Ludum Dare 22:

While Isolated Assault was huge success in my eyes considering it was my first Ludum Dare game, and by the scores it received, I’m struggling to come up with a Post-Compo version. You see, I’m just not feeling the motivation to work on it. Every time I sit down, I just feel, “Wow, this is old.” It’s like one of those projects I just gave up because I had no motivation for it.

That’s how it went with Dunnet (My most worked on game), and with my First Person Shooter (My first professional game), and with all those projects I started but never got around to.

Currently my Unity Project Folder looks like this:

Where “Abandoned” have been worked on for a while. I could always go back to the “Abandoned,” but I haven’t, and why should I?

My Problem:

I need a due date on projects.

Some people can never get work done knowing there’s time management involved. For me, it’s the other way. Knowing that there’s no time to procrastinate, and that there’s a reward for finished, I can get a lot of good things done.

I also have problems focusing on one idea and getting it implemented quickly. All of focused ideas I have are too complicated even for top-notch game companies.

Therefore, Ludum Dare was perfect for me–it gave a theme for the game and a deadline. I now know my best work will probably come from future LDs.

Will there ever be an Isolated Assault 2?

Not now. And probably not from me. Anyone familiar with Unity (That means you, reader!) can take my Isolated Assault Source files, and add some new levels, as long as I receive credit.

I have no motivation whatsoever to make an Isolated Assault 2. All my ideas were expressed in the first one. You are a guy. That fights cubes. That wears glasses. The only thing added to this game would be gloss.

Will you participate in LD 23?

Of course! Ludum Dare is the best way to manage time and get good games squeezed out!

Will you stop asking yourself random questions?

Never!!!!

Now I ask you, do I stick with deadlines for making games, or do I learn to get around them?

Do I use Ludum Dare to create all my of my work?

For some reason, I need some sort of reward/time limit for everything I make, because that’s just how I work.

Either way, I’ll obviously still be doing LDs, and I can’t wait for LD23!

A bit late announcement, but I am in. I am using Haxe, GIMP, Audacity and Flixel.

Here’s a simple one-button game I have got so far:

Two stages now, another two might come tomorrow.

I’ve been working in a raycast engine made using Lua- Love2d. Lights working.

To do:
- Include sprites
- Music
- Sound

Not sure if I will have time tomorrow, but at least I would like to share this video with you:

http://youtu.be/iof0-jNhjfg

Good luck to all!!

Thanks all who voted and competed along with me! It was fun and exciting to finally join Ludum Dare, and I can’t wait to join again for the 10 year anniversary!

Once again, I’m going to honest (and critical) and try to make this mega-post interesting!

PLAY THE GAME HERE

My goals for Ludum Dare 22

• Before the competition started, I had some goals in mind that I wanted to make.

1. I wanted to make sure “Fun” was the best category, so that people could replay the game, and have a good time playing.
2. I wanted the gameplay to be smooth and the animations smoother.
3. I wanted to beat Notch in at least one category (knowing how hard that would be).

What software I used

• Unity 3d Game Engine
• Blender 3D Modeling Software
• Pixlr Photo Editor
• Cfxr Sound Generator
• Unitron Script Editor
• Garageband Music Creator
• Text Edit Text Editor

How I made the game

• I quickly had come up with an idea for each of the most likely themes before LD22 started. My theme for “Alone” was a game where you would be sometimes alone, and then all of a sudden, you would be crowded with people.
• After the theme was announced, I decided that the game would be first person (the easiest of all the persons) and that you would have to fight your way through endless hordes of cubes (the easiest of default shapes). You could only see the cubes when your glasses were on, but if you weren’t in a shaded zone when your glasses were on, you’d start burning. This was a way to keep the player moving, and a way to make them constantly nervous.
• I worked on the player controls and LockCursor, etc. But the gameplay does not complete a game. I needed an enemy. One that would appear only if your glasses were on.
• I whipped up a cube model and texture and soon came up with this:

• Whoo Hoo! Now I have a cube!
• Next I worked on making the cube look at the player, and then having it disappear when the players “glasses” (A semi-transparent plane) were off.
• By now my Unity Scene looked like this:

• Soon I got Health implemented, and then it started to look like a Test level.
• I kept at it, knowing it would soon look like a game.
• The cube could soon move towards the player, and deal damage at close range.
• The first “Shaded Zone” was created, (using a Trigger) and the player would not take damage while inside it.
• I worked on making the zone a little prettier, and expanding the floor plane. I added a skybox, and changed the ambient light to near black.

• All along I had been slightly working on a music track, but now I decided I needed to finish it.

• The level was extended, the cube had a spawn code and could replicate itself, and the textures for walls and the floor was created in Pixlr.
• I created a variety of sound effects in CFXR like jumping and enemy death noises (my favorite).
• I worked on making an in-game tutorial, by timing when the music starts with the same time that it tells you that there is no one there.
• The menu was easy, all I had to do was come up with a name and choose the font, and soon my game looked legit. (Sorry for the lack of photos here)
• I asked my friend if he could play a test version on his computer (a windows) and I’m glad he did. The font I chose was bugging out on his computer, so I changed it to something else, and it worked fine.
• Now I knew my game was compatible on Windows AND Mac

• I created another music track for the menu, a helicopter to go to as the goal, and a stats screen so you could try to beat your own score.

Rating Other People’s Work

• I specifically rated the games that had the fewest ratings and tried to give most of them a fair, solid score.
• Mostly I gave 3.0s when I thought something was average.
• For a few people that put little effort into it, I had to give some 1.0s.
• I was sad that Notch had not really implemented the theme and pretty much made a different version of Minecraft. (Most likely this was just because he wanted to, or he felt like it.)

How people rated my game

• I can thank my friends, family, and Ludum Dare community for playing the game and enjoying it, especially DontBeNoobish‘s Gameplay Footage:

• I was proud with how my game turned out compared to most of the other entries.
• People mostly liked the audio and innovation of the game, but there were a few things I could’ve made better (More enemies, options, etc)

The Results!

• Coolness – 52% Bronze medal | At first I thought that the bronze medal meant third place, but then I realized Coolness didn’t have the same rating system. Oh well, it was still good to see that my playing of all those low effort games went to good use!
• # 40 Community – 3.55 | Wow! Community? I didn’t realize I was that popular! I guess this rating makes sense because of all the excited posts I made with links to this game. I did a LOT outside of the game (Time-lapse, post mortem, gameplay video, tips)
• # 108 Innovation – 3.20 | Good, people liked my idea of the sunglasses and whatnot!
• # 113 Mood – 3.20 | I think the music accomplished the overall feel of the game.
• # 118 Audio – 3.00 | Once again, the music, but also the enemy death noises made this count.
• # 113 Theme – 3.33 | Well, you are sometimes alone…
• # 202 Humor – 2.29 | I wasn’t even going for this (other than the ReadMe) so I have no clue how it ended up higher than overall.
• # 323 Graphics – 2.67 | Although mine was one of the few 3D first person games, I guess people didn’t really like the low effort GUI and enemy textures.
• # 435 Overall – 2.50 | Oh no! Overall score seemed like an important one…
• # 487 Fun – 2.06 | Really? This was the category I was focusing on, but yet it got a 2.06! Yes, I guess I did better than almost half of everyone else, and I’m not complaining, but this ended up at the bottom of the list, when I had worked for it to be the top.

Comparison To Notch

• My goal was to beat Notch in at least one category, and it turns out that was too easy:

• I ended up beating Notch in 7 different categories!
• A comment on the community rating: Last LD, Notch won third place (if I recall correctly) in the community category, but now he received a #49! And I received a #40! So after all the years Notch has spent on Ludum Dare and Minecraft, and the entire fan-base he collected from the Top Computer Game Of 2011, I was able to receive a better score than him from 3 weeks of posting on Ludum Dare!

I send out a huge thank you to all who rated my game (yes, even those of you that got me that horrible “Fun” score) and hope to join again for LD 23! Please remember Rob Productions again for next Ludum Dare, and you can expect a post-compo version coming in time!

Links:

TIPS ON MAKING A UNITY GAME

POST MORTEM

TIMELAPSE

THE GAME AGAIN

here’s the timelapse for Zombie Street. heres the page for it:

Zombie Street

Zombie Street Timelapse

I’m afraid I must shamefully bow out. May a thousand needles pierce my body and my organs liquefy (or something similar – doubtful that will happen, though).

Unfortunately, too many things went wrong from the start. The theme alone (see what I did there?) was enough for a major brainfart, and I lost Friday evening simply thinking about what to do.

I did come up with a design, though… which was then gracefully shredded to pieces and flushed down the toilet (wanted to do a survival/Castaway type game on a desert island). I then moved on to doing a side-scrolling 2d shooter, where overgrown manimals of all kind attacked the player and randomly exploded.

Now, even if the concept isn’t half bad (let’s call it “minimalistic” for the politically-correct folks out there), I kept encountering seemingly simple, yet mind-boggling problems. Admittedly, I haven’t done simple XNA sprite animations in a while, but this weekend made me feel like I should be going back to school (or subliminally learning animation code while sleeping).

So there I am. With 4 hours to go until close, animations that aren’t showing, no music or sound effects, no weapon sprites made yet, some serious lack of sleep, a massive headache and a caffeine overload…

I wish the best of luck to the other participants. I learned so much this weekend, and will be more than prepared to tackle the next Ludum Dare.

Engage~

I have completed and submitted Super Animal Friendship Club:

PLAY ONLINE

Total coding time: 5-6 hours

Enjoy!

now its time pack everything and publish the final version !!!!
good weekend of coding, drawing, coding, testing …

These are the changes since the last report:

• Player graphics and sounds
• Fix Floor borders.
• Arrow graphics and sounds.
• Arrow shooter graphics and sounds.
• Barrel sounds.
• Save point sounds and graphics.
• Exit point sounds and graphics.
• Burning Effect.
• Title screen.
• Ending screen.

I had other things to attend this weekend, therefore I have set aside a few hours for LD. Thinking vaguely about the theme yesterday and coding now for about 4 hours, it’s my pleasure to introduce you Super Animal Friendship Club:

PLAY ONLINE

TODO:

• sounds and music
• difficulty

this is getting close to the end !!, add the main screen, story screen changed the game over, killed some minor bugs of the viewport, now missing the soundtrack, sound effects and build the final map.

go go go !!

Pasta today, the cupboards are empty, all that I could find was milk, spaghetti, flour and cheese, oh well.

I also have a lack of ideas, that sucks too. I’ve finished all the mechanics and music scares me.

Bit of a late start to day 2, courtesy of an unexpected excursion to the pub last night.

So, this game thing then. Well, Alone was the theme I was _really_ hoping wouldn’t win, because I couldn’t think of a damn thing to do with it, but eventually I came up with something.

Borrowing somewhat heavily from Spectrum classic Ant Attack, you play a lonely robot whose only friend, an adorable kitten, has been lost in an ancient city populated by hostile killdroids.

So far I’ve got a fairly acceptable random map generator and a controllable player character wandering the empty ruins.

First order of business for today then is to put some game in there. Knock up a couple of evil looking killdroid models and a fluffy kitten and get them in there, then I can start looking at adding some general polish, like sound, music, title screen and win/lose sequences.

*Looks at clock* Crap! I’d better get busy!

Going pretty well.

I think i have finished with almost all the gameplay elements. Now I’m planning the rest of the graphics and starting with the sounds.  So now the status is:

• Player –  Gameplay done – Graphics pending - Sounds pending.
• Columns - done!
• Floor - pending. (fix border tiles)
• Barrel – done! - Sounds pending.
• Spikes Hole – done!
• Spikes Hole filling with Barrels – done! – Effect pending. 
• Lava Hole – done!
• Arrow Shooters – Gameplay done! - Graphics pending. Sounds pending.
• Arrows – Gameplay done! - Graphics pending. 
• Boulder Dropper – Canceled.
• Boulder – Canceled.
• Save Points – done! - Graphics pending. Sounds pending.
• Exit Point – done! – Graphics pending. Sounds pending.
• Menu - pending.
• Intro screen – pending.
• Game Over screen – pending.
• Ending Screen – pending.

I have put the Alpha1 for testing purposes here:

Timelapse for day 1. Time for sleep now. A day of music and polish tomorrow. It’s nearly done!

add main menu, end screen, life boost items

next steps for release 1 :

• increase map size
• splash screen
• sound track  - already choose !!!
• sound effects

release 2

• add stories

go go go !!!!

We are making progress alright….

but first a little pizza break

and now we will grab a big bag of sleep and save the work for tomorrow

This was a great day of programming!

I managed to do alot of programming more than what I expected for today.

I decided that tomorrow I won’t go to school so I will have more time to really finish my game and cleaning all the bugs.

Timelapse Of Day One:

Here You Can Play The Game!

Here You Will Be Able To Watch My Live Stream Tomorrow!

(Still My Game Doesn’t Have A Name… Please Help Me To Choose)