Hello Everyone!

This will be my 3rd shot at the 48 hour compo.
My only goal is to be able to make a better game than I did the last 2 times.

Tools I will be using:

• XNA with C# in Visual Studio 2010
• Paint for basic pixel art, Paint.NET for more advanced raster graphics, Inkscape if I decide to use vector graphics
• Bfxr for sound effects
• Renoise for music if I have the time (I never do)

This time I decided against using a base code, I’ll build everything from the ground up. I hope it works out alright.

Anyway, I wish you all the very best with your game making endeavors and I hope we won’t be wiped out in the looming apocalypse, so we can do this again next year.

I’m in for this Ludum Dare, and needed a tool for making a timelapse.  Chronolapse is awesome, but it only lets you use either the primary display or all displays, something that didn’t work for me, so I made my own! It’s simple, and doesn’t have a lot of the features (you’ll need something to stitch them all together afterwards), but it does let you specify which display to capture, or all displays if you want. I figure maybe someone might find it handy for this weekend.  It lives in the system tray, just right click and hit start after running to start capturing.

Grab the program, or the messy c# sourcecode.

So here’s what I’m going to use for this LD.

I’ll use Unity 4 as my engine and C# for my programming.

For graphics my workflow is ZBrush (sculpting, painting, auto-uv and auto-retopo)-> Modo (general poly modeling, manual uv and retopo) -> Blender (animation). For texturing not done directly in ZBrush, Substance for texture generation (and maybe Filter Forge too) and of course Photoshop to put everything together. Maybe I’ll experiment with that new dDo texture generator.

For music, Reason and Reaper with the Garritan Instant Orchestra sounds. Also Adobe Audition for editing my sound effects. And I just bought Vocaloid in case I want (and I have the time) to have fun with that. I was also thinking about maybe using Band-in-a-Box for procedural generation because I actually don’t know that much about music…

I guess I won’t have the time to play with everything… :/

yeah software!

This will be my first Ludum Dare, but no worries. I’ll be using HaxePunk with Haxe NME so I can port my game effortlessly, and it will be quickly prototyped. This should be fun, however I will only have around 18 hours of game-making time. I’ll be tweeting as I make it at @tophattedcoder.

Tools:

• Language: Haxe
• Framework/Libraries: HaxePunk and Haxe NME
• IDE: MonoDevelop
• Graphics: GNU Image Manipulation Program, Inkscape and mtPaint
• Audio: Sfxr (isn’t WINE the greatest?)

 Goals:

• Experience.
• Something to show off about.
• Make revised version of game, sell it on major game marketplaces.
  ???
  Profit!

So I finished up my decisions on the tools I’m gonna use for the compo. See the updated list below (And yes, I seriously linked to the Wikipedia article of water.)

Language: Javascript
Library: CraftyJS

Art-sy stuff: Paint.NET
Bleeps and blops: BFXR
Music: Musagi (If I have time to compose)

Crispy stuff: Pringles! And cheese puffs!
Drinking stuff: Caffeine (Coffee, Energy Drinks), Water

General plan: Panix for at least 1 hour at the start and the end of the compo.

And of course an obligatory photo of my desk!

Win7 running on the left, and Fedora 17 on the right.

You can’t quite see it in a static image… but the slime is moving… xD

I’ve made something not totally useless, and thought that some of you might like it… xD

As the title said, it’s an “animation player” (that runs over Flash). What it really does is to allow you to import a charset from your computer, create an animation and play it. And that’s it. =X

Since I’ve been using flixel (and like to draw with GIMP), this application make sense for me. I can use it to import a charset and test if the animation is looking all right. Before creating it, I’d create a State, add a Sprite and then animate it… but since I’d have to compile it, it’s a little time consuming… Now I can only re-import the image and see how the animation is.

I know that there are tools that already do that, but… don’t know. xD I just wanted to try and do something like that. xD

I made a post on my blog (here) with it. Alternatively, you can’t use it directly here.

Hey guys!

Looking for established high-profile music? Don’t want to search websites for that one awesome track?

Then go check out Matthew’s Big List of Public Domain Songs!

Features several dozen folk-songs and classical pieces, used in such games as

• Flotilla
• Vampire II: Bloodlines: The Masquerade (at one point in the background)
• Tetris
• Peggle
• Unstoppaball DX (shameless plug) (sorry)

Go check it out. Also features some pointers to locate more awesome usable tracks.

-Matthew

Looking for a Console for your Flash game? I’m currently developing Consolator, a simple library which attachs a console to your project, ready to use and fully customizable.

You can use it to debug your variables, or change your game while playing. You can easily call the methods of the objects you bind.

Some features:

• Categories of messages, you can hide what you don’t want to see.
• Bind any class and you can automatically access its public methods.
• Visual auto-completion with a popup, just like an IDE would.
• Easy integration: just addChild(new Consolator());
• Fully customizable: change color, background, position, size, etc.
• Remember the last commands used so you don’t have to write them again.

Your ideas are welcome at consolator.uservoice.com

Okay, guys and gals – I’ll force myself to give you another little update about how my game for the OctoberChallenge is coming along.

Procrastination, Story & Concept

I have had some slow days in the last week, with some problems to motivate myself. As I’m a chronic procrastinater even for stuff which I really deeply care about (like games), I’ve developed few little tricks to overcome my anxious, lazy demons.

Most often – for me, atleast – the problem is, that I simply pick too broad goals for my to-do-list.

Something like „work on game“ will not work for me at all – something like „fix bug X and redo the art for enemy Y“, on the other hand, will work real wonders.

The former will enhance the feeling of „this-is-too-much-work“ as it doesn’t set boundaries. Also it doesn’t reward you for finishing todays to-do-list at all because it doesn’t emphasize any goal that has been reached. „work on game“ can mean a minute or 16 hours. It doesn’t break my vicious circle of procrastinating brain chemistry (I’m no doctor, but that’s how it seems to work for me ).

The latter – on the other hand – emphasizes exactly that. You can reward yourself extremely easy by checking easy and quick tasks. As you have clear goals for the next day it also happens really often that I come up with solutions while trying to fall asleep or being under the shower – because I know what’s coming next. That doesn’t happen with the more broad and general goals. To me, another really important aspect is that I have a clear end which I can work towards. If I have to do some things which I don’t find particularly fun, then I will work extra fast and efficient because when I’m done with them, I’m done for the day.

What I would generally suggest to those of you with the same bad habits as myself: try to find causes! When you procrastinate over and over again, even though you actually like what you do, it doesn’t mean you’re a lazy person (I doubt such a thing even exists) or it is somehow hardcoded into your genes, it just means that you formed bad behavioural patterns which form this sort of vicious circle.

I assume most of us are pretty good at analytical thinking (and creative at the same time, which seems to encourage procrastination ) – some self analysis can actually really help in these cases.

What are your experiences with procrastinating and overcoming it?

Enough of the rambling and on to my actual work!

As my daily goals got broader and broader over the last week, I realized that some concepts for my game really lacked definition. A few of these worked wonders for getting me on the right track again:

I had big holes in the story which I had planned as a major column of my games experience – so they had to be dealt with. After that sink was unclogged, creativity and motivation could flow again. Sometimes it’s the simple things!

Happy belated #ScreenshotSaturday

Some screenshots taken from a small testbed-level:

The testbed – this is where the magic happens… hopefully!

My placeholder (or maybe not, we’ll see!) menu screen

Development Process

I would like to talk a little about my development process and pipeline. Maybe some of you find it interesting.

I develop my, yet to be properly named, game in Java with the aid of the Slick2D framework. Java was a no-brainer for me, as that is the only language in which I have some notable experience and it is also what we mostly use at university (and I actually LIKE it ). Slick2D – on the other hand – I will probably only use for really small quick prototypes after this one. At least until it gets some major updates (or I take the time to contribute some things myself). It caused me some very unnecessary bugs, also the TilEd implementation is not really sufficient and has a few weird bugs (including inexplicable, OS-specific ones).

That leads me right to my next tool:

My testbed level… those who played my LD24 entry might recognize it!

TilEd

It does everything I need for this project and quite a lot more, yet it also does have its quirks… Can somebody recommend another awesome Mapeditor with Java support? Don’t get me wrong – I would strongly suggest you try TilEd, it’s just that it’s not very stable for me and it could really have a more streamlined user experience.

For source control I use Git with Bitbucket:

Commits of the last days

Even though I work alone on this project, I actually don’t want to miss this anymore. Once it is set up, it is really comfortable for working on multiple computers and also for when you just quickly want to try some things in your code without the fear of breaking everything. Good integration in Eclipse via Egit!

Twitter

Last but not least I’d like to bother you again with my twitter stream. I’m pretty new to twitter so I would love to have a chat (and maybe some mutual following? *the-rock-stare*) with more of you over there!

This weekend I’ve been working on a random animated sprite generator, meant to kickstart sprite graphics development for non graphic artists (like me).  I’ve tried to include an evolving feature, where you can click on a sprite to generate variants on that particular sprite.

Sprite generator prototype (Java, applet or jar)

It’s still a prototype. You cannot yet save sprites, undo, etc.  I am also working on a shading feature. If there is interest, I’ll publish a more finished version later.

Here is a screenshot (note that the real thing is animated):

If you click on a sprite, you get variations of that particular sprite:

Plan to use: Unity3D free (C#), FL Studio (well, lets see…), sfxr, InkScape, Paint.NET, jEdit, Fraps

Probably will have more time to think / plan / design than to actually code. Is that a good thing?

This is obviously such important news that everyone needs to announce it in their blog, so I shall do likewise. This would be my second LD competition, first one having been LD#11. In that one I made the mistake of using Python and OpenGL, so people weren’t really getting to see my game. This time my goal will be to have something completed and easily playable. My primary tool here will be Construct 2, since I have used that to make minigames for my webcomic called You the Fox, and it is pleasantly fast to develop small games in.

I’ll also take this opportunity to point and laugh at all the people who not only take issue with the Kongregate competition, but will also go so far as to boycott or otherwise sabotage LD games submitted to it, because they do not understand the meaning of “LD is for fun” and they are dumb. Ha ha.

So I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to dedicate the time I did to my last entry, but I think I’ll give it a shot anyway and see if I can at least crank out something simple.

I will be using Construct2 this time, so HTML5
I’ll also be using:
Pixel Art Editor for Android
sfxr
Autotracker-BU

I’ll update if I can think of anything else. Maybe I’ll try to use Inkscape.

So what does everyone think, what are you going to do with 1000 Kittens?

I made some productivity tools in Autohotkey, and have been using them for quite a while now. They’re solid and wonderful, although only for Windows users I’m afraid. Some of you may find them handy.

• Instant Text Automator lets you make mouse and keyboard macros by inputting them as text strings (I always found recording macros kind of fiddly).
• Scratchpad is a notepad that displays and hides with a keyboard shortcut. I find it handy for making todo lists, storing text snippets, or logging changes to code as I make them for later addition to the commit.
• TextWrapper adds prefix and suffix strings of your choosing to your currently highlighted text. This can be done through Instant Text Automator too, but this is a ready-to-go tool expressly for this purpose, because I find myself needing this so often.

“Mr. President, terrorists have seized control of the interwebs.”

“Oh noes! What do they want, Jack?”

“Games! Thousands of games! We have 48 hours to deliver them or they’ll destroy all the lolcats of the internet.”

“But that would cause a mass panic and we can’t possibly make that many games in such a short time frame.”

“There is a way, Mr President. I need you to authorize me to unleash the geeks. ”

“My God, the world is never going to be the same after that. But do it, Jack. We have no other choice.”

Hey, I’m Codexus. I’ve made a few LD games before. And I will once again try to push the limits by not sleeping too much and avoid watching too many TV series for 48 hours so that I can make a game.

Code: Unity, MonoDevelop, C#

3D Gfx: Modo, ZBrush, Blender

2D and textures: Photoshop, Filter Forge, Substance, Painter, nDo

Music and Sound: Reason, Reaper, Audition, SFXR

Misc: Vue for a nice skybox maybe (?)

Hello once again Ludum Dare! (#Tobuscus reference)

Last Ludum Dare, I made Invasion Of The Trivials, a first person shooter. You should check it out!

Before that, I made Isolated Assault, a first person sword action explorer game… I think. Anyways, you should check it out!

Being as I am very used to first person games, that will probably be this LD’s game. Although I might go for something different this time… who knows

I use Unity Indie – mostly javascript.

For music I use Garageband, check out my songs

For 3d models, I use Blender.

I’m very picky about having the user control settings, so be sure to expect customization of sensitivity, quality, and volume! Also I’ve worked to create good visuals in levels and tend to make the enemies basic shapes!

My HUGE PROJECT I’ve been working on is Isolated Assault 2, the sequel to my first ludum dare game! It’s currently an extremely advanced first person shooter with the same basic idea of the original.

My goal for Ludum Dare is to get top 10 in at least 1 category, so be sure to check out Rob Productions’ game this time around

I’m pretty sure I won’t be as nervous this time!

You guys may have heard of Darwin Tunes before. If not, it is an experiment on evolutionary computation, where small music samples are automatically generated, and evolved based on feedback from the public.

After you give feedback to any particular sound loop (follow the instructions in the side), you are given a link to download the loop you just heard. The loops are CC-BY-NC, so I guess they could be used for LD?
Most of them sound really cool, so this seems like a good alternative for those of us without great musical talents

Play Seeds of Destruction
If you haven’t played, I recommened you do. It’ll only takes a few moments to get the gist. It is a flash game, so you won’t waste anytime downloading/installing.

What Went Right?
1. Practice – I spent a good month practicing. I knew I wanted to use Flash and FlashPunk which I’ve never used before. So, I spent about a month before the event doing tutorials and then I worked on porting my Ludum Dare 17 – Islands entry to flash. Althought I didn’t finish the port, it was good to get my hands dirty with FlashPunk.
2. Chevy Ray’s Code – When the keynote was released and I discovered that Chevy Ray had given everyone a beautiful gift of awesome code, I immediately downloaded it and studied it. Then, during LD23, when brainstorming I threw out ones that could not be used with his starter code. It definitely shows that I did this, but I think it was worth the trade off.

What Went Wrong?
1. Bad Screen Switching Bug – in the last hours of the LD I ran into an impossible bug when switching between the different screens. I couldn’t unravel it because I didn’t understand Flash, FlashPunk and the Chevy Ray’s keynote code well enough. I spent too much time trying to “fancy fix” it. I should have switched to hack mode earlier. I ended up with a hack, that included restarting the game within the game. If you play it long enough I think it’ll run out of memory and crash. Doh!
2. Big Plans – I spent a lot of time on my animated cut scenes. It was planned to be more involved, but I noticed in time that I had to triage. I, luckily, was able to tell the bare bones story with what I had already created, but I stress how lucky I was here. I could have easily ended up with a lot of work being abandoned. I need to better judge how much I can get done in the time allotted.
3. Curse the Cursor – Several people complained about the green cursor being hard to see against the light blue sky. I hadn’t noticed this at all. I need to build in some “looking” time into my future plans. I was so busy with game play I didn’t consider the easy of use.
4. Distractions – I spent too much time surfing. If you watch the time lapse below I think you’ll agree. While surfing is a normal part of my routine, I feel it got out of hand. Typically I surf to give me and my subconsciousness time to organize and think about problems. Maybe I need to come up with a different way to take these thinking breaks. One that is less likely to degrade into just procrastination.

Time Lapse

Tools I used
Color Wheel:
FlashDevelop
MS Paint
Google Images
Fitbit
iPhone 4
My Camera
FlashPunk
TweenMax
Chrome
imgur.com

(Edit: this is the game I made, if you’re curious. I will be posting my own late post-mortem and list of favorites next.)

The past couple of weeks have been insane, and I got way too carried away with meeting so many people through Ludum Dare that Twitter’s system suspended my account under suspicion of my being a bot. I took this as an opportunity to step back and take a look at all that has happened.

Ludum Dare is not the only game jam, but it’s the most significant. Because of its size and reach, long history, and incredibly strong community, each Ludum Dare creates actual ripples in the game developing world.

The best examples of how awesome people are to each other in LD are the game reviews and the posts on favorites. There is a lot of effort put into encouraging people to see the qualities of their games and how to improve. No matter how unfinished the state of the game, sometimes even unplayable, the comments are always incredibly encouraging. There is always something awesome about it.

It has moved me deeply to see what a wonderful gateway into game making this is. For me, being so readily embraced even though I had never made a game and knew absolutely nobody before the competition caused something long dormant in me to awaken. I’ve learned many lessons that, if it’s not too corny, I’d say might have saved my life.

(more…)

Ludum Dare is a great place to know more tools for game development, so I’d like to share the tools I used to make Micro World.

Programming:

Flixel - Open source game-making library for ActionScript 3.

FlashDevelop - Open source code editor. Supports ActionScript (2 and 3) and haXe .

Graphics:

GraphicsGale - Animation graphic editor. Good for pixel art.

Music:

Guitar Pro. Tabulature editor software. I used it to write the song and export it to MIDI.

GXSCC - Automatically converts a MIDI to 8-bit chiptune. Just drag and drop your MIDI to this window, then click Authoring to export it.

Sound:

Bfxr - Generates manipulable sound effects with 8-bit style.

Free Audio Converter - I used it to convert WAV to MP3.