Progress with my game has been slow for a while, I was hoping to have most of the underlying systems finished and be moving onto throwing in content, but I dont even have a moving player yet. And progress is about to come to a complete stop for a few hours as I have a shift at work in ~30mins.

Heres one of the intro screens with the initial story details/clues:

Still yet to come up with a title!!

I have most of the menus done, the main character is 80% finished + a space station has been built and a few other things. I just need some animation, levels and cut scenes to get this game into action. Wont be sleeping much tonight, thats for sure but I find a lot of my better work is done in the final moments of something like this, when the rush begins

Another screenshot to wrap up this post, space station X15 which this will all take place on -

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-19/?action=preview&uid=654

Anyway a quick update, the menu page is done and working, it loads the game, exits and looks pretty.

Pretty uninspiring title. But until I think of something better it’ll do. – Feel free to make suggestions.

I also have basic game environment done, nothing major but its all I can do for now. Need to get this thing in the air and some more gameplay!

So much to do! Im about to do my last 2 hours for tonight (taking me to 4am) and ill really try to cram in some gameplay. Then tomorrow Ill try to get up on time to polish and submit (hopefully), and since this is my first LD I really have no idea how any of that will go! *Eeek*

But here is Discovery so far:

Far from finished.

-I dont like the ET texture much atm,

-The shuttle doesnt have markings yet, only an AO map

-I dont have much time to work on it anymore

-Need to get into some python to making it fly and get some environments done today! (But I have so many other things to do today as well… Gonna be a late night)

-ADEdge

• Each planet can be bound to a Sun
• Each planet can be bound to an other planet
• Gradiant color around planet
• scaling, but it’s not working perfectly :/
• “camera” deplacement

Also, I need to find a name… And I’m not good at it.

- Sounds like a great idea! Pity I only knew of its existence since last night. At T-14 hours until the theme announcement -  I walked into the Ludum Dare world, and was instantly impressed/excited/interested. I came across this whole thing from Notch’s twitter feed, and remembered seeing his amazing entry into Ludum Dare 18 earlier in the year (except at that time I had no idea what it was, and was too busy to really look into it)

The community vibe is great, I spent last night looking around the site, getting more and more pumped about the contest about to unfold and made certain I would keep tabs on its progress to see how it all worked, in preparation of Ludum dare 20 next April (which I planned to be my first attempt) But here I am now, about to get into this current contest. Pretty exciting to be able to go up against some major game designers.

Why?

- As soon as the theme went up and as soon as I got some time off work to check it, I was hooked. It took me a matter of minutes to work out the game I wanted to make, and once you get that little spark going theres nothing you can do to stop it. I mean its hour 38, Ive just had a super busy day, tomorrow will possibly be busier, but I really want to get something done for this, even with terrible time constraints. Im sure Im not the only one only just getting started.

Who am I?

-My internet name is AD-Edge, my real name is Alex Delderfield. Im from Australia, Im 21, Im studying Computer Graphics and Programming at University. (That covers just about everything)

Ive been writing/drawing stories since before I can remember, making 2D/3D animations in the past few years, and in particular focusing a lot on games. My tools of choice so far have been opensource and Im strongly a part of the Blender community as Blender is my primary tool.

My game!?

-Well the first thing I thought of when the theme was announced was the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Thats what the game will be based apon and I saw someone post saying that they hoped someone would do a game like this (I havent seen anyone else with this idea yet, lots of space stuff, but not space shuttles exactly)

In the game you are in control of Discovery, from T-2:00 mins on the launchpad, it will be your mission to get Discovery into the air and in particular, if your lucky and somewhat skilled with a tendency not to explode – space. There will be a mission to do once you get into space, one which involves a discovery of some sort (double discovery!!). I would like to do a landing part to the game as well when you return to earth, but Im trying to keep this thing short (I dont even know if Ill get up to getting this thing off the ground – haha D:)

If I have time I might attempt a landing part (but I really dont think Ill get that far). But theres always time after the contest to add these things.

What will I use for my game?

-Firstly (and obviously) – Blender.

For my first Ludum Dare I had a gut feeling to do something purely from code, some oldschool retro 2D platformer. But jumping into this one headlong I feel like I should stick to something Im fast with and have had plenty of experience with. So the Blender game engine (BGE) will be my engine of choice, a very much under-appreciated game engine in my opinion. Its not exactly UDK, not at all, but in the right hands some pretty cool stuff can be created. And lets face it, making games in BGE can be extremely fast (perfect!)

-I will also use Python for the scripting (thats what BGE uses)

-Gimp for all 2D texture needs.

-Audacity and maybe pysound for sfx control.

Anyway, next post Ill have a space shuttle to show, maybe more (lets hope)

Id love to hear comments, or other questions etc! Looking forward to getting to know this community better, and of course seeing some awesome games!

-ADEdge

*Edit* Wow, post turned out longer than I thought, hope this isnt too long… :/

j)lDolBPZ^0)

FLEEDOM FLIES – by HybridMind – April 17th-19th, 2009
Created from scratch for Ludum Dare 14′s 48hr game competition

Story:

An unstoppable armada of alien warships is approaching your doomed homeworld. Your only hope is to see how many of your race’s precious colony ships you can save! Flee through the armada for freedom, your fleet flies for it’s lives!

Controls:

• Use the arrow keys to move
• Use Z/A/Y to contract your fleet’s ship spacing
• Use X/S to expand your fleet’s ship spacing

How to Play:

The more expanded your fleet the larger your score multiplier!  Watch out though as this will make you more vulnerable sometimes.  To score high you will need to balance when you contract and expand with how you move through the alien armada.

• Also features Online Leaderboards for some friendly competition!

Tools used:

• Coded in ActionScript 3.0 using the Flash CS4 IDE and using Dr. Petter’s sfxr for sound effects.
• MochiAds Leadboard v3.0 API used
• Greensock TweenEngine Lib used

Got Feedback?

Leave a comment below or in the voting feedback area, or email me at dave [at] hybridmind.com

I’ll be working on this game some more so any thoughts or suggestions will be taken into consideration for the post-compo version!  Thanks for playing and I hope you have a good time with it!

Files:

PLAY THE FINAL VERSION HERE IN YOUR BROWSER!

NOTE: If it seems slow or laggy, Flash can sometimes have issues when you view it with your browser.  I recommend downloading one of the links below to play on your desktop for maximum performance!

WINDOWS EXE HERE

SWF FILE HERE (Right-Click Save-As)

SOURCE AND ASSETS HERE

[ PLAY CURRENT BUILD IN BROWSER HERE ]

Well.. grabbed some sleep last night.  Just played my game this morning to see how I felt about it’s progress and direction.  Time to make the short list of goals that is so important in these compos to trying and pull off a playable and hopefully fun game in time.

I find a good trick to use is decide what makes the compo version versus what I’ll save for a post-compo version.  I’ve been pretty good about actually doing a post compo version lately that I’m not too worried that I’m using it as a fake crutch.  You can learn so much from a rapid prototype like this that it is still worth it to finish a reduced yet playable game for many reasons.

Anyway, knowing that some of my favorite features will likely still see the light of day makes me more willing to cut them for the compo version.

It is with that in mind that I am thinking about the following design decisions:

Compo Version Features:

1) One formation only of your fleet ships… the long and lean horizontal one.  This is because I am not sure if I’ll have time to code enough of what I want to justify the other formations right now.  I may have to focus on just making this a fun space avoider with the twist of having multiple lives / health built into the number of your fleet ships remaining as you fly along.  As long as 1 ship makes it you have been considered to win in that you’ve saved some of your race’s people.  The more ships you save the larger the score multiplier probably.

2) Probably not going to implement player ships fighting the enemy armada of doom.  I’m really trying to focus on not making this a shmup but rather sticking to the fact that these are light and nimble colony transport ships that are trying to get the hell away from their doomed planet / advancing wall of the enemy armada.

3) I think that since I have a simple but functional way to hand code in all the enemy ship placements and movement speeds I have the ability to build an exciting armada progression that will have some fun surprises and such along the way for the player to fly through.

4) I am worried that since these compos don’t afford much optimization time I may end up making a version that in order to look as cool as I want will likely suffer performance wise on slower computers.  I may have to go the route of a simple button to: “play high quality” and “play low quality” to turn down all the beam / particle effects I want to use.  I think that is a fine compo compromise.

Of the 16 hours remaining I fear I may have some domestic duties to attend to as well unfortunately… laundry and the ilk.

Oh well.. it’s crunch time here at LD so good luck everyone!

Play it here in your favorite browser

It now has an enemy ship wave manager so I can build out the Wall of Doom(tm) that you must escape through to rescue the last of your race.

I also took a suggestion to map the fleet pattern echeleons to the Z/X/C/V keys.. four patterns in all.

Give it a whirl if you’d like as I’d love to hear any feedback.  I’m trying to get absolutely as much of the gameplay done before screwing around with any graphics this time.  I think it is actually progressing really well for once!

The game just ends right now when all the enemy ships go by.  Also.. if you lose all your ships you have to refresh your browser to continue!

First, the mockup!

(Click image to view larger)

Anyway.. the simple concept is you are controlling a fleet of the last ships of your race.  You are fleeing your planet as an alien armada of doom approaches.  You will be able to move your fleet up/down/left/right and there will also be a key that lets you toggle the density/pattern of your fleet.  Think of it as able to expand or contract.

You will move through the armada avoiding colliding with capital ships and what will surely be horrendous energy weapons fire as they attempt to anihilate your race.

You must get a least ONE of your ships through the armada to win.  The more ships you get through the larger your bonus at the end for saving a larger gene pool of your race…

Simple idea, hopefully the scope will be one of which I can get a fun, playable game out of before the deadline is up…


---------------------------------------------------------
-------12~~~-----5/8\5~~-------12~~~---------------------
------------------------------------------7/9-----5/9----
----14---------7------------14----------9-------7--------
---------------------------------------------------------
-12----------5-----------12----------7--------5----------

Sounds good with some light distortion and little bit of tremolo. Enjoy!

Downloads (both have windows exe + source code and Linux makefile):

• Compo version
• Post-compo: Smaller zip, sound latency fix (no code or data changes) (new)

Uses SDL, SDL_mixer and SDL_image. I used kate for code/text, gimp for graphics, sfxr for sound effects (thanks DrPetter!), and pxtone to make music.

If the Linux version crashes when you run it on 32-bit x86, use this SDL library (contains a fix for a bug in SDL_SoftStretch)

Edit: Figured out the Windows sound latency issue! Seems the SDL.dll I used was buggy. Replacing it with one from libsdl.org fixes things.

I’m happy to announce my final entry, Space Reactions. The aim of the game is to destroy planets using the pieces / fragments of other planets, which you ‘asplode using rockets! Bam!

There are 9 gutwrenching levels to tease your gravity-lovin’ brain, and it also features a totally original soundtrack! (special thanks to DrPetter, as I used his sfxr to generate the sound effects for this game)

SCREAMshots:

Game download (includes both win32 executable and python source) right here:

http://fydo.net/programming/spaceReactions-fydo-LD10.zip

edit: Updated the zip to include a missing source file (check the dates, I didn’t cheat! )

You don’t need to re-download unless you’re interested in looking at the source, or playing on a non-Windows machine

Base idea for the game was to have the level be “swarming”, for an unexpected approach. I figured there could be loose platforms drifting around in space and you’d try to jump around between them, doing… stuff. The gameplay part of it was sketchy at best.

I suppose the better part of the first day was spent getting the platform movement and interaction working, and then I think much of the second day I just sat and tweaked it, fixing bugs. The gameplay elements and final graphics/audio were added in the last two or three hours.

Windows download: 128 kB zip (exe, data, source)

Linux port: 16 kB tar/gz (needs above file for data)

Arcade build a’la Lerc.

Set in space, you controlled a fleet of virus ships that could convert enemy ships. Fleets of enemy ships kept on attacking, and you needed to keep your fleet alive so you could go on fighting, gaining points while doing so.

The game was, if anything, more pretty than fun, but it really was playable once you got into it. Although you probably got bored within an hour or so. Don’t know how it placed, but it received OK scoring, and also got praise such as ‘The game I’m supposed to be reviewing is more like a screensaver’, ‘I liked Hat Swarm better, though’, ‘Without a doubt, Hat Swarm is WAY better’, ‘I honestly would have given the hat swarm a higher score though.’ But seriously, some people (including me!) actually seemed to like it.

You can get the Ultra Fleet compo version. It requires OpenGL and is for Windows, but I’ve been able to compile it for Linux, although I have no idea where that port went, but it should be pretty easy if you want to try yourself.