Concept

I started by brainstorming on a piece of paper and with a good breakfast (soup and bread). The brainstorming resulted in a large web of words and lines. Afterwards I started to scrape all unrelated words and lines until a small part was left. From the readable words I picked the best and started sketching. The concept ended up being:

The player is stranded in an unknown world (other dimension?) and needs to get away before he dies from starvation. While doing so he should try to contact others while being annoyed by robots/drones.

Design

The sketching brings us to the game design. I started with a simple sketch and made it into a 3d design tool. The sketch ended up with showing a dessert with a crash landed space ship. The main objective got: Activate the beacon (middle of image).

But the question remained, how did the player get there? To solve this, the player doesn’t know either, she just wakes up. To give the game more feel about the strange place I created two separate environments. The player would wake up in her own bedroom and once she gets outside the room, there is no hallway but a dessert.

So the level and setting where done, the only thing left was the robots and drones. Trying to keep it simple I choose a floating sphere like drone who float somewhere around. It was time to think about the technical design. I worked in C++ using the tool Irrlicht and Irrklang. So I opend Visio and started to place the objects I had: Drones, Level, Beacon, Player and the scene itself. It resulted in this:

Ofcourse, much is changed during the game development, but note, this is a useful “work to” point. I ended up with:

• Player must survive (he always survives)
• Player must activate the beacon
• Player must keep the drones away by picking them up and throwing them away
• The beacon is activated by clicking on the launch button.

Prototype

I started to develop the things I sketched and put them together into a simple game. The prototype was done before the 18 hour mark. The prototype seemed good but lacked a bit of humor and feeling.

One of the results of the prototype showed that the game lacked humor and that one machine to activate was too easy to handle. The extra things I planned for the game itself became:

• The beacon can be activated after the power generator is activated, activate by clicking on the launch button.
• The power generator is activated by clicking on the launch button.
• The Drones make a noice when picked up
• The Drones receive damage after being thrown, after which they move slower and start to smoke
• Adding more subtitles and “ particles! “

Testing

A very important step! Think about how to test your game before you finish it! I used Visual studio so I was able to do variable manipulation, but, otherwise I would have added cheats. Make sure you can easily test your game on bugs. Watching a story over and over again is awful, settings states and recompiling is bad, real bad. So, make a plan, how do I test the start, middle and end? (without replaying the game every time). I just manipulated the games variables with the Visual studio debugger, changing enumerations and time variables.

The Game

On 22:00 CET I started with the game. The first things added where voices and sounds to the drones, a background music track and recorded some sounds for the power generator. How did I record the sound for the generator? Well, quite easy, taking my microphone and putting it behind my computers fans, lowered the pitch and lowered the speed and viola! Done. In the prototype, the bedroom and spaceship were left without detail, it was awful. The ship had to look broken, to do this I first modeled the ship and when that was finished I broke it. Cutting holes, lines and adding more panels. The advantage of doing so is that you have a good looking ship. Breaking it and adding debris is a much easier process. When the new models where done, I just replaced them in the prototype. The same detailing process is done for the drones, power generator, debris, terrain and the music track.

Submitting

I kept track of 2 folders, one for debugging and one for the release and I setup special defines for the debug and release. Once a debug version was bug free I tried the Release version in the release folder. The source code was placed inside a separate folder. At the end, I was capable of just clicking the source and release folder for archiving them. On monday 02:40 CET ( 20 minutes before the deadline) I submitted my work. Barley before the site went down! Got lucky Time used: 32 hours Sleep: 15 hours Tools:Autodesk 3dsmax, Adobe Illustrator, paintToolSai, Audicity, Anvil Studio, Visual Studio 2010, D3d MeshViewer, Irrlicht and Irrklang.

Tips and do’s:

• Set up 2 folders, one for a clean release test, one quite clean for debugging.
• Write down the games basics and rules,
• Sketch the technical design
• Build a simple prototype on which you can later improve the games visuals.
• Take regular breaks! Work 60~90 minutes with a small break, like: running through your house, going outside for 10 minutes, they improves your motivation and precision!
• Always make sure to write it down, it makes it easier to decide if its possible
• Chat on the IRC channel with others, use your time and chat later, in small breaks or afterwards.
• Sleep less, when you have less sleep it will lower your creativity, bug tracking and other skills.

My game can be found here.

Thank you for reading the “How Did I Do it”.

[Watch Timelapse] [Play Game] [Rate Game]

Congrats to everyone who has submitted an entry!

Dead Party was originally going to be a dungeon crawler, where you play the sole survivor of a raid gone wrong, but during playtesting I found that NPCs that followed you did so in an amusing manner, and I though “I should make a game around that” so I did. And there’s lots of cats.

I describe it as “Ico meets Diablo meets SmashTV” but with none of the quality.

Play it here!

quick post mortem

what went right

• I knew the game library, and I had made games with the language before

During the warmup weekend I had tried to learn more about Love2D, and while I managed to make half of a game it didn’t sit well with me. A friend of mine suggested I stuck with what I knew, which was AS3 and Flixel. It turned out to be right, I spent nearly the entire period making stuff rather than trying to wrangle technical issues or learn a new library. I also used Flixel Power Tools, which made several things, including bullet managment and aiming, exceptionally easy. Flixel is great at taking care of a lot of game related things, and the Power Tools made things even easier. I’m used to code structure more than I am with other scripting langauges, so I could structure (or not structure) things to work.

• I knew what to cut and when

Originally the game was going to be and RPG, complete with an overworld and a dungeon level, plus a battle system. Then that just went to an overworld system. I was also going to have multiple weapons, plus melee weapons, each with different characteristics. Needless to say, it didn’t turn out that way. I had to cut 2 levels and a few more features near the end too.

• The Level Editor!

Probably the biggest help is the DAME level editor. Normally I would have to hand-code where certain things are, or have to create my own level editor, or make my own CSV for things. This time I was able to build and design levels with ease and get them into the game quickly. Granted the workflow process was really weird (I’ll get to that later) but I was able to make non-super-ugly maps quickly.

• Got some sleep

After 3am I hit a brick wall when it comes to productivity, and continuing on doesn’t make sense. A friend of mine said that I wouldn’t win if I slept, but I beg to differ. The last 5 hours were the worst, and I began to make simple mistakes while fatiuged, had those happened earlier on it would have made the rest of the dev process much harder.

• never give up, never surrender!

With 24 hours to go I was still working on the dungeon crawler, but I felt really crappy about it since I felt it wasn’t a very good game. All I had was a level loading at that point and it was just shooting enemies. And then I thought “It may be crap, but I basically made a Smash TV clone in under 24 hours, so be a little proud”

WHAT WENT WRONG

• Making levels

Oh God. I mentioned this in an earlier blog post, but to make a level and put it into the game, I had to do a 7-8 step process. I had to make a new .dam file for each level, re-import all the sprites and tiles, draw the map, rename the groups, export it, fix certain .as files, and make a whole new playstate for the level. If I had made a saner structure and had just 1 playstate for all the levels, I could have simplified things and made more levels. I was mainly interested in making things work, rather than make things easy, and in the end it was probably 5x more work to import the levels the way I went about it. It also meant that I had to cut off features at a point, because i would have to add them all to the seperate playstate files and test them induvidually. Real smart, me.

• The theme

I had trouble with the theme, since I could only think of sad things, and I was so concerned with starting I didn’t really take time to consider another idea, just “start coding right now OMG” and, maybe if I went with something else, I could have skipped a lot of headache and felt better about going with the stated theme.

Well, that’s it for now. I’m really tired so, I’ll probably go to bed *before* 3am. ha!

• Finish creating the world (I’m probably about 10% done)
• Everything Audio related (Haven’t done any audio stuff yet, probably not going to be able to get much done)
• A menu/title screen (This shouldn’t take more than about a half hour)

Visually, not much has changed since the last post I made, but I will still go ahead and post another screenshot. I am really liking how everything is coming together and I am hoping I can get close to my vision for the game.

Here is a screenshot, because that’s all most people care about.

I’d be grateful if you followed (I’ll follow you back!):

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcfunkypants

Google+: http://mcfunkypants.com/+

And is done. Play here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-21/?action=preview&uid=5234

Wish I had more time, but nevertheless, enjoy!

With the theme Escape the first thing that came to mind was a platformer consisting of various levels with enemies to get past / kill, however when I started on developing it I quickly became bored with the idea and after looking at a couple of other projects people had announced I realised that it was being done by several people.

Instead of continuing with the platformer idea I opted to create something different, I enjoy making procedural enviroment’s so I created a city algorithm that effectively created a maze which the engine then drew city buildings / decals and objects onto. On top of this it added guards and snipers to give the player something to fear while trying to find the exit (Which is randomly placed too!)

Anyway, makes more sense to actually see the game in action!

Links to Game and Source code:

Ludum Dare Source-code for CityRun

CityRun

Let me know what you think!

http://www.mediafire.com/?uzi6kx6eza0udp8

So, I recently submitted my first game for Ludum Dare 21 competition – Maze Escape, I’m very proud of myself, cuz I finish it and code everything I was planned

Because I recently moved to another city I haven’t any workspace in my new apartment, I only have a table, a chair and my MacBook 13″. Before this moment I didn’t use it for the development and this is my debut. For creating my game I used this tools:

•     IDE: Flash Builder 4.5 (any alternatives are welcome)
•     Engine: FlashPunk
•     Art: GIMP

My game doesn’t contain any “mad skilz” art or any sound, I think for the first time I did good enough

Thanks to my friends, who tested this game during this two days, and thanks to all Ludum Dare competitors, guys, you rocks!

Coollioo, so basically I suck at programming and can’t figure out how to limit the rotation in Unity…

Soo I moved onto design, drew a crappy maze/ labyrinth / will look up the different definitions later , now to draw over it and 3D model a maze ^^

Hmmm sooo have created a platform that rotates around each axis… Just the ball only rolls if I start rotating it before it falls and hits the platform… why? Probably colliders or something *thinks*

Hey all!

Excited for the upcoming compo/jam? I know I am!

If you’re on Google Plus, and want other LD’ers to Circle you, would you mind adding your voice to this thread here? It would be a great help in gathering everyone, and facilitating Hangouts during the events.

Looking forward to see you all!

MY ENTRY

Game will be in 800×600 resolution with windowed and fullscreen option. Feedback? Comments? Critics? You are welcome.

This is my first time to enter this competition. I am developing 2d platform/puzzle game. It is called “Saving his code”.

STORY

Game is about two friends Tim and John. Tim is a game developer. One night unknown hacker stole his game source code. But… Tim has a big problem! He must finish his game in 10 days, and he doesn’t have his source code. So he calls John to help him find the guy that stole his source code.  In that point your mission starts!

TOOLS

I am developing this game in GameMaker. For graphics I am using Inkscape (vector art) and GIMP for rasters.

SCREEN 1
I started making this game before couple  hours ago, so this is a first screen…  Main menu.

Main menu 1st build (Click to enlarge!)

Hey all,

Thanks everyone for the feedback thus far on my entry, most notably Daniel X. Moore’s comment about not being able to run Unity on Linux. I’ve put together the above walkthrough of the game from start to finish.

So, for anyone having issues running it or beating it, you’ll get the whole experience here and hopefully still be able to contribute a rating!

I’ve also prepared a version of the video without commentary. Thanks again for checking out my stuff, I’ve had a blast playing through everyone else’s!

Enjoy!