Ok here is my final entry. It is far from being polished but I am up for 17 hours 12 of which were programming… My brains are messy now

So no sounds, no bunch of planed effects and sleek interface… And output codes may not be forum friendly… Not time to test and debug but mostly game works.

Also sorry for English don’t have willpower to go and check if I did some mistakes and ofcourse there are bugs and glitches

But at least I did everything I wanted from mechanics point of view. Enjoy this game and share bugs and replays here plz.

Image

Links:

EXE file

Browser version

Source FLA and AS files

Well source codes. Half of the time I was waging war with interface which resulted in really messy structure and some bad dependencies. Also I go tired of commenting so I am not shore if it will be of any use to anyone

Used Box2DFlashAS3_2.0.1 and some my utilities of my own

So, I have another playable build of my work in progress available.

Play it here in your favorite browser

It now has an enemy ship wave manager so I can build out the Wall of Doom(tm) that you must escape through to rescue the last of your race.

I also took a suggestion to map the fleet pattern echeleons to the Z/X/C/V keys.. four patterns in all.

Give it a whirl if you’d like as I’d love to hear any feedback.  I’m trying to get absolutely as much of the gameplay done before screwing around with any graphics this time.  I think it is actually progressing really well for once!

The game just ends right now when all the enemy ships go by.  Also.. if you lose all your ships you have to refresh your browser to continue!

Gosh, I’m moving really slow. I’m going to have to start working harder.

My game is sort of playable. The game is about being on your deathbed, and in this build you can experience yourself slowly dying. You can focus your energy on different parts of your body by clicking, which has no effect right now except clicking on the brain, which slows down your death.

I guess you guys are going to want me to make this more GAMEY now. Fine. I’ll add points and crap. That’s coming up next.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE WORK IN PROGRESS IN YOUR BROWSER.

Good morning friends!

For anyone who feels like playing a very unfinished game, here’s the state of mine as of last night. The beginnings of the gameplay are there: notice now as you switch between your senses, sometimes you experience portions of the outside world. That’s what the deathbed experience is all about.

I have like 10 things on my list for the next 12 hours, so I better get to work.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE WORK IN PROGRESS IN YOUR BROWSER.

Here it is! Enjoy yourself!

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the progress of this, I won’t spoil it by telling you what it’s all about.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE FINAL GAME IN YOUR BROWSER.

Click here to download a Windows Executable + Source

Coded in ActionScript 3.0 with Tweenlite, with art drawn in Flash CS3, and sound created in sfxr.

Lack of motivation at the half way point means that I never did get around to art.  Also, the lack of playtesting makes me nervous.

But I think I have a pretty neat game.

Click here to play The Growth online.

Download the source + SFW.

Edit: If you can’t see the text (flash under linux?) please try this build with embedded fonts.

Hello,

I have Squeezemaze up on scratch’s site.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Mike_W/495022

It’s a java applet that runs it (technically the java applet runs a squeak interpreter) so I think windows, linux and Mac can play that version of it.

This is my second playable Flash prototype.

Try to draw the enemy spikes and red seeker boxes into the yellow mines for points. If you hit anything on screen you will take damage. Your energy recharges over time. If you lose all your energy it is game over.

SUMMARY

AVOIDAL page here on Ludum Dare (for rating and comments!)

Gameplay Trailer (watch me score 1.5 million points!)

Watch my TIMELAPSE

Play the LD48 Official Compo Version of AVOIDAL

Play the Post Compo Version

I had a lot of fun this Ludum Dare! After missing the past few it was good to participate again for sure. I’ve never done one of these post mortem entries but I enjoy reading the other ones people post so I thought I’d take a crack at it.

POST MORTEM

You can read my detailed post mortem below:

FRIDAY

I had an idea within two minutes of the theme announcement. This doesn’t always happen so I’m pretty excited.  I normally spend Friday night sleeping on the theme announcement after drawing a few mockups but this time was a bit different. I had an idea that I figured would be simple enough that I fired up photoshop and drew the following mockup:

I read over my notes and the concept felt solid for fun potential as well as being in line with the scope of a 48 hour competition. For my game studio work I typically develop within the 1 to 3 week time period but I’m familiar with the 48 hour marathon since I’ve competed in about 6 or more of these 2 day game competitions. I’ve also worked on learning my lessons (failures) well!

I refine the idea into a color mockup by doodling it again in photoshop:

You can see that I’ve got the basic enemy and player elements of the final game already in place. Spike and seeker type enemies. A large and silly player character that eventually becomes a stylized robot character. The gold stars as targets for the enemies to collide into.

Having fleshed the idea out more I’m ready to open up the Flash CS4 IDE and start implementing a graphical mockup:

Now the graphical assets above are all usable as initial art once I’m finished creating the mockup in Flash. It is a really cool thing about prototyping in an IDE like Flash that I can quickly put game logic into ActionScript 3.0 files behind each of those assets.

I work for about 3 more hours trying to get a first playable prototype. Getting the first playable prototype build is so crucial to iterating on the next part of the game that the earlier you can get feedback and play the game–the earlier you will be able to see how much more you need to implement. This couldn’t be more important than in a 48 hour game competition scenario.

I manage to post the following prototype build at 2am–four hours into the competition:

You can even play the first prototype here if you want to see what I started out with.

I was very happy with what I was able to come up with at this point. I was able to know that the game idea was solid and more importantly–already very fun!  I knew that I’d sleep well Friday night and was looking forward to beginning to iterate on Saturday with a good start in the competition.

Time spent at this point was four hours.

SATURDAY

I awoke Saturday morning after about 5 hours of sleep. I checked out the Ludum Dare blog and found that a few people had played my game already and had left some encouraging feedback. This was a big morale and motivational boost as it meant more than just myself found the game fun.  I also found I had been awarded two funny LD awards: One for “Flash prototyping like Flash!” by Zlash and a second “Silver Star for Prototyping goodness” by Tyler. Thanks guys–you really made my morning!

Now today I was also excited because I was going to be driving over to Portsmouth NH for an in person meetup with some other Ludum Dare participants I had never met before. I’ve been working on getting out more into the game community around the New England area and this was an excellent opportunity to meet some other people who enjoy making games.

We met up in an awesome cafe called “Me and Ollies” and found an entire downstairs community center with AC and wifi and plenty of nice seating!

That is me on the left and billkyne on the right.

Here is a short YouTube video filmed by Jonny D of the beginning of our meetup.

The meetup went really well. It was so refreshing to be able to see what others were working on and to just talk about game development and Ludum Dare related things. I also enjoyed the strange looks I got from others in the room when we would talk about our games to each other or when I would take photographs of my food:

I ended up getting less than four hours of work in on my game but the small lack of productivity was more than made up for by getting to meet Jonny D and billknye. I was able to post version two of my game from the cafe.

I had so much fun and was inspired to drive back home after 6pm to get cracking again on my game!

Once I got home I was finally able to decide on the name AVOIDAL for my game. It took me longer than normal to pick a name this time. I like picking out unique names as well as names that often have domain name availability.

Avoidal isn’t a real word but it is in use lightly on the internet and has Urban Dictionary entries strangely enough. I decide that the low Google search noise will allow my game to eventually place well in search results for Avoidal.

I discover that avoidal.com was available and I register it and quickly setup some HTML and CSS in place on my sever to hold the eventual competition game entry. Why go through this extra effort? I enjoy crafting the entire experience for the player and I like the elegance of the idea of having my competition entry hosted on a dedicated, short, and memorable domain.

Having prepared the final destination for my game I get back to work on the actual game itself. Here is a screenshot from version three:

I spend some of Saturday night implementing SWFStats gameplay analytics. I love using an analytics package like SWFStats so I can start getting valuable aggregated play testing data to help improve the game as early as possible. It allows me to track custom metrics like average scores over the various difficulty levels and highest chain multipliers reached. Stats like that help me see graphs of what the difficulty curve is and make intelligent decisions about the mechanics and settings. I can also analyze play length data and number of views versus plays to see if my game is holding player interest or not.

I then focus on getting the bulk of the menus and game flow logic in place. I know from past competitions that once Sunday rolls around my brain will be a chaotic and spastic place. I like to handle all the mundane things like online highscores implementation, preloader and initializer, game over screens, game state tracking, main menus, pause menus, sound mute widgets and all the other miscellaneous ephemera that goes into making a polished game. I enjoy putting a high level of polish into my games so it helps to still be fresh when I implement these things.

All told I put about four hours into my game getting all the non-gameplay stuff in place. I know that tomorrow will be reserved for final tuning, final graphics, sound effects, and music composition. I am preparing myself mentally for what I know will be a long day. I head off to bed and plan on getting another 5 hours of sleep.

That brings my Saturday development hours in at this point at about 8 and 12 total for the competition so far.

SUNDAY

Final day and I am PUMPED!  There is so much left to do to bring AVOIDAL to life and it’s time to get going.

I start off by redesigning the mine asset:

Those white spikes will become projectiles that eventually fly off if the player let’s the mine explode before destroying it. Those spikes also do the most damage of any of the enemies in the game.  I want the player to be motivated to destroy the mines with the other enemies so I do two things. First the the chain multiplier goes up each time you destroy a mine. A mine has a lifespan and will eventually explode if left alone for too long. When it explodes it releases the projectiles as well as resets the chain multiplier.  The second motivation for the player is that when the mines explode the spikes move pretty fast and in eight directions so they can be quite deadly. I’m hoping that this will be another aspect of excitement and tension in the game.

In order to get my coordinate offsets and angles correct I draw the following mockup:

This will let me spawn the mine tips at the correct coordinates when the mine detonates so that it will be a seamless visual effect of the tips of the mine sprite flying off. It ends up working quite well and my Sunday is off to a productive start.

I then go through and revamp all the graphics replacing all the placeholder art.  I pick new colors for some things while others remain more or less the same. I put in animations for most of the assets.

I then spent some time to tackle the main character design:

On the left is the placeholder art for the character from the prototype. Next to that is the character I had doodled in my original mockup. I still wanted to capture the light-hearted and goofy feel of that doodle instead of the cool mathematics of the pentagon.

I initially drew the third image overtop of the original sprite in the Flash IDE. This was so I would have the dimensions be equivalent so that gameplay wouldn’t change. I couldn’t get a freehand style I liked that I felt blended in well with the polygonal style I was already working with.

I scrapped the third freehand concept and started using basic primitives to sculpt out what would eventually become the little flying robot. I even sort of think of him in my mind as being named Avoidal.

Once I saw him animated I knew that I was happy with how I captured my original intentions with the doodle of the little flapping guy with the target on his chest.

I now had all my final art in place:

When I wasn’t working on the final art for my game I was playing it as much as I could and posted two more playable builds to get player feedback and start working out balance and difficulty issues.

Here is version four and version five for reference.

Now at this point I’ve been working since about 7:30am Sunday morning and I’m starting to really feel it. I find myself zoning off into space and starting to lose track of my train of thought.

I realize that I need to grab a quick dinner since I only have less than three hours remaining in the competition and there is still final menu polish, sound effects and music to create! I run out and grab some pizza and come back and inhale it. I didn’t even have time to take a photo because at this point the game is clearly the priority for me.

It may sound weird but participating in Ludum Dare competitions over the years has really helped me to remain cool under pressure when developing. When I feel the brain-tightening stress start I remember to relax and breathe in and out. I then refocus and keep working. I find using an online todo list web app really helps me stay on track.

With just a few hours remaining in the competition I fire up the web version of SFXR and start cranking out sound effects like a machine. During this part I keep a list of sound assets I need and the game playing in the background. I tab back and forth between SFXR and my game in the browser and imagine what kinds of sounds I am going for.

Then it is a frenzied mashing of buttons and hoping I get lucky on the randomize feature. I really love this part in that it feels like I’m fishing and I don’t know what I will catch.  I score some really lucky hits on randomize as well as some old standbys from the more normal themed buttons. I import them into Flash and tie them in with code. I even take the time to add some nice stereo panning to applicable sound effects based on sprite screen location.

I also have been taking care of various other tiny polish items from my todo list. I wanted to get a slight left and right lean to the robot sprite when the player is moving quickly back and forth. I also wanted to make sure to add an instructions screen in the event that someone gets stumped and actually decides to read the instructions (hardly ever happens I know…)

I now have less than 45 minutes remaining and I fire up Reason and use my Alesis midi keyboard to layout a quick menu chiptune loop.  I compress it into MP3 and put it in place in the game.

Holy crap only 15 minutes remains to do final screenshot and upload. I’m sort of a purist in I like to have my game fully submitted by the deadline. I managed to get everything filled out in the form and turned in with 5 minutes to spare.

Now comes the relief knowing that I’M FINISHED.

Total time spent on Sunday was over 14 hours–phew what a crunch!

Total game time spent developing was 26 hours. I’m getting faster…

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’m really quite pleased with how my game came out and my weekend in general. I feel lucky to have come up with such a simple and fun idea very early in the competition. I had a playable prototype so early it really let me focus on polishing the heck out of this little game and putting in all the normal bells and whistles I’d put into a releasable Flash game from my studio. This has been my most successful Ludum Dare yet–now I just have to see how other players like it!

I have to really pump myself up sometimes to participate in something as demanding as the marathon that is Ludum Dare. I almost want to collapse or feel like I might vomit sometimes from the amount of strain and wear that hits me after working 25-35 hours straight over the two days.

Why do I do it then?

Despite the wear and tear it is just an amazing concept to participate in a global event with so many other passionate game developers. I have a strong sense of competitive spirit and I like the opportunity to demonstrate my skills and love for game development. I like feeling the inertia of 100s of other game developers trying their best and simultaneously creating awesome games!

Ludum Dare really teaches me how to distill a game down into what is critically important and make hard decisions about features and scope that I have found I can apply outside of the stringent competition to my normal game studio work.

I started my independent studio and returned to game development largely because of participating in Ludum Dare a few years ago. It will always hold a dear place in my heart because of putting me back in touch with mychildhood dream of game creation. I’m just glad it clued me into what a great game development movement was going on that I was unaware of.

I can’t wait to play all the other games here!

MY LINKS

AVOIDAL page here on Ludum Dare (for rating and comments!)

Gameplay Trailer (watch me score 1.5 million points!)

Watch my TIMELAPSE

Play the LD48 Official Compo Version of AVOIDAL

Play the Post Compo Version

I am pleased to present the final version of AVOIDAL. It has gone through heavy changes since my last post-compo post.

I’ve been working very hard on it since Ludum Dare concluded and have put about 30 more hours of work into it (or about 50 or so total on this game so far.) I wanted to be able to get this finished in time to submit to August’s Experimental Gameplay Project since I was aware of their theme of “Zero Buttons” while I worked on this and I was able to do it!

Big thanks to Sparky who has given me a TON of invaluable feedback and ideas while tweaking this final version.

The menu should read v1.0.7 or greater in the top-left or your cache is old.

RECENT VERSION HISTORY

v1.0.7 – Posted 8/30/2010

• Made HUD a little less cluttered

v1.0.6 – Posted 8/30/2010

• Combo introduced and capped to x5 multiplier
• Mines now can start moving around at higher levels
• New “Mine Streak” bonus awards at 10,25,50,75,100,150,200
• New menu layout
• Tracks local highscore, highest streak and difficulty for local replayabilty and challenge
• More sounds added for new notices and awards

v1.0.5 – Posted 8/30/10

• New visual effect and sound effect for when a spike hits a mine (to differentiate and add variety from when a seeker hits a mine)
• Smoother angled robot effect when mouse moves left and right
• Smoke toned down to be less distracting
• Mine lifespan increased at beginning to 6 seconds instead of 4
• Added a 10 frame damage image to the robot torso to also help show player health
• Adjusted game to run at 60FPS instead of 30FPS
• Smoke now appears behind player sprite
• Fixed score bug

v1.0.4 – Updated 8/29/10

• More changes to difficulty curve based on feedback
• Added Animation on How To Play screen to easily explain game mechanics instead of having as much text to read

IT’s an  MMO* made with node.js/backbone/three.js/tween.js/underscore/…

… and all the good parts of javascript.

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12078

What is it all about?

You are in charge of an evergrowing world in a universe full of evergrowing discs.
But growth comes at a terrible price.

In the advent of your great growth-inducing politics the general disc-populace grows weary of overpopulation and overproduction.
You decide to take the best way forward.
WAR.
War against the unknowingly weak non-blue discs.
Carefully you plan your next aquisitions while balancing your infrastructure spendings with your investitions in green energy and hauntingly large disc-machines of war.

What does work:

• Support for up to 51.00000000000002 players
• Planets indicate their current production capacity by growing
• Planets may revolt (red tint)
• Military and a good investition in green technology help to overcome riots.
• Attacking

What doesn’t work:

• There is no chat or ranking.
• You cannot transfer your all-killing-war-machines to a friendly planet
• If you tab out there is a high chance your browser might die.
• Simulation is a bit rough. Hadn’t had time to make animations
• Same for graphics.
• Player starting positions can be compromised from time to time. If you can’t grow your disc: reload the page

Oh, and the code is horrible. Iam not uber experienced and furthermore obviously needed to reassure myself that Diablo3 won’t ever become a game i could be happy with.

Thanks for your time. Have a blast!

If you still haven’t played it yet, here is a screen with lots of circles for you.

f this s. iam going to be a potato!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12078

*at least in a realtivély tiny world it would be a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE experience. Here it’s somewhat of a medium scale multiplayer app.

So I didn’t even know I was going to be able to participate in this Ludum Dare because of other things going on, but I knew I’d be travelling all day on Sunday and I happened to get an idea for a very small game on Saturday night.

My entry was created over the course of 8 hours and involved traveling through four states, on three different types of trains and one bus!

I am so glad the theme was one which supported a heavily constrained timeline.

Use the left and right arrow keys to avoid the blocks!

You can play Squeezed Out in your web browser and it has online leaderboards if you’re into competition with other players.

Here is the link to the compo entry page for feedback or voting.

I made a quick and dirty userscript that displays a “Performance” graph on all user pages. For example, mine looks like this:

The script can be found here.

To install in Chrome, download the script, go to Tools | Extensions, and drag the downloaded script into the page. To install in Firefox, use Greasemonkey. To install in other browsers, do something else.

Let me know how it works for you guys.

In this post I’ll present to you how I take the decision of make this game, how I deal with (many) problems, why I enjoy the results and what is my next steps after my participation Ludum Dare 28.

But you can play the game here first

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Everything! I decide to participate in Jam mode, but I want to participate in Compo. A programmer want to participate with me and them I decide to call one friend who is a artist to help us with the assets.

After our brainstorm, we decide to make a game about Trust. In the game you can trust only in one person, and the idea of the game is make the player survive in the middle of a bunch of assassins wanting more money.

The idea comes from the programmer, and unfortunelly he decide to give up in the second LD day. The artist have issues with his PC, and start to work only in Sunday, and I take a day trying to write a story about trust with many choices. Sounds hard even when you try to imagine such a thing. The wost thing in my opinion is the programmer don’t warn anyone about he’s give up. So the artist take all the Sunday night to make the characters sprites… and we can’t use it.

My first failure was let the theme be accepted (my sugestion involoving beer), and after I make it harder in the game mechanics. The withdrawal of the programmer is expected, so I made a plan B: a text-based game with my script done.

My second failure is that I’m not a good writer. I can tell some stories but not using only words, specially in english. This game makes me training my english a little, but I believe it was too earlier to make a text-based game like this. At least I’ll try to write more stories.

And finally, people don’t like to read, and I write a lot in this game. My story have this problem: have too text and nothing seen very important. I will try to improve this storytelling ability.

WHAT WENT RIGHT?

The visual for a text-based is AWESOME, i admit it. This experience I got from another game that I made in September, which this same developer let this job to me to do and take vacations.

You can play it here, but it’s only in Portuguese

This experience help me a lot in the visual concepts and ideas. I also have to say thanks for my girlfriend and his sister to help me with the intro video. The video gives to the game a good visual effect that I particularly like in the Start Menu.

With the grammatical errors, I have the help of @TomoAllTheWay, a nice guy who make the copywriting for me. I also have the help of Christina Nordlander to some basic errors that I let it pass. Advices about how the story fails in trying to give the player care with the characters was received too and I want to study more about this technique.

But one think that surprise me a lot it was Twine. This text-based engine is so good to make games, that I take two days to learn it and do the game. I also learn how to use the CSS to control the background and how to improve the game with audio. There’s a lot of things on the internet that you can use with Twine to make a better visual to your game.

The most important lesson that I learned in this LD is: the game sometimes can reflect the reality you live. I try to trust in someone to make a game with me. I let another programmer out of the group to let this one make the development as he want, and yet he doesn’t. I let he decide the theme, and yet he simply give up. Meanwhile when I need someone to make a video in Sunday night, my girlfriend make it. When I need a copywriting Tomo decide to help me. In his work. Choose wisely when you gonna trust in your jobs.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Christmas, New Year’s promisses and a lot of work to do in January. I’ll decide my path and simply do it. And you, play the game. It’s harder to do this text-based game than you think.

That’s how our space exploration idle game looks like at the moment. You will be able to manage ressource and population production, research space travel and discover new stuff!

Lorries in SPAAAAACE! is an interplanetary haulage management game. Buy space-lorries, and send them off to buy and sell goods between various planets. There’s no real goal yet, but I’ll be putting one in tomorrow, all being well.

The game’s not done yet – I’ve decided to go for the 72hour jam rather than the compo, but the game’s done enough for people to play it (Unity web player). Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

I went through each theme and wrote up a game idea or a reason why I don’t like the theme: http://deathraygames.tumblr.com/post/142775660982/final-theme-voting-for-ldjam-ld35-and-my

7 green, 5 yellow, 8 red. I’m excited that there are quite a few good themes on the list!

In case it wasn’t obvious: I’m in. It will be my 11th consecutive Ludum Dare. I guess that makes me a veteran?

I’ll be working with my usual toolset:

• JavaScript, HTML, CSS, all written in a Sublime editor and tested in Chrome.
• For artwork I’ll be trying to do it all in Pickle (I loved Pickle 1, so I recently bought Pickle 2; I’ve seen a lot of bugs in it so far, but it’s too late to switch editors now).
• Libraries: probably just my open source RocketBoots set of game-building tools, with jQuery, and possibly another OSS js library if I get experimental.
• Sound/Music: Maybe bfxr for a few sounds, but it’s probably better off if I don’t attempt music and leave it quiet.

I’m also going to try to take on the additional challenge of limiting myself to 64 pixels x 64 pixels for the low rez game jam. I’m also excited to try out this color palette that I’ve admired for a while. We’ll see how it goes…

Good luck to everyone!

Spellbound is now playable on browser. Check it out here!