Software Engineer, Musician
https://soundcloud.com/hyperbox
http://hyperbawx.tumblr.com/
Ludum Dare 29 | Ludum Dare 27 |
http://ludumdare.itch.io/ is a great little portal that presents games to rate in a slick manner.
The caveat is, with web games, you have to put “HTML5”, “Java”, “Unity”, or “Flash” in the title in order to get picked up. It seems like Web (Platform) is the most common format.
Regardless, it’s a nice thing to do for folks who are on computers that may not support certain web platforms.
If you like music-based experimental games, give my entry a try. It’s quite calm and has an air of mystery to it.
Here’s my farty javascript game engine
https://bitbucket.org/bstegmann/pulsar
http://www.brianstegmann.com/pulsar-api/
After rating 100 games, here are my favorites so far. No particular order here.
A highly polished stealth game where you play as a ninja who has 10 seconds to assassinate all of the capitalists in a given room. This game features an intuitive point-and-click control scheme and frantic sneaking action.
Lean Mikey’s Mega Muscles with Lean Mikey
A wacky button masher where you play as an ambiguous creature tasked with 10 second workouts and impressing ladies. This game has charming atari-style graphics and an interesting rpg-like stat management mechanic. This is probably the most humorously entertaining game I’ve played so far.
A trippy action game where you are a bird who has 10 seconds to place an egg in a safe spot so it can hatch. The atmosphere here is well done, with a tight cohesiveness between colorful graphics, sound effects, and music. The physics involved with the bird and eggs provide a pleasant challenge.
The Unbelievable Adventures of Kamil the Cat
An adorable and humorous 10-second minigame collection where you help Kamil the Cat through an adventurous morning. This game has a nice variety of minigame mechanics and an entertaining storyline.
A online multiplayer beat-em-up where the platforms change every 10 seconds. It’s very impressive for a 72 hour Jam entry. The fighting is frantic and quick, with each successful hit, rock, or bomb throw killing an opponent. The music is also blends with the beautifully retro environment well, and both provide a pleasant contrast to the murderous action. This is one game I really hope gets expanded on after the competition ends.
A beat-em-up where you are a hero who slept in late, and has 10 seconds to find & equip as much of your gear as possible. The items you find have an effect on the gameplay once you hit the streets to beat up some thugs.
A point-and-click game where you have been tasked with a bizarre, enigmatic adventure. A mobile phone provides the means to add 10 seconds to the time limit for each scenario. This entry is quite artistic. Fans of Fez and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery will take delight at the inspiration that this game draws from them.
A side-scrolling horror/thriller game where you are a man trying to escape an evil entity. This game does an excellent job of invoking a feeling of suspense and horror. You frantically search for the means to exit each room as the monster begins to force its way into your room after 10 seconds.
Another horror/suspense game, where you are trying to avoid evil creatures while collecting orbs. You are able to move for 10 seconds, and then you’re frozen as a creature has it’s own 10 seconds to approach you. Very creepy and chilling game, especially as you are forced to helplessly watch the creature approach you. The unsettling combination of a 3d environment with 2d graphics adds to the experience.
This insane top-down shooter drops you into a field filled where you must fight for survival against waves of bizarre creatures. Every 10 seconds you have an opportunity to enter a shop where you upgrade your equipment and restore health.
Hello All,
My friend SineRider and I got together and made a remix of the music from my entry for LD27. It’s quite over the top compared to the subtleness of the game, because music. The best way I can think of describing it is “galaxy rock” or “slow trance.” Free download, so enjoy!
So I’m beginning my rating spree and I notice that the entry pages have two comment boxes. When I added a comment to the top one, it didn’t show up on the page. But my comment showed up after I entered it in the bottom box. Is there a difference?
That was definitely a great experience. I realize now how the personal effects of something like Ludum Dare to a developer is vastly more important than the actual competition.
Despite falling quite short of my original concept, I’m extremely satisfied with how far I got in 48 hours. I have a good idea now how I will structure my game engine, as I add some of the slop back into it as good re-usable components. Ironically, I spent very little time on music and sfx. Wait actually no time on sound effects at all… oh well.
The rundown of this weekend:
Friday Night: Got the concept down. Then World’s End and, very appropriately, a local pub with some friends. Awesome movie btw.
Saturday:
Sunday:
My initial concept actually involved having a little compound where you farmed during the day and then adventured out into the night. Your speed would prevent you from going to far at first. I had some additional power-ups and enemies in mind as well. After a few cycles of prototyping I realized that this would take more time than I had, so I went with a day/night collection game.
What’s particularly great about this experience is I now have a pretty decent javascript engine to use going forward. There was quite a bit of development during this game that I will be able to re-use for future games and future Ludum Dare competitions. So next time I’ll be able to focus on the game a lot more than the engine.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=24792
What’s on everybody’s coding playlist today?
Currently I’m listening to “The Nothings of the North” by Ametsub. Really good ambient kind of stuff with tight little beats.
If you have jQuery included in your project, here’s an easy way to automatically pause your game if the user changes tabs or the web browser window loses focus:
$(window).blur(function() {
//pausing code here
});
Voila!
https://bitbucket.org/bstegmann/seed/
This is an open source JavaScript game engine that I’ve been working on. It uses CreateJS. I will be using this for the competition.
Why go through the trouble of creating a game engine from scratch? Mainly because I want to create something custom for myself as I intend to make more HTML5 games in the future. Plus it’s a great way to practice the knowledge I’ve been obtaining from this amazing book called Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory of Naughty Dog, and also another book called Learning JavaScript Design Patterns by Addy Osmani. Also, it will hopefully save me some time during the competition so I can focus on the game itself.
It’s missing some key components that I hope to add prior, during, and after the competition. Mainly: collision detection, a game model system, and a rendering system for game objects. I’m sure I’ll discover additional features to add as I go along.
Hello All,
This will be my first foray into the Ludum Dare competition.
I have been developing software as a professional for about 3 years now. I graduated with a Computer Science degree back in 2010. I’m also a hobbyist musician (https://soundcloud.com/hyperbox).
Video games are one of my main inspirations for getting involved with software development. I’ve had a few game projects in the past that never saw fruition, particularly an XNA game and then one for a system called Sifteo. After taking a break for a year, I’m looking at this competition as a great way to get the gears turning again, and to exercise some of the research I’ve been doing on game engines for the past 6 months.
My weakest skill relating to video games is definitely graphic art, but I do have an eye for aesthetics, so I’m hoping I can get crafty enough to compensate for that shortcoming.
For this competition, I will be using the following:
Platform: HTML5 Canvas
IDE: Netbeans
Libraries: Custom engine built upon EaselJS and probably more.
Sound: Reason
Graphics: Pixen
Playing the entries for past competitions has become a little hobby of mine, so I’m delighted to be a part of it this time around. Looking forward to checking out the inevitably awesome submissions for LD27!
~Brian
