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)

I have a good feeling about this LD. I missed the last one so I’m going to make up for it this time with extra awesomeness. It’s a 4-day weekend here in the UK, thanks to some guy getting married or something, so I’ll have extra time to get my environment, tools and libraries ready beforehand, maybe get some food in the fridge in preparation, etc. And on the Monday I’ll be able to do that jam thing that all the cool kids are doing these days. It’ll be fun to see how far the momentum takes me, post-deadline.

My toolset:

• nano – yeah I code in nano. Shut up.
• Myrmidon – a PyOpenGL-based 2D framework by Fiona
• pythonutils – a small collection of miscellaneous util functions I wrote
• py2exe – creates standalone Windows exe from a python program.
• Graphics Gale – still my favourite pixel editor for animation. Luckily it works reasonably in Wine
• The GIMP – open-source paint program
• Rosegarden – an open-source sequencer I’m still getting to grips with
• sfxr – MSPaint for sound
• Audacity – sound editor for cleaning up stuff
• PyCatcher – for making a timelapse. Fiona fixed it!
• Lots of paper – for brainstorming

And some rules I’m laying down for myself, to help avoid the mistakes of previous attempts at this:

• Prepare – I’m going to make sure I get enough sleep beforehand
• Keep it simple – I’m going to pick an idea that I believe I could make in half a day, and if I really have it done by then, I’ll give it some serious polish
• Don’t be clever – I’m not going to try too hard to be clever with the theme or to invent a whole new genre
• Suppress desire for clean code – I decided after the last competition that I would put less focus on code quality
• Make it fun – I’m going to put more focus on tweaking my gameplay until it plays well
• Make time for audio – I never get any sounds or music done. But this time will be different!

Hello to all of the Paint .NET users out there.  Are you struggling when trying to create animations in Paint .NET?  I used to feel the same way, so I created the Sprite Sheet Animation helper plugin. I’ve used it the last couple of LDs and it has proven to be quite helpful to me.

Download the zip file, unzip it, and drop the dll into the Effects folder where your Paint .NET installation lives and get to animating. Download the plugin here.  For instructions on its use, check out this video tutorial (it is not for the latest version but everything is still valid).

just an FYI, I released a tool to help with texturing 3D models recently, there’s a free version and it may help with your ludum dare weekend if you find you normally spend too long texturing your 3D models.

Video (of an old and broken version, but shows how it works):

Some things I textured:

click for fullsize

also click for fullsize

> Click here for the website <

…HERE I COME. So original.

Following my success in MLD#22 (yah), I shall be going for LD#19. The time is (as for many) just right – end of the year, no stuff to do…

Also, let’s keep up this random tradition of saying what tools shall who-ever use, shall I?

• CODE – AS3.0 – Flash CS5
• GRAPHICS – Vector – Flash CS5
• GRAPHICS – Bitmap (maybe) – Photoshop CS5
• SOUND – … digital? – sfxr / as3sfxr / MICROPHONE (yeah, I am a beatboxe… oh whatever)
• MUSIC – ambient – Logic Studio 9 (if I will have enough time for that)
• IDEAS – neural – mHEADmod3.599 (meannetSim)
• NOTES – verbal – Text Edit 9.5321.12348g (MOST RECENT)
• COMMUNICATIONS – cut – EVERYWHERE
• COMPUTER – good – iMac
• okay, i will stop

Timelapse is coming, but I wonder if I will continue using that lame Gawker… It crashed trice the last time, so I lost like an hour or more of material… I HAVE iShowU but I can not find any way to make it record time lapsing… Ideas?