WOo just finished with minutes to spare. Check out my pirate rogue like here.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=16170

Well if you google you will find it but still sharing
http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/

Pretty cool one, still will need some editing at least to make it loop.

Not sure I will be using this but can be a great thing to add some music at the last moment

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!

I’m getting to grips with game development and lately jams like this have helped me to actually get stuff done.

I’m not yet sure what tools I’m going to use. I like Unity but it’s hard and I’m very slow with it. Construct 2 comes recommended so it is likely that I will take advantage of the ludum deal discount on that if the theme suits. For some themes I might find that I’d rather make something with Twine, or if I’m going to go super abstract and geometric then I’ll use Processing.

I’ve been following the theme voting with bated breath. Some of the leading themes I love and I’m really hoping I can make one of the game ideas I have for them!

From where I come

Haven’t participated for a while as was mostly interested in non game dev for some time.
Participated before a dozen of times and here are various previous results
Some finished, some not.

Plans and motivations

Actually this time hoped to participate in Jam version with one designer but he ended up too busy these week…

Participating again with aim to try do something for mobile phones using Adobe AIR/Flash as main tech.
Have only some experiments with AIR, actually participated in Global Game Jam in January making Java/Android game prototype.
Yeah native is cool with all performance and access but it definitely not good enough for quick prototyping.
So, I want to stress and squeeze all out of AIR this time around!

Tools:

• Target platform: Android(I own one duh) and may be Web, depends on kind of game I will be making
• Coding: FlashDevelop, AS3
• Art: Flash(animations, UI) and Photoshop(pixel art, textures)
• Sound effects: as3sfxr
• Music: probably none, depends on the time + if I find easy enough tool for quick generation of some music

Any advices on music generation apps?

Hello LD’ers!

So. Ludum Dare this weekend.

And my girlfriend decides to debut her new band on Sunday. On a town two hours away by train!

So I’m looking at a 4 hour downtime in the commute… In order to not waste this time completely, I was thinking that maybe I could work on the art of my game while on the train.

So any suggestions for a pixel art or sprite editor that works well on an Android Tablet?

(Any other suggestions on LD-related things I could do while stuck on a train for 4 hours welcome!)

Thanks!

If your answer is POTATO, then you can check out my tools for making your development easier.

What are you selling?

First is Jorjon Resource Maker, which will enable you to quickly embed all your images / fonts/ mp3 you need for your game.

Don’t write a single [Embed] ever again.

You don’t even have to worry about it, just use my *.bat file and double click whenever you change a resource, and it will generate everything for you. Very useful, I use it in all my Actionscript projects.

Anything else?

Well yeah, actually. I want you to use Consolator for your next project. This is a functional Console that will enable you to debug your classes, objects, functions. It supports multiple channels and features an über-simple implementation. Works in Starling, too!


All my tools are available for free. There’s a support forum you can use if you need any help, or just Tweet me at @jorjongames.

Since it’s soon time to start working on the real entry, I’ve decided to take the time to grab a few pictures and links before I start work.

First off, a picture of the battlestation I will be manning during the upcoming event:

I will be using the C++ code skeleton I’m currently writing a bit on, located on my github here. This code skeleton is built on my own entity system library that’s called Kunlaboro, and I’m hoping to have enough features in it to be able to create any type of 2D game by the time LD26 starts.

I’ve tried a few music generators and found Sound Helix, one that gives pretty upbeat piano music with the example preset. To simplify everything a bit for myself, I’ll be taking those midi files and running them through timidity and ffmpeg to get some ogg vorbis files instead, since SFML comes with built-in support for playing such things.

All in all, I’m hoping to be more prepared for this event than I was for the last three, maybe even get a basic Ubuntu system running so I have something mainstream to compile Linux builds on.

Here’s hoping for an awesome weekend, and lots of comradery on the IRC.
(Anan)Ace out.

Starting April 19, the 5th Hack-a-Jam Game Development Competition will begin!

This competition is held every 2-4 months, and this is the approximate 1-year birthday. Because of this, I am offering a prize to the winning entry. This prize is free advertising (one month), on both of my main websites, which have decent traffic.

What is the Hack-a-Jam?

The Hack-a-Jam is a game development event/competition where you must create a game within a set amount of time. The time given in each competition varies, as it could take two days, four days, or even just 30 minutes. Different from other game jam events, the Hack-a-Jam uses a multiple-award system, meaning there is no “Overall Best Game”. This allows for us to give awards to the best games, and not make a decision between two games which are equally amazing. The theme will be a suggestion voted on from the community through many different voting sessions. Another thing you could do to win certain categories is make things such as dev logs, timelapses, etc. You can them post them or links to them in the Posting section of the Forums.

What are some possible winning categories?

Most Psychedelic Visuals
Most Deaf People After Hearing The Game
Most extra items (dev logs, etc.)
Most Rage-free
Most rage-induced
Most Suggestive Content Without Crossing The Line
Shortest Game
Best themed
Most Things On Screen Without Lag or Crash

What are the rules?

Since we are a laid back community, you could probably get away with most of these rules (except major ones, like turning in your entry a whole 24 hours late…). Here are what I would like the community to follow, however:

1. All game content must be created within the set time. Note: You can use other music, placeholder graphics, etc. as long as you are allowed to!
2. Your game is not required to follow the theme, but would greatly improve your chances of winning. Unless almost every other game is not following the theme, it is almost guaranteed that your game won’t win anything.
3. You must work alone, and you must create everything included in the game.
4. All game creation tools are permitted, such as Unity, GameMaker, Photoshop, Flash, Paint, etc.
5. All external game extensions/DLLs are permitted. If you want to make it multiplayer (if you are using GameMaker), go ahead and use 39dll.

You can visit our website at http://www.hack-a-jam.com/. From there, you will want to head over to the Posting section, and sign up for an account (you can use Google, Facebook, etc.). Good luck to everyone!

Just in time for Ludum Dare #26, I’m releasing a beta of Spritely, a tool I made for autogenerating placeholder art. We have lots of tools for automatically making music (like Autotracker) or sound effects (like cfxr) – these tools are great for adding in temporary content when you’re rapidly developing a game, or for generating content that you can’t make yourself just yet (I have no musical sense, so Autotracker often comes in handy for this). Why don’t we have one for art?

Spritely is my attempt to make one! It uses image sources like Google Images, OpenClipArt and Wikimedia Commons to generate sprite-sized art automatically. It comes in three flavours – an easy-to-use GUI (which is really ugly), a command-line interface (in case you want to automate things) and a Java library (for building right into your game). Best of all, the code is public domain so you can hack it and extend it to your heart’s content.

Download links for the UI, command line, and the source code in the README on GitHub

What can you use Spritely for? Well, it’s handy for generating art to fill gaps when you’re prototyping – you don’t have to stare at coloured rectangles any more. I’m hoping lots of you will find that useful when you’re coding like crazy in a couple of weeks. But why not think more experimental?

WALRUS!

For the #7DRL competition this year I tried to make a roguelike generate itself. One of the things I added was enemies, player icons, items and skills that had their graphics generated on-the-fly by Spritely. The player said they wanted to be a dog… or a walrus… or a trumpet… and Spritely made a picture to match. If you reduce Spritely to just searching for one or two images at a time it can do it quite quickly (not quick enough for realtime, but I’m sure you’ll find a creative way around it – in my roguelike I just searched in the background and added the icons in when they were ready).

If you use Spritely for anything, from placeholders to a new genre of games, let me know! You don’t have to, of course, but it will put a smile on my face and also let me justify spending time on making it. I want to create more tools like this that spin off from my day job (where I research techniques for automatic game design). If I get lots of feedback I can show this off to people next time the funding nightmare comes back.

Good luck in Ludum Dare 26! If you have any questions please leave them below. I’ll do my best to update Spritely when I can, but no promises – feel free to make your own extensions and fixes, the code is free!

This will be my 4th LD. YAY! I think I’m starting to get motivated to make something cool. Lately i’ve been working on, well, other things.
Maybe this time I will make something that is actually good. Every Ludum dare has taught me a lot.

My tools:
Language: Java
IDE: Eclipse
Graphics: Paint.net
Sound: BFXR
Timelapse: ChronoLapse
Competition: Ludum Dare (haha)

See y’all then.

return 0;

Woohoo, it’s finally time for another LD!

I have just noticed that nearly all my software still has files from the previous LD in the most recent files menu :/ Time to finally do some gamedev again!

I’ll be using:

• Unity 3D 4.1 Pro (coding in C#)
• Modo 701, ZBrush 4R5, Blender 2.66, Photoshop CS6, Substance Designer 3.5, Vue 11 Infinite (maybe)
• Reason 6.5, Reaper whatever-is-latest, Garritan Instant Orchestra, Shreddage, Band-in-a-Box 2013, Adobe Audition CS6 (and SFXR if I run out of time for proper sound effects)

GOOD LUCK TO ALL!

And here are all the games I managed to make during a LD:

Moar gamez!

I…guess I’m in. I’m not sure if I’ll have any time, but I’ve been wanting to do this since the day I heard it. First dare, first jam, first game. Yay milestones

… i hope. Oh well. Already have an idea slowly piecing itself together, hope I can pull it off. I have nothing better to do with it I suppose…

• code+ide: processing. booyeah!
• gfx: primitives like rect(), line(), and box(). gimp for emergencies.
• musics: assuming minim will work i’ll try b/sfxr for sfx and maybe CAUSTIC 2 for music. yay android apps!
• timelapse: maybe, just maybe a glapse. say please.
• os: #! linux. or without all the funny characters it’s crunchbang linux. lightweight & perfect for my
• computer: who knows how old? i get 100% cpu from a 500×500 window (but a nice frame rate )
• food: sandwiches, preferably peanut butter + cinnamon
• cats: two + laser pointer. are extremley cute & may be distraction.
• pickle: bermuda

what am i listing again? oh, compo stuff.

right. This is all very iffy now. I don’t even know if I’ll have a free weekend and I’ll probably forget the dare anyway. but IF I can remember it’s gonna be grrrrreat!

As you might recall, I published a prototype random animated game sprite generator more than 6 months ago. Well, I finally gotten round to finishing it, in time for LD26 in which I am planning to participate.  I hope there is as much interest as there was at that time, and that some of you will use it for LD26!

It now includes shading, random palettes, more animations, and the crucial save file function.  There is also an Android version for your anytime-anywhere pixel art creation needs.  The evolve feature was killed because it didn’t fit in the processing pipeline anymore. I’ll likely post an update before the start of LD26, and I’ll publish source when I clean it up.  In particular I want to redo the evolve feature because it will save me time for the LD   I also created two example games using sprites directly taken from the sprite generator. In fact, almost everything in these games is procedurally generated.

If you find problems, you can help me out by reporting them!

Sprite generator: http://tmtg.net/ludumdare/spritegen/

Game 1: http://tmtg.net/onegameamonth/towergunner/

Game 2: http://tmtg.net/onegameamonth/twinvaders/

These are available on Google Play too. See also the screenshots below.  I’ll also tell you some things I’ve tried and which failed.  The sprites are 10×10 with 1 pixel space around them for the outline and animation.  I also tried smaller, which was less interesting, and larger, which was too random.  I also tried enlarging to double size using HQX2, but I wasn’t happy with the result.

I think this project needs some love!

Go to Kickstarter and make sure you aren’t missing out.

There’s a working demo you can download too: Spine Demo.

A 2D skeletal animation tool.

Random music composition tools. Better music means more polished games. Random generators are fantastic for inspiration, even to hardcore composers. Compiled with the help of Zeik and ChainedLupine in the LD chatroom.

These are all free except Easy Music Composer, and ACS which is shareware and in my opinion is amazingly useful even without a pro license. For me at least, ACS has an almost 1:1 ratio of success; it prompts immediate inspiration. I’ve personally found Wolframtones to produce quite meaningful ideas as well

http://codeminion.com/blogs/maciek/2008/05/cgmusic-computers-create-music/
Kindly suggested by AdventureIslands in the comments below. This is quite mind-blowing in fact.

Wolframtones     <- algorithmic, very interesting pattern. Has preset genres like jazz, world, rock, etc.

 http://www.soundhelix.com/  <- Sound Helix  cool pattern-based compositions

( http://www.soundhelix.com/audio-examples )

Circuli   http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/circuli <- ambient generator

Easy Music Composer http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~mcs/emc.html

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA014815/music/English/autocomp.html< very very useful musical ideas. This is a must

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Greasemonkey’s Autotracker-Bu <- Run “python autotracker.py”, you will get an .it file, then use your favorite tracker ( like http://schismtracker.org/wiki/Schism%20Tracker ) to export it to .wav or .mp3. ( link and description provided by jarnik )

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http://www.bemmu.com/music/index.html <- music driven by a simple math formula. interesting convoluted results

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http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata <- freeware online version, paid iOS app

Please signal boost this post and if possible get it on the official site. What is a community without communal spirit!

Also be sure to suggest more of these

OK, of course LD had to start in the middle of the bloody night so after sleep, shower and food I’m ready to go!

The theme is broad and I’m already predicting a couple of game genres that will be created and I’m also going for a simple tech (2D side) game in HTML+Canvas with a sub-theme: Corruption.

Livestream is up at http://www.twitch.tv/zenmumbler
On irc as zenmumbler
Twitter: @zenmumbler

I will do my best to incorporate goats as I can.

First steps:

• app skeleton
• platform basics
• first playable
• awful graphics

Tools:

• Gear: iMac 27” 8x3GHz i7 / 16GB
• Editor: Sublime Text
• Gfx: Pixen + Pixelmator
• Sound: inudge.net + cfxr
• Level data: Tiled (likely)

As we get close, I feel it is a good idea to post an update to my maze library. I’ve built a tool which will help people create mazes.

There’s only one path from start to end and it runs quickly. The points are 1 based (instead of 0 based) with 1,1 being the upper right hand corner. There is an outside border, so the actual size of the arrays generated are 2 spaces bigger than your specified size.

I’ve built a generator:

See this post for the library:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/12/11/maze-creation-library-testing/

Here is the application, requires .Net 2.0:
http://www.kins-home.net/ludum/timelapse/MazeGen.zip

Firstly, a special surprise.

I made a random LD theme generator that provides you with one of the suggestions from past events. I really like the style of LD’s themes, so being able to get one at any time would be nice for inspiration or for practicing LD between events.

Go go gamedev!

I’ll be missing the first twelveish hours of the compo because I have a party, but I’m in for the rest of it. I may not finish my game this time, as studying for finals has pushed out everything I knew about gamedev and I will have to rejigger my memory as I go. Nothing that a sufficiently narrow scope can’t take care of, I think. We must stay positive!

Obligatory battlestation picture

Play-Doh is a great creativity tool. Dice are excellent for visualising arrays. The lemon timer is for the Pomodoro time-management technique, and the rubber duck is for solving problems.

Engine and libraries

Engine: Unity3D, base project here. Similar to last time, but I’ve removed some of the scripts I had previously. Libraries include iTween and RagePixel, but I don’t know if I’ll be using them (nor do I know how to use them).

Graphics: GIMP, Blender.

Sound and music: Audacity, Garageband iOS, yelling pew pew! into a recorder.

I’ll be taking a timelapse using Chronolapse, just like last time. It helped me stay on task.

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*