LudumDare is about to begin!!

I have the house to myself so it’s nice and quiet. I whipped up a couple spicy (raw habanero) krab rolls and a miso soup that I can nibble on prior/during the theme announcement. Cheers all. Let’s make this an awesome game jam!!

I’m proud to find that my previous Ludum Dare #25 compo entry “Goat Mechanic” has been played and shown by a popular YouTuber named ConCrafter :)… Thanks!

My entry is called How I Escaped The Dungeon of Torment. It is from the perspective of a child, locked inside a storage shed, using a garden hose with various attachments to force open the “dungeon” door. The names of the attachments are named and described as if originating from an RPG, so for example, a hand saw is a jagged sword.

In the first evening, I only had a handful of sparse ideas to pursue. The next morning I started to design the idea of a prisoner, crafting a weapon to chisel away the stonework of a penitentiary. Then to reduce art needed, I changed the idea to a storage shed so it all takes place on one screen.

I had a lot of technical hiccups. I had even more concerns for the design, actually dropping the idea and starting another LD project twice. In the final several hours I changed the direction to a little boy describing his adventures.

Unfortunately I had dusted out my computer, and changed graphics cards, shortly before LD started. Chronolapse ended up recording the wrong screen, so now there is no timelapse video to share

My entry for LD29 is called Giant Pumpkin. While thinking of the theme, I was watering my plants, figuring beneath the “surface” could imply soil. Roots get really chaotic. Meanwhile I remembered a trip I took to the York, Pennsylvania fair, featuring enormous pumpkins. You get the idea, I latched onto the design idea and proceeded from there.

The Good:

Using Flash, I got a lot of bang for the buck using Tween objects for small animations. For example, the plus symbols on roots and stems grow spontaneously in a fraction of a second. That bit of polish does make a difference as it makes the game feel more interactive. The sound effects came together well using a cheap microphone that came with Rock Band.

The little popup that comes up when the cursor hovers over something became really useful. I hope it helps to explain features to the player.

The Bad:

Balancing basically six resource types in a game is very difficult! I would have liked it to be more educational, but overall is so far from being biologically accurate.

The Ugly:

Implementing the preloader in the final hour broke a lot of features. The bug was a simple oversight, but the adrenaline kicks in as the clock ticks down the final minutes.

Okay you guys, I just had a huge beef and bean burrito with veggies and homemade guacamole. I am ready.. bring on the theme!! =D

Last night I submitted my compo entry The Village of Lost Time!

You control villagers, 10 seconds prior your daughter’s demise. The villager movement and actions are recorded and repeated. Create gatherers, javelineers, mages, progress through the mini story!

Technical ramblings!!…

Unfortunately, numerical errors crop up in the recorded movement so villagers end up running all over the place. I knew this bug existed, but under the pressure couldn’t think of a fix. This morning I facepalmed and immediately knew just to calculate velocity and position for the current villager, and only store the final position for that frame for the future recorded movement.

Instead I was storing the controls and recalculating velocity and position with the same function for the current and recorded villagers.  Still, the method of storing the controls should still work, because time steps are fixed so any numerical errors would just be repeated again and again for the recordings..? Actual frame rate does not matter because the time delta is fixed. This is going to bug me.

I added a link to the fixed version, but I left the buggy 48 hour version as the default.

Oooh! My latest batch of kombucha is ready just in time for LD# 27!

What? What is that?!

Imagine cold and carbonated sweetened black tea with a bite like apple cider. It is a probiotic drink where the bacteria breaks down sugar as food to multiply, while producing natural carbonation and a tiny bit of alcohol. I strain it by the gallon, filling plastic bottles. Typically I use a little fruit juice in each one, sealed overnight at room temperature, so it will be extra fizzy.

Why? Well, for starters it’s absolutely delicious and very healthy. For a game jam it gives me long lasting energy, rather than a temporary jolt like coffee.

Cheers!

Earlier in December 2012. I went all out in my first Ludum Dare, 25 themed “You are the villain” which sparked all kinds of ideas… especially sub-themed with a goat. I went for an overhead traffic game where you play as a goat working for a corrupt mechanic, dropping objects into traffic to create accidents to earn more money and unlock new items. It was an amazing experience! I almost panicked near the end of the compo, due to several physics bugs and strange Flash issues. Titled “Goat Mechanic”, it earned 15th place.

I have completely redone the entry, adding new items, levels, polish, and pushing it to the Apple App Store and Google Play! Tokens are earned over time and creating accidents eventually unlock more items and levels.

Hi guys, this is my compo entry called Goat Mechanic! It is focused on dropping objects into traffic as a villain to earn money for your mechanic boss. Made with Adobe Flash CS5, FlashDevelop, Box2D API, Gimp, Audacity, microphone, as3sfxr. There are three levels and twelve items to buy in the shop. Results show how many car windows were smashed, number of flat tires, etc. Try to beat all three levels for the ending.

Made in Flash so play it here!

Download the source code here!