Winter is coming,
the goose is getting fat.
Put another penny in the snow-man’s hat.
Then run, run for your life!
Programmer, Analyst, Musician, Project Manager, Estimator
Ludum Dare 31 | MiniLd #54 | Ludum Dare 30 | Ludum Dare 29 |
MiniLD 50 | MiniLD 49 | MiniLD 42 | Ludum Dare 26 |
Winter is coming,
the goose is getting fat.
Put another penny in the snow-man’s hat.
Then run, run for your life!
Hi there,
Not sure whether to say something or not. But I am somewhat frustrated…
I’ve been assiduously rating Web browser playable games since competition ended. Probably looking at about 80 per day, based on playing for between 30 seconds (if game doesn’t work, or is very incomplete – in which case not rating but leaving a comment ‘not yet rated’ and explaining why), or playing for up to 20-30 minutes when completely engrossed, which doesn’t happen often. Then I’ve been trying to leave a thoughtful comment based on my experience.
I freely admit I’m bad at twitchy and ‘hard’ games, but try to leave an honest comment. My own game is probably a reasonable mid to average (48h) quality of game, based on my very personally biased view of course… however hard I try to be objective!
I’ve been swapping 1st place on the coolness ladder with Mallot1 for a few days… Not trying to outdo, but just overtaking sometimes, then he/she overtakes me back.
Last night Mallot1 rated 500 games!!!
Approximately the same as we had each managed to rate in 8 days (since the main competition closed last week). I don’t think I could even look and read the webpages for 500 games in the 10-12 hours elapsed when Mallot1 went from 495 (approx) to 1030.
Is this reasonable ?
I’ve been a bit stressed since… Have I been trying to hard to rate games ? Is it best to just carry on with development and stop looking at my peer group at work ?
I’ve been back and forth about whether to say something. It really isn’t that important to me to be first on coolness, I was mainly just enjoying making a list of things I need to get better at programming and design-wise, while playing and rating lots and lots of games. I wasn’t even expecting to feature on the cool list, but as I’m currently out of work it seems that my free time has enabled this to happen.
Should I have said something or not ?? Am I taking it too seriously… and other self-doubt. Hmmm….
Would appreciate your thoughts.
< /rant>
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=20788
It’s a glorified Lunar Lander. Had to abandon original control scheme halfway through day 2, which was fun (!not), the final engine control is much more how I think the Apollo mission retro controls worked, setting power and time then firing a burn.
Of course you have to do it repeatedly for this, but it is a game…
I used Construct2 this. Also spent far more time than usual on look and feel, which I think was a good decision, though as a typical programming-first developer I do find it tough to admit that visual polish is important and the ‘brilliant’ idea will just vanish into the murk without it (not that this is an original idea ofc.) I found time spent was about 20% each for design, coding and testing/bug-fixing and 40% on graphics and polish.
All the planets are based on an iPhone photo I took of a weather windowsill tile out the back. Gimp filters ftw!
Built with Construct2, Gimp, BXFR, Audacity and a (small this time…) amount of piano playing.
Testing with 4 hours to go late last night (UK timezone) found a few minor things – and I realised that the harder levels were fine on Touch devices, but bad on with Mouse control… so added keyboard shortcuts, updated the help & other pipeline stuff… sigh. Three releases in final minutes, just one more thing Columbo.
As always thank you for the fun LD and see you next time!
All that remains is: Load/Save, powerups, Difficulty changing, random terrain, parallax glide, sideways movement, starmap discovery, many more sound and visual effects, balance, testing, ohhhh… OK who has hidden the coffee machine… Coffee now!! Sleep once half of the above completed and half in skeleton form
http://web2.mrexcessive.net/ConnectTheWorlds/
Shopping for good coffee… CHECK; snacks… CHECK; chocolate… CHECK.
Tooling this time: Construct2, GIMP, PickleEditor, Audacity, BXFR, iPhone for music recording and lots and lots of sheets of paper, a pencil and pen. Open Broadcast Software for Twiching my efforts #LudumDare
Hot tip – gleaned from another LD’er, apologies can’t find it again to give you credit – it is worth spending a few minutes now coming up with an idea for all 20 possible themes… then you have a flying start when it all kicks off.
Favourite theme: Chaos
Everybody have fun now!
Hey and good morning LD people!
Had a bunch of fun this time, long weekend of coding with a break to play Middle-Earth-Quest, that game takes an age, but we beat Sauron … just… anyway…
Please check out my game http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=20788
If you rate or comment I’ll rate you back where I can run the game, gonna take a while to get through all 69 pages – wow!
Finally bit bullet and setup WordPress, linked to about 8 old pieces of my work – even found a Flash/Actionscript version of my PyGame original GiggleBubble!
Hey… (EDIT apologies… not sure why this is appearing above MiniLD50)
After seeing the excellent PillowCastle video, I made a demo Forced Perspective object resizing workspace… not a game as such, but if anyone is interested in making some models or creating levels, give me a shout – perhaps we can work together on something.
http://web2.mrexcessive.net/ForcedPerspective/
If anyone wants the code including whole project environment which borrows from snippets found in various Unity forum threads, then you can download that here.
http://web2.mrexcessive.net/ForcedPerspective/ForcedPerspective.zip
The complexity (it’s not that bad…) is in FixedJointDragger.
Vogon weapon sound made using BFXR
Starfield based on excellent gimp instructions here http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/starfield-tutorial
(I need to redo it to get better colours & positioning)
Still to do… Earth shields, Poetry generator and end of world!!
I need to create four main visuals…
After that… need to create the poetry generator and then do some balancing for the levels, end of game.
Making placeholder everything… will probably end up as final version everything.. My art is not good. Map of earth freehand for projection onto globe.
Have uploaded a placeholder build which doesn’t qualify as a game. Earth and projectiles, spaceships and events next. Then the basic mechanics of gameplay.
Yes I realise this is backward, I’m doing the things I think will be a problem first, then tomorrow is reserved for all the gameplay with whatever effects are made before 10pm tonight.
Have some RL things to do over weekend, and rules more relaxed, so started slowly tonight – setting up Unity environment, publishing a blank game to website, that sort of thing, checking the pipeline is in place.
NGUI for Unity has changed a bit since I last used it so running through basics again to get the new approach… good so far. Like the .ttf importing