I didn’t make my own game this time around. Couldn’t think of any game designs based on the theme that I was excited for. I’m a mechanics-first sort of designer, and this iteration’s theme left me clueless. So I instead helped out with the programming and design on another project by some other local game devs. That project became Cvltists and Crusaders. (Also check out Bovidae Destroyer, produced by another local team.)

It was a new experience for me, being on a game jam team along with another programmer/designer, plus a very capable artist and a very capable musician. I was already worn out at the beginning of the weekend (not an encouraging sign at the start of a jam), and was exhausted by the end, but it was nonetheless a great team and a great experience; I’m glad I was a part of it!

Our submission is up! It’s called “Bovidae Destroyer.” Click the image below to go to the game page.

It’s not what we’d call “finished” but this is the first Ludum Dare attempt for most of our team and this is as far as we got.

You can also download an mp3 of the game’s silly theme song, “Attack of the 50 Ft Cows” and even get the separated tracks for remixing if you want! The song is written, performed, recorded and produced by Ben McLean with special guest Andy Gainey on drums! It’s certainly not my best work, but considering the limited time period and the lack of sleep, I’d say it was pretty good all things considered.

Full Credits:

Alex Vilasenor – Lead Programmer

Aldo Calderon – Programmer

Justin Moore – Artist

Ben McLean – Musician

Andy Gainey – Drummer

Original game concept by Alex and Ben.

I’m a little disappointed that none of my code actually made it into the game, but my music got in, and I spent alot of the weekend learning Unity which was great. I am confident that next time I enter a game jam, I’ll be able to contribute alot more as far as code is concerned since I’ll already know Unity somewhat.

Thanks to everyone involved and especially to Alex & ArtsTech for hosting the event.

I left at 8:30 AM to sleep and arrived back at ArtsTech at 1:30 PM. My good friend from the Kansas City Video Game Developers meetup, Andy Gainey, was nice enough to record some drum tracks for our game’s theme song I wrote, “Attack of the 50 ft Cows”, to replace my crappy sequenced drum loop. Justin’s back and Xander is still chugging away at coding the mechanics.

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce Team 2, which I haven’t had a chance to talk about yet. Team 2 consists of coders Andy Gainey, Nathan Walker, and musician Luke Shredder. For their Ludum Dare project, they are making some kind of Lovecraftian Angry Birds.

Even though Ludum Dare jam goes on longer, our plan is to quit at 9 PM tonight, because some of us have jobs to be at on Monday. 6 hours to go!

Justin, our modeller, gave us some models last night before he departed for some much deserved rest. Xander worked all through the early hours of the morning programming the game mechanics.

Meanwhile, I wrote and recorded a silly song, titled “Attack of the 50 ft Cows!” Very inspired by Weird Al Yankovic, Jonathan Coulton and especially the Gothic Archies. It is in 6/4 time (I think?) and has lyrics, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, crappy sequenced drums and a wicked keytar solo! 😀 It should be in our trailer, in the game and I’ll link the download here when it’s ready! I have completed recording all the tracks but still need to do the mixing. I am too tired to continue at this point though, so I went home at 8:30 AM. I plan to get a shower, some sleep and then return sometime around noon for the final stretch!

Xander is the most hardcore — he is the only one working on the game at this moment. The rest of us are sleeping! But we’re not done! We’ll be back later today to finish. 😀

I finally got some assets from our modeller Justin. I got a bit ticked off when I found out I wasn’t given all the necessary files at first, but his models work when you get all the files.

That was white noise from xxHash. Just to see it working, I also did one with OpenSimplexNoise. (the improved, patent-free noise similar in intention to Perlin)

Unity City! 😀