Hey fellow devs and artists and musicians and whatnot,

I am in! But not alone in the Compo, as the last four times, but together with a friend of mine in the Jam! She’s quite pro at doing those art stuffs, as opposed to me, so I’m glad to have her!
It’s her first time doing this thing, but I believe it’s gonna be great.

Since we don’t really know how we’re going to be approaching this, it depends on the theme as well, I can’t say anything about what we’re going to be using.

We wish you loads of fun! Happy Ludum Dareing!

So Ludum Dare #33 lies behind us now, and I take the chance to write a quick follow-up of how this all turned out for me.

There is also a timelapse video of Virus‘ development:

The Preparation

I didn’t prepare much this time. No basic games to get back into the whole process, not many commits to my engine.
What was important though was that I made a list of ideas for the 20 final themes, which helped me a lot in getting creative and was quite a bit of fun, too.

The First Night

I forgot to commit final but crucial changes to my engine, which I consider would be cheating since then I would be the only one with access to that code. I noticed my mistake very late, and after documenting and committing everything there were only about two hours of sleep left.

When I woke up and started Eclipse as well as my timelapse software, I noticed the latter didn’t really work. Everything looked JPEG-ish, even though I had set it to PNG. I spent the last seven minutes before the theme announcement quickly building my own timelapse script, just to realize the original software did work correctly… Anyway.

I was not happy with “You Are The Monster”. Not at all. I mean, I knew that the chance for it was high, but still. I ended up making my biggest mistake, not sticking to the idea I had prepared beforehand. I wanted to do something atmospheric, something calm, like flying a bird. There was my idea – you play an eagle, which looks friendly at first glance, but for something like a mouse an eagle is quite the monster.

I built awesome flying mechanics (really, they deserve to be called “awesome”), made the textures, and put it all together into a lovely little eagle. It would even sit down when you flew it to the ground!
Unfortunately, after spending around six hours on that, I had no idea what to do with it.

After sleeping a little, 14 hours in, I gave up. Back to my original idea: playing as a virus that infects all of humanity.

Starting Over

Progress came fast, since I had mostly the whole thing in mind from the start. In just a few hours, the basics were already done, although it was still far from a game.
In the evening that day, I took a break from coding and started with:

The Music

I am bad at making music, there’s no doubt about it. Partly because of my missing experience, I guess – this was the second time I ever made something for real.
It isn’t what you’d expect when you think of the word “music”, it’s rather some disturbed synthesizer sounds with a heavy focus on drums. Those are the only two things I am not that bad at. It turned out OK.

Want to listen to it? Play my game!

Making It A Game

After tuning the music to my satisfaction, I added the progress minimap, tweaked the gameplay and added the main opponent: vaccine production.

I also changed the background to a non-static one, with a pseudo perspective on the houses. Very proud of that!

Voice Acting

I appear to be surprisingly good at voice acting. It was my first time to ever narrate anything, and I only did one single recording, but it turned out very well!
One hour of effects work to make it sound like some highly-disturbed walkie-talkie transmission, and suddenly my game got a lot better.

Testing & Fine Tuning

Obviously, when you have played such a simple game for a few hours, you get really good at it. That is a problem, because as the developer, you have had to play it over and over again, which means you don’t know how hard or easy it is for someone starting from the beginning. That is where I got other people involved, basically just playing the game and reporting back how it worked for them.
Then followed lots of fine tuning, since the game turned out a lot harder than I had thought.

After one of them managed to win, I called it a success and submitted my game.

My Overall Experience

This Ludum Dare was absolutely great. I had a bad start, but after that, everything went very smoothly and I am happy with the outcome.

The way I did it this time appears to be how I should always handle game jams in the future. Giving everything you have drains a lot of energy, and you lose more than you gain. If you do this in a more relaxed way, you are not exhausted and get to do more.

• If you haven’t yet, you can view my entry here: Virus
• The development is available on YouTube, sped up to just over 5 minutes: Timelapse
• And please vote

Thanks for reading,
JangoBrick

I AM DONE. Done with my game, Virus, done with this Ludum Dare.
It has been a great one, and I’m looking forward to the next one.

Anyway, there’s still one thing I fear, like every time – the fear of the game being unbalanced, the graphics looking even worse to others than to me, audio not playing, or something else in that direction.
That fear is hard to come by on my own, so I need your help.

Please help me test this thing!

I would be more than happy if you could visit my game (here is the Entry Page) and give me crucial feedback in these few remaining hours.
If you do, I’ll gladly give your game a vote as soon as that’s possible.

Have fun whatever you’re doing, be it finishing up your own game or looking through the ones made by others!

I’m in another time, the fourth one actually. Took part in #29, #30 and #31 – had to skip #32 unfortunately. But no big deal, there are countless more I’m going to be part of, like this time!

It kind of became a ritual to use the same tools every time, learning from mistakes, making them better. That would mean:

• Language: Java with Eclipse
• Engine: JangoDare
• Graphics: GIMP,
• Sound: BFXR, Audacity
• Music: FL Studio?

Although I am theoretically open for experimenting with new stuff, specifically something web-based. So if the theme choice goes very well for me, I might throw my complete setup over and do something totally different… We’ll see! It’s gonna be great!

Wheewww, I’m done with my game! … my second one, actually. The first idea I had was a lot better than this one, but I ran out of story ideas very quickly so I had to use my backup idea.

Takeover is a tower defense game, and yeah, that’s pretty lame, but I’m still happy I finished something at all – I wasted a full day with the other game. And even though the idea of a tower defense game is boring, I actually like the result quite a bit.

Enough talkin’, have a look at what I’m responsible for: Takeover

I think I’ll be going for this Ludum Dare compo as well, but like I said in my previous post, I won’t have the full 48h… maybe I can manage to get 30, but no more. I hope that’s enough!

Anyway, I’ll be using my 2D Java game engine JangoDare and many other things. GIMP for graphics, possibly Bfxr & Audacity for sound (if any).

Let’s see how this goes! Happy coding =D

On this weekend, I have only one day available…. 24 hours. I really hope the theme will be something I can manage to make a game in 24h to, otherwise I’ll have to skip.

I am done with my game! And I’m finally even proud of it. There was a time when I wasn’t – but that lies in the past xD

Well, my interpretation of “Connected Worlds” was this one: Screen split in half, each half is one world. They’re connected somehow.

And the result is some funny game with two colo[u]rful slimes, that are jumping in opposite directions, held together by a rubber band. So, connected worlds. Connected with a rubber band.
I guess I would normally make an animated .gif and throw it into here, but I’m way too exhausted to do that now. So, have a static screenshot (don’t be sad! at least there IS a screenshot.):

Oh, and also one where the rubber band just broke (one of the more difficult levels is shown in the picture):

Click here!

Click the cake to go to the submission page, and please don’t forget to vote & comment

This post comes a bit late, but whatever. I had to get other stuff done in order to be able to fully focus on this Ludum Dare, which I’m really excited for! It will be my second one.

The tools are similar to the last time. I will again be using:

• Language: Java
• IDE: Eclipse
• Engine/Framework: JangoDare
• Graphics: GIMP, maybe Inkscape
• Sound effects: Bfxr (the downloadable one, I like standalone stuff!); possibly something else if it fits better. Idk.
• Sound editing: Audacity
• Music: I don’t know yet, maybe FL Studio or some online generator. I wish I could play an instrument sometimes 😀
• My brain

I have probably forgotten something, but these are the most important tools I’ll be making use of.

Also, I would like to mention that I am actually a bit sad about the Potato Salad theme being gone. I wonder what people would’ve come up with. lol

So I have finished my entry for this competition. I was already done a few hours ago, but I wasn’t sure if there really wasn’t anything to add.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my game is called “mem29”.
mem29’s base idea is similar to the Memory board game (therefore the name), although there are a few (pretty important) things which are different.
The pictures on the cards are all objects from famous video games by the way.
How to play can be looked up in the game, I think it should be pretty straightforward. In the beginning it is very easy, but it becomes harder.

Tools used:

•  JangoDare engine (http://github.com/JangoBrick/JangoDare)
• Eclipse for code
• Bfxr for sound effects
• GIMP for graphics

You can view the entry here, the compiled JAR is located here, and the source here.

Animation was too big to upload – click on the image to view it

Hehe, another one of these posts :DD

Anyway. I think I have gotten pretty far with my game “mem29” already, and in my opinion it is already a hell lot of fun – I spend more time playing than coding now to be honest.
Here you have a screenshot of it:

I had a hard time creating the screenshot, as mem29 is really all about being quick.

The basic idea is very similar to the board game Memory, although there are a few things which are different.
The pictures on all the cards are objects from famous video games by the way.

Let’s see what I can add tomorrow!

Hello!

This will be the first time I participate in the Ludum Dare compo (and in Ludum Dare in general). I will be creating a 2D game in Java, using my own engine “JangoDare” which can be found on GitHub.
It is still in development, although it is already possible to create simple games with it. The engine currently supports tiled levels, but will also support a few other level types soon (and of course you can also add own level types without modifying the library’s code, that’s no problem). It has full support for entities, and physics as well as particles (and maybe shaders/shadows) are also planned.
If you’re interested, make sure to follow the development because I will be implementing these (+ possibly more) features over time, hopefully I can finish it all until the weekend we’re all awaiting is reached.

Have fun and good luck,
JangoBrick