I’ll call my game finished. Until then, I’ve got everything covered so can spend the last 8 hours with the code. And maybe some caffeinated drinks.

I was planning to do the Jam this time round, but my team are all over the country right now on holiday

See you on the other side of the 48 hours.

So it’s been 17 hours since my last post, but the site being down and a little something called sleep made that necessary. Anyways, I’m completely done the gameplay now. I’ve got 12 levels, 4 types of special tiles and 12 more hours to make sound, music, story and art. I’m going to finish this baby.

No screenshot, nothing new to see

See you on the other side.

So, last post I told you guys that I had completely changed ideas, and that’s true. Howeverm I thought it’d be fun to run through a few of the ideas that almost made it. I was initially going to make a game about trapping yourself, and then you were able to escape by pressing the escape key. However, you needed to be trapped to do it. So it was kind of like a reverse sokoban game. It wasn’t fun. A second idea was a game that revolved only around using the escape key. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that wasn’t fun. Anyways, I’ve added teleporters to my game and included some new levels (I’m at 7 now).

Here my newest level (definitely NOT going to be until much later in the game)

I

If anybody takes takes the time to comment, well, what kind of features do YOU think should be included?

Alright everybody, last post may have seemed overly pessimistic what with having to restart everything again. However, I am happy to say I do have a new idea. In the game you’re a person who is suffering from depression and has to escape from the sick parts of themselves (represented as the person’s “shadow self”). Pretty much, it’s a tile based puzzler, where every time you move, you doppelganger moves the exact same way (minus inverted vertical movement). The point is to kill your shadow by making it fall into traps (so far all I have are burning fire pits) without getting yourself killed. If you die… well you know the drill. Also, level loading and a level editor are working perfectly

I also implemented a text system to the one in LoZ with text seaming to be “typed” onto the screen. The system is in the screenshots, but neither the positioning nor the text are representative of the final implementation (I’m pretty sure you could have guessed that one).

A sample level

And a second sample level

it’s noon here so i decided to whip up some breakfast.

I baked bacon and eggs with cheese on top to make these adorable breakfast puffs. We also have the most professional plates. Okay? Okay.

And breakfast for Machiavelli too!

Hope everyone is doing okay! I have some backgrounds to color.

So my initial idea, which was to make a top down escape from the bring your kid to work at the office style game, is not something I think I can finish in time. I currently had the player, walls (babies)  and enemies (fat kids). Back to the drawing board. I’ll let you know more when I know more.

Here’s what I had:

(idea)

Here’s the first Escape from Ludum Dare demo! Ludum Dares included: 0 (Indirect Interaction) – 1 (Guardian) – 2 (Construction / Destruction)

http://megaswf.com/serve/1163762

At the moment there’s no win/lose feedback.

So I didn’t update yesterday because I was, get this, sleeping. So, the real journey starts today. I’ll explain my concept when it hits me

So…..I knew in advance I’ll have VERY little time this weekend….. and I was also aware how many different things actually go into making a (playable) game…. so I REALLY had to think very well what I would do for the compo.

As I also knew I won’t have the complete weekend to work on it  (and since the theme was to be announced by Friday 10:00PM local time) my plan was like this:

• Friday night (after theme’s announcement): Think on the game concept. Shall I fail to come up with one,  I would abandon the competition.
• Saturday Morning: [Boring things to do]
• Saturday Afternoon (until 7PM): Work on the game (assuming I didn’t abandon the competition)
• Sunday Morning (until 14:00PM): Work on the game. Submit. (assuming I didn’t abandon the competition)
• Sunday Afternoon: [More boring things to do]

The critical point was Friday night…. Fail to have an idea and it’s all over…

Luckily… I think I have my idea now…and it’s not even midnight! (although the clock will probably hit 00:00 when I finish writing this).

Of course sidescrollers, shooters or anything too conventional in terms of gameplay were out of question. I wont’ have the time to do any of those from scratch (as I didn’t declare the use of any boilerplate code beforehand) so this is what I came up with……

You are the Escape Key (ESC)…. you are in a maze of rooms and doors (the keyboard perhaps?) and you need to escape from the evil Function Keys (F1….F12).

You will run into doors, and those doors will open revealing a key that is inside the room (any other key from the keyboard). If it’s a “harmless” and “friendly” key you should press ENTER to enter the room (duh!) and you will keep running until the next door… If it’s a function key you should press ESC to close the door and keep running until finding another door.

So, the game will be pretty much watching yourself approach to doors (first person view) and press ENTER or ESC according to whoever opened you the door and repeat until reaching the exit. You will have a “reaction time limit” that will be shorter as you get closer to the exit. The running speed will also increase as you progress through the game. A timer will tell how fast you managed to escape (if you succeed, that is) so you can play again trying to beat your best time (or a friend’s time if you dare to challenge a friend).

So it’s basically a reflex-testing game built upon the concept of ESCAPE and (hopefully) constraint to my current limitations.

I HOPE I can actually dedicate the aforementioned time to the game and complete it  in such time frame. Although the idea is simple I can still run into a few walls (so to speak) with it.

I’ll try to keep here a journal of any progress made into the game but don’t expect lot of updates since I’m a damn perfectionist b*stard who checks whatever I write dozens of time in order to make sure it makes sense … so making these blog entries consumes a hellin’ lot from my time. Also, I suck at writing, lol.

I’ll start working on the game tomorrow (Saturday) after I finish with everything I have to do in the morning…. so until that time comes I won’t worry about the game….. In the meantime…… STAGE ONE CLEARED!

So, the Dare starts in 1 hour, so I figure I’m gonna make my first post. During the dare I’m going to post every few hours, just letting those who care know what I’ve done and where I’m heading. As it is now I have : NOTHING (those are the rules). So here’s a screenshot of what happens when I compile my code as it is now:

Unfortunately, in trying to reach the maximum user base possible I decided to use XNA Reach  and thus had to remove my animated intro, even though it was awesome, because it was something like 39000 pixels wide, and Reach wouldn’t take it.

Just so you know, I’m going to be using C# XNA 4.0 for my code, Paint.Net for my art and probably my cello and logic pro for all sound.

Let’s do this!

Oh, and self-replication, I have voted for you, now win!

I dunno what to do, I have some ideas but none of them are convincing, and for now the project’s codename is Taken (no, I mean, that’s the codename)

Anyways, I am preparing my workspace and all necessary stuff for my project, here a photo of the first one:

Arielsan - Workspace

Breakfast? CHECK

Supplies? CHECK

Concept? CHECK

My concept I’m going to start fleshing out now is to do a tribute to Gauntlet where the player that plays alone gets a special item to help with the difficult levels that are designed for 2 players (tying in to the theme). This is probably more than my poor art and sound skills can manage, but its the best idea I can come up with that actually seems like fun to me – so here goes nothing!

Starting design work and timelapse capture now…