Hello LDers!

I finished processing/uploading the timelapse for my entry, flipper:

The timelapse represents only ~14h of footage. Give or take some 2~3 hours that I may have forgotten to capture, I worked less than 17 hours throughout the weekend. I’ve made a previous post about how I felt through most of Saturday. That somewhat explains why I slacked off so much.

Still, another point was probably that I couldn’t see how to implement the main mechanic properly. I originally had thought about making a game like Umihara Kawase, but whenever you tried to leave the room it would flip in some direction.

Even after implementing the grapple mechanic, I still somewhat lacked motivation to finish. The game IS quite broken, and it would only be another bad game on my list of LD entries. At least, the game is so badly broken that you can enter walls by using the hook… which enables finishing the game in a few seconds. 😀 (since I’m really into speedruns, this is a plus)

But finishing something and submitting it to Ludum Dare is so much fun that I was able to motivate myself and finish it. Now, looking back at the game, I’m really happy with how it came out (given how little I worked on it) and I’m considering further developing that mechanic some other time (and in another game).

But now, on to play, rate and comment and your games!

Last night, and during most of yesterday, I was considering skipping this LD.

Today, however, I felt motivated to keep going. So, yeah! I should still be able to submit… something. XD

On to implement the grapple mechanic and then a simple level.

This has been an unusual LD for me. I want to try to figure out what I’m going to do and share with y’all why I’ve barely made anything. I apologize if it comes out as a rant.

I’m usually really keen to take part of the compo and give it my best. At the same time, I don’t really care with the results. I’m really in for the complete experience: *slaughtering themes, voting, making a game and playing/commenting on all your awesome games. (*yeah, I’ve always skipped the suggestion phase…)

I also enjoy the aspect of putting down my current project/whatever for sometime and try doing something new and/or different. It’s always great to see how much I’m able to accomplish in a single weekend.

And there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to break my streak… I’ve been able to successfully enter a new game every compo, even when I trashed my previous idea late during the first day and would be away for most of the second.

This time, however, I haven’t been able to fully focus from the beginning.

It started with the theme. I was pretty disappointed with it and couldn’t come up with any usable idea before going to sleep (the theme was announced at midnight, here). The following morning, I woke up even before the alarm rang, only so less time was “wasted” sleeping…

The idea I was able to come up with was quite… weak. The theme felt unnecessary and the game could work just fine without it. (The game was also a bad ripoff of another game’s mechanic.) But I don’t want to ignore it. I feel that ignoring the theme is ignoring a big part of the event. Also, if I were to ignore the theme and make anything, why not simply work on my current project? That would be more productive, but it would also mean skipping the event… This thought kept looming around, and was a big factor on my procrastinating through most of the day.

I still think I have more than enough time to wrap up my current entry. It wouldn’t be as polished as it could had been, but it would be something. But then, I get caught up on these thoughts…

• I don’t want to force myself to finish the game for the sake of finishing it
• But I don’t want to skip an event
• At the same time, I want to prove to myself that I am able to overcome all that and finish something
• and so on…

Well… I don’t know. I’m off to sleep. I’ll leave the decision (to continue or to give up) to my future, rested self. (who’ll probably be in a better mood…)

As many others, I didn’t really like this theme… but I finally found a way to use it that I like:

You are trapped in a mystical mansion/castle/whatever. Every rooms looks exactly the same, except mirrored. Find every gem on every room to escape.

To take that idea further, I’m thinking about using something like the grapple mechanic from Umihara Kawase:

Let’s see how this works out.

(Or day ‘0.5’, if you like 0-indexed better)

Good morning, LDers!

I just woke up and got back to working on my entry! Come watch me at https://www.twitch.tv/gfm123!

So far, I’ve got some ideas I could work with, but nothing that really took my interest (or that I know how to make interesting). Update: Writing devlogs is great! As I wrote this post, I was able to decide on a game idea! _o\ \o\ \o/ /o/ /o_

After the theme announcement, I started to write a list of topics within the theme:

• Floppy disk
• Colossi
• Egypt / Pyramids
• Wheel
• “Dumbphone” (i.e., a regular, “non-smart” one)
• 14-Bis
• Paper / Book
• Nintendo’s GameBoy
• Sega Genesis
• Trojan Horse (i.e., the Wooden Horse)
• Terracotta Army
• The Great Wall

Some of the items weren’t really technology (like The Great Wall), but it was a start… From those, I wrote a few short “pitches” for games:

• Paper / Book: You have an assignment due tomorrow, but the internet is down! Run to the nearest library and finish your research!
• Colossi (I): You find an strange mountain/monument emitting a mysterious light. As you climb it, you discover that it’s a colossus from ancient times…
• Egypt / Pyramids: Use your magical staff to lift and throw stones from the river to your pyramid-builder-partner, who must be able to catch the stones mid-flight and build a proper pyramid.
• Terracotta Army / The Great Wall: Scrapped, as it wasn’t related to ancient technologies.

Then, while writing this post, I had another idea:

• Colossi (II): There are mysterious shrines through a field. Upon climbing mysterious floating islands, you place magical lens onto burning glasses, lighting sacred fire on the shrines. Through this ritual, the colossus wakes up from its slumbers and… (?)

The shrines could be part of the colossus, and the end of the game may be a playable cutscene with the shrines floating into the air and becoming the colossus… I liked the idea of playing with lighting a lot, so I’ll probably start tomorrow by prototyping some pseudo-lighting mechanics. It would be great if my framework already supported custom shaders, but it’ll fun trying to move past this limitation.

Now, I’m off to sleep!

See you guys soon! o/

It’s already that time of the year, again… I’m really looking forward to take part of another Ludum Dare and to play lots of great games! 😀

Once again, I’ll be joining the compo. My tools haven’t changed for the past few events, but here’s the list:

• Language: C
• Library: GFraMe (2.1.0, which will be merged into master later today)
• Music: c_synth (1.0.2b)
• SFX: sfxr/bfxr
• Editor: Vim
• Tilemap editor: Tiled
• Timelapse: Chronolapse
• Image editor: GIMP
• Beverage:Coffee, as always =D
• OS: Ubuntu 14.04
• Streaming: Open Broadcaster Software
• Base game resolution: 320×240 (I like this res… don’t ask…)

I’ll try to stream during most of the compo. I’ve done that for the last few ones and its was quite fun and interesting… You will find my stream on Twitch.

See you guys tomorrow. Have fun!

Hello LDers!

This LD was quite different from what I’m used. I had a few short slices of time in which I could work on my entry through the weekend, until I was finally able to work almost 10 hours straight on Sunday’s afternoon (the only part of the jam that I did timelapse).

Here’s briefly what went right/wrong:

What went right

• I finished something
• I used the theme on the narrative (in a way that I rarely do)
• Even though running out of time, I was able to explain the theme in-game
• Graphics were done quickly and (mostly) smoothly
  • Also, the flapping of the evil fairy!
• I was able to do three (pretty simple) variations for the game’s theme song

What went wrong

• The idea was too big for the time I had (less than 24 hours)
• Everything is as rough and unpolished as possible
• Gameplay is really dumb
• I was away from my battle station until mid-day, on Sunday

And here’s the timelapse, taken for around half the time I worked on the game.

Later, I’ll write a proper post mortem. I’d like to explain why I didn’t have much time, how I got the game idea, how I quickly done the graphics… etc.

Until then!

This is what my “game” looks like right now:

But I don’t know how to finish it before the deadline… and I feel quite demotivated, right now…

I’ll do my best to finish something!

I’ve finally written down all that I want on the game! It’ll be completely based on the “Beauty and the Beast”.

The game will be divided into 2 sections. The first part will be a short mini-game, in which the prince will fight against the evil fairy. On losing, he will be turned into a beast. Then, there will be a short outro, to explaining what happened since the prince’s fall and why the girl went to the castle.

Then, the girl will have to search for clues through the castle, to understand the story and ultimately face-off against the beast, leading to one of three endings.

Yeah, it seems like too much and I definitely won’t have time to do all that, but that’s the starting point…

Time to start coding with squares! (since I can’t draw without my mouse… =/)

Short update: seems like “beauty and the beast” belongs to the public domain…

That seems like a promising starting point…

I’ll soon have some more time on my notebook… I should finish planning and (hopefully) start coding something.

I thought I’d only have time on Sunday, but I got some free time on my computer now and will probably have some more time later. YAY!

Even though I wouldn’t be able to start working on anything, I saw the theme as soon as it was announced (kudos for mobile network access… to think I didn’t use it until a few months earlier…). ‘Shapeshift’ got me thinking on the following things:

• slime that has to stealthily walk through enemies (changing into furniture and stuff)
• kirby (grab abilities from enemies and turn into them/grab characteristics from them)
• ninja that has to turn into enemies to mislead ’em (well, pretty similar to my first idea)
• Something weird related to transforming polygons into other polygons

The slime/ninja idea seems too simple (as in, a lot of people are probably doing that)… And I actually think that the kirby one also falls into that category…

Oh, well, let’s see what happens. XD

On a side note, my github repo is already up on https://github.com/SirGFM/ld35. I only really put my own template (https://github.com/SirGFM/GFraMe_game_template) there, so it still has got nothing, really…

I’ll try to keep you guys updated, but I probably won’t be able to check what you’re all doing… =/

See ya! o/