Partly saying we’re in, partly saying we’ve actually got a mechanic done!

We’re Foxbyte games (Plug: @FoxByteGames on twitter), we’ve just gotten set up this year and are working on our first game, but we’ve taken a weekends break to compete in the Jam!

Doing a kind of puzzley stealthy board gamey type thing where you have to dodge enemies (and if we get time, players) to survive by hiding in the shadows and changing time… or just using some good old fashioned ACME style traps. Oh and it’s in a room.

Actual mechanics

And adding rigidbodies because… well that.

Well, we are!

This time we’ll be using either:

Flash AS3 via Flashpunk or

Python with pygame and my own little library (not uploaded, will do at the end!)

Okay, getting close to one whole day programming, and I’ve just gotten in from a friends 18th… safe to say, i’m not in the best of shapes. The amount of times I’ve used backspace already testifies to that. So I’m signing off for today, carrying on programming in this state is just painful. So night ya’ll ludum darers!

Here’s a playable build of my game too, press space to jump! Clicky

Just spent the last 30 mins programming a cheat code system into my library, for the sole purpose of turning the player into a potato… pretty sure that’s a good use of time is it not?

Okay, so my first idea got a bit out of hand, having nothing to do with minimalism… so here’s idea two.

Endless runner, black background, grey square player, white square jumps. Simple, doable in the time I have left… just want to finish!

Obligatory twitch stream plug.

Well, I’ve got a basic idea, which is seeming more and more like geometry wars… but I’ll do something interesting.

Got a player who can move and rotate, with a weapon attached. Took so long to work out how to get the weapon to rotate with him… too long xD

And another plug for my twitch stream: http://www.twitch.tv/ben657/

NOTE: Does anyone else think the twitch stream feed on the site is a little unfair? The people who get up there first are getting more and more views since people are seeing those streams all the time, leaving any new streams without views… would it be better to maybe rotate them round on top?

Well it’s not the most inspiring theme for me… but I think I’ve got a pretty solid idea, so after sleeping in a couple hours I’m about to set off and get some stuff done!

Gonna be streaming most of the day here.

Well, I’ve been so wrapped up in preparation that I forgot to say I’m in!… And I am!

I’ll be using:

• HTML5 canvas
• JavaScript ultimately, but Typescript to write it
• My own little game lib to handle the boring stuff: SandLib

Well this time just didn’t seem to flow for me. Nothing went quite right, and for some reason AS3 is really starting to grate on me, so I’m leaving for now.

I did get a working prototype, but not near far enough to have something completed by the end of the time. Lots of fresh ideas flying round though, so I’ll be doing something post-compo for sure!

Well, things aren’texactly going swimmingly after a day… admittedly most of that day was spent playing games with friends stupidly, but anyway.

My main problem is why on earth did I think lots of customisation was a good idea for an LD entry? I mean mosfont time spent programming today was purely spent wrestling with how to add different paths of “Evilness” hitch I’m still not really certain on…

So I think tomorrow  it’s time to simplify. Do away with a lot of customisation, and just have the bare basics for something to enter. Shall definitely be picking this up after the compo ends though!

Happy day 2 everyone!

Only three hours to go!

But yeah, I’m in for my third LD, only the second of which I actually produced a game in.

I’ll be using either C# with unity, or AS3 and flashpunk. Depends what the theme is and what ideas I have really.

But it’s late here in the UK, so I’m hoping for a few hours of sleep before I get going a couple hours after the compo starts.

So good luck everyone!

Well everyone else is, so I thought I should do a quick post-mortem of my game since I didn’t do any blogging during the compo!

This is purely from my perspective, might be totally different from that of the other half of our team!

What went well?

Knowing our tools

We were working on two laptops, both loaded with everything we needed, and both of us know pretty much exactly what we were doing, AS3 and flashdevelop just seem to work. The flashpunk library was also a big help as always! This helped us to spend no time messing about getting obscure tools to work, we just coded away.

Constant testing

Suppose this could be a downfall too, but we spent a lot of time actually playing the game ourselves, which meant there aren’t really any gameplay bugs… just little things we forgot that would’ve added to it, but don’t break it. Also, staying at Connor’s (the other half of the team) house with his young brother and friends let us have a good stream of playtesters.

What went wrong?

Difference of opinion on the idea

Personally, I was going for a simpler, arena survival thing, whereas my team mate wanted a more story based evolution which went through different arena phases, we eventually settled on simple survival arena due to the time, but we could’ve done a lot more if we’d been clear from the beginning I think.

Having a party the day before

Speaks for itself really… Saturday morning was a bit of a fun one!

But hey, the game turned out pretty well, and it’s the first LD that  I’ve actually finished a  game and entered, so yey me! 😀

Go play it here!

After starting with one idea, then scrapping it, i’ve got a little level generator up and running, just some simple floating islands.

They obviously need a lot of tweaking to make them consistently nice, but it’ll do until i’ve got some actual gameplay up and running!

Press space to load a new island: Here

Well… I’m  in!

This will be first LD but i’ve followed it the last couple of times, so I have a rough idea of what i’m in for. I’ll be entering the Jam with one of my good friends doing some music for me. Really excited to see what the theme is, I’m wanting “evolution” at the moment.

Tools

Language: ActionScript

IDE: FlashDevelop

Libs: Flashpunk + PunkUI from the community

Music: My friend will most likely use FL studio

Graphics: Paint.NET with some photoshop for pretty effects

Good luck to everyone!