I’ve really enjoyed adding to Seed Life.

SeedLife 2 minute demo video

Windows | Mac | Source links

I’ve already received great feedback from friends and LD comments. I’ve implemented some of them:

post-compo additions:

• Display currently selected seed
• Reworked how drag planting works (with shift-dragging for straight lines)
• Better performance on longer runs
• Can now harvest any type of seed with right-click(watch out, they’ll grow back)
• Clouds (disperse them with mouse motion)
• more to come..

future plans:

• New types of seeds (I’d love some ideas from everyone)
• Critters that only come out based on your garden
• feedback wanted

Thanks for a great LD! Keep playing those games.

I’ve known of Ludum Dare but this is the first time I’m participating in the event. I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m planning on writing the game in Ruby using the Gosu library. I have a small personal library called Okami that encapsulates Gosu in a ruby-ish fashion, but doesn’t differ all too much from Gosu. It’s available on https://github.com/Aerotune/Okami and https://rubygems.org/gems/okami

I will probably also make use of some of the awesome gems for gosu like chipmunk, ashton, texplay for visuals and releasy for releasing the game.

It will be hard to top the success of I Am A Ninja (LD22, 50th place) and Cytosine (LD24, 31st place), but I’m going to try my best.

Like my last two games, this one will also be HTML5. I’m not yet sure whether it’ll be canvas2d or WebGL, but I’m leaning towards the simplicity of canvas2d.

My previous two entries were written in raw JavaScript, but this time I’ll be using CoffeeScript instead. It’s just a more pleasant language to work with, and less verbose so quicker to type.

For preparation, I’ve written a tiny Ruby webserver using Sinatra, which uses a Rakefile to automatically compile my assets:

• CoffeeScript is compiled into JavaScript.
• SCSS is compiled into CSS, using Compass for its CSS3 mixins (which automatically add vendor prefixes like -webkit- and -moz-).
• Inkscape SVG files are exported to PNG files.

This makes for the quickest development cycle: just save the file, and refresh the page.

I have three rough game concepts. Here’s to hoping one of them can be bent to fit the theme.

Good luck everyone!

My first event after seeing a friend suffer through a few on his own.

• Language: Ruby
• Framework: Metro
• IDE: Textmate 2
• Graphics: Photoshop, Pixen, Tiled and TPEditor
• Audio: Ableton, Figure (iOS) and Bfxr

I am using this last week to learn and build a few more things before everything gets started:

• Generating animation with my own art assets using TPEditor
• Developing and exporting animations with Pixen
• Metro needs to be able to import Tiled exports
• Metro needs the concept of a viewport

Better late then never. Because I do not have much time left I’m likely to participate only in the jam. I will use Ruby and Gosu and I will test out an entity-framework I wrote last week, following the great tutorial of Richard Lord. You can download it here, just to abide by the rules. I do not recommend anyone to use it, because it is kind of the first piece of software I wrote in Ruby, lacking testing and proper error handling.

Have fun, everyone!

Javascript, sfxr, GIMP, Raphael-JS (maybe), Autotracker-C, SoundManager 2.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5227720/HTML5/grid.html as basecode.

I may give up half-way through and make it with Ruby instead. If so, I’ll be using Ruby(duh) and Chingu/Gosu.

sfernald sank his teeth into the game engine for my LD#16 entry – the light in the end of the tunnel and the results came out swinging!

He’s used the game engine better then then me, making some winding, fun, hard to beat, acid-filled caves.

Check it out:

Source:  http://www.bitjets.com/thelight2.zip
Win32 exe:  http://ippa.se/games/the_light_2.exe

Maybe I’ll make a sequel too since the original game was so tiny. Actually I already started hacking on it. Some ideas/goals:

• The collision detection wasn’t perfect (for example you couldn’t jump while running into an obstacle)
• I’m thinking level-building from One big image instead of several small, but there’s quite some things to work out before that’s possible.
• More interaction with the world, could be levels to pull, buttons to push, doors, modification of terrain or living enemies, not just acid pools/drops.  Preferable additions that don’t complicate the level building to much, now it’s basically drawing a new image and creating one class — liberating easy.

All right, so, I’ve managed to work out how to participate without a) unboxing and setting up my computer just for the compo, in the middle of a move, or b) leaving little software dev turds all over someone else’s computer, the solution being, use entirely portable (as in USB-stick portable) software for development. In this case, allinoneruby.exe, notepad++, mercurial (the command-line part only), pidgin (for irc), and whatever graphics software is already on this computer (such as MS paint, probably). This is made even more delightfully awkward by the fact that I normally do my work on a Mac desktop, and now I’m on a PC laptop. Should be awesome.

I should also add, in addition to my previously announced use of Ruby and Gosu, I may make use of chipmunk for physics, and I may steal some code out of an earlier project of mine, Operation Lambda. I anticipate using application-level code like menus, user preferences and resource management, not any gameplay code.

All that being said, this is still a busy weekend; nothing like 48 hours will be spent on this project.

Finished my entry for the LD#15. It’s a pity I didn’t have enough time to include all the features (enemies, power-up’s, lots of blood, stalactites…) I thought at the design stage, but at least it is playable. I think I might continue the development, though.

I’ve had lots of fun! This was my first LD and I’m really satisfied. See you in the next one!

Title screen

The Evil Dark Cavern Which Leads Straight To Hell

In my game I had some problems with gosu’s rendering of tiled graphics. jlnr was so kind as to quickly fix some bugs, so here is my updated LD14 entry:

Download: Evacuation v1.01 (Windows binary + Ruby source code)

Bugfixes include:

• background and road tiling
• bunkers no longer getting placed under houses so villagers can’t enter
• sound glitch when game is won

Bummer, too late for the binaries torrent

Finished my game now. There could be some more polishing but I think it’s fun to play and turned out much better than I expected yesterday.

Download: jsb_LD14_evacuation.zip

(It seems the gaps between some tiles are an issue with my GPU, please report back!)

I hope all of you had a great time, I definitely had. Now, finally some sleep!

UPDATE: Windows binary added.

Well I was counting on working down to the last minute, but I have to quit for the day so this is going to be the final version, 5 hours before the deadline. The game is “done” in the sense that you can win and lose, but I wouldn’t really call it complete, there’s a list as long of my arm of things that need to be fixed up and added. All the art is placeholder, which especially hurts. Spent waaaaay too much time on the tech.

So overall, success! I made a game in 48 hours. This was my first LD and I had a blast, I’m definitely doing this again. And I’m definitely going with a simpler game next time. I think Solar Lift has some good ideas, but 48 hours wasn’t near enough time for me to experiment and pull those ideas out into a polished, enjoyable game experience.

The game is written in Gosu with Ruby. Intro is lacking, so here’s instructions: the goal is to rescue stranded people off the plummeting planets before they are consumed by the Advancing Wall of Doom. WSAD moves, left mouse shoots, spacebar fires your super laser blast. Rescuing people charges your laser, bullets are unlimited.

>> OS X Download <<

>> Windows Download <<

Source Code

Say hi to my desk, which I hope to see only when I do Photoshop work:

Other than that, coffee shops and the university will probably be where I am most of the time, meeting up with pythong and mathias. Wee!

Tools

• Ruby (1.8, sadly)
• the Gosu library—<plug>just released version 0.7.13!</plug>
• TextMate
• Photoshop + Wacom
• cFXR
• MacBook
• actually
• I’ll make this list
• a bit longer to make it look
• like I am well-prepared

So be very afraid! … *runs to the mall to buy some pizza*

Only 7 more hours until my first compo. My home office is always at the ready:

Though I’ll probably spend a lot of time in coffee shops instead, no way am I sitting in one place for two days straight.

The contest starts at 9PM local time, so I may start doing a bit of work tonight if I feel confident that I can force myself to go to bed at a decent hour.

Everybody vote for layers! I’ve got some good ideas there.

Tools: Macbook, Wacom tablet, Ruby, Gosu, cfxr. Possibly chipmunk for physics but I’d rather avoid it to keep things simple. I’m gonna try and avoid 3d too, or keep it to a minimum.

Lots of coffee and green tea. I’ve stashed up on miso soup, dried fruit, and burrito fixings. I’ll try to avoid hitting the homebrew beer but I make no promises.

After having participated in LD5 some years ago I’ve finally found the time and motivation to enter again. Once again, I’ll be using jlnr‘s Gosu gamedev library for Ruby. As my coding skills are a bit rusty at the moment, I hope to regain some programming and time management practice (apart from enjoying a fun contest!)

Here’s my pretty basic workspace:

The compo will start at 5am German time so i think I’ll go to bed early and sleep til 8am. Also hope to resist any persuasions by my friends to go out Saturday night

Will be posting updates here, maybe some on my twitter. Good luck to everyone!

Hey folks- finished my game:

• Windows build
• Mac build
• Source (linux build instructions in readme, requires Gosu available from RubyGems)

CONCEPT:

You’ve received 4 scrambled images of possible cryptids:

Use your Crypto-Computer ™ to unscramble them!

You have 1 minute to complete your task before the
evidence is lost forever.  You will receive a
30 second bonus for each cryptid you discover.

Each cryptid image is made up of 4 individual pieces.
Unscramble each cryptid by clicking on the numbered boxes
to rotate a distinct piece of the puzzle image.

* Left mouse button for clockwise rotation.
* Right mouse button for counter-clockwise rotation.

Enjoy!

Here is a current screenshot from my simple cryptozoology puzzle game.  It is coming along fairly well schedule wise.  I have 3 of 4 crpytid puzzles completed and just need to draw one more so that is good.  I still need sounds and maybe score a little game soundtrack for it too later.  Need a menu, perhaps highscores just for practice coding that and still searching for a title I like.

I’m glad that I finally picked a game scope that allowed me to have something playable early on and really gave me time for polish, tuning, and asset creation.  As this is my 4th LD (2 full, 2 mini) maybe I’m FINALLY learning something about scope.    If anything, I probably went too far on the side of simple but we shall see.

I decided to participate after all.  I think I began around 8pm EST.

A mysterious screenshot of my cryptozoology game..   Time to go to bed.

Here is the final mini-ld #6 version of Monorail for windows.

STORY:

You are the Hero trying to reach the head of a runaway train to get to the locomotive.  You start at the caboose and work your way along fighting off the bad guys who have taken the train over. You have to be careful not to fall off the train cars or get swept off the left side of the screen with a disconnecting train car.  Also, don’t get shot!  You can get hit 3 times before you die.

CONTROLS:

Use left/right/up arrow keys to move and jump, spacebar to shoot

Use Gamepad stick and button 1 to jump, button 2 to shoot.

BUGS / FEEDBACK:

I’d love to hear any bug reports or feedback as I’ll be developing this game for a while longer still.  I listen to all suggestions and do work on these projects long after the compo deadline.  I will likely post an updated version before too long that is post-compo.

THOUGHTS:

This was my 3rd attempt at the 48hr competition format.  I think I am fairly pleased with the results.  I love how these competitions really let you bootstrap a concept in a really short amount of time.  I spent 35hrs of the past 48hrs working on this game!  While some people might not ever get why anyone would want to ‘work’ so hard on their weekend– it is SO worth it! 

Well.. my working title is evolving a little from “Monochrome Train”.   Anyway, here is the update:

I have been working like mad during this miniLD#6.  I worked 12 hours on Friday, 17 hours yesterday, and now I have a little over 5hours left to at least wrap up the gameplay.  At this point I’m going into triage mode again like many LD format competitions force us.  In a last minute rabid attempt to cram and adjust all the critical features that will turn a project from a demo into a  game.  This being my third LD type event I have yet to feel that I’ve suceeded within the timeframe.  Not sure this time will be any different yet but at least a big difference is that this time I have been able to play my game a LOT more during creation.  Probably to the detriment of the timeline a little.  I guess that is a good sign though.  Anyway, 8am EST is almost here and that is when my crunch time begins.  I have made a critical todo list to accomplish during this time and we’ll see how it goes!

CRUNCH LIST:

• score file handling to support matrins compo requirements
• detecting most primitive form of ‘you win’ condition when reaching locomotive at head of train
• enemies – spawning, moving, fighting, dieing, dodging (of some type)
• simple player / enemy animations for the logic I have coded so far (right now there is no animation)
• simple event sounds
• tiny train like soundtrack loop (update: DONE @ 9am)
• how to page?  I am confused on this because due to the matrin framework requirement– I was planning on using his idea of the 400×400 image in his framework to provide how tos… but I also want people to be able to know how to play if they just download this level from the blog without the loading framework.. so there is the connundrum of sorts.
• animations for train wheels and locomotive parts and steam cloud

Current screen shot above and current windows build here.  Use arrow keys (left/right/up) to move or gamepad stick with button 1 to jump.

Seeya all on the other side!