Ludum Dare

Posts Tagged ‘chronolapse’

Woah Ludum Dare great fun videogames stream development tools tools workflow timelapse snowman potato etc etc.

Let’s get to the point.

I’ll probably be joining the compo, and will switch to the jam if I need more time. Tools:

C# – Language. Obviously superior.
Unity3D – Game Engine. Due to the awesome folks over at Unity giving away ~1,000 free codes for a month of Pro, this just gets even better.
MonoDevelop – IDE. Unity’s one weakness. I can’t afford the Visual Studio plugin, so I’m stuck with this.
Paint.NET – 2D Graphics. Besides the fact that it’s awesome and free, I have the most experience with this.
BFXR & Freesound – SFX.
BeepBox – Music.
Open Broadcasting Software – Streaming [Twitch]

As for a timelapse, I’ll be using Chronolapse, assuming it works. It keeps telling me it doesn’t have write permission, even though I’ve given full permissions to everything for the target folder, and ran Chronolapse as administrator. If anyone has a solution, please comment!

Hoping to do better than last time. Ratings weren’t good, and I procrastinated posting them, so here:

Someone told me my music was good. I still don’t believe they were right.

Learned a ton about Unity platformers though, which led me to fix the super annoying “I’m stuck on this tile wtf” bug and optimize collisions at the same time. It even got me to start a Github project to make Unity assets intended for creating platformer games, which I’ll be using if I create a platformer this time around.

Anyways, theme dare post wordpress vote potatosalad hope ludum snowman and good luck!

I will be writing a full post-mortem doo dah tomorrow, as at the moment it’s rather late (yet again, if you’ve read my previous posts before).

Anyway, after spending too long dilly dallying, I’ve finally rendered out my creation timelapse:

Created using chronolapse and Sony Vegas. Unfortunately, not everything was captured, but anything that wasn’t here was recorded in a lower quality for backup, not that you’re actually interested.

If you’re feeling nice, or if you even like the look of my game, please feel free to vote on it here. I am personally trying to vote on as many as I can but with a-level exams coming up soon it’s kind of a hurry for me :/
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-26/?action=preview&uid=20850

Many Ludum Dare participants like to create time-lapse videos that show the actual development of their entries. I thought that was a cool idea, and decided to use Chronolapse to capture and encode my video. Chronolapse is stable, has a simple interface, and even has some advanced features like dual monitor support and picture-in-picture. But the software lacks in one major area: video quality.

While recording, Chronolapse takes periodic frame captures from your screen or webcam. Then, when you’re done, you can use the tool to compile the image sequence into a video that can be uploaded to YouTube, for example. Unfortunately, there are no settings to tweak the video output quality, and the quality is pretty bad.

The simplest solution I could find is to download a separate tool called ffmpeg to do the encoding.

Chronolapse

ffmpeg

Here’s how to do it:

1) Use Chronolapse to create a sequence of images in a folder somewhere.
2) Download ffmpeg and extract it.
3) Find the encoder executable ffmpeg.exe in the bin folder.
4) Rename all the images in your time-lapse sequence to a format that ffmpeg can recognize:

Open the folder with your image sequence in Windows Explorer. Make sure there are no other files in the folder.
Single-click on the first file in the sequence to select it. Note: This step is very important and affects sort order.
Select all files with Ctrl + A.
Press F2 and type img, and then press Enter. The files will be renamed sequentially.

5) Place a copy of ffmpeg.exe in the same folder as your image sequence, or ensure that the executable is in the Windows path.
6) Open a command window where the image sequence is, and enter the command:

ffmpeg -r 20 -i “img (%d).png” -q:v 1 -b:v 1500k timelapse.mp4

7) After processing for some time, you should have a new video file of much higher quality than what Chronolapse produces. Unless you have the correct codecs installed, this will not play. If you’re having any problems, try the VLC Media Player.
8) Profit!

To see an example of higher video quality in action, see the time-lapse video link on my entry page.

Have fun!

This will be my first game jam, and hopefully also my first non-mod, non-prototype game.

This Week

Warming up, which will essentially be testing out tools and techniques I don’t have enough experience with.
Speeding up my laptop
Some university related stuff
Cooking (healthy) food for 48 hours
Explaining my girlfriend why I’m doing this (and not going out with her)

My Tools

Building: Unity
I’ve been using Unity for 2 years now, and I still like it. Luckily I have a Pro version that I can use, which has some nice new features like pathfinding, an awesome particle system tool and of course dynamic lightning. Not sure if I will use any of those, but it’s good to have.
Coding: MonoDevelop
Unity comes with MonoDevelop, Unity is partly integrated with it, the auto-complete is nice and I’m used to it, so I will be using it to code my C# scripts.
Music: LMMS
Sound, and therefore music, is the only thing I have no experience with, so I will have to practice it a lot before I start. I also have to find some nice VSTs which I can use. I do know something about music so I hope I can produce something worthy.
Sound: Audacity
When I have to do something with sound, which rarely happens, I use Audacity. I will probably be recording sounds with my smartphone and/or laptop microphones, and I know how to remove things like noise with this tool. Also editing and looping sound works pretty nice with this free tool.
Graphics:Photoshop
I love Photoshop, I have been using it from time to time in the past 10 years, I’m far from a pro but I know my way around in it. And, most importantly, it works really awesome with my Wacom.
Modelling: Blender
I usually use 3ds Max for 3D modelling, but I only have a student license for this, so I use Blender as substitute. Since the new interface I no longer really hate it, but I do not have a numpad on my laptop… Anyway, I want to try to make a 2D game, so I won’t use it extensively. Otherwise I will have to fall back to good ol’ 3ds Max.
Motivation: Spotify
I always work with music on. (Unless I’m doing hard mathematics) I usually listen to a few styles, sorted by requirement: For creativity: death metal, progressive metal and prog. rock. For speed: drum ‘n bass, deadmau5 (yes, that’s a genre) and industrial. For inspiration: minimal classical music. And for relaxation: Eddie Vedder, Foo Fighters, Muse, or any of my other favourite bands, that no longer need attention (because I know every single tone).
Communication: Twitter - This Blog
I never tweet, but I would love to give updates and give answers to questions. (Not that I would know why you would do that.) Follow: “@Siewart_”. I will be posting some blog posts as well, because the process of creating a game is awesome, inspirational and informative. (It’s also nice to look back when you are done)
Timelapse: Chronolapse
Everyone seems to do it, so I will do it as well. Also: I love timelapses :).

My hardware:

My old HP Elitebook 8530w (Dual-Core 2.8Ghz, 4GB, Quadro FX770M);
Samsung Galaxy S2 (Ice Cream Sandvich);
Wacom Intuos 3;
A random mouse;
Hopefully a keyboard

Warm-up
For my warm-up a theme generator gave me a (cliché-ish) theme: Post-Apocalyptic Steam Punk. But I vowed to use it so I will.

Basic idea: A 2D sidescroller where you have to use nuclear waste to mutate plants, animals and NPCs in order to solve puzzles involving steam engines. Don’t know if I have enough time for something like this, but I want to go through the whole process once so I might make one short level, without tutorial. I will post it when it’s done, if it’s done.

One last thing
One last thing: Good luck and above all, have fun, my dear opponents!

I did a timelapse/commentary thing:

Actual thing here.

Super busy trying to win this, but still rating like mad when I can. Seriously, would a 3-month rating period really be all that bad? I don’t think so.

Happy ho-ho days! Hope you get to stuff all the stockings your heart desires

This will be my fourth Ludum Dare! Just as always I’m looking forward to a weekend of no sleep and lot’s fun. ;]

Weapons of Choice

Language: Flash ActionScript3

IDE: FlashDevelop

Graphics: Paint.net

Engine: FlashPunk (with some personal changes)

Additional Library: Polygonal Data Structures

Additional Software: Chronolapse

Workspace: ASUS i3 4gb laptop with Hanspree 22″ LCD monitor for an extended desktop

(Yes, that is a paper Creeper)

I have my monitors configured so that my second monitor is to the upper left of my primary monitor. But when it takes screenshots in dual monitor mode, it acts as if the second monitor is on the right, so I just get a screenshot of my screen plus an extra 1600×1200 black area to the right.

Is there any solution or do I need to move my monitor to the right side?

Wish I would’ve tried this a week ago.

Or alternatively, is there a better timelapse capture program that can handle this situation?

Get your weapons ready! Get equipped with:

Tools I’ll be using partially, wholly, or not at all..

blecki’s jileed (mapping)

http://jemgine.omnisu.com/

drpetter’s sfxr (sound effects)

http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/project_sfxr.html

drpetter’s musagi (music)
http://www.cyd.liu.se/~tompe573/hp/project_musagi.html

keeyai’s chronolapse (timelapse)
http://keeyai.com/projects-and-releases/chronolapse/

someone else’s paint.net (image editing)

http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

Posts Tagged ‘chronolapse’

I’m in (+Chronolapse problems and entry ratings)

Timelapse: Now. Post-mortem: Not now.

Higher-Quality-Video Workaround for Chronolapse

Let’s do this!

How I Make the Magics Happening

I’m in for Ludum Dare #22

Chronolapse has failed me :(

Message from Dr Light!