Hey guys, just thought i’d toss this out here for anyone interested.  Finished a first “stable” release of my new sprite editor, It’s QT4 and written to be cross-platform but at the moment only downloads for linux are up, as I’ve yet to figure out how to use the mingw cross compiler with QT.  Tailored for my engine’s format but the toolset can also easily export to png spritesheets.

Short version of the features (full list on download page)

• Onion skinning to help with animating
• customizable palletes w/ full save/load/rip from image support
• more color picking tools than you’ll ever know what to do with
• fully integrated with system clipboard so you can freely select, copy,cut, paste, etc..with other image editors
• large undo/redo bufers, specific to each frame
• live animation preview
• fast control scheme (mouse + command keys, or hotkeys control every action, all hotkeys are listed in the edit menu)
• customizable UI, all toolbars can be reshaped, floated,  pushed behind tabs, hidden….etc

Still got a lot of bugs to work out, and missing features, but it’s at least stable and capable of image editing at this point. You can download it and try it here http://www.midnightfragfest.com/sprite-editor/

Edit: Windows download is now available, but somewhat untested, I would appreciate any feedback on how it runs.

The public alpha release of my cross-platform pixel editor Pickle is now available for download.

The app features animation preview, seamless tile preview, and terrain preview—all live updating as you edit.

I’m trying to get feedback from the game dev community to help make it better. So if you have a few minutes to try it out and let me know what you think I’d really appreciate it. It would be great to have a more full-featured version complete for people to use in the next LD.

Download Pickle at PickleEditor.com 

Follow @pickleEditor for updates

Command-line tool that generates a single *.as file containing all the embeds of the folders passed.

An example of what this tool can make is found here.

This will help you if you, like me, like to store all your embed on a single “Resources.as” file. Every time I make a couple of assets I don’t want to add them by hand, so I run this application and it’s automatically done and embedded. It also handles *.tff (setting fontName and embedAsCFF=false as optional).

Usage

You can run resmaker -h to get the available list of parameters, but it’s really simple: you specify a bunch of folders where your assets resides (separated by comma), and where is the file Resources.as (will be created), and it will recursively iterate the folders. Remember to use always absolute paths.

For example, the sample I linked above was done using:

resmaker c:\Projects\LD22\assets -o c:\Projects\LD22\src\Resources.as

If you use it, let me know! It was originally made as a Python exercise, but as I found it very useful, I decided to share.

Download link here.

Volcanox was a lot of fun for me. Although a programmer, game development is not something I normally do. Additionally, it was also a test of the programming language MoonScript. I wanted to see if I could write a game in my own programming language.

The results, I thought, were pretty good. By the end of the competition I had something playable. I even had time to write music and insert sound effects.

If you haven’t played the game yet, you can do so here!

The Process

For this project I started with plain LÖVE. I figured I could get a foundation together. Even before the theme was announced I was pretty certain of making a platformer. It’s something I’ve never done before but I implementation ideas in my head. The first night was all writing collision detection code and movement. This was the one thing I was certain about writing, so I plowed through it. I even had time to write a map loader

I implemented an algorithm called Uniform Hash Grid, which let me subdivide my collidable objects to reduce the number of checks per frame. This worked very well, I was able to create a huge map with no impact to runtime performance. (It had a little load time though, which I think I could improve if I had more time.)

My map loader just loaded a bitmap where pixels represented collidable tiles. I did this to avoid having to use any real map editor tool. In my code I assigned colors from the map image to be actual tile sprites. This was my first map:

From there I just added gravity, and assigned a jump button and I had a working platformer.

I spent some time fooling around with ideas. I wrote a basic particle system which I later used for all the shooting effects.

The next day, after waking up I decided to tackle something I thought would be very hard, drawing sprites. I put together a simple (and awful) animated player sprite:

After that though I kind of lost sight of what I wanted to create. I had a working system, but I didn’t know what kind of game to create. I  got lazy and went out to a coffee shop with friends. I think this was unavoidable because I needed time to think. After that I decided I would have shooting and enemies so I started coding bullets. I added minor things and created a tile set. Things were looking okay but I still didn’t have a game mechanic.

On the last day the name Volcanox finally came to me. I coded up until 1 hour before the deadline adding simple game features like title screen, and winning and losing conditions. I added one enemy and wrote the AI. I had no experience writing something like that so it came out very unnatural. I decided that because the game was so simple, I would make the enemy spawning very aggressive. This actually made the game (annoyingly) hard. I expanded the map to make it huge and have lots of enemy spawners.

Here’s the final map: (yes that’s a volcano)

The last hour I rebooted into OSX and recorded some music on my keyboard, and quickly got some sound effects out of bfxr. I submitted my game at exactly 6pm.

The final submission’s sourcode is on GitHub.

Review of MoonScript

Part of this project for me was testing how well MoonScript would work for game development. MoonScript is a language that compiles into Lua. It’s a slimmed down syntax that adds a lot of sugar. Things like classes, list comprehensions, and a lot of other useful stuff. It works great with LOVE.

I wrote 1534 lines of MoonScript, and it compiled into 2880 lines of Lua. Pretty cool!

I heavily used the class system, and the inheritance it provides. It allowed me to quickly scaffold objects in my game. I think if I were writing Lua, a lot of time would be spent designing my object interaction. In that regard, MoonScript was an excellent tool to use.

I strongly recommend it for game development.

What went right

• Using MoonScript
• Using a bitmap and gimp as my map editor
• My tools all worked well together

What went wrong

• Didn’t test on windows, got report of people having issues after submission
• Didn’t know what I wanted to make in the middle of the comp
• Didn’t have any foundation code, had to focus more on getting code to do basic stuff instead of adding game features and polish.

Once again, If you haven’t played the game yet  you can do so here!

I have successfully finished my very first LD game, The Last Man on Earth.

You play as the last survivor of an alien invasion, your goal is to avenge your species by clearing out an alien spaceship.
It is a pretty hard game, but please don’t get mad at me – I had no time to balance the gameplay.
The game has two endings… and a kitten.

It has been great fun, I would love to participate in the future, too.

Screenshots:

Tools:

• Visual Studio 2010
• XNA Game Studio 4.0
• Paint.NET
• Inkscape
• Bfxr

Download: http://attilahorvath.me/TheLastManOnEarth.zip
Source: http://attilahorvath.me/TheLastManOnEarth-source.zip
Game Page: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-22/?action=preview&uid=8403

Hi fellow entrants

I’m feeling a little under the weather at the moment but that’s not going to stop me taking part! I have decided to go low-tech this time though, to make things a little easier for myself. So I’m planning to make a very simple command-line text adventure in plain old Python.

The theme is an awkward one, in my opinion, because it pretty much dictates a backstory rather than possible game mechanics, and all that springs to mind at first are artsy, depressing, story-based exploration affairs. I did manage to think further than that, so if like me you’re struggling for ideas a bit, how about these:

• Alone doesn’t necessarily mean physically alone (Nobody understands me! I’m the last of my people!)
• The aim might be to become alone (Hounded by papparazi? Defending your hermit cave? Looking for a quiet place to revert back to your gelatenous state?)

Anyway, my tools of choice are:

• Python
• Curses, maybe
• Nano
• Paper
• PyInstaller

My goal this weekend is just to finish something, even if it totally sucks.

Because desk photos are so last century.

My weapons:
Engine: Unity 3.4.2 Pro
Language: C#
2D: Photoshop CS5 Extended, Filter Forge 3, Painter 12
3D: ZBrush 4R2, Topogun 2 beta, Modo 501, Blender 2.61, Vue Infinite 10
Sound: Reason 6, Audition 1.5, SFXR

Strategy for this LD:

Ooops, do I need one?

I hope to make a game with better gameplay than last time. So I’ll try to get that working early. Also I really want to have some sounds and “music”. I might switch to doing the jam if I can’t get something good enough in the 48h. Also particles. I often neglect particle effects and they can really bring life to an otherwise empty 3d world.

Good luck everyone!

I will not be making a 3D game this time around. I simply don’t have the time to learn the basics while doing the compo, so I’ll just be making another 2D game. By basics, I mean all the 3D math and stuff needed.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t use jMonkeyEngine for 2D though. Its integration with external libraries on the scene graph is phenomenal and I’d like to find a way to utilize, say, Bullet nodes/controllers in a 2D environment. Plus, I find wrangling with LibGDX to be un-fun and rewriting boilerplate code for Slick again is not in my sights. I spent way too much time on simple crap like entity management on the Discovery game from LD19.

I’m guessing using jMonkeyEngine for 2D stuff the hacky way would be switching the camera to Orthographic view and just using objects with lots of volume in the Z axis, since I am terrible with physics.

In addition, there are a few new tools I may use:

• Tile Studio
• The Games Factory/Multimedia Fusion (total last resort, if I’m just not feeling up to speed)
• PXTone definitely, though I mentioned FamiTracker earlier I absolutely loath tracker interfaces and PXTone is like a really, really simple FL Studio to me.

There was some talk between my friends and I about doing the Jam instead, but one of them may be having travel conflicts that’ll prevent them from participating. Oh well. Dare it is.

I’m in. LD22 will be my first ludum dare. Looking forward to it
My tools of destruction:

Code: C++
API: SFML 2.0
Graphics: GIMP
Sound: LMMS, Audacity
IDE: Code::Blocks

I will probably be streaming during the competition. I just need to find a way to stream from ubuntu first…

With the start of LD #22 in less then a week now, I’m getting my tools set up! I’ll most likely be using

• Unity 3d Indie (Experience: 1 1/2 years) : Mostly Javascript as the language
• Possibly Blender 3D (Experience: 1 1/2 years)
• Garageband (Experience: 2 years)
• CFXR (Experience: 1/2 year) : The BEST program for sound EVER
• Pixlr (Experience: 1 year) : Online substitute for Photoshop :p
• Unity Forums (Experience: 1/2 year) : The best weapon in my arsenal! My Page

Without a doubt I’ll be using Unity’s Standard Assets Source Code as no man can code without it!!! Also, I may use some of assets from Unity’s example packages such as: Lens Flares and The First Person Demo (demo is removed for some reason, I guess it’s obsolete)

Good luck to all, hope Notch doesn’t completely own us!

Here’s how I’m going to win:

Language: Actionscript 3

Library: Flashpunk

IDE: Flash Develop 4.0

Graphics: Photoshop CS5.5

Sound: sfxr and Audacity

Music: FL Studio 10

Timelapse: Chronolapse

Here I go!

Even though I have so many things to do for school, there’s no way I’d miss LD!

As usual, my tools will be:

• Language: C++ with SFML
• Graphics: Gimp and Inkscape
• Audio: LMMS with Yamaha keyboard

In case anyone is using Tile Studio with Flixel, this might be useful. I added an option to always start with a transparent tile at the beginning of the exported tileset: !StartWithEmptyTile, since Flixel insists that the drawable tiles start from a certain index.

For some reason I haven’t been able to log into SourceForge for a while, but there is a new executable here: http://www.wieringsoftware.nl/ld/ts.exe (if you don’t already have Tile Studio, first unpack the zip from http://tilestudio.sf.net and then replace the executable with this one).

I’m totally in and ready to rock hard this time.

I will be using:

• Python
• Myrmidon
• Nano
• Graphics Gale
• GIMP
• Audacity
• Rosegarden
• Sfxr
• Scrot
• Also a kazoo may be involved

I will attempt to abide by the following self-imposed rules:

1. Get all my tools and libraries ready to avoid wasting time on setting things up ready to code
2. Have some game ideas in my head before the theme is announced. Have one last look at the theme list and come up with an idea for each
3. Keep it astonishlingly dizzyingly simple to the point where I scoff at my own game idea because it could be thrown together by a visually-impaired amoeba in a timescale measured in planck time
4. Put absolutely no effort into graphics until the game is working. So throw together placeholder graphics that look like scribbles at best
5. Spend zero time making the code “nice”. If the code isn’t repulsive to look at, I’m doing it wrong. It should be the most hacked together piece of crap I’ve ever written. If it runs, it’s good enough.
6. Have the game playable by the end of day 1. So the core gameplay should be in place, and ideally the levels done too (depending on what time of game it is. The concept of “levels” may be more complex than I’m aiming for here)
7. Don’t get hung up on bugs if they’re not total show-stoppers – they can be squashed in the cleanup phase
8. Spend day 2 polishing the thing to a shine, including sounds and music!

I have a feeling this is going to be the greatest Ludum Dare E V E R.

Best of luck, everybody!

Hello everyone! I’m ready to join in! This is my first post to the site!

I’ll be doing a Jam entry with a friend. I’d be doing the code work and he’s likely to help with graphics and sound.

So here’s what I’ll probably be using:

• Language: Lua (Using LÖVE as a framework)
• Source Editing: Vim
• Version Control: Git
• Graphics: mtPaint (pixel art), MyPaint (Sketches, concept doodles), Gimp (Anything else)
• Sounds: sfxr (Bleeps and blips), Audacity (Filtering and other stuff)

Hopefully that should all be enough to pull me through. Good luck everyone, see you soon!

Nothing will prevent me from completing a game this weekend!

Engine: Unity 3D Pro (coding in C#)
Graphics pipeline: Modo 501, ZBrush 4.0, Blender 2.59, Photoshop CS5 Extended
Sound: Reason 5, Audition 1.5

I’m very happy to introduce you gLapse 0.2, the visual GNU/Linux tool to take screenshots at fixed intervals and make time lapse videos of your compo progress. If you didn’t knew gLapse you can check out more information about this tool in my first post. At this moment, gLapse is available in English, Spanish and German.

Changelog

• Configurable video quality (very bad, bad, normal, good, best).
• Synchronized screenshots output and video input folders.
• Changes default screenshots output folder.
• Adds German translation (thanks to Superyoshi).
• Improves GUI usability.

Download

• gLapse 0.2 Debian package
• gLapse 0.2 source package

Feedback and new translations are hugely welcome, if you find any problems I would be grateful if yould report them in the issues section. Hope you like it and find it useful for the next compo!

Hi, I’m proud to introduce you gLapse v0.1, a GUI GNU/Linux tool to make time lapse videos of your Ludum Dare work progress. gLapse allows you to take desktop screenshots at fixed intervals and glue them together in a time lapse video. I developed it because there only were command line tools to make time lapse videos on Linux… until now!

Features

• Take .png screenshots at a custom time interval and with variable quality.
• Make videos from using the saved screenshots with custom FPS.
• Multilanguage: English and Spanish for now (more translations are welcome!).

(more…)

Noms I bought today for LD20, including noms for the brain on the left

I’ve got all I need for another LD. After the ‘disaster’ of not finishing the last one, I’m super motivated to not let that happen again.

So I’ll be using Unity Pro 3 and code in C#. I’ll make some 3D graphics with Cinema 4D or maybe Modo, ZBrush and Blender. I might additionally use Vue Infinite 9.5 for the skybox or weird stuff like Groboto. For sounds I have SFXR which I actually hope not to use as it’s just too easy instead I might record myself doing funny noises and use Adobe Audition to edit them and make music with Reason 5. Also I will doodle on my Wacom Intuos3 and edit that in Photoshop CS5 and make textures with FilterForge 2.0.

Also for the first time I’ll try to use motion capture recorded with my Kinect.

Also from the previous compo:
Video montage of my previous LD games (not need to update it since I did not finish last time)
My Zelda-esque Desktop (I might post an updated one later if I’m not too lazy)