I’m working on a one screen kitchen game.
Player must plant and harvest vegetables (inside kitchen) and them cook many dishes.
I’m accepting name suggestions

I’m in for my 9th Ludum Dare.
Working alone but “We are twice armed if we fight with faith.” – Plato =)

Code/Engine: Visual Studio 2013 (C#) /Unity 3D 4.6
Art: Corel PaintShop Pro X7
3DModel: Blender
Music: FL Studio 11

Previous entries:

LD #30 Connected Worlds – Stellarlink Corp
#72 Innovation(Jam)

LD #29 Beneath the surface – HammerHead in the Sea of Monsters
#77 Graphics(Jam)

LD #28 You got just one – Hard Point
#208 Fun(Jam)

LD #27 Ten Seconds – Mission Luna
#29 Innovation(Jam)

LD #26 Minimalism – Alien Raid
#155 Mood(Jam)

LD #25 You are the villain – Moonrise
#82 Theme(Jam)

Here is the post mortem for the Stellarlink Corp., built as a jam entry for this 30th Ludum Dare (and my 8th edition).

Theme

As always, theme is announced Friday 22:00 here in Brazil, and right after it the overall idea came clear to my mind. I’m somewhat cautious about using themes literally (there would be room for much more creativity) but working alone with limited time, you simply can’t have the best of everything in your entry – a legacy knowledge from previous Ludum Dares.

Initially this game should be in 3D space but after a second thought I saw some problems with this approach. Mainly with player interaction and the strategies to fix/improve it would lead development beyond jam deadline, so fixed camera was chosen leaving the game environment in X/Z plane.

Stellarlink Corp. idea is that player controls a company that provide data links between cities at planets. These planets orbits a star and have their own rotation movement with random settings every game (angle, velocity).

There would be upgrades to apply on city transmitters, links and satellites to buy.

Environment

Heavy work started at Friday night and by Saturday dawn I had a functional environment with cosmos background, proper planetary movement and a cool random perlin surface generator. This last one took me like 40 minutes and I really liked the results. Morale was high so I went to bed.

Saturday – Gameplay gameplay gameplay

Cities and their attached transmitters were created and fixed at their planetary sites (thanks Blender).

First gameplay tests proved that this game could be fun but it also made clear that (then again) it would be a hard game with an unusual player interaction where one must split attention between precise aim and overall surveillance about planets motions to spot possible link paths. As the player progress, the links requests start to come in row and more often, turning the link delivery business into a chaotic experience for the unprepared. It was time to upgrades.

Saturday night – Upgrades

I had enough time to code every single planned upgrade and they really do a lot of difference in gameplay. The last one coded/modeled, Satellites, were one of the top reasons that convinced me, back in Friday planning, that the whole idea had potential. And I really loved how they fitted to game;

I spent some more time on balancing and tweaking values and prices, adjusting satellites control/function and by Sunday dawn Stellarlink Corp. was a complete game.

Sunday – round the edges

Some work on UI, some more balance/tweaks, intro and game over sequences, bug fixes. Then, for the first time in all Ludum Dares that I took part, I had a clear chance to submit a game in the 48 hours compo, except by 2 little details: 1) The game would go with no sound/music and 2) that would forbid me to use the only previous made asset in game : The blue cosmos background. So, I decided to stick with JAM 72 hours and start to add sounds.

Monday – real life work then sounds/music

As JAM rules allows, sounds from several sources were used, with some remix at the amazing Wavosaur.

Then I got my old keyboard from under the bed and started the music creation at Monday 20:00 in FL Studio 11. I had some problems trying to make a seamless loop to fit nicely in gameplay but at Monday 21:30 time was up and I had to upload as is.

As always it was amazing to take part of Ludum Dare. This one was a breeze, no rush, no stress, things worked as planned and I’m liking players feedback.

Thank you, see you in LD#31.

Some gameplay from Stellarlink Corp.

LD to do list:

[x] Complete game in time

[x] Shameless self promotion

[ ] Write a post mortem

[ ] Post compo version

50% of time gone, 40% of tasks done.

My first game in space without aliens, who needs them. You will have enough problems with data links.

“Beneath the surface” was really one of my favorite themes of all LDs that I took part.

“Hammerhead in the sea of monsters” puts you in control of a research submarine in a sea full of gigantic hostile creatures.
The initial idea was to gain resources from killed creatures to upgrade the sub. The final objective would be the oceans bottom where player fights a kraken-like screen sized monster. Time allowed me to reach at near 65% of this.

Too much effort was wasted with code in features that I never used: lots of AI on creatures attacking each other; devices that could get damaged and start to malfunction; many other devices (sonar, spot lights).

Result is that by sunday 12:00pm I barely had a playable gameplay with lot of code missing and no graphics – entire game was on placeholders. Lot of things had to be cut and graphics rushed. Well some placeholders stayed – Yes, if you find a giant cylinder swimming at depths that was suposed to be the hardest creature of the game =D

I have to say that I really liked the end result. The game got its atmosphere and have a clear path to be further developed. I’m planning more creatures, more devices and the final kraken.

Well, true is that this is the 3rd time that I promise a post compo version from my entries but at least one of them, the last one from LD 28, Hard Point, finally is ready in its full form:

www.arcadiumplayware.com/Hard.Point.html

Thank you all for another high class compo, I’m on my way to rate at least 200 of the games.

See you ate LD 30!

Very first and full of placeholders screen of my entry – Hammerhead in the sea of monsters.

The player drives a submarine that research and hunt weird mutated sea creatures.

Just landed home and here I am for my 7th LD.

Previous entries:

LD #28 You got just one – Hard Point

LD #27 Ten Seconds – Mission Luna

LD #26 Minimalism – Alien Raid

LD #25 You are the villain – Moonrise

LD #24 Evolution – Flagellum

LD #23 Tiny World – Organelle

Tools: 

Code/Engine: C# /Unity 3D
Art: Corel PaintShop Pro X6
Model: Blender
Music: ModPlug

Hard Point puts you in a small archipelago in control of a tank to battle 3 super vehicles with upgrades acquired from smaller enemy vehicles.

Only one upgrade can be used at a time at the tank’s hardpoint and the player must choose wisely in order to beat the game.
These upgrades are weapons (machine gun and cruise missile) or devices that extends the tank capabilities (rotors to fly, boat to cross water and armor to protection).
Each enemy vehicle drops one or two kind of upgrades only (helicopters drops only rotors for example)

The compo version features 5 types of enemy vehicles and 3 “boss” super vehicles

This is a hard game (an unintended constant in my LD entries) but IS winnable.

Went right

Modularization as a design principle. Vehicles and devices are assembled from independent parts. There are no special cases for the player or AI controlling things for both uses the same input interfaces over many controllers. This yields lot of work at start but begins to unfold advantages at latter stages as some features comes “for free”.
AI is working nice. Land vehicles knows how to keep themselves dry in solid land and water vehicles knows how to keep themselves wet in water. Enemy vehicles knows how to hit things at distance but it is designed to miss at random.

Went bad

Hard Point was very very close to miss the Jam deadline and even that I managed to deliver it in time its overall incomplete.
From ballistics to buoyancy, AI aim, AI navigation, I guess that every single function in Unity Quaternion and Vector3 was used in this game.
Sadly, a problem with AI aiming took me 6 hours to solve (with an unforeseen trivial solution). This turned the project from “going well” to “emergency mode” and choices had to be made – no sound, no music, no texture at models, no cool effects, too few instructions of how to play and no time to polish some hard corners.

Post compo version

Post compo version is almost ready with sounds, music and visual effects, bug fixes and a new vehicle (submarine) with a new power up that allows the tank to submerge and fire torpedoes.

I’ll write a post when it is ready.

Thank you all for another great LD.

See you at LD 29.

Here is the current status of my entry: Hard Point.

I had very hard time to find something to do with theme but finally reached on something to work on.

Player controls a tank fighting enemy vehicles in these islands. Each destroyed vehicle have a chance to leave a special device to be installed at tank’s single hard point (you get only one).

Here I am for my 6th LD

Previous entries:

LD #27 Ten Seconds – Mission Luna

LD #26 Minimalism – Alien Raid

LD #25 You are the villain – Moonrise

LD #24 Evolution – Flagellum

LD #23 Tiny World – Organelle

Tools: 

Code/Engine: C# /Unity 3D
Art: Corel PaintShop Pro X6
Model: Blender
Music: Fruit Loops
Idea/Design: CrossDoc