Ludum Dare 23 Compo Entry is up!

Play the game HERE.

Blast the Mega-Spheres into nonexistence to save the miniature Trivials from extinction!

There is some happy up-beat music for the menu and the gameplay! Try it out!

Timelapse coming soon!

I am tired.

Here is playable build v04 to check out. Use arrow keys to start the level and move around. Avoid everything silver/metal. Get to the SAFE-T zone marked in stripes. Each hit on silver/metal costs 1 second penalty on your clock. Simple score idea will just be to complete the levels in quickest time. I’ll design multiple risk/reward paths along the way. Having way too much fun with Unity!

Play dat shit here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=3430

A young dinosaur tries to integrate into human society by starting a transportation business. However, navigating around town is difficult when you’re the size of a house! Try not to break things while getting passengers to where they want to go. However, sometimes passengers don’t feel the need to support your business and run off without paying! Then it’s rampage time, BREAK THINGS!

Controls:
Arrow keys/WASD: Move
Space bar: Jump
Escape: Exit
Other stuff is told ingame.

Timelapse coming soon.

Yes, the double birthday surprise party went very well ! But that was far away from home, so… I’m in ! Ahem.. There’s only 6 hours and 21 minute left, I had time to discover the LD48 theme “Tiny World” on saturday evening, and one day almost to think about. So that’s up to me now to do something with it, and mostly create what I’ve got in my mind. Time will tell if I can succeed here. I have one screenshot from the first 5 minutes (yes, there is something to see) :

And I can share one more thing with you : the title of my game begins with the letter “W”. See you soon ! (very. soon.)

Here is another playable build of my Unity game. Arrow keys move. Try to reach ‘safe-t” zone. Nothing happens if you do yet. Got a shitty main menu implemented and got sparks and push back force occurring when you impact any of the silver areas. I’m having a lot of fun with my first Unity game even if the progress is slow, that is kind of to be expected.

I should also implement more gameplay at some point. And yes, that hand is awful I am sorta bad at 3D art.

Sorry I haven’t been able to make a post until now! My game is a first person shooter (What a surprise!) where the goal is to save the miniature Trivials from the Mega-Spheres!

Here’s a screenie from the first day:

Day 2:

Day 3:

Switched from a hex grid to a square grid because six relations would be overwhelming for the player to keep track of. I’m using the RagePixel plugin to create all the art inside Unity. So far I haven’t corrupted my tileset but I’m using git to regularly backup my work just in case. Next I’m going to get drag and dropping citizens working. I’m still working out how relationships to other tiles will actually work mechanically.

Here is a screenshot from my current game build. Basic concept is you are a loose electron lost in various circuit board levels trying not to touch anything that will short you to ground. This screenshot represents a current proof of concept. You can’t touch those solder points or wires and you can use the ramp to reach that safety zone.

I’m just focusing on having fun this compo and learning Unity by using a simple and small enough game idea that I might be able to pull something off.

NavMesh & Agents was a breeze to add. See this link for a quick tutorial. Also that blue looks cool, I might add something in that style.

Some kind of progress. Seems like the movement is working too, if a bit jerky.

Texture is from my photowalk this morning:

https://plus.google.com/115369982511844801329/posts/ERW1MdC2T6B

“Oh, really?” my friends would say. “You wanna join Ludum Dare 23 jam? Aren’t you too young for real compo?”
Yep, I propably am. And? It start in 10 hours, I’m gonna make a game or just try to make it – keep it simple.

Was thinking about trying a new framework like Slick2D or Flashpunk but I think I’ll stick to what I know best, which is Unity. I’m going to focus mostly on gameplay this time around but I hope to get around to making some great pixel art. RagePixel seems like what I’ll use the most.  I just picked up my first iPad today so I’ll try to make something suitable for the platform; playable in the web browser too of course.

• Code: Unity 3D (C# & MonoDevelop; Mobile Basic license)
• RagePixel (warning: it’s a bit buggy)
• iTween
• fg2D
• Planning:Paper or Procreatefor sketching
• Art:Pixen and/or Blender (RagePixel plugin too)
• Audio: Audacity + microphone & BFXR

I will try to post updates on Twitter and G+ regularly.

So yeah, I’m planning to enter LD23, although we’ll see how far I actually get.

Going to be using Unity with Boo, and possibly any useful libraries that I find along the way. Graphics will be a mixture of Blender and Paint.net Sound will either be me shouting down a microphone or sfxr.

I may or may not also use a little personal library I’ve written, for editing, saving and loading into game a 3D tileset based level. At some point it might be nice to make this a tool others can use, but right now it is undocumented, under-commented and almost completely free of sanitization, so you can break it very easily, so I suggest that nobody as much touches it. In keeping with the rules however, here is an unordered collection of Boo classes.

I’ve only got one Unity game under my belt so far, and tat was hardly stellar, so wish me luck!

I’ll be rocking:

Code: Unity(C#) + EX2D(if 2d)

Graphics: PyxelEdit or GraphicsGale or Paint.Net or Spriter Beta (haven’t decided yet)

Sound:  BFXR + (PXTone or iNudge)

Listening To: Dubstep or Brown Noise

Drinking: Whisky

Aiming for the ”Ballmer Peak”

Lets do this.

So after wanting to take part the last two times but being unable to due exams and other stuff, this time I do actually have a weekend where I am free.

Tools:

Programming : Unity or Haxe (not decided yet)

Libraries : If I go with Haxe I will be using Haxepunk + NME, with Unity I will probably only use ragepixel.

Graphics: Gimp

Sound : Sfxr

Hey Guys,
So I’m in. duh

My tools of choice are once again Unity and my trusty guitar. I won’t be using WolframTones again, as it’s results proved too similar too others.

*Frantic Announcer-Voice* How will this Ludum-Dare go? Will Boxy the Space-Cat survive it?! Or will unspeakable things happen to her?!

Tune in next week to find out.

-Matthew

(here’s the game with Boxy, btw)

This will be my first game jam, and hopefully also my first non-mod, non-prototype game.

This Week

1. Warming up, which will essentially be testing out tools and techniques I don’t have enough experience with.
2. Speeding up my laptop
3. Some university related stuff
4. Cooking (healthy) food for 48 hours
5. Explaining my girlfriend why I’m doing this (and not going out with her)

My Tools

• Building: Unity
  I’ve been using Unity for 2 years now, and I still like it. Luckily I have a Pro version that I can use, which has some nice new features like pathfinding, an awesome particle system tool and of course dynamic lightning. Not sure if I will use any of those, but it’s good to have.
• Coding: MonoDevelop
  Unity comes with MonoDevelop, Unity is partly integrated with it, the auto-complete is nice and I’m used to it, so I will be using it to code my C# scripts.
• Music: LMMS
  Sound, and therefore music, is the only thing I have no experience with, so I will have to practice it a lot before I start. I also have to find some nice VSTs which I can use. I do know something about music so I hope I can produce something worthy.
• Sound: Audacity
  When I have to do something with sound, which rarely happens, I use Audacity. I will probably be recording sounds with my smartphone and/or laptop microphones, and I know how to remove things like noise with this tool. Also editing and looping sound works pretty nice with this free tool.
• Graphics:Photoshop
  I love Photoshop, I have been using it from time to time in the past 10 years, I’m far from a pro but I know my way around in it. And, most importantly, it works really awesome with my Wacom.
• Modelling: Blender
  I usually use 3ds Max for 3D modelling, but I only have a student license for this, so I use Blender as substitute. Since the new interface I no longer really hate it, but I do not have a numpad on my laptop… Anyway, I want to try to make a 2D game, so I won’t use it extensively. Otherwise I will have to fall back to good ol’ 3ds Max.
• Motivation: Spotify
  I always work with music on. (Unless I’m doing hard mathematics) I usually listen to a few styles, sorted by requirement: For creativity: death metal, progressive metal and prog. rock. For speed: drum ‘n bass, deadmau5 (yes, that’s a genre) and industrial. For inspiration: minimal classical music. And for relaxation: Eddie Vedder, Foo Fighters, Muse, or any of my other favourite bands, that no longer need attention (because I know every single tone).
• Communication: Twitter - This Blog
  I never tweet, but I would love to give updates and give answers to questions. (Not that I would know why you would do that.) Follow: “@Siewart_”. I will be posting some blog posts as well, because the process of creating a game is awesome, inspirational and informative. (It’s also nice to look back when you are done)
• Timelapse: Chronolapse
  Everyone seems to do it, so I will do it as well. Also: I love timelapses .

My hardware:

• My old HP Elitebook 8530w (Dual-Core 2.8Ghz, 4GB, Quadro FX770M);
• Samsung Galaxy S2 (Ice Cream Sandvich);
• Wacom Intuos 3;
• A random mouse;
• Hopefully a keyboard

Warm-up
For my warm-up a theme generator gave me a (cliché-ish) theme: Post-Apocalyptic Steam Punk. But I vowed to use it so I will.

Basic idea: A 2D sidescroller where you have to use nuclear waste to mutate plants, animals and NPCs in order to solve puzzles involving steam engines. Don’t know if I have enough time for something like this, but I want to go through the whole process once so I might make one short level, without tutorial. I will post it when it’s done, if it’s done.

One last thing
One last thing: Good luck and above all, have fun, my dear opponents!

After watching Notch make Prelude of the Chambered and Minicraft, I decided that i am inspired enough to try to participate a competition!

Who am I? I am just another Unity dude out there, with a specific passion for basic geometic shapes (my poor modeling skills also contribute on this) and pixellated stuff. I mainly program in JavaScript, but I’ve learned that C# is much more complete un Unity. Lately I’ve been playing with Jurassic to implement a modding API, with no success. Maybe after some forced exercise I’ll catch the train (not sure if this expression exists in English). I guess i should follow those posters below and post my workspace.

Yes, there is a mrror behind my screen.

It’s a kind of average gaming computer. I like to play games and code stuff (mostly obnoxiously useless tests) and play with physics.

If anyone wants to see what I’ve made, visit my site.

I spent the day “working” on my warm-up MiniLD32.  I have the general design done, it’s a sort of gopher smash on the head game, except you are on a float throwing beads and doubloons at people in the crowd instead on hitting them on the head.  I was going to use Orthello2D with Unity but after some hair pulling figure out it hasn’t been update to 3.5.  Then, I started figuring out how 2D Toolkit worked, but it dawned on me an hour or so in that I couldn’t use that in a Ludum Dare because I can’t share all the code.  So, then I started floundering around trying to get some basic things working a la from scratch.  After Google-ing some problem I ended up watching 3 hours of YouTube Unity tutorials.  So, a most successful warm-up so far, as long as you think of warm-ups as making all the mistakes you can’t afford to during the actual Ludum Dare.  I’m headed to bed now, but I could still have something playable by the end of the day tomorrow, stress on the could.