Hey everybody,

As you prep your tools for the upcoming LD, remember to download the new version of Chronolapse (1.0.4). The last two versions had a fun little bug that broke the actual video encoding.

If you had recorded things with the broken versions, you can use the 1.0.4 release to encode them correctly.

Here we go again. It has been a while since my last LD (LD12 I think?), and as such I have a whole new setup. New house, new computer, new desk. Behold:

Keeyai's Desk

Also, I’m bringing back THE JUG:

THE JUG - Pre-Compo

Here is what I’m using this time around:

• Python (as always)
• Pygame or Pyglet + Rabbyt (compatibility vs power)
• Python-Ogre (if I want to flush all chances of finishing down the toilet)
• PyScripter (my IDE of choice)
• SFXR & Musagi (thanks Dr. Petter)
• TortoiseSVN and VisualSVNServer (version control ftw)
• Chronolapse (yay timelapses)
• Reminder ( countdown + reminders to blog)
• Audacity (in case I get frisky with some recording)
• IRC (for maximum distraction)

Well, its coming up on 4am and I have almost nothing to show for this LD. I spent far too much competition time on other things (soccer games, movies, drinking) and the time I DID spend so far I’ve wasted messing around with blender and ogre, tools I have almost zero familiarity with. I really wanted to make a 3D cave shmup, but it is simply outside my abilities to finish within the small amount of time left. I struggled for hours trying to get all sorts of other tools to work to get my cave from blender into ogre in a useful way, but ended up with nothing feasible.

I guess this just isn’t my LD. I neglected to start a time lapse, I’ve taken no food photos, and at this point there is about 15 hours to go and I have zero, count em, zero lines of code. Here is everything I have so far – a simple render of my cave system from the top down. It’s fairly dark (on purpose), so the image isn’t worth much by itself.

Map of the cave system

Not too bad, but not great either — still, I learned some things and had fun playing with nurbs, so even if I drop out it isn’t a total loss.

Alas, it turns out that I am going to miss yet another LD. A last minute invite to las vegas with free travel and a free place to stay is taking over this weekend. It was a hard decision, but I’ve stopped voting on themes because of this. I’m half tempted to help out by culling the ones people hate, but I’m also tempted to vote up the ones we always see on the list but don’t want (evolution, I’m looking at you).

Good luck to everyone who is competing. There are a lot of new names posting — special good luck to all of you. Hopefully you all get hooked and become permanent parts of the community.

Quick advice to you newcomers:

1. Pick a game design that you can completely finish with time to spare but with room for additional features if you find yourself with extra time (lol). Too many first timers fail because they bite off more than they can chew.
2. Make code that does only what it needs to do. I’m the worst about spending way too much time writing general, well commented, extendable code snippets instead of just writing what I need. It’s 48 hours – if you want a piece of your code to use later, re-write it later.
3. As mentioned in an earlier post and on the wiki, there are lots of tools created by the LD community that can quickly add a large amount of polish to your game. Dr Petter has written two amazing tools that give you sound effects and music, as well as a graphics editor. Blecki has a good looking map editor. RB has a new 3D python framework (allowed?). I wrote a tool for making timelapses, and a loader to make judging the games less of a chore. I’m sure there are more – read what people are posting about their toolsets and ask around in IRC. In fact, we had a whole mini-LD on tools, so check that out as well.
4. Have fun! If you aren’t enjoying yourself, take a 20-60 minute break. If you hate your time making your game, we will probably hate our time playing it.

Finally, my time lapse tool (Chronolapse) is ready for some serious testing.

Windows users can grab the exe here: http://code.google.com/p/chronolapse/downloads/list

Linux/Mac: I haven’t done any work on your versions yet, but everything but the webcam ‘should’ work. You’re next!

When you find bugs, please either comment here or send me an email to the address specified in the manual.

Since the mini LD started, I’ve been filling my time with diablo, TF2, C&C3, amusement parks, and other non-coding activities. However, I have been sneaking in coding time here and there, and am making progress on my tool, despite being well outside the ‘deadline’. I posted a gui shot to IRC, but forgot to put it here, until now!

People’s biggest complaint seems to be that it is rather dense. Well screw those people. 😀 Seriously though, it is a semi-heavy tool, but I’m hoping I’ve put it together logically. I’ll be writing instructions on how to use each part and I’d like to think that, with a little tool-tip help, each section is pretty self explanatory.

Since I haven’t really discussed it here yet, my tool, codenamed Chronolapse, creates time lapses. Right now the only working webcam library I have is windows only, but that might be addressed later. The goal is to make it a snap to make time lapses like the one below. Here is an overview featurelist:

• Synched Screenshots and Webcam Captures (can do either one or both)
• Simple ‘Annotation’ – show messages like status etc on your timelapse
• Picture in Picture – example: put your webcam shots in the corner of your screenshots
• Video – convert your images to video for you

I decided to make each of these features a seperate entity to give the user as much freedom and functionality as possible. It will add a little bit of time on the backend as you go through each ‘phase’, but it really enhances the value of the tool. Here is a picture in picture example: First, you capture your images. Instead of allowing you to pick PIP at the beginning, it just saves the two different sets of pictures. After you’re finished capturing, you can run it through the PIP section, selecting size and position (and sources). This gives you a new folder of pictures with the PIP effect. Now, if you want to go back and change where you put the PIP, it is as simple as tweaking the settings and re-doing the PIP. If PIP was built into the capture, you couldn’t change it at all. It also means you can use any program you want to do any of the steps, and CL will fill in the rest. You can capture with CL and create video with virtualdub, or capture with something else and add PIP with CL, etc etc etc. You have da powah!

Example Goal Timelapse – This wasn’t made with CL; it required 4 different tools to put it all together, plus the youtube annotation. Being able to make this using just one program (well, need to add sound separately) is the end-result goal of CL.

My LD 12 Timelapse

Here is my time lapse. Enjoy!

Here is the link to the torrent for LD12. All the games are in it, as well as the compo game loader. All the games have been hand edited where necessary to make them work well with CGL.

http://keeyai.dnsalias.com/ludumdare12.torrent

Papper also put up a regular mirror of the torrent content if the torrent is down.

http://www.kekbur.se/ludumdare12.zip

During the crunch I had a pumpkin pie baking, and here it is. Only eat happy food:

I’m finally finished! And with 1 hour and 11 minutes left for packaging. Here it is: Up!

Up! is a rampart-like game where you have 3 phases – first you build your tower, then you get cannons based on your tower’s height, then you use those cannons to try to take out the enemy tower. Each turn gives you less and less time to build until finally someone is the winner!

Source Link: http://keeyai.com/files/up.zip
Source with wav (no AVBin dependency): http://keeyai.com/files/up-noavbin.zip
Source with no music (if it crashes in linux when looping the music, try this): http://keeyai.com/files/up-nomusic.zip

Windows Exe: http://keeyai.com/files/up_exe.zip

Linux executable on its way.

A Screenshot!

9 Hours and 45 Minutes left. I just finished the music and got it working in game, making this my first LD entry with sound of any kind. The song is crap, but hey, I’m still proud of it. I did it all on my guitar (even the ‘drum’ parts) using audacity. The three phases are in, although there is no AI and the cannons don’t actually fire. The turns are still set on very short for debugging, but it does cycle all the way through. There are still some bugs to fix, and the AI to create. If I finish all that, I’ll put in sound effects.

The last day is here. I’ve woken up with just under 12 hours to go. Can I make it? We shall see… Still to do: all the AI, firing cannons, sound, music, and the major panning effect I had planned for the fight phase.

To power up, I made pancakes for breakfast. Breakfast is so much more malleable than the other meals…

Here is the obligatory phallic pancake for the roommate:

And a spiral pancake! Culinary skills++

Finally, here is last night’s more standard fare – burritos with rice, beans, and cranberry juice.

A much needed update: There are about 29 hours left in the competition. Already people have posted some very impressive looking screenshots!

I spent the morning losing a fight with pyode and have removed it completely from my program, replacing it with pymunk instead. Hopefully I can get pymunk going on linux — that really hurt us in pyweek, so it’s important that I get it working.

After/during that, I took an hour to help a friend move, but when I got there they didn’t need me anymore. :/ That’s ok – breaks are good, right?

Now I’m finally starting to get into my game – the physics is working and I have most of the infrastructure laid out. I don’t know if I have time to finish (above mentioned friend is coming over later as well), but as of right now I’m still going to try.

Also, I finally got the laptop out so I can get the pictures from the camera online.

Behold, the command center!

Friday’s Food:

Kolaches for Breakfast this morning!

Ok, the compo has officially started! I’m already intimidated by everyone’s food photos. I guess I’ll have to step it up hard core. I didn’t make it to the store today, so I have to go without the water jug this time around. Sad…

Anyway – all contestants new and old: don’t forget to make your gameinfo.xml file for the Compo Game Loader. Instructions and Checklist found here.

Good luck, and don’t forget the owls!