Ludum Dare

About Dir3kt (twitter: @ZappedCow)

Entries

SPACEPIG Ludum Dare 32	SnOwDuDeS Ludum Dare 31	Bedungeoned Blitz! MiniLD 50	You only get one chance to save the world so don't screw it up Ludum Dare 28
ZoOp! October Challenge 2013	Ludum Dare Ludum Dare 27	... Ludum Dare 26	Big Bad Wolf Ludum Dare 25
PowerUp October Challenge 2012 Unfinished	Oh my, a shooter with blocks! Ludum Dare 24	Jetpack Pixel Ludum Dare 23

Dir3kt's Trophies

LD28 Badge of Honor

Awarded by Ted Brown
on December 16, 2013

Dir3kt's Archive

Here is woot happened during a week on the AppStore a.k.a the Wild Wild World.

And here is what happened during that epic day of eternal glory:

After one week on the AppStore I sold 13 units of ZoOp! which should amount to 20$ dollars on my bank account. LD October Challenge is a TOTAL SUCCESS!!! However my balance is still negative considering the Apple Developer subscription fees and the 70$ I paid to build a shadeless tent for filming the trailer (which was a lot of fun BTW). So this, and considering the efforts I put to make this game makes it a TOTAL FAILURE!!!

Little story: I got contacted by a US TV to feature my game. I was so happy thinking ‘hey, some guys in this world believe in my game!!’. I was so wrong. Turned out they asked me to pay between 2-3k for producing the segment. In short they wanted me to pay them to produce their crappy show which would only make prejudice to my game, at best.

I feel down. So down, and stupid as well.

What I learned doing this October Challenge: World is filled of bad people trying to make money on you. Exact opposite of the LD community which is full of handsome people helping each other. At least we have a safe heaven, thanks all of you

It’s a pleasure to announce that ZoOp! is now available (worldwide?) on the AppStore!

–> CAPITALIZM RULEZ! <–

Here is the trailer:

And a few screenshots:

screenshot1 screenshot2

Although the game was almost ready at the beginning of the month, it was still lot of work to make it available on the AppStore. Overall it has been a great learning experience, a bit painful though. I mean we all like to write code and/or do arts. But what about marketing?

So what now? Basically I’m sending mails and creating threads like an headless chicken. Trying to make as much noise as I can. I feel like a small ant in a huge colony 😀

After failing last year, I’m back, full of hope, energy, will, motivation and mojo!

Speaking of the game it’s almost finished, I’m on the polish phase and hope to submit by this week-end. If there is one tip that I could give to anybody participating: Evil is in the details! Don’t underestimate the time needed to polish the game and create the marketing material (logo, screenshots, webpage, description, pitch, etc..).

My last activity has been to create a trailer which has just been released

Hopefully this doesn’t look too amateurish. It’s 100% homemade. I created a shadeless tent with a box, some fabric and 4 spotlights. I borrowed the camera and the music is from a friend’s band.

Actually I had lot of fun building the tent and inviting some friends to play the game inside it. We even had to stick the iPad to the box, and the box to the ground because it was moving too much

This was full of low and high. But finally something came out of my computer. Hope you like it.

var basecode = "http://www.zappedcow.com/ld27/ld27_basecode.zip"; var tools = {"HaxePunk", "FlashDevelop", "Aseprite", "Bfxr", "Beepbox", "Audacity", "Fruity Loops"};


function foo()

{
  while(!ludumDare)

  {

    wait(5);

    refreshLDwebsite();

  }

trace("Oh yeah!"); }

By this post I declare that I’m in. And this is my warmup, some badass street pixel art.

After 2 weeks of polishing, crying and level designing, the re-mastered version of … is now available on Newgrounds!!

You can play it & rate it here!

Sorry for the minimalist post 😉

Hi there!

I’m glad to announce that, after lot of work, a post compo version of … is now available! It has more levels, more awesomeness and completely new graphics, look!

It will be released on Kongregate and Newgrounds in a few days. But before play the beta here while it’s still hot! Any feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome. Do not hesitate to drop me a tweety-tweet!

Of course my original entry can still be played here (100% shameless). By the way reading the comments I do believe that there are not a lot of folks that found the super secret level available only in the compo version. As a motivator, here is a sneak peak at it:

Mr Potatowesome FTW!!

Testing those LD games takes so much time and energy, especially if you try to fully (or at least reasonably) explore each one. But I felt that I learn as much by playing them that I learn by creating them.

Anyway I said to myself that I would do a small selection after rating 50 games. Here are my top 5 picks in no particular order.

Gallery by Andrew Shouldice

A fairly hard puzzler with an amazing mood.

imy by Ditto

I don’t now how to describe what I felt when playing this one. Sometime words are not enough.

Inverted by Karlin

This one is quite perfect it terms of mechanic and controls. But too shoooort!

Def by pansapiens

Someone had to do a minimalist tower defense game. Pansapiens did it with stunning visuals. Even the title is minimalist!

F*** This Job by Casino Jack

Canabalt on steroids. Same mechanic but goes much deeper.

…

My basecode for LD26 is publicly available there:

http://www.zappedcow.com/ld26/ld26_basecode.zip

Nothing fancy, just a template HaxePunk project that do a bunch of things. Basically I wanted to make sure that everything works (display a sprite, load tilemap, play music, particle effects, basic UI, …). I also have some utilities for steering and A*.

Oh maybe this could be a small tip. Prior to LD makes sure everything works and test with assets generated by the tools you are going to use. There is nothing more frustrating that incompatibility issue during a Jam :/

I think this is my last post before the fun starts. So again GLHF!!

Here are the tools I’m going to use.

A peeler

A fryer

Good luck everybody! And do not forget to have fun

Unfortunately I didn’t recorded my Ludum Dare however I saved a few work in progress screenshots. Here is a selection of them.

Of course you can play and, are encouraged to, rate Big Bad Wolf here.

😉

That’s the last sprint now!

Keep it up everybody!!! Can’t wait to play all your awesome games!

BETA HERE –> http://www.zappedcow.com/ld25_beta/ <–

I would be very grateful for any feedback. Sounds and background are still placeholders. It has been my first time doing pixel arts and I have to say I quite enjoyed that

Yesterday my vision of the game was that:

Today I got that:

About Dir3kt (twitter: @ZappedCow)

Entries

Dir3kt's Trophies

Dir3kt's Archive

ZoOp! October Challenge Passed!!

ZoOp! released!!

ZoOp! iPad Finger Party!

Ludum Dare, The Game

trace(“basecode and tools”)

Da Da Dare!

… :D

Post Compo version of …

My top picks after 50 ratings

…

Minimalist Potato

basecode declaration

I’m in :)

The making of Big Bad Wolf

There is light at the end of the tunnel

Big Bad Wolf (beta available!!)