Since Piet, the game I originally submitted for the October challenge has yet to earn a single penny (and cost me $25 to submit to the play store), I doubled down and made another game. Odds are I won’t make anything with this one either, but at least now each game only cost me $12.5 😛

Meet Galaxy Launch. It’s not quite as pretty as Piet, but it’s a whole lot more fun to play.

Free for Android in the the Play Store:

Didn’t you always wonder what would happen if you’d cross Mondrian with Simon Says?

I made Piet for another jam (the theme was “minimalism”), and decided to put it in the play store with some ads for the October Challenge. Since I didn’t have a dev account before, I guess I need to earn $26 to win the challenge.

The October MiniLD is now over (as is October). Thanks to all who participated!

I’ll post mini reviews of all the entries soon.

MiniLD 13 is almost at an end, but you still have a few days left to decide to make an awesome educational game.

2009…

200 years ago Charles Darwin was born, 150 years ago he published “The Origin of Species”.

400 years ago Galileo was the first to gaze into the heavens with a telescope.

To help commemorate these important birthdays for Science, your task will be to write a game that’s not only fun, but also educational. Bonus points for teaching us about astronomy or biology (or astrobiology ).

Collaboration with non-programmer scientist friends is allowed and encouraged.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is no fixed deadline this time; post a message just before you start and then post your game at the latest 48 hours after your announcement post. However since much of the fun of Ludum Dare is hacking along side others, I propose next weekend (9-12 October) as the preferred period.

Finally, since one of the really cool things with the real LDs that we (or I at least) miss during the minis is feedback, as compo host I’ll commit to reviewing all the games posted. (Unless there are a bazillion entries in which case I’ll review the first 20 or so.)

Unfortunately I lost my home internet connection so I’m not online as much as I’d like, but feel free to contact me either in a comment or by email (nils dot fagerburg at gmail) if you need any clarification.

Happy hacking!

– – –

Submit Entries Here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/

View Entries Here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-13/?action=preview

I decided to steal an idea from the 7DRL people for the October mini LD: while I will announce the rules sometime on October 2, the contest starts whenever you want in October. Just post a message right before you start and than post your game at most 48 hours after that.

Lunch was nothing special, just sandwiches.

Dessert was nice though: ice cream on a stick. And the photo also shows my desk area :o.

My game now has an intro , too bad it still pretty much lacks a game.

Breakfast is muesli with greek yogurt and honey, and a cup of tea.

Last night I went to bed concerned about the lack of progress I had made, however this morning I found I’m advancing quite quickly, so I guess I did make a lot of progress on the ‘scaffolding’ code after all. Or maybe I’m just less tired. 😛

Also I made a (-n awful) piece of music for my game. It really sucks though so I might not leave it in.

I just came back from a friend’s BBQ. It was very good and the company was excellent. On the other hand that plus a late start plus grocery shopping means I’ve made pathetically little progress on my entry. I’ll try to get a little more done tonight and work all day tomorrow.

First of all, my cake failed:

The turning plate thing in our oven is broken so I placed the cake mold on an oven-safe pie thing so it would turn, however the mold was too flexible and the batter spilled.

Next, breakfast (3pm is a perfectly acceptable time to have breakfast it seems):

I finally had an idea for my game . It’s not terribly original but oh well. Now I just need to make it. 😛

I also decided to reuse some collision code from a previous entry of mine. I feel that since you’re allowed to get the same functionality in a library it should be ok.

I didn’t have any ideas so I decided to bake a cake.

I still don’t have any ideas that satisfy my minimum originality threshold, I may be forced to make something boring if I don’t find something soon. Also I forgot to preheat the oven for my cake.

Ideas I probably won’t use #53: a colossal cave adventure clone.

Anyway, since everybody else is, I’ll list my tools:

• emacs (aquamacs actually)
• python + pygame
• audacity and of course sfxr
• the gimp

It sucks to have very few ratings and comments on your game, so here are a few pointers for next time.

Platform
The most rated games are the ones you can play in your browser. Try making your entry in java or in flash and embedding it in a webpage for maximum exposure. If you don’t want to have to suffer the horror that is (Java|AS|Flash) at least make a binary release for Windows since most people seem to have access to that platform (I don’t so please also make an OS X version 😉 ). If you’re making your game in Python (or its pale imitator ruby 😛 , or any other interpreted language for that matter) you might think you don’t need binaries but you’re wrong, people aren’t going to install a different environment for every single game. Same for Löve games.

Dependencies
If you do only release as source, or if you only release for one platform, or dynamically link libraries, keep dependencies to a minimum. If all I have to do to build the game is type “make” there’s a better chance I’ll try it than if I have to install 13 libraries which each in turn depend on half a dozen others.

Screenshot
I try to play all games regardless of the screenshot (in part because my own drawing skills are easily surpassed by those of a drunk monkey with a pen) but if the entry requires more than clicking on a shiny icon to run, I’ll definitely spend more time trying to get an entry with a cool screenshot working.

Rate other games (and leave comments!)
While I am determined to try as many games as I can, I prioritize rating the games from the people who left comments on my games first.

Of course these “rules” aren’t set in stone. You can make a game for the Atari 2600 and still have plenty of ratings. You can also make a game with an uninspiring screenshot and win best overall.
Of course you could also cheat by making a ton of games under different names to rate your own games 😛 .

After several hours of screams, cursing, tears and mild violence towards inanimate objects I have a windows binary for your enjoyment. In case it doesn’t work for you, (which wouldn’t surprise me that much ) you can shove it up your… 😀

Download

It seems there are a lot of games with the word “DOOM” in the title…

Anyway, here’s my entry. I decided to try something a bit different so I made three mini games that are all played with only mouse. The games are wrapped in a story mode and you can unlock arcade versions by winning the story versions. The sound effects are rather crappy so you can press “s” to toggle the sound.

Download (python + pygame)

I’ll try to make a windows binary tomorrow though I remember last time it was a rather painful experience.

I’ll post more comments and perhaps a post mortem later. Good night.

Edit: windows port: download

The 2009 7DRL is happening in a few weeks. The goal is to make a roguelike in 7 days (which is like years for hardened LD48ers like us 😛 ). The event takes place March 7th to March 15th.

Info here