Ludum Dare

Retrospective of 2015

What, we are already over two months into 2016? You mean 2015 is already over? Wow, it’s really easy getting into the mental-trap of saying: “I’ll post some progress update later, when I really have something to show.”  Another week passes, again nothing happens… And suddenly the year is over!

2015 was a pretty exhausting year for me, I had many months where I just couldn’t bring up any motivation for game development. So, what did I manage to do in 2015 besides moping and starting game prototypes that led nowhere, let’s see:

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~February: I found some time to participate in MiniLD #57 with the theme “Reverse”. Created a reverse Match-3 game. It’s playable, but mostly proof of concept. (And couldn’t get the web-version to work.)

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~March: Made a quick joke “game” called Infinitris. It’s tetris on an infinitely large playing field. I was motivated to finally test out chunked maps, which allow for (nearly) infinite worlds, and it works pretty well. There are so many possibilities this could be going, but it is a fun toy as is.

~Juscreen_1457547820.85.jpgly: Participated in the IndiesVSGamers Game Jam, hosted by GameJolt. The theme was ‘Arcade’ the time limit was 72 hours and the ambitions were high. Therefore the game “Space Scrap” was born (naming things is hard), a shmup were you assemble your spaceship from spare parts lying around on planets while under constant time pressure, fleeing from a supernova. The original 72h version plays and looks horrible, but I’ve been working on it on and off, and it starts to be a really kick-ass game. I’ll try to focus on it next, getting it done soonish.

That’s my first game hosted on GameJolt, and I have to say: I like it. It makes adding highscores and trophies a breeze and provides a clear and professionally looking game page.

thumbnail_small.png~August: Participated in MiniLD #62 with the theme “Final Boss”. Created a simple platformer, where you play a robot with a sawblade, using it to attack, defend, cling to surfaces and push yourself around. Had lots of boss ideas, but only managed to implement two of them. It’s unhandy to play with keyboard, but plays fluently with a gamepad.

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~December: Participated in LudumDare 34, which had a tie between the themes “Two Button Controls” and “Growing”. Didn’t stop us from ignoring both of them, to create a random RTS about managing your Space Colony and sacrificing your people to calm the wrathful gods. This is absolutely missing a proper tutorial, so playing it can be confusing, and trying to win is a real challenge.

So, that wraps up 2015. With a post only over half a year late, I hope,that in the future I manage to convince myself to post progress updates more often. Now go play some games!

Survived Ludum Dare 31

The last few days have been intense, but we present to you: Hyper Soccer

Hyper Soccer GameplayIt’s what happens when you let placeholder graphics get into the final game, but there simply isn’t time for everything. The gameplay turned out fun, that’s what matters most (to me at least).

The Theme for LD31 was “Entire Game on one Screen”. Nothing really inspiring, but at least I managed to make a game that follows the theme for a change.

Hyper Soccer Grapple Match

It’s a local-multiplayer game with gamepad support. Play with as many friends, as you have gamepads!

So, go grab some gamepads, call some friends, and enjoy the madness that is Hyper Soccer.

Web-Build and Making-Of will follow later.

 

Release of “Hello, Alien!” – For real this time

So, now the “Open-Beta” has ended, and “Hello, Alien!” is ‘finished’. Or at least, development on it has stopped for now (except for bugfixes of course).

What if you make a game, and nobody shows up?

“Open-Beta” went relatively…. well, let’s not say bad… we’ll just call it underwhelming. The same holds true for the October Challenge. Apparently nobody will show up to a party, if you don’t tell anybody. (Who knew, right?)

At least we can boast 207 views and 38 downloads. (While nearly all of the traffic comes from ludumdare.com, the only other site I’ve posted about the game.)

I just understood the importance of marketing. The next step will be to try and get the word out. I’ll have to investigate on some good ways to get some people’s attention. I heard twitter is good at those things…

In other news

We are currently working on a small game started for the MiniLD #55 last weekend. Just testing out some things I usually neglect (trying out some nice shaders) and it seems like it will finally be playable in the browser (rejoice). I just hope we finish in time before LudumDare #31 will start this weekend. Also let’s hope the theme won’t be ☃.

-Anton

Ludum Dare 30 Aftermath

Ludum Dare 30 ended and the results are in! And we did BETTER THAN EXPECTED, at least better than I expected. Woot! Out of 1045 jam entries, our game Hello, Alien! scored surprisingly well:

Position Category Rating Relative Position (from Top)
#23 Fun(Jam) 4.02 2%
#39 Humor(Jam) 3.82 4%
#47 Overall(Jam) 3.94 4%
#57 Theme(Jam) 3.90 5%
#106 Innovation(Jam) 3.62 10%
#154 Audio(Jam) 3.55 15%
#175 Mood(Jam) 3.51 17%
#295 Graphics(Jam) 3.58 28%

This are the best results of any Ludum Dare I’ve entered yet. Our game seems to be a really fun(ny) experience! Big thanks go to Florian Kager, because he did a great job creating the music/audio for the game. I still can’t believe it, I’m utterly happy that people seem to like what we are doing!

Another reason to celebrate: We published the first revised Post-Compo version, with old bugs fixed, new bugs introduced, three new levels and finally a (hopefully) not sucking way to rotate objects.

Next goal will be bringing ‘Hello, Alien!’ to a mobile device and I really want to add more levels and more ways to manipulate the laser.

-Anton

Ludum Dare 30 – Hello, Alien! – Post Mortem

This Ludum Dare we created a little puzzle game, which we called ‘Hello, Alien!’ and you can go play it here.

Gameplay of Hello, Alien!

About the game:

The aliens have been living happily in their connected galaxies, until an asteroid storm disconnected their interplanetary connection based on laser satellite technology. Help them to restore their connection, by using mirrors, splitters and bombs.

The good things that happened:

  • LAZORZS! The laser effects turned out to be pretty neat, and it’s really fun just playing around with the lasers. (Thanks to this laser creation guide.)
  • Artstyle: I tried out various artstyles and came to the conclusion, that pixelart is what I suck the least at. So, I’m happy I decided to create pixelart and stuck with it.
  • Teamwork: Although Florian (Sound and Music guy) had a lot of other things going during the weekend, he managed to create some sweet music and sound-effects, so that I could focus on other tasks. We had a pretty fast feedback-loop so that iterations over created assets were quick and painless.
  • Dropping the lose condition: In the first versions of the game, you would lose the level when you grilled those nice aliens and you had to restart the level, undoing all your hard work. But killing the aliens is the most fun part! And it’s a god damn puzzle game, there is no need to ‘lose’ the level. There are states of the level that mean the level is solved, and everything else just means it isn’t solved yet. On the other hand it will certainly make sense to add some sort of element that the laser isn’t allowed to hit, before the level counts as solved. But it shouldn’t need a complete level restart, just some repositioning of the necessary game elements.

The bad things that happened:

  • Unnecessary (Failed) Optimizing: I wasted some hours reworking (“optimizing”) the laser raytracing code just to fail at one small bug. It turned out the first sloppy code was good enough in the end.
  • Last minute level design: I created some levels during the second day, but a lot of the third day was spent refining them as tutorial levels. The last hour before submission was used to quickly create more ‘non’-tutorial levels, and were quite hastily put together.
  • Level Editor Lacking Usability: Also the editor for creating the levels was made during the weekend, and some features were really clunky to use and/or not fully implemented. So creating levels was a really tiresome progress. This further slowed down the ability to create more levels for the game.
  • Did not finish art assets: I did not manage to rework all the graphics for the final version, so the planets and buttons don’t quite fit aesthetically into the rest of the game.

Ludum Dare was certainly a fun experience and gave us the feeling of actually having accomplished something (even if not much).

So, the next thing we will do, is to polish our Ludum Dare entry and add all the features we would have liked to add. For the post-compo version, we would also like to get it on Android, because we figured, it would make a neat mobile game.

-Anton

Get ready for LUDUM DARE Edition 30
*Hype Intensifies*

Get hyped

Soon Ludum Dare 30 is going to start, and we totally intend to participate. (Even when the theme is going to suck.)

Tools we’ll be using:

Any other projects will be put on hold during this weekend, because Ludum Dare takes top priority.

Taking showers? What is that?
Eating? I’ll live from what I find between my keyboard keys. (most certainly Ramen noodles)
Sleep? Ain’t nobody got time for that! I got to create a game!
-an average Ludum Dare participant

Our goal will be to have fun and to create something that is also fun. Maybe trying out some new things along the way. And maybe, with a little bit of luck, we will even be able to call it a game.

-Anton