Happy to announce that I’ll be jamming along for LD34!

The setup I’ll be using:

• Desktop PC
• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
• Unity3d
• Sublime Text
• GIMP
• Blender
• Audacity
• LMMS

Also probably:

• a pen tablet
• Qubicle – if i can get it to work via WINE
• streaming – probably running on separate box and just pointing a webcam on me as i studio

i will be using:

• a mac mini
• a portable usb monitor – fits inside a backpack
• wireless keyboard and mouse. actually fuck that mouse. i’ll use a wired laser mouse.
• power cord, surge protector. not anticipating any major thunderstorms, so a basic power strip should work.
• software installed: the usual suspects – unity3d, blender, gimp, audacity
• also mac os x – unix, baby!

i’ll find a coffee shop somewhere and hang out for a while and maek gam. if any seattle folks want to hang out and hold down and area of a coffee shop during one or both of saturday and sunday, i think that’d be a nice quasi-event, in lieu of atomjack (who hosted the seattle LD event in april) closing [:(]; i know there are quite a few LDers out there, so feel free to PM me or post on seattle indies (also here) if you find a good spot for a bunch of us to sit down and jam..

i may also go back and do some audio work on my main workstation, running windows 8.1, all the software that’s on the mac mini (except os x)(the windows versions, obviously), plus :

• cantibile solo, with VSTs for emulating some old school synths – SH-101, MS-20, Bit-1, some others
• a MS-20i midi controller for the MS-20 VST, also the keyboard works as a keyboard
• two 24″ dell monitors, one in portrait, one in landscape
• one squarish 19″ samsung monitor from like 2005 i think, because more monitors
• a clippy desk fan, because it might get hot
• lots of tea
• also an oculus rift dk2. it doesn’t really work on the mac mini, so if i use it, it would be on a second attempt type game if my first game done on the mac fails for whatever reason halfway through.

i look forward to making a game along with everyone else, and to seeing what everyone comes up with.

until then, o/
–TH

(was in earlier, but site was down when i was about to post this ಠ_ಠ)

Compo’ing unless someone at the Atom Jack location reeeally wants me on their team.

@ Atom Jack Studios in Seattle

Equipment:

Mac Mini, Unity, Blender, Gimp, Audacity, Wacom Bamboo, Sublime Text

may record some synth fx later on my windows machine using a ms-20i

might try some music program. Not sure if/what just yet

This will be a nice opportunity to try playing around with a fresh idea. If it fits with the diablolike starter code I did for 7DRL, I might use that as a base. (that’s allowed, right?) Otherwise, you know – Ludum Dare!

I’ll be working in my spare time from a day job during the weekdays, so most of my work on this will probably be done over the weekend, with maybe some beta testing and polish work done after that – assuming things go well over the weekend. hehe

Looking forward to finding out what kind of theme we’ll be working with!

–TH

This is the view in the editor of some sprites I drew in gimp and then imported as groups of voxel cube gameobjects.

Here is that same view with the game turned on. The voxels are able to be individually colored without having to stored a gazillion materials in the unity scene by storing the color in a script and then updating the instanced material at run-time. The downside of this is that nothing has any pigment to it in the editor – you just see an outline of a form. Also lighting. Might as well put that to some good use..

Still have another 12.5 hours to go! I’m liking how this is coming together. Might need to simplify down or cut short a couple of things, but I see this as being pretty finishable for today.

Looking forward to playing some of the other games afterwards! (after I get some sleep, that is!)

–TH

Hey All,

I’ll be doing the jam this time around. I’m really excited about this weekend. You can just feel all the energy flying around – it’s pretty awesome.

As for what I’ll  be using, it’s looking like:

Unity3D, Sublime Text 3, MonoDevelop, GIMP, Audacity, Blender, 3DS Max

If I do any multiplayer or online stuff (keeping it really simple, of course), I might use UnityHTTP and use that to talk to a small node server somewhere. I’ll have to timebox this, since I might not be fully aware of all the unknowns involved here.

I’ll probably stick to the conventional PC/Mac/Linux build target, although I might entertain the thought of Android / iOS builds, if there’s sufficient interest.

Nice selection of themes this time – should be fun!

–TH

I’m in for LD#29.

Can only do the 48 hr jam b/c I have to work on Monday.

ill be using Unity, Blender, Max,Gimp, Audacity, an MS-20i, Sublime Text 3, and MonoDevelop.

the themes doing well in the voting look pretty awesome, so I am hoping this will be an interesting side project for the weekend from my unnamed and not-quite-announced game that I’ve been working on since January.

also looking forward to playing and rating some of the cool games you all will be making.

happy weekend!

so, the weekend after next is ludum dare.

also i am traveling to visit friends and family for the holiday.

i am so doing this.

i’ll probably do a warm-up game this weekend.

i haven’t really done much game dev in a while

so i’m really looking forward to this ludum dare

i would like to make something cool

but above all i would like to make something that is fun and enjoyable for everyone here

and finish it within 72 hours

i will be on my laptop. against my better judgement, i think i’m going to stick with what i know and use Unity3D.

Blender, if i need to make any custom 3D objects. i might try to minimize the need for this. keep it simple.

GIMP, of course.

i’d use a tracker program to do music, but something tells me that will either involve a lot more work than necessary and/or involve gathering a bunch of external content to use as instruments. so, i’ll just stick with famitracker for doing the music and probably the sound effects, too. it will sound like a nes game. maybe i’ll throw in some bfxr just to mix things up.

audacity for any audio mixing or digital recording i may do

that’s all i can think of as far as tools, besides using sublime text for editing and monodevelop for debugging.

let’s do this    :]

I got insta-banned from Twitch.tv – for – (wait for it) – logging into my account using Tor!

I’m such a horrible person, aren’t I? Anonymizing my IP address…

I know this because I did so last night to check up on things and to get ready for the weekend. As soon as I logged in, there was a little banner pop-up saying that I’d been sent a verification e-mail. I go get the verification e-mail, click the link verify my account. All is well, right? Wrong. About a minute later my entire session is replaced with a little “You have been banned” message on an otherwise blank page. So, I guess I won’t be streaming using Twitch this weekend.

I’ve seen some (understandably) cautious behavior from sites like Facebook asking me security questions when I would appear to be logging in from another country. I’ve gotten the passive aggressive silent treatment from Youtube not playing any videos (which is really more of a technical problem of some videos not being encoded for tor-friendly streaming). I have never before gotten outright hostility such as this.

Leaving my tinfoil hat off with regard to this, but suffice to say, the site no longer adequately meets my requirements for security and privacy.

tl;dr – screw Twitch.tv.

I’ll use autoscreenshot or something to grab screenies every 10-15 seconds or so and make a video from that.

I will be jamming something up this weekend following the theme that is ultimately selected this week.

I will be using Unity3D, some C# scripting, some models done in Blender.

My image editing will be done using GIMP.

Sublime Text 3 as my code editor

MonoDevelop 2.8 for debugging. (or Debug.Log’ing, as appropriate)

Probably Famitracker and Audacity for sound, if nothing else. I’d have to see what kind of random audio toys I can dig up before this weekend to make sounds with.

Oh, and I also have an Oculus VR dev kit.. I might play around with that this weekend as well.

I /might/ be able to do a TwitchTV thing.

Looking forward to making something new this weekend along with you all. And playing the abundance of awesome games afterwards!

Have a great weekend, everyone!
-Tom

Done with a crazy hectic week, time to make a game!

The theme.. is minimalism….

4/26 – 7:51pm Looking at stuff on the Internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimalism
http://kotaku.com/the-most-gorgeous-minimalist-gaming-posters-youll-see-470835956
http://www.shortlist.com/cool-stuff/design/minimalist-video-game-posters
I like the use of 2-color visual design to create a minimalist look to the posters. The form is crisp but the details are left out and don’t bother the casual viewer, while the intent viewer can reconstruct a more vivid picture in their imagination using the detailed outer form.

I’m listening to the Fez soundtrack right now. It’s great for getting lost in thought with.
7:59pm – http://www.touchebitches.com/2009/06/minimalism-in-gaming-considering.html

internet went out for a second. *brain fart*

“Before considering the game in these terms, let’s take a brief look at what defines a minimalist text. For the purposes of this article we can compress the definition to three key components. I don’t purport they are comprehensive, but they give you a working idea:

Minimalist texts embrace the core elements of their category; they are stripped to their essentials

Features of minimalist texts are highly economical. For example, in a lot of minimalist architecture, one component will serve multiple purposes.

Less is more: much can be expressed by only using simple features. E.g, minimalist writing is defined by an almost complete lack of adjectival phrases, using basic sentence structure and context to convey meaning.”
If Canabalt is a minimalist platformer.. what other genres of game could be done in a minimalist form? I think they all could, but only some have, and maybe some are more easily put into minimalist form.

I”m thinking a minimalist RPG would be something worth trying.

Could this be done within the 48 hours of Ludum Dare?

8:03pm

8:05pm – http://www.trollishdelver.com/2011/05/4-best-minimalist-roleplaying-games.html

These are interesting.

I have whole bunches of d6s laying around I could prototype something with. I could also just code up some dice-rolling code using some Random() calls.

8:12pm

What about a minimalist MMORPG?

I’ve seen MMOs done before on here. I wouldn’t think it would need to handle a load of more than, say, a couple thousand simultaneous players at the most.

oh, wait, wait – that one big mmo co-op diablo type game.. i forget what it is called.

8:19pm – creating a new unity project

8:32pm – ok, so minimalist RPG is probably a little too obvious. there’s probably going to be like a dozen of these entered.
8:34pm – screw it. let’s make an arcade game.

8:36pm – camera background is white. because. maybe it should be darker so as to put less of a strain on laptop/mobile device batteries..

It’s time to make some more awesome. I’ll be doing the Ludum Dare thing this weekend with all of you. I’m looking forward to the challenge of making something around whatever comes about from the theme voting and playing what everyone else has made.

Pretty much the same setup that I’ve used before, with some small tweaks and additions:

Core i7 PC, 20GB RAM running Windows 7
2 24″ monitors, one in portrait view for coding
Unity3D for making the 3D games that work on Windows, Mac, and Linux
Gimp 2.8 (just upgraded recently, still getting used to it..)
Bamboo Pen tablet
FamiTracker for making authentic NES-style sounds and music
Bfxr for quick & dirty 8-bit-esque sound hacks
Blender for 3D modeling and skinning, possibly animation as well

I’ll try and actually do something for the competition this time, so.. we’ll see how that goes.

Best of luck to everyone participating!

I was just thinking about polishing up one or more of the prototypes I have laying around into a full-featured, marketable game and putting it up on Google Play.

Accepting this challenge is a little extra motivation to do so this month, and maybe even look into finding a way of selling a PC version of the game.

I’m not sure exactly what game I’m going to do this with yet, though. I’m looking at my previous LD entries as well as some other unpursued prototypes and doing some new-game-brainstorming on the side.

Since I already have an LLC and bank account set up and all the paperwork and waiting that goes with that taken care of, the “selling” aspect of this challenge is at least mostly, if not completely done, and all that remains is finishing a game and advertising it somehow. Will probably also want to beta test, too – although selling an alpha for a larger project might be an option, if I can find something that I can honestly say I’d like to work on long-term, and enough people express interest in playing/buying my unfinished game. Might be good to have a smaller game ready to finish and put to market anyway, just in case.

There’s one idea in particular which I think might have a lot of the right things going for it in terms of marketability and I think would be really cool to work on. The question remains is how much/good of an alpha would I be able to make in less than a month on my ownsome.

So, I’m giving myself another day or two to really work through a few ideas on what to do. This month-long timeframe is nice hopefully I make good use of it.

Also, I wish everyone participating in this the best of luck, and hope everyone involved does make a good, honest buck (hopefully more!) off something they’ve made!

-Tom

For this Ludum Dare, I’m going to try using my newly repaired laptop. I installed the release preview of Windows 8 on it (it’s free and runs Unity, so good enough for me). I’m in the process of setting it up with tools that I may use over the weekend.

Definitely (90-100% of using):

-Unity3D – looking around at 2D frameworks to use if i decide to go that direction. otherwise I’ll just default to full 3D using either Blender or 3DS Max
-Gimp
-Audacity
-sfxr
-Sublime Text 2 with Unity3D plugins
-famitracker

Maybe:
-Blender for 3D stuff (will revert to 3DS Max on my main machine if this becomes too much hassle) – haven’t used this before, so I’ll be reserving a bit of time between now and Friday to find my way around
-Bamboo tablet – new gadget arriving in the mail soon. will also have to figure out how to use it. hopefully will not be too difficult.
-Inkscape – vector graphics tool – i less than three me some vector graphics. spent a good semester in college learning all about how to draw curves and write code to draw them, so i’m guessing this should just be a matter of taking a couple of hours to learn the UI. would be awesome if this works with the bamboo tablet.