Space Amoebas!  http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-34/?action=preview&uid=7542

pictured: not Agar.io

<NICEFILTER>
This game was incredibly challenging for me to finish within the deadline. I can’t describe the feeling of joy I am getting watching players connect and pilot their goofy little amoebas around trying to eat each other.

Separating the servers from the game was a mistake though, which is obvious to me now. It is confusing to have to keep a separate server window open and confusion keeps the player count low, which is death for a multiplayer game. I was terrified of latency since I am in Europe so I wanted to make sure everyone could connect to a local server. I should have just made one server and dealt with the lag.
</NICEFILTER>

<RANTFILTER>
Most of my reviews are saying my game is just a copy of Agar.io. For some reason this is getting under my skin so I have to rant about it before I snap and yell at my dog.

First Rant: Do you go around to every one of the 100s of platform games and leave reviews saying they are “Basically just copying Mario Brothers”? Space Amoebas is about using planets gravity to propel yourself around in space to eat small enemies or hide from big ones. Yes, in my game you eat dots too. So did Pacman. What is your point?

Second Rant: Have you ever tried to make “Just a copy of Agar.io” in 48 hours before? It was really freakin hard. I wish there was a category for Technical Achievement which I think I would do well in since I don’t think anyone has made a WebRTC game with synchronized physics for LD before. The best I can hope for is Innovation, which I will do terrible in because my game is “just a copy of Agar.io”.

Do I look like Agar to you? Well, do I punk?!

Third Rant: This rant is aimed at myself. I swore I would never make another multiplayer game for a compo. It is so disheartening to see players have connected, bopped around for a few seconds without seeing another player, and leaving again. The whole, complicated system is working (miraculously) but there are no players to interact with so the game is boring. I really planned to write some AI but I ran out of time.

Fourth Rant: One side effect of writing a server for the compo is that I can see exacly how long each player has connected before leaving again. I can see you people. All but a few of the users who have left reviews spent less than one minute in the game. Some about 15 seconds!! Is that how much time you are spending on all of the games you review!? Are you just padding your coolness score? Why not just look at the screenshots and base your review on them?

Grumpy old man out. *drops mike*
</RANTFILTER>

Seriously though, thanks everyone who has tried my game and left feedback so far. Feedback is like gold.

I added the ability to run your own server from a web browser, so if an existing server is too laggy just start your own!

http://ancient-plains-7885.herokuapp.com/examples/space/exampleClient.html

Eat your enemies!

A bean you can trust

30% less snake, 20% more potato

Vote Beanzo for Ludum Dare mascot!

A clean record, no skeletons in this closet.

60% less flammable than the other candidates

Black eyes, like a doll’s eyes.

Respawn is working and so is basic account creation.  So that means a public test is possible!

Play here!

No king yet…

Still to do:

• unit experience
• sound fx
• show fighting somehow
• improve the map
• intelligent target selection during fighting
• music?
• chat?

Networking is functioning pretty well.  Implemented most of the game rules.  Finished all of the tile art.  Why is this going so smoothly?  Could it be that after 30-odd failed games it starts to get easier?

Ready for a castle assault.

Still to come…  Public demo.  Ability to regain lost units.  Sounds and maybe music?  Lots of bug fixing.

I am making a multiplayer turn-based/RTS hybrid called MountainKing.  Everyone starts with a few soldiers and fight to stand on top of the mountain where the game proclaims them king.  Then a few seconds later someone knocks them off and there is a new king.

It is an HTML5 game using Craftyjs, Raphaeljs and Nodejs.  I started on the graphics over the weekend since I won’t be able to compete the whole 7 days (and also because I suck at graphics).

Okay so my game was pretty-much impossibly difficult to win and confusing to boot.  Lesson learned.  I made some tweaks and uploaded a new version under a different link “Playable Version” so as not to be confused with my entry version.  Please try it!  (and then ignore it because you should only vote on my entry version)

Now with more love

Things tweaked:

• added positive/negative feedback for when you are winning/losing
• bigger fonts and different colors for readability
• graphical indicators to show what the actions do
• some gameplay tweaks to make it easier

This has been my second LD attempt and my second completed game!

Shoebox World

The Good

• Music.  My first game to have it.  Musagi is fun!
• Artwork.  Perhaps you are thinking this should be in the Bad or even Ugly categories.  This means you haven’t seen my previous games.  I am actually improving!
• I started to hardcode the “goals” for winning the game and then stopped and decided, for once, that I would actually design it.  It took a tiny bit more time than hardcoding but in the end all I had to do was cut and paste my first goal, change two parameters and presto, new goals!

The Bad

• The game is confusing for first-time players.  I need to get better at making it accessible.
• I came down with strep throat on friday.  I was a pitiful sight all weekend but damned if that was going to stop me.
• Even with the strep throat excuse, I could not dodge a commitment that stole away most of my sunday.  I am just not good enough yet to make up for this lost time.

The Ugly

• I was reserving sunday night for game balancing and polish.  I cut out any remaining features, made a test deploy to the server, a quick test pass and…it hangs?!  Obscure error message deep in the framework?!  Gahh!   I lost all my polish time desperately trying to debug a dumb little error that happened only after a deploy to the server.  In a way this was just bad luck since I am pretty familiar with the framework and the error ended up being obscure.

All things considered, another enjoyable experience.  Looking forward to the next one!