When I first entered Ludum Dare, it was April of 2011. 2011 was a good year for making games for me. Throwbots, Aphelion Incident and Blue Moon were my creations for 2011, and I still feel that for all their flaws they are still reasonably solid entries.

2012 was not so good. This time last year I came down ill. In August I was busy with preparations for an academic conference. In December? In December, my only excuse was absolutely hating the theme. (If “You Are Your Enemy” wins I will go mad. MAD)

Let’s hope things go better this time around!

IDE: IntelliJ

Library: Flixel

Map/Level Editor: DAME

Image Editor: Photoshop/GraphicsGale/Paint Tool SAI

Sound Generator: BFXR

Music Editor: SunVox

Timelapse: Chronolapse

Streaming: Open Broadcaster Software

(disclaimer: some of these tools might not end up being used at all)

I’m looking forward to what will be my first Ludum Dare Jam… potato or not, there are still many cool themes being voted on! Looking forward to what should be a weekend of good fun

It may be LD48 #26 but it’s English League title #20 for Man United. GGMU!

Language (IDE):  Java (Eclipse)
Graphics: Photoshop
Music + Sound: Most likely going to use Audacity / FL Studio/ sfxr
Libraries: LibGDX

Edit: I’ve now got two friends that want to be involved as well so Jam it is!

I’m back for a third go at Ludum Dare. After a first rather successful (in the personally fulfilling sense) and second substantially more successful entry, I feel. I will be entering with very similar sets of tools as the past two times but this time I will entering with ROCK-HARD DETERMINATION. That determination, of course, is to make something that makes me happy.

Tools:

• Language: Lua
• Framework: LÖVE
• Code Editor: Sublime Text
• Music Writing: MuseScore
• Audio Editing: Adobe Audition CS6
• Image Editing: Adobe Photoshop CS6

Existing Code:

• Ussuri Engine

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Alright, guys—I’m in!

Here’s a quick run-down of some of the tools I’ll probably end up using:

• Engine: Impact
• Editor: Sublime Text 2
• Graphics: Photoshop, Pixen, Wacom tablet, pen & paper
• Audio: Famitracker, GarageBand, various acoustic instruments

I’m going to attempt to write all of my source code in CoffeeScript, as I’ve been meaning to give it an honest go. I wrote a custom build system for Sublime+Impact+CoffeeScript, which I’m keeping my fingers crossed about. Desk shots/food shots/excitement/wailing to come. Looking forward to it, and good luck, everyone!

Hi! I’ve entered a few Ludum Dares before (none this year due to illness and deadlines, ugh) and this time last year I made Blue Moon, one of my most well received games in general.

I’m going to use the following tools, and aiming for the compo. But it is the end of the year, when burnout is high and holidays creep ever closer, so perhaps I might go for the jam this time.

• Flixel
• IntelliJ IDE
• DAME for level editing if I really, really have to
• SAI for illustrations
• PyxelEdit/Photoshop, the former I don’t know as well and the latter I do
• Sunvox for music
• BFXR for sound

That covers everything, I think! See you then!

I have now built a game in 48 hours! And you can play it here! (I think I may be a little excited. And I didn’t even lose that much sleep.)

Built in Unity, with sound effects in Bxfr and some levels in Photoshop (really!).

Stuff that didn’t get in (in order): fluid simulation (spent 3 hours researching first day, didn’t really need it), pathfinding (spent 4 hours researching second day, replaced with vector steering), procedural terrain generation (turns out that the textures I had already thrown together were varied enough, you probably won’t notice it’s missing).

Features that are in:

• Sheep!
• Terrain editing!
• A tiny world that’s sinking
• Level progression
• Sheepdogs to herd sheep
• Wolves (that eat sheep)
• Alligators (that also eat sheep)
• Sound effects!
• Horrifically messy source code provided!
• And more!

https://twitter.com/#!/juaxix/status/193774592815403008/photo/1

I created the char, the tiny world, the icon and the house with Photoshop, the rest is procedural, ships of the aliens, stars, asteroids, etc.

Progress! After about an hour of brainstorming, and an hour of Cake going to a company happy hour (Sorry Zeik!), here is a screen of our first 5 hours of progress.

So far this is Cake’s screen. Lots of Illustrator-ing going on. It took her a good 20-30 minutes to art direct the mood and theme for the game, but so far she’s got character design completed, a few obstacles, and the background. Before the end of the night is over (+ a large cup of coffee) she plans on having most of the world created and brainstorm a few level ideas with Zeik. But the main goal for now is to have most assets created and dive in to the main screen.

Zeik is trying to keep up with the art, since Cake is “pumping out more art than [he] can keep up with”. Despite that, the game is somewhat playable. Still trying to integrate a flux capacitor (har). No, but seriously, we have some game mechanics to hammer out. That’s the goal for tonight….sort of? He’s just trying to do work.

Our current work station and dinner. Not pictured is the giant Starbucks cup that Cake is gulping like water with blearly eyes and the moleskin she relies on like a life-jacket. Ya, we both really enjoy hot wings.

So that’s our progress so far! We’ve set pretty good goals for ourselves for tonight and tomorrow. Neither of us really plan on sleeping before 3am.

Ludum Jamming To: Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Up From Below, possibly going to switch to Cake’s fabulously 80′s mix.

Oh man, this one was a little bit of a killer for us simply because we barely had any time to work on it consecutively without reaching deep into the night and waking up with bags under our eyes for work. But it’s done, huzzah!

The game was built with a custom engine that Zeik coded (and will later regret to do, as we’ve decided to move onto Flashpunk for our official LD jam). The art and UI was created by Cake in Illustrator and then Photoshop. Music was originally JakesFables from Newgrounds, and edited by Cake and Zeik.

Check out our post HERE or play it directly on my site HERE

This will be my first game jam, and hopefully also my first non-mod, non-prototype game.

This Week

1. Warming up, which will essentially be testing out tools and techniques I don’t have enough experience with.
2. Speeding up my laptop
3. Some university related stuff
4. Cooking (healthy) food for 48 hours
5. Explaining my girlfriend why I’m doing this (and not going out with her)

My Tools

• Building: Unity
  I’ve been using Unity for 2 years now, and I still like it. Luckily I have a Pro version that I can use, which has some nice new features like pathfinding, an awesome particle system tool and of course dynamic lightning. Not sure if I will use any of those, but it’s good to have.
• Coding: MonoDevelop
  Unity comes with MonoDevelop, Unity is partly integrated with it, the auto-complete is nice and I’m used to it, so I will be using it to code my C# scripts.
• Music: LMMS
  Sound, and therefore music, is the only thing I have no experience with, so I will have to practice it a lot before I start. I also have to find some nice VSTs which I can use. I do know something about music so I hope I can produce something worthy.
• Sound: Audacity
  When I have to do something with sound, which rarely happens, I use Audacity. I will probably be recording sounds with my smartphone and/or laptop microphones, and I know how to remove things like noise with this tool. Also editing and looping sound works pretty nice with this free tool.
• Graphics:Photoshop
  I love Photoshop, I have been using it from time to time in the past 10 years, I’m far from a pro but I know my way around in it. And, most importantly, it works really awesome with my Wacom.
• Modelling: Blender
  I usually use 3ds Max for 3D modelling, but I only have a student license for this, so I use Blender as substitute. Since the new interface I no longer really hate it, but I do not have a numpad on my laptop… Anyway, I want to try to make a 2D game, so I won’t use it extensively. Otherwise I will have to fall back to good ol’ 3ds Max.
• Motivation: Spotify
  I always work with music on. (Unless I’m doing hard mathematics) I usually listen to a few styles, sorted by requirement: For creativity: death metal, progressive metal and prog. rock. For speed: drum ‘n bass, deadmau5 (yes, that’s a genre) and industrial. For inspiration: minimal classical music. And for relaxation: Eddie Vedder, Foo Fighters, Muse, or any of my other favourite bands, that no longer need attention (because I know every single tone).
• Communication: Twitter - This Blog
  I never tweet, but I would love to give updates and give answers to questions. (Not that I would know why you would do that.) Follow: “@Siewart_”. I will be posting some blog posts as well, because the process of creating a game is awesome, inspirational and informative. (It’s also nice to look back when you are done)
• Timelapse: Chronolapse
  Everyone seems to do it, so I will do it as well. Also: I love timelapses .

My hardware:

• My old HP Elitebook 8530w (Dual-Core 2.8Ghz, 4GB, Quadro FX770M);
• Samsung Galaxy S2 (Ice Cream Sandvich);
• Wacom Intuos 3;
• A random mouse;
• Hopefully a keyboard

Warm-up
For my warm-up a theme generator gave me a (cliché-ish) theme: Post-Apocalyptic Steam Punk. But I vowed to use it so I will.

Basic idea: A 2D sidescroller where you have to use nuclear waste to mutate plants, animals and NPCs in order to solve puzzles involving steam engines. Don’t know if I have enough time for something like this, but I want to go through the whole process once so I might make one short level, without tutorial. I will post it when it’s done, if it’s done.

One last thing
One last thing: Good luck and above all, have fun, my dear opponents!

• 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

Here’s how I’m going to win:

Language: Actionscript 3

Library: Flashpunk

IDE: Flash Develop 4.0

Graphics: Photoshop CS5.5

Sound: sfxr and Audacity

Music: FL Studio 10

Timelapse: Chronolapse

Here I go!

I’m entering for the first time, so I’m basicaly a LD virgin.
Anyway I don’t think it will hurt, but it will probably be a bit awkward…

Programming: AS3 ( FlashBuilder )
Library: Flixel
Graphics: Photoshop
Music: Nanoloop ( iPhone )

This is where I’m from:
http://g.co/maps/rqp65

And this is what I’ll drink:

I’m in for my third Ludum Dare. The last two have been incredibly fun, so I don’t want to miss this one! For LD 20 my entry was Diamond Hollow and for LD21 I made Glissaria. Each time I’ve made sure to create a timelapse, and this one will be no different. However, I also plan to stream my progress live this time right over here. Also, I’ll keep updates on Twitter, so feel free to follow me if that’s your thing. And finally, I have a circle of LD people on g+, so add me there so I can stick you in my ever growing circle!

I’m going to stick to my strengths with pixel art and flash. Going to try to brush up on music this time, so I can at least have something listenable. I might try to find a music generation program simpler than Fruity Loops due to me being musically challenged. More formally, the tools I will be using are:

Programming: AS3 (Flash) via FlashBuilder (Eclipse)
Library: Modified Flixel (extra plugins such as a flixel bitmap font library, etc)
Graphics: Photoshop
Music: FruityLoops (unless I find something better)
Sounds: As3sfxr + Audacity
Other: Fast food, sleep, cats, alcohol

Last time I was overambitious, writing 3 games in 1, most of which I had no experience with. This time I’m going to play the safe route and make a platformer. It’s something I have experience with, is easier to make art for, and will hopefully mean I can create a full game in the alotted time. Let’s just hope the theme lends itself to a platformer. Also, if kittens wins I will cry because I can’t draw a cat to save my life.

One Of Two Partners In Crime

Good luck all. =]

Trying to fit in with our theme, I’m making our backgrounds. Just to be sure I don’t rush into anything stupid, I like to make color samples, were I lay flat colors and remove the lineart.

The Second one i may redo… Hm.

RED ALERT! I really need Photoshop help, I’d HUUUUUUGELY appreciate it :O

What I need to do is change a color on multiple layers. I’ve got 27 layers of an animated character. Character is black with white eyes by default. However I need to reskin him a few times, one of which being orange with blue eyes. I COULD use an adjustment layer, but then when I Export Layers to Files it ignores the adjustment layer :’(

How do I replace a color (black, and white) on multiple layers?

I would HUGELY appreciate help with this, big time.

Okay, my last post was about entering Mini Ludum Dare 28 – and that was it. I tried hard to think of a simple gameplay, but couldn’t come up with it. I also developed some strange reservations towards the theme (my conscience had problems with making “war” fun, with all the suffering peoples out there, right now …).

But Ludum Dare #21 now should be interesting, nearly all the themes sound doable, although I fear that something like “Dreams” could make the entries too diverse and thus lead the compo ad absurdum.

As usual, I probably will use Unity3D (with MonoDevelop), Photoshop Elements 9, bfxr, and every other tool that will help me. I looked at FlashPunk a while ago, and if I think that the gameplay would be better in 2D, I probably would use FlashDevelop.

Well, hopefully Ludum Dare #21 will be my first Ludum Dare in the Compo, as I put my last entry (for LD#20) into the Jam. Before that, I participated in the Mini Ludum Dare #23. This time, I’ll get famous!

A friend told me about this event, I found the idea interesting, so I’ll give it a shot.

For graphics, I will use Paint tool SAI, Photoshop and for animation Anime Studio .
I am not really experienced with music, I will try to use Fruity Loops and also http://www.freesound.org/ will be fine for my sound effect needs.
For the game engine I will use GameMaker because I feel comfortable with it and it’s a good tool to produce something in a short timeframe.

Well, that was fun. And hard/tiring.

Anyhoo. Dirt Driller is complete! Go play.

Once I have slept enough I’ll check my screencaps to see it this makes an interesting timelapse.

-Matthew

In the next 72 hours I shall create “The Digger” (Working title).

Dig a hole to the center of the earth, while gathering valuables and avoiding HOT MOLTEN LAVA. Behold, the fake screenshot.

Yeah. I’m not really a fan of producing “how it’s supposed to look”-stuff. I’d rather spend the time more productively, like actually working on my game.

“Finished” game shall include
- automated level-generation
- several valuabales and hazards
- highscore-system

-Matthew