I released a new version of my post compo! Here is a list of what has changed since release:
+ Added Music and Sound
* Changed player image
+ Added Easy, Medium, and INSANE difficulty (hard is what it was during the compo)

Click here for the entry page.

I also posted a video featuring the changes (note that the actual game looks much better) below. Oh and don’t forget to watch my timelapse.

And here is a GIF preview:

So I finally did my post compo. The only thing left is to add the music that I made. But I’m lazy, so I think I’ll leave it.

What has been changed:
Added sounds (which mostly were created during the compo)
Added difficulty
Changed version in about menu XD

Well that’s pretty much it. You can find the entry here.

You can also see a speedrun (of the original) here:

Or you can see the timelapse:

I’ve been waiting for it sooooo loooong and it has finally happend! We’ve just released Ghostly Me – post-compo version of my MiniLD #36 game which was originally called Eruption. It’s free as I promised, and you can play it on Newgrounds. I’ll be happy to get your comments, thanks!

Also, cupquake made a lets-play video for the game and she’s really cute, I had a lot of fun watching it.

I’m not exactly fond of doing this, but the complaints were too strong to ignore.  I’ve decided to create a new web build to address the issues below.  Let me be clear that you should play the original build and rate it first before playing this one.  Otherwise, that’s unfair to everyone.

Played it?  Good.  Here’s the new webplayer:

http://wp.me/P3bFDA-5m

It contains the following improvements:

1. Significantly improved the controls.  This was done by combining several methods:
   1. Re-calculating the center of gravity to where the camera is focused
   2. Increasing the gravity on the cube you’re controlling as you get bigger.
   3. Increasing movement assistance as your cube gets bigger.
2. Added camera controls via mouse and right-control stick on the Xbox 360 controller (only supports Windows).
3. Fixed the Goal’s 3D text shader to not show through objects.
4. Changed the tutorial level to be more straight.  This makes the arrow direction less deceptive for beginning players. Also added camera control instructions in that level.
5. Rocket boosters are adjusted to be more effective.
6. Fixed bug where newly lit objects will sometimes not stick to the cube.
7. Added a brief 0.1 second delay before the next object sticks to the cube.  This makes the poles in “Level 1″ actually collapse first before it sticks to you.  Also note that that level has changed to accommodate for this change
8. Slightly increased the threshold necessary to pick up objects.  Only slightly, though!
9. Picking up bouncy spheres (and potato!) no longer makes you bouncy.

Please tell me in the comments below how these improvements fare to the original build.  I really want to work this into a full game in the near-future, so the sooner I know how to improve the game, the better!

And once again, thanks for all the help!

I’ve been going around trying to test and rate some of the games. One thing that I like is how this competition heavily encourages you to rate games, so your own game gains visibility. I feel this helps create the great community for this competition.

I’ve personally been checking my entry page every once in a while to reply to every comment and thank them for checking out my competition, and check out their game if they have a submission. I feel like I really want to give back to the community, and really like getting constructive criticism.

I remember there being a lot of complaints on the IRC chat after the theme was announced. I personally really liked the them, because it forces you to cut out unneeded elements from your game until you get straight to the core of the game. That, at least, is my interpretation of the theme. I feel like if you really embrace the theme, you can get a lot out of it, no matter the theme. It really gets you to think outside the box, and outside your comfort zone.

Dear plebeians,

I’ve posted a post-compo version of Hunter to Hunted on Kongregate. This article focuses on said event, making it a post-”post-compo post” post. The new version fixes the bugs you never encountered, includes online high scores that you can only watch from the sidelines while drooling (most likely out of retardation rather than admiration), and adds a help menu to wrap your pathetic minds around those colorful funny things moving on the screen. Radical changes weren’t needed because one can’t improve on perfection.

Not that you’d deserve to pick the fruits of my efforts. Not that I’d expect you to understand the revolutionary nature of the gameplay after you’ve rated my entry #461 in Fun. I’m no mathematician, but it seems to imply you implied there were 460 more fun games in LD25, and that ain’t right.

I also wrote 25 pages of witty remarks, but they’d be wasted on a bunch of illiterate rednecks, so I’ll cut this short.

Now go to hell, and take my game with you. So you can try it out.

I managed to finish my first LD entry and I now present you a post-compo version of it. Play it here. Title screen:

I made improvements based mainly on what people said about the game:

• Added music (from http://www.nosoapradio.us/)
• Added sound effects (with sfxr)
• Added intro/help screen (as seen above)
• Polished the graphics a bit, lowered window size
• Increased player control
• Made it more game-like instead of a simulator
• Let the player control destinies of Igor and Dmitri

Some post-mortem thoughts:

Comments gave mixed feedback about the graphical style of the game. Graphics were made in about 10 minutes, and I doubt more time would have made them any better, considering my interest and skill in art.

Lack of music and sound was perhaps worse than I thought. Next time I’ll try to include those in the compo release. The post-compo sounds are not impressive by any means, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

Intro screen to explain the game and controls is also something I’ll try to get into the actual release next time around.

Player control was a central issue in this game. The player can only vaguely affect the behavior of a large number of independent AI agents to indirectly achieve his goal. Many players reported they didn’t feel like they were in control and I’m not entirely satisfied with the improvements of the post-compo release I made to address that.

The game was an experiment in emergent gameplay created by multiple AI units – a simulator type of game. I think the emergence was limited as the minions do not really interact with each other, only the Hero. That is, the game wasn’t complex enough to be really interesting. I have a feeling I’ll be trying something similar in the future, using what I learned here.

In conclusion, I think my first LD entry was quite successful. I learned a lot and want to make more games in the future. I was also very impressed by entries by other people and look forward to seeing the results of voting!

After much procrastination, I give you… the post-compo version of Airship Infiltration!

More levels, more puzzles, more ways to trick the patrol guards, more… uh… floor tiles…

Play it here

Comments and feedback are much appreciated

Play Bad Puppy

1. randomized petter skin color.
2. fixed some subtle graphics bugs that would sometimes draw a person’s clothes backwards.

1. Added girl petters.

I’ve added some more levels. Along with some more elements to play with. Enjoy

Here

1. New “fear” animation for person running away from Bad Puppy if you bark at them enough.
2. Fixed bug in highscore detection so that tweet prompt only happens when you really do have the local highscore.

I’m still looking forward to seeing my first high score tweet from a player.  It will make me feel really happy when I finally see that

I wanted to devote just 8 hours to LD25, but eventually I ended up with just 2-3 hours, thus not finishing my concept and not submitting the game.

However, I really liked the theme, so I finished the game later.

Goatzilla vs Nuclear war:

The story: nuclear war is raging, goatzilla appears. Various nations are firing missiles at each other, while still building and improving their settlements.

As a goatzilla, you have three options:

• let the humanity perish (stomp all the houses)
• force the humanity to unite, then let them destroy you (stomp near houses to make them shift sides and unite)
• get killed early, keeping the nations separated

You can download the 48-hour edition here or the post compo version here [exe] [zip] [rar].

 ——————————————————

What went well?

This was my first Ludum Dare and my first finished game. I’m pretty happy with the game and very pleased with how things went.

 ——————————————————

I Finished!

The deadline kept me right on track and by hour 48  my game was finished, I didn’t manage to get everything in I wanted and the code was a little sloppy but there’s plenty of room for me to build on if I wanted to work on the game in the future.

The Art

I’m not a very good artist so I decided to go for as simple a style as possible. I ended up trying to go for a style similar to the game Realm of the Mad God. which worked out pretty well. I focused on trying to create  a lot of variation in the backgrounds to try to break the grid which meant I spent a lot more time on art than I’d have liked.

Keep it Simple

The game needed to be simple to pick up for players so they wouldn’t lose interest and simple for me to design so I’d be able to finish it before the deadline. Thankfully sticking to this idea meant that the majority of people managed to finish the game but it also lead to the game being a little too easy.

 ——————————————————

What went wrong?

I’m generally very happy with how everything turned out but there were a few major problems largely caused by lack of planning. I’ve got a lot of them fixed now, but there’s still one or two I’m working on.

 ——————————————————

Lots of Bugs

Annoyingly there were some major gameplay and graphics bugs still present when I released the game. Some of them I’d spotted but simply didn’t have time to fix, others such as the tile scaling bug I didn’t spot til after I’d uploaded.

I’ve fixed the majority of them in the post-compo version.

Music!

It may be partly because I’ve listened to the tracks in the game for hours during testing but I felt the music was probably it’s weakest point. Before the compo I didn’t plan on how I was going to create my music which led to a frantic search at hour 46 for a way to quickly generate it. I eventually settled on Otomata thanks to the post by caranha on music generators. The music it generates is pretty good, I then ran it through GXSCC to give it a nice 8-bit feel.

For the post-compo release I’m planning on redoing most, if not all of the music using Famitracker.

Over-scoped, under-delivered

When I originally sat down to start sketching out game ideas the first thing I thought was “Think Small” and despite this I still managed to over-scope.  I’d planned to have around 6 puzzles but ultimately ended up with 3 at most. This was mainly due to lack of time and poor planning. Thankfully the brevity of the game seems to be something a lot people liked so I plan to keep the game short but add a lot more depth.

Post-compo Version

I’ve fixed up all the bugs and improved the graphics a litle for the post-compo version, you can download it here [exe] [zip] [rar]. If you find any bugs please post them below and I’ll try to get them fixed asap.

Thanks for reading

Ludum Dare 23 was a huge success for me with Zunzanda, and I said that I would not return to do another LD until my commercial game is done. But I guess I lied. It’s just too much fun to pass up! This marks my 7th LD (I think) and I think I did OK.

With the list of available themes, I picked the top three that I thought would win and began to brainstorm. I had some great ideas for END OF THE WORLD, and I was sure that it would win. Then, when the theme was announced, I just kind of stared at the screen in amazement. I honestly did not even think about YOU ARE THE VILLAIN. I should have, but for some reason it just didn’t pop up. I immediately stood up and began doing random things around the house while my mind raced with ideas. I usually go through this process. Instead of sitting down at the computer and drawing sketches, I just do some mindless task so my brain can sling crazy ideas around.

After enough thought, I decided to do something that I said I’d never do. I made a ‘Zelda clone’ with unoriginal slime creatures as the main enemy. This style of game is very unoriginal and the enemy is ‘easy’ to draw and is a total copy of about a million other games… but in that familiarity I crafted my overall design purpose: to use the player’s own history and tendencies against them. I will explain more about this design approach in the “THEME ANALYSIS” section. Reading that before playing the game will basically spoil the entire purpose of the game… SO GO PLAY IT!

CURE 48

Time, as usual, was the main enemy.

Features that got dropped after day one:

Features / tweaks that got dropped on the last day:

WHAT WENT RIGHT?

- The music. Cure 48 features two songs… the main theme and the ‘escape’ theme. I used the same instruments for both songs and kept them similar so the change wasn’t jarring. I think it works very well and the main theme is pretty rad.
- The spriting. I was able to get a fully animated main character that’s generic but somehow not generic at the same time. Enemies are decently animated and have three palette variations. The world tiles are also pretty snazzy except for the walls.
- The overall ‘purpose’ of the game seems to have been a great success based on the comments I’m getting. More on this will be revealed in the “THEME ANALYSIS” section below.
- Graphical overlays and special filters. These make the game feel like it’s being viewed inside of an old, crappy monitor. Scan lines and static included.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

- CRASHES! My computer kept crashing on the first night and it put me behind by a considerable amount. It ended up being a hardware conflict related to my audio setup. BARF.
- Much of the mood that I wanted to set got scrapped due to time. This included detailed intro and outro sequences with voice acting to help frame the actual game.
- Screen transitions are harsh.
- The sound effects are pretty standard. I wanted to do more unique sounds but I guess it fits.
- Porting to HTML5. I was hoping this would be simpler but there were just far too many tiny errors that kept piling up. Things like world tiles flickering, audio not being triggered on time, objects and sprites changing at random, and AI not behaving correctly. It just wasn’t worth ironing out all of these bugs, especially when there are just so many other games to play and rate.

THEME ANALYSIS

So here’s the part that you shouldn’t read unless you want to be spoiled. If you haven’t played the game… GO PLAY IT NOW! If you’ve already played it, don’t want to, or CAN’T… then feel free to keep reading —->

(more…)

Added high score tweeting!

Hey there developers and gamers!

I had a lot of fun with Ludum Dare last weekend.  It’s always a blast to make a game that turns out pretty good!

What went great:
– The theme.
I feel like the theme gave me a lot of room to be creative and come up with something the rest of the developers didn’t.  I love the freedom of that.  Kudos to the Ludum Dare team for making that possible
– Flash.
I know what I’m doing when I’m in Flash.  I spent half my life learning Flash xD
It crashed twice, but thankfully it has autosave, and I didn’t lose too much.  Tip: The debugger decides to crash every few tests…
– Not using a chunk engine.
It’s true.  The original engine I made had the start of a chunk engine.  It didn’t make sense.  It was awful!
– Streaming.
I LOVED streaming, not just because it motivated me, but because I got to meet some really neat people in the chat.  I listed everyone I could remember in the “EXTRA” section of my game menu because it was so fun.
– My idea.
I had a good idea right from the start.  It’s really important to get the basics down in your game before you go and add goats or something.  That’s what I learned from this experience.  As quickly as I could I built a working game with a unique concept and simply gameplay.  Afterwards I added all the less-needed features, like music and a menu…
– Time management.
48 hours to make a game.  It seems impossible, but when you start doing it, it’s surprising how fast you work.  At least for me.  I was able to get done what I had to get done in the time I had to get done doing it (twitter reference).

What went not-so-great:
– The details.
It’s not really expected to have a detailed game during Ludum Dare, but I feel like the features I did have weren’t pushed to the right spot.  The regenerating stamina was too slow, the leveling up was boring, and some other things (like the particle size).  I’m sure it would make the game less glitchy if some of my rendering wasn’t messy too.  Hopefully I’ll get around to fixing it up and making it a finished game!

Overall I think I did a great job, and I had fun!  I like a lot of the games I’m rating too!  Great job everyone else
Here’s my submission: Dragon Boss

Later,
- Zanzlanz

1. Random sweater colors.
2. Multi-barking.

These are just aesthetic enhancements, and do not affect gameplay at all from the previous post-compo build.

1. Added a bonus system, which works pretty nicely.

Ahah, it’s hard to test a game with one tester (who’s also the coder), on one computer, on one OS. I just discovered with a friend that the slower is the computer, the faster the character falls. Totally uncool :p

So I made a small post-compo of my game ( run and transform ), correcting theses strange bugs, and taking in account some feedbacks. The game is now far easier (it’s the cool word for “playable”).

Downloads :

Windows, Linux 32 bit, Linux 64 bit, MacOS, .love file, for sources and MacOS

The .love can be opened on Mac with LÖVE (love2d.org) or renamed to .zip to get the sources.

Also, discovered the hard way that if I don’t write a comment and hit “save” on a rating, it’s not taken in account. So much lost votes

Have fun!