https://inkbunny.net/journalview.php?id=82430

This was my second participation in LD, and while I don’t consider it a great success, I’m happy I produced something. Here’s the link to the game: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=18395. It is basically a minimal (non-digital) painting simulator. You use your brush to spread and mix colors given in the palette on the right side. The palette is part of the painting and shares the physics of the whole paper. You can paint over any image files and see how well you are matching the image guide.

The theme minimalism didn’t really get me excited, so I initially ignored it and thought about what would be interesting to code. I came up with the painting idea, thinking I could make it into some kind of game in which the painting lives and the player interacts with it. However, in the end, I never got a good idea for such a game, and ended up just improving the painting simulation.

I used the theme as a guiding principle and managed to reduce color painting into just mouse movement with left-clicking. So unlike in an image editing program, there’s no “toolbox” or any kind of abstract settings that let you insert into the paper arbitrary stuff brought from “outside”. In this game, you are confined to work inside the painting itself (excluding the water-button, which is actually optional).

In conclusion, I think I managed to use the theme okay, coding went smoothly, but I just had no idea what to actually code. I started programming before planning the game and that didn’t work out. On the other hand, if I had just kept on planning unsuccessfully, I might not have finished anything. I’m looking forward for next LD!

Well, I was prepared for a crazy weekend and didn’t even have to worry about going to work on Monday because it’s a holiday. Then… the game kinda wrote itself. A bug showed me the way to greater fun and my game was done in less than 12 hours.

Now I just need to figure out how to get pyinstaller working with a virtualenv… that or just buck up and install pyglet in the default python directory. >_> It’s not like I really need a virtual environment. Any tips?

But now? Now is bed time. I shall listen to more of my Mistborn book while I lay out my futon for sweet, sweet sleep.

Ok, after a difficult 6AM rise and already 2 hours behind the schedule, I crawled to the PC to find a theme that made me gasp. Hell, I really didn’t expect this to be a theme. I mean, tell me about a game done in 48 hours that isn’t minimalistic!

So, the brainstorming session started quite slowly. Pick up the pen, go to the desk with a white paper and start writing whatever came to my mind. An hour later I’m rather happy to say that I have a clear idea of the concept of the game. And (this coming from me is actually quite unexpected), seems pretty fun to both implement and play. Let’s make a quick heads up.

My traing of tought followed this route: about 99.9% of the games that will be developed will focus on minimalistic graphics. Well, that’s almost a given, due to the time constraints. That CAN fit the theme alone but of course with a theme so ample there are a lot of stuff you can apply it on: mechanics, story, choices, number of buttons used… I see from posts that this last one is a common choice… Very interested in seeing the results!

Ok, since I’m using Ren’Py for the development of my game, I’ll focus on… Drum roll please… Minimal dialogue choices! 

(Why is no one clapping?)

Ok, it is not the most original idea in the world, but hear me now. The game is about rescuing a princess. You have two choices: “yes” and “why?”. With “yes”, you save the princess and all is good. You see an image of you saving the princess, credit roll and goodbye. With “Why?”, the narrator explains your reasons. For example, “Cause you are in love with her”. Then you have the same two choices: “yes” and “why?”. With yes, you win the game, credit roll and all. With “why”, the narrator explains… You get the idea.

So, you can basically choose any time to save the princess, but you can go as deep as you can with your  The fun stuff is, this can go on for quite a while, and can lead to some pretty fun writing. With time, you will access some unique questions. And, now for the fun part: based on the question you asked, the final image will change according to the details you unveiled. More question you will ask, more details you will add. Think Binding of Isaac: each power up adds up effects on the character. This will be the same but with the final image.

The title for this game is (since the theme is minimalism, let’s keep it simple):

The Mission

(Oh yeah!)

I’m pretty happy with the concept so far. I really didn’t expect to be happy with a concept of a game less than one hour after waking up. I have some basic idea on the Ren’Py script to use, now let’s get down to work!

Minimally.  Or maybe a bit more than that.  Seems like the theme is getting a lot of flack, but it was actually my top choice!  I don’t know what I hope to make yet, though.  Probably just going to brainstorm tonight and get to work in the morning.  Good luck all!

I’m in! First ludum dare and first attempt at completing a game ever! Wow, that sounds scary. Hopefully this will be a learning experience even if I miserably fail in delivering my game.

Since a lot of people have been listing their tools for the job, I guess I’ll do the same.

• Genre: Point and click adventure
  I had been planning to make a free point and click adventure for a while now, so I thought that making a ludum dare entry may be some good training wheels before throwing myself into my “dream project”.  The fun thing about this genre is that it can fit any theme pretty easily.
• Language: Python
• Engine: Ren’py
  I’ve rarely seen Ren’py being used in ludum dares and never for anything other than visual novels, and that’s a serious pity. Yes, it is an engine for visual novels, something that actually made me ignore the engine for a long time  (stupid, stupid!). But the reality is its scripting language is so fast to use and flexible you can do some rather complex stuff with it.
  Okay, it’s pretty limited: for example, only 2D (no 3D models), and is not ideal for stuff that requires real time input, like a platformer (using plain pygame is better for that). But if you want to make something story driven that requires user input once in a while (a point and click game, for example), its scripting language is pretty powerful. It’s a pity everyone uses it mostly for visual novels and dating sims cause there is a lot of stuff that could be done with it. I’ve done a prototype of a first person point and click game in a matter of  minutes, no joke.
  Fast prototyping, fast debugging and on the fly script reloading means an immense amount  of time saved that can be used to add more mechanics or make better art and music. Since I know that I will be using (wasting) most of my time to come up with an interesting idea, time efficiency is a critical factor. Plus, it’s multiplat AND free. 
• Editor: Notepad++
• Graphics: Paint.NET, GIMP, probably some handdrawn or rotoscoped stuff.
• Audio: REAPER combined with the free and excellent sounding Synth1

Good luck to everyone and good work!

Hello people of the blagosphere, I have this website on to which I shall probably put my games what I make, and probably some thoughts on game design and coding should I have any of note. I started it about a year ago but it quickly failed as my co-conspirator walked away. But yet, here I am, back to put some more games up there.

As for the quality of these games: Expect very little. I’m not really putting myself under any obligation to make games here, so it will just be whatever ideas capture my fancy. Also the art will be forever bad unless I can find someone to do it for me, which is unlikely since pretty much everything I post on there will be free and open source. No cash incentive, you see.

With that said, thanks for listening to my nigh-incoherent rambling.

Today I released MidBoss (v0.5 beta), because stuff might still change and/or break) as a feature complete game. It’s an overhauled, rebalanced version of my LD25 game, and my January entry for One Game a Month.

MidBoss is a game about possessing your defeated enemies in order to become stronger. You play the weakest of the dungeon denizens, an imp with no ability other than possessing other creatures. Your goal is to defeat and possess increasingly stronger creatures, unlocking their abilities for yourself and becoming stronger as you go along, and eventually defeat and become the dungeon’s ultimate endboss.

Features now include:

• Possess your enemy and gain their strengths and skills
• Dynamic music system with more frenetic music to accompany action
• Line of sight and fog of war systems
• A total of 15 monsters to defeat and 10 skills to unlock
• Randomly generated dungeon floors
• Single-file save and resume
• Permanent death, if you die your save is gone (save-scumming is available)
• Full options menu including key rebinding

If you like it or have feedback, feel free to leave comments here or let me known on Twitter @enichan. Also in case anyone’s curious, here’s my 1GAM profile.

Click on the image to get it!

MidBoss post compo version

So, MidBoss did fairly well in the ratings. I won’t bore you with the full overview, but it came in #81 in fun, and #91 overall. Pretty good! I kind of wish I hadn’t taken Sunday off, maybe it would’ve done better as a compo entry than a jam entry. It’s not like I actually spent the available 72 hours on it, but oh well.

Since the competition I’ve been working on the game, to polish it up and make it more playable. The post compo version is now ready and you can get it here. Keep in mind that I intend to change core gameplay mechanics to make the game easier to balance and maintain in the future! New features include:

• Dynamic line of sight and lighting
• Save/resume feature (save scumming is available)
• Dynamic music system
• Options menu (also for key rebinding!)
• Various bugfixes

And that’s not the end of MidBoss, I want to keep developing it further, so if you have any comments or feedback, or want to keep updated on progress, please follow @Enichan!

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!

This was my first ever game jam. It occurred a very short way into teaching myself to program again. My current skillset is very limited, though my conceptual understanding of programming is a bit above what I can currently do — for example, I can’t successfully program graphics, at the moment, but I have done so before and have some idea of how OpenGL, at least, works.

In spite of that, however, I figured I could get something done, and now seemed better than later. I learned a lot about Python in the process, particularly with exception handling, and in general had a blast.

Pre-Compo

Since I went into the project knowing that I was starting from such scratch as dreams are made on, I had what turned out to be realistic expectations for what I could accomplish in such a short time frame. Here’s how I envisioned my prospects going in:

• I wasn’t worried about concept and gameplay design. I am accustomed to designing simple, focused games on short notice.
• I knew I could come up with some kind of interactive game mechanic and program it in a decently short period of time.
• I was not sure I could add graphics or sound, so I was prepared for the possibility of needing a text interface for the game. I therefore planned to focus on mechanics first and only add graphics/sound if I had time.

In the weeks leading up to LD25, I was busier than a starving mouse in a pantry full of food in cloth sacks. After digging my car out from under 1 meter (not a typo) of snow on the Monday beforehand, I spent three days bone-tired and recovering. I therefore had little chance to really prepare. I couldn’t get PyGame to install and barely got Pyglet installed with enough time to dink around with the tutorial stuff.

So I had absolutely no base code to start from. None.

Conceptualizing

When the theme was announced, I quickly assumed that most of the LD entries would run the gamut of stock game types with villain-themed wrappers. Although I take no issue with that, I wanted my game to be as unique as possible. Especially because of my limitations. In looking for a way to achieve uniqueness, I found inspiration in dystopian science fiction, a German board game a friend of mine told me about a while back, and some things I learned in my social psychology class in college.

I don’t really want to go into too much detail about the story here yet, since people are still playing and rating, but I will talk about the format of my game. There is more story than gameplay, but there really IS gameplay. There are segments in which you run simulations to determine the optimum configuration of robots for a work site with a farm and a factory, and which robots to discard in favor of some new robots. This ties into the story and the villainy, though the villainy isn’t apparent until the end.

Execution

Having set myself up to write a frelling simulation game with a lot of story (oh, how I facepalmed at myself), I had a feeling I wasn’t going to end up with graphics.

I focused first on working out how the simulation would work on paper and then launched straight into programming it, starting with object classes for the robots and where they were to work. I occasionally wrote functions to display the bits of the story when I needed a break from formulas and stuff, but I did the majority of the story work after the simulation was working. I wasn’t consciously thinking about having a playable prototype ASAP, but in hindsight… that’s essentially what I aimed for.

Once I had a couple of story segments and the simulation done, I considered my music and graphics prospects. I knew graphics were out. I thought there was a chance that background music was in, though, so I did some singing and then tried adding my music to the game with Pyglet. I got the music playing, but not looping; then looping, but all activity in the console stopped while it played. So I threw that out, too, and went back to working on the story and checking for bugs. (But you can hear the first BGM song I recorded here! Single take. It was to play during the normal, everyday parts of the story.)

I think the most important thing I learned from all the coding I did was how to properly handle exceptions in Python. I already knew how to make custom exceptions in Python, but I wasn’t practiced enough in their use to make good use of it. I am much better at it now! The way I handled input meant figuring it out lest the game crash.

Even so, my initial executable releases still included a bug at a critical juncture in the robot simulation because I missed exception handling at a critical juncture. I found and fixed the problem (I think) and have released updated files for everything except Windows, which I was unable to get to recompiling today due to not being anywhere near my Windows machine. I also figured out how to use Pyinstaller to compile the program into a single file for niceness.

Oh yeah, just figuring out how to compile the programs was a new experience, too. xD

Improving the Game

I definitely want to keep working on this game. There are a number of things I could do to improve the game, starting with more storyline branches and figuring out how to add sound. It would be nice to have graphics, too — basic visuals for the robot sim and maybe some visual novel style backgrounds and character graphics for the story bits. The story could be lengthened to allow for more robot simulations and better expression of the ideas in the story.

Tentative Plans for the Next LD, Based on Lessons Learned

• I will have base code beforehand. Yes, I will. Starting well beforehand. Must learn moar!
• Make sure I know how to incorporate at least sound, if not graphics as well. I’m not really a drawer, but by gosh I can sing, and if I am gonna keep doing things where mood is important, I want that extra mood buff.
• Cook good food beforehand instead of expecting myself to want to do it during breaks. When I take breaks, I end up playing games or otherwise goofing off.
• Spend more time in the IRC channel because the community rocks.

Overall

I’m very satisfied with how it went.

Wanna check it out?

(post compo development of this game can be found here)

I made it!

MidBoss, the roguelike with a theme of possession of defeated enemies is a reality!

So the fact that I managed to complete a game on my own for the jam is pretty funny, when you think about it. After participating in the last dare with less than stellarly fun gameplay results, I figured I wouldn’t be able to participate this time due to being on study exchange in Japan and being super busy. In fact I forgot about Ludum Dare until by chance someone asked me if I was entering, last friday. I had nothing better to do, so I figured I might as well.

Then, I promptly decided to spend my entire sunday eating sushi and doing karaoke with friends. Woops! I was about ready to throw in the towel at that point. Unfortunately this game’s theme kept nagging at me, as well as the progress I’d made. I decided to take some time off from school and go all out on Monday to participate in the jam, and somehow, I made it! Not only that, people are actually telling me that MidBoss is pretty fun, and they want me to do a more polished version. I’m… honestly pretty shocked, since I was winging it since the very beginning.

After some insistence by a friend I’m going to try and polish this up for a post-compo version. Maybe try and make a little money off of it. If anyone has any advice for that type of thing, I’d really welcome it. I’m not used to working with the kind of sloppy code an LD can produce, but I also think refactoring most of it might as well mean I’d start over.

What went right?

I didn’t have any preconceived notions about what I was going to do, I went into it as a blank slate just looking to have some fun and maybe make a fun little game. I think not having expectations made it easier to just go with the flow and wind up with a better idea and a more fun game than last time. My code also stayed relatively clean until pulling an all-nighter started getting to me. Going out on Sunday while kind of silly did help me get out of the crunchy mindset, and so I could attack the project with renewed vigor the following day.

What went wrong?

As a consequence of being unprepared I didn’t have anything set up. A split-second decision lead me to go with Python over Xna because it’s more accessible, but I didn’t so much as have Pygame or an IDE installed. Installing Eclipse and Pydev took at least a half hour too long. Meanwhile I had to do pixel art in photoshop, which is something I positively loathe, because my regular editor wasn’t installed. I also took waaaayyy too long getting the automatic wall graphics to be correct, there’s still errors and I don’t think anyone’s even noticed them. I could’ve spent that time more productively, maybe.

Conclusion

This LD turned out with a better game, and was more fun than the one that came before it. And I’m pleasantly surprised that I made a complete game at all, so I consider this one a success.

I could have titled this post “Flawless victory!”

Or at least something along those lines (let us not get cocky here…).

First thing first, this post is going to be a pretty big one, so if you would rather see the game and play it, you can find it at the link below (Source, Windows and Linux64 at the moment, more platforms to come).

Play (and rate :p) Raoul V. in Your Are Ze Villain!

With that out of the way let us get down to business, shall we?

The title card of the best silent film since The Artist, or something!

Post-mortem

What went right

Most of the Ludum Dare, for a change. But in more or less chronological order…

• Theme & Idea : At first, as usual, the theme did leave me scratching my head. Most probably because I had started formulating a very cool idea for “End of the World”, which I thought would be picked because of the date. But it was not to be, and I had to find something else. I did not want to shoehorn my idea into the theme somehow, so I started by scouring the Internet for ideas. I wanted something a little more original than casting the player as an archetypal video game villain. The answer came from Wikipedia and its disambiguation page for “villain”. A game idea fell right into place as soon as I had read a particular page. You can either play the game and beat it to find out what it is about, or I will give you the link at the bottom of this post if you want to spoil yourself. But nevertheless, it was really a good find, and really fit the theme (guess what the V. in Raoul V. actually stands for?).
• A roguelike! : I have wanted to make a roguelike(-ish) game for quite a while now, so I was thrilled to see that my idea actually could be implemented as one. And it was the right way to go. I could have done it as a first-person 3D game, but I am pretty sure I would not have finished in time. So not only did I have the opportunity to code a small roguelike, it was very much instrumental in achieving the next point…
• Proper scoping : This is what I always did wrong in my previous attempts. Except maybe for OUT OF HERE, but I had the idea for that one way before the LD, and even then I completely shoehorned the theme via an ugly wall of text. Here, I managed to implement all the core features of my initial design. Except for one thing, which is handling a restart after the game is over. But more on that particular point later. The point is that my idea was very much doable in the time frame of 48 hours, without really skimping on anything.
• Letting features drop like flies : This sounds at odd with the preceding point, but what I mean is that, as usual, I continued to came up with new features and refinements as I progressed. One such thing was a minimap. I implemented one, but turns out that the particular way I went about it slowed the game down to a crawl. So, instead of trying to push forward and lose a big chunk of time, I simply dropped the feature. Same thing for my level generation, I ended up leaving the first, somewhat “buggy” version in the final game. By buggy I do not mean that it crashes, but simply that it gave different results than I had planned. So be it, it was playable, and actually doing what I had in mind would have been really too much work. Several things like that didn’t make the cut, but I never mourned them for long. And that meant I got a game done.
• Procedural everything : The map, but also the combination of elements that make up the NPCs, and the notes revealing information on your target are all procedurally generated. It does tend to feel a bit same-ey, but it was a great way to keep the game interesting for multiple playthroughs.

At this point it was a *tad* too procedural.

• Mixing known and unknown tools : I went partly against common sense, and decided at the very last minute (meaning after I had actually started writing code) to use Cocos2D instead of pure Pyglet. I had never used Cocos2D, but as it was based on something I was quite familiar with, it went rather well. The only downside of Cocos2D is that while it is a Python library, almost all the documentation you can find on the net is aimed at its mobile ports, and more specifically the iOS one. That made the learning experience quite a bit harder, but as I was able to fall back on Pyglet for things like sound (which I never got Cocos2D to play…), it never became a showstopper. And in the process, I have become proficient with a new API. Success!
• Pixel art : I suck at art. No, really. But I am still happy of the graphics for my game. The neat thing is that I was able to work the setting of my theme into a constraint that eased the creation of a coherent art style. And I am quite pleased of my characters. With more time, I would refine the aesthetics, and improve the readability of the graphics, but for my skill level I really think I did quite ok. That I even had time to revisit my initial tile set was just icing on the cake.

First version of the art. Very programmer-like.

Improvements, with shadings(c) and gradients(tm)!

• Music and sound : After my attempts at playing a sound effect with Cocos2D fell through, I shelved the idea of putting sound into the game (and it would have been more or less justified by the “silent film” motif of the game), but I went back later and succeeded. I quickly whipped up a couple of music tracks and went along with it. I would have loved to make a piano-based score, but my MIDI keyboard was having troubles and so I fell back on my trusty guitar and my drums (for the sound effect), which I filtered to have an “old telephone” sound to them. All in all I do not think I have spent more than 15 minutes on actually creating the sound, and as everyone will tell you : sound ties a game together.
• Coherence : I think the game fits together nicely. Everything plays off the same theme, and the game mechanics relate to the historical facts (albeit loosely). I worked a goat or two in there (in the written text), there is some flavor text on some of the notes, and all in all nothing seems too out of place. Even the dialogues improve (or their presentation at least) the impression of you playing in a silent movie. So there, very happy with that.

French accent included in some parts.

• Blogging, Twitter, etc. : While I did not post as much as I would have loved to (not to mention I did not have someone dedicated to documenting the process as I had for my last participation in the jam), I still managed to post some screens, check out the IRC, Twitter, and even record a timelapse! This last one is a first for me, and both days are actually uploaded on Youtube, and embedded at the bottom of this post. I also commented and “hearted” here and there, and there are now a bunch of entries I really look forward to playing!
• Packaging the goods : PyInstaller has become pure awesomeness.  If you are using Python and have access to your target platforms, use it, it is really great, and version 2.0 really makes things a breeze.

…That is a lot. To conclude, the most important point : I submitted a game, not a half-broken prototype!

…except when he does not. Sneaky guy.

What went wrong

All is not sunshine and rainbows though, and there are definitely things I could have handled better.

• Awful code architecture : As if that was not a given in Ludum Dare games? Still, because of my inexperience with Cocos2D, I ended up digging myself into a design hole, and had to spend several hours at the end of saturday and sunday morning cleaning up the mess. At the end it turned out ok, but I could have polished the game a little bit more if I had that time left.
• Not having everything ready : I almost failed at creating music because of problems with my MIDI keyboard. I should have tested all my things prior to the compo, and not leave anything untested until the last quarter of the time. At least I managed to record my guitar and my drums without any problem.
• A couple of bugs : Unfortunately, there is, to my knowledge, a single bug that could potentially prevent you for playing or winning the game. Sometimes, the level generator will create a room sealed off from the rest of the level, and if you or your target end up being put there, you might as well restart the game. Speaking of which…
• The missing features : I really wanted to get the restart working, but thanks to my crappy code architecture, it was almost impossible without yet another rewrite, for which I had no time. This means that the game will exit rather unceremoniously after the end screen. And you have to relaunch it if you want to have another go. The game also should have provided a way to look back at the notes you collected. Right now, you will need to use paper or your memory to keep track of the information. It should also have warned you when you killed the wrong guy. At least it will be evident when you have shot the good one. Lastly, the full screen mode (which is provided by default by Cocos2D) does not work correctly in regard to aiming. That is quite the bummer.

So, there you have it. I think the only way to improve on these is to continue practicing making games, and probably to collect some kind of base code which enforces a sane structure rather than throwing code around and see if it sticks together.

Timelapse

I think you have had enough to read, right? So instead, here are the two parts of my timelapse. The image quality is poor, I need to improve my timelapse-fu. I had also planned to make an “IRL” timelapse synced with the screenshots, but that did not work out. Enjoy!

Day 1

Day 2

Conclusion

This weekend was a blast. With everything going smoothly, it managed to be a very interesting learning experience, while being incredibly rewarding. For now, I will leave the game be while I rate other entries, and I will also provide an OSX version, as well as one for 32 bits Linux. Thank you for reading, and have fun playing…

Raoul V. in Your Are Ze Villain!

Spoiler : You can check the Wikipedia article from which my idea came. Meet the real Raoul V.

Over and out!

- Bastien ‘Grungi Ankhfire’ Gorissen [@b_gorissen]

One last screenshot to see you off

I figured out how to get Python scripts to compile in pyinstaller about 15 minutes before the submission deadline. I had already submitted my source code, so I was in anyway, but… :3 It still made me very, very happy to be able to submit exe files for both Windows and Mac OSX. As the title of this post suggests, I spent several minutes shrilly keening my delight before I was capable of uploading my files to the interwebs.

But they are uploaded. Which means I have Python source scripts, a Windows EXE, and a Mac EXE available for use. HOORAY!

I did it! My first LD entry has been submitted. It is a game in which you try to win, but not by too much. As an Evil Overlord, you don’t want the Hero to ruin your plans, but you don’t want him to die either, because that would spoil the fun! More on the submission page.

That was most intense coding I remember ever having done. Towards the end I had to start heavily cutting corners. There are so many global variables and redundant checks, and so much duplicated code that I don’t ever want to look at the code again

I had some time to spare but was too exhausted to start implementing anything – testing my game is pretty tedious. So there’s no sound, no starting screen, and most placeholder art is better than what you see in the game. Still, I completed what I set out to do – to create a game with many AI controlled agents and player only having global control over their behavior.

I feel I was very lucky with the theme, planning the game took only about 15 minutes. And I even managed to include a goat!

If he didn’t have a cute (but deadly) pet goat, he wouldn’t be an Evil Overlord. On the left, you can see Igor and Dmitri, trusted associates of the Evil Overlord.

The game is controlled by giving orders to your minions by choosing one of three available random choices. There are three levels, at the end of each level there are special choices.

See you in next LD!

I finished. No music, no graphics, nothing but text… but it works, and I think it’s good. For those who finish it, I hope it will have the desired impact. It’s got mature themes involving morality, puns, and single, solitary goat.

Hey, this is my ludum dare.. In fact, my first game competition.. So, I’m just so excited – I’ve been up all night for this, maybe I should have slept, but either way, I’m still feeling quite fresh and hopefully, I’ll be able to complete this first compo…

I’ll also be uploading timelapse video, updates and workspace pics later…

Currently, I have this idea- You’ll be playing with two characters and ultimately one of them betrays.. And the secret is- you get to choose the betrayer is and you’ll have to play as that character at last. Also, this will be a platformer game with both puzzles and killing.

Game engine: Pygame/Python

Sound: FL Studio, maybe bfxr also.

Graphics: Inbuilt sprite editor of Gamemaker.

No code base to share, I’ll be starting with a blank screen

Plans to release it as open-source game.

This will be my 4th LD (excluding miniLDs)

Hoping for a theme like ‘End of the world’ or ‘Outer space’, something which could be scifi.

But we will see! No point getting too attached to a particular theme, I’ve made that mistake before.

Game Engine: BGE
Language: Python
Graphics: Blender/Gimp
Audio/SFX: Audacity
Music: ???

Also, big night. Hung over and on about 3 hours of restless sleep right now. Got just less than 4 hours for a powernap O_o

So the day before yesterday I had grand plans to get PyGame working on my computer and start learning to make graphics work. Then I fell asleep at my computer at 6 PM, right after dinner, and didn’t wake up until 7:30 AM when my video phone beeped that the morning town news had arrived.

Even with a ridiculous 13 hours of sleep under my belt, I was tired all day and my brain was running in slug mode. I’ve been feeling a bit off since Tuesday, and since I haven’t felt truly sick, I can only conclude that my body is belated feeling the aftereffects of my hour and a half out in the train station parking lot digging my car out from under a meter of snow. I went on a business trip last Tuesday, leaving my car parked there because I didn’t expect raging blizzards, and then weather  life prevented me from going to get the car until Monday.

I did not crash last night, but my brain still wasn’t up to reading documentation, really. I did get a chance to talk to a friendly acquaintance who has experience programming in Python for games and otherwise  last night, though. I got to pick his brain a bit before he went to bed, and ended up deciding to go with Pyglet instead of PyGame. I didn’t get very far in playing with it before my brain let loose with a bold-italic stream of symbols like you’d see in comic book dialogue, but I got Pyglet installed and it seems to be working. So I might not do a text adventure after all!

That said… I’m still installing Ren’Py as a backup. xD

So! Official declaration: I plan to use Pyglet and/or Ren’Py.

Signing off. *murloc noise*

I`m in. Again.

And here is my plan for the weekend:

• Get lost in the eternal space
• Go through event horizon
• Stop existing
• Create a game
• Have fun

Create a game… Don`t forget to create a game this time… This is probably the hardest part of my plan but its fun anyway!
Now I’m writing small framework in python for pygame wich can perform basic scene management, collisions, animations, e.t.c.

UPD: Sorry for my broken english…