First, a screenshot…(click on it, it’s scaled down in the blog post.)

So, the game is going swimmingly, I think. I’m planning for 5 stages (each with two phases), I have two of those done so far, as well as most of the mechanics. Once I iron out the mechanics of the ending (gameplay influences the ending), I’m going to finish the level design (so there’s a game), then probably move on to making the tileset look less like crap.

It’s interesting to think about how to make the game design progressively more difficult. At the moment, the character really only jumps. I feel like the timer (anxiety-relieving pills) add a sense of urgency, which is a nice effect, well, maybe. I think added difficulty can come from different types of platforms (Shouldn’t be that hard to implement?), some small other interacting objects that affect the anxiety meter, etc…

I’m going to try to stretch out the difficulty as much as possible without implementing those things, first…I want to get at least a rough thing finished soon. Plus, I need to figure out how to make this work on windows. It works fine in chromium on ubuntu. Not sure why not windows – I thought the compilation process was cross-platform, but maybe not. I think I’m going to look into that now, actually…

Anyways, the plot of the game. Still more or less just absurd, but that’s okay – it’s more fun that way. I’m not really in the mood to, well, make a moody game of any sort.

Pretty excited to do the music for this. Since this game is slightly related to pavement, I might do some short mockup of one of their songs. I’m assuming I won’t be sued or anything, but hey. I’ve had some ideas for ways to incorporate music into the game other than the usual, but I’m leaving that for if time allows.

Hi, this is my first Ludum Dare. I’ve messed around in game development before but never really completed anything. I hope the stress of the competition acts as a great motivator.

I just released my own programming language called MoonScript which compiles into Lua. I’ll be using that to make my game. This will be a great test to see how it works. One of the original use cases of the language was game development because there are so many engines that use Lua.

If you happen to be using Lua, then I suggest you check it out because it’s pretty awesome, works on all platforms, and I’ve written a ton of documentation.

Anyway, about my game. So far I plan to create a platformer, but depending on the theme I might switch things up. I’ll be developing on linux but using LÖVE so my result should run everywhere. I hope to do a time lapse screen capture of the entire weekend but I haven’t found software yet. I’m worried about creating graphics and music because I’m not very good at those things. Must not let them consume too much time.

Here’s the final list:

Language: MoonScript (compiles to Lua)
Editor: VIM
Framework: LÖVE
Graphics: GIMP
Music: MilkyTracker
Sounds: Audacity

Follow me on twitter for updates, and here’s a pic of me being serious:

First screenshot. Ignore the tearing, that’s printscreen hating v-sync.

Instead of copying and pasting my post from my own blog, I will write one just for LD!

The most important fact, as with any Ludum Dare, is that I was able to finish! I originally thought I wouldn’t have enough time to get it done, so I threw in the towel roughly 8 hours before. I had second thoughts a few hours later and quickly rushed back into coding. Thankfully I had just enough time to finish it!

Even though this was my first time making a platformer, I’m feel that it isn’t just another run of the mill platform game. I wanted the torch to be part of the player so those moments are more intense when you aren’t holding the torch. I think this worked quite well, but sound effects and a sound track really would have helped the atmosphere.

I usually use 8bit graphics, but I wanted to simplify them further so I wouldn’t be hung on graphics during the competition. I wanted to be spending more time with the actual level design. So I opted for 8×8 sprites scaled to 4x times their size. While it gave the game a cutesy feel, it made text feel awkward as it looks huge on screen. The furthest I’m going to go next time is 2x or I will scale the graphics in my image editor instead of doing it through code.

As I said before, this was my first time making a platformer and I was worried about it being too easy. From the feedback I’ve been given so far, I’ve found that it’s far from easy. There was also an issue near the end of the level where players thought they need to make a blind jump, when in reality they had missed the hidden passage. I’ll make it more obvious in the post-compo version. ;]

Speaking of post-compo, I’ve already added/fixed a bunch of things. Notably I’ve fixed the physics for both the torch and the player so things should be much smoother. I also added much needed particle effects to the torch. I should be releasing it sometime in the next few weeks!

Until then…don’t drop your torch.

>>Torch Play and Rate!<<

I need help with collision code. I want to keep the player from falling through floors, pretty much. Help?

EDIT: Okay, I’ve got some good collision detection, but there’s something wrong with my moving code.

bool checkCollision(SDL_Rect &movable, double &vx, double &vy, SDL_Rect solid, bool move) {
int moveLeft = movable.x;
int moveTop = movable.y;
int moveRight = moveLeft + movable.w;
int moveBottom = moveTop + movable.h;

int solidLeft = solid.x;
int solidTop = solid.y;
int solidRight = solidLeft + solid.w;
int solidBottom = solidTop + solid.h;

int clipLeft = max(moveLeft, solidLeft);
int clipTop = max(moveTop, solidTop);
int clipRight = min(moveRight, solidRight);
int clipBottom = min(moveBottom, solidBottom);

if(clipLeft == clipRight || clipTop == clipBottom)
return false;

if(!move)
return true;

int clipWidth = clipRight – clipLeft;
int clipHeight = clipBottom – clipTop;

if(clipWidth solidX) {
// moving to right
movable.x += solidRight – moveLeft;
} else {
// moving to left
movable.x -= moveRight – solidLeft;
}
} else {
// moving along y axis
vy = 0;
int moveY = moveTop + movable.h / 2;
int solidY = solidLeft + solid.h / 2;
if(moveY > solidY) {
// moving to bottom
movable.y += solidBottom – moveTop;
} else {
// moving to top
movable.y -= moveBottom – solidTop;
}
}

return true;
}

Please help! If you’re interested in seeing what’s happening, here’s the program: http://files.chocoboheaven.com/uploads/Guests/files/85267_PaintWorld.zip

It’s not completely finished, but PaintWorld is as finished as it’s going to be within the deadline, which will happen in about 30 seconds.

http://files.chocoboheaven.com/uploads/Guests/files/PaintWorld.zip

Warning: the files are directly in this zip and not in a subfolder. If you want them in a subfolder, like Bleck does (stares at Bleck), the new zip is at http://files.chocoboheaven.com/uploads/Guests/files/87528_PaintWorld.zip

Go on, play it! I want to make the deadline, and so will edit in explanations. If anything doesn’t work, please tell me. I will begin working on the postcompo version now.

Well, there’s level selection/preview, view moving, a functional world, a you win screen, a you lose screen even though you can’t lose just yet, and that kind of stuff. Arrow keys to move, escape to exit.

It’s Done! sort of…

Download here:
Download Frogger X Master Shake V3 MS Windows Version
Download Linux version
* Source included

My web pages with other projects

There are a whole lot of things I wanted to add but couldn’t. I’m pretty happy though about getting sound working and doing some halfway decent tile collisions for my first time.

**UPDATED** made it a little harder and improved particle performance, also jacked up the timer freq. for particle events.

This is my first Ludum Dare. I really like the theme and rules so I jumped in this time.

… so I stalled right out of the gate trying to pick a good pair of characters to face-off against each other. I had all kinds of ideas. My trouble was picking one and sticking to it. It’s definitely a fun theme. I picked Frogger from the 80′s arcade game and Master Shake from Aqua Team Hunger Force.

I like frogs and Shake is the perfect villain.

I picked a single-screen 1-on-1 duke-it-out style game with projectile and close quarters weapons. I haven’t done a 2D tile game before so I kept it simple: no scrolling, 1 screen, no OpenGL acceleration. it looks like the OpenGL acceleration isn’t that rough to add. I won’t have time tough.

So far I have a primitive particle system, my 2D tile drawing and loading from text files, and a simple sprite animated character. The mouse is used to aim the projectile weapon and fire. Keyboard moves left/right, jumping, change weapons, and can also fire weapons (as well as left mouse button).

The big stuff still to do:
very primitive collisions – rectangle-rectangle at tile level for jumping & weapon damage.
sound and sound content – this is a biggie for me. I haven’t messed with sound much before.
Draw Master Shake sprites
Draw “slap fight” hand-to-hand combat tile/sprite animations & add hand-to-hand game logic

Maybe this is what I should have been doing for the last LD… It took me two days to make and it’s based on the code of my LD11 entry (I didn’t even miss Felicity!)

Download over herely

Making “just a game” was kind of enlightening, since I didn’t have any real technical challenges to overcome and could just get on with content and putting in simple control logic to make it all come together. It’s pretty much an unthinkable project viewed in terms of what I’ve been doing the last few years, but since both development and result were enjoyable it’s a pretty clear hint that I should be doing it more often.

However, I ruin that immediately by having a natural impulse to make some kind of convenient editor/engine which would reduce the need to write copious amounts of replicated-but-slightly-modified code for instance when I want new enemy types etc. I have made these before, and each time I end up spending weeks or months working on it and then never really use it because I get increasingly unhappy with how it’s built. Still, I couldn’t possibly make a game of say 10x the complexity/scope of this one without using more structured code at the very least. And defining animations, scripted events, enemy patterns etc would quickly get tiresome and repetitive to do in code+Photoshop if you have more than one or two types to deal with. The grunt of this game (discounting image loading and input code) is a 1500-line C file, where almost all logic is directly in the main loop – wonderfully spontaneous way to work but of course breaks down with increased program size due to convoluted value/flow dependencies, loss of overview and the need to repeat code.

The fact that I did manage to create this in just two days though, and that I didn’t run into any major hickups along the way, probably says something about suitable code vs application complexity. If I had gone and made “a perfect design” with fancy classes and streamlined algorithms for everything, I would most likely not be done yet. More importantly, I probably wouldn’t even have started since such a small project doesn’t really justify that kind of work. Not without the prospect of a larger product coming out of it, and if there was one I would probably be too intimidated by the thought of that and keep trying to out-think myself in terms of what stuff I’d need to make that “great big thing” work eventually.

I think Derek Yu recently said something about coders being able to “doodle” games like artists sketch with pencil and paper, and that’s probably an important thing. A sketch is never meant to be used for anything substantial, it’s just playing around with the tools of your trade to make something spontaneous and fun. If it turns out nice then you could potentially do it again from scratch but “do it right” and expand on it if you wish – but you should definitely not be doing it the roundabout way to begin with since that would destroy the spontaneity and make it a laborious task instead of a free-minded sketch. When sketching you can only use whatever skills and processes that come natural to you, without considerable planning or conscious mental effort. Of course, with increased experience this set grows larger and some people could probably do advanced class hierarchies without thinking too much about it. All the more power to them.

Since I made this thing in such a short timespan, I have a pretty good overview of all the techniques I used and the bare-bones code needed to make them work. This could provide some extra value when designing larger game systems as I might be able to target my efforts more carefully, and not get overly general or implement pointless things. For trying out pure game ideas though, I still feel that it would be sensible for me to “sketch” in a more streamlined tool… a kind of game maker for sure, but definitely not Game Maker (for the simple reason that I’m incapable of using any tool that is close enough to what I could potentially build myself, which is a most unfortunate condition in terms of productivity… but creating a tool to fill some (possibly imagined) need of my own is just so very rewarding)

miniPals is a minimalistic co-operative platformer. It features 7 levels of fun! 2nd player requires a joystick (sorry team)

Keep in mind that even though this is a co-op platformer, you can still enjoy it by yourself!

controls:

z – use power

x – switch player (1P mode only)

left & right arrows – move

check the README.txt for more information!

screenshots:

win32 download with source: http://fydo.net/programming/fydo-miniPals-LD11.zip

Howdy!

Here is my entry. It’s basically a cross between robotfindskitten and a generic platformer.

DOWNLOAD: http://kittay.ca/kittay-fydo-LD105.zip (1.0 mb)

Written in C, uses OpenGL. Didn’t have time to make a linux binary, sorry team.

I’m planning on doing a post-compo version, with bugfixes and better level graphics. Also, I’ll incorporate the other 3 mini-songs that I recorded, too.

Enjoy!

EDIT: Note that I’ve created a launchpad project for kittay. So you can file bugs there! Yay!

This was my very first LD entry ever!

It was written with python + pygame. I don’t have my original compo submission version handy, these screenshots are from the slightly polished version of the game that I have available on my website. Since “Anti-Text” was one of the themes, there wasn’t a title on the title screen, nor was there the status bar on the bottom of the screen when playing the game. The final version has the same original 3 levels as the compo submission though.

All in all, I’m quite happy with the result. It’s a nice simple game that allowed me to show off some of my ‘graphics-making’ abilities. I spent the majority of my game development time doing the graphics. The first level in particular took a very long time because I digitally painted it using my wacom tablet (see the second screenshot above). Phew!

You can download the game (both win32 and python source available) and find a bit more information here:

http://fydo.net/projects/buggygame

This was my second entry, and the first time that I got something playable. This is still one of my favorite games from LD, even though the graphics are a little simple.

TIE is a puzzle/platformer, where must build a roadway across a series of ice floes, while avoiding the exploding sheep.

You can find the game here:

http://www.vickijoel.org/ldgames/TransIcelandicExpress_U1.zip

My first LD entry, for the #7 compo in December 2005.

Story, according to readme.txt:

You’re kidding right? Uhm… Control
Jackie as she tries to escape from her
sugar-induced nightmare by climbing an
ever-growing flower. Flying pigs are
attacking and she needs to feed them
candy until they burst.

Collect delicious pig eggs for score,
and keep a look-out for hearts to boost
your health should you need it.

What more is there to say? You jump around, throw candy, collect eggs and try not to fall into the water as platforms appear and disappear from the randomly growing flower. The flower itself was the most advanced piece of code in this one, and the first thing I started working on. Generally I seem to go about LD compos that way – think of some cool technical concept, then implement it and try to turn it into a retro platformer somehow…

Download, WIN32 binary+src: jackiebs.zip (1.24 MB)

—

Just starting out, no platforms have grown out yet.

—

Flower has grown a fair bit and there are tons of platforms.

—

White pig has eaten too much candy, burst is imminent.