Finished another Ludum Dare! The theme this time around was Tiny World, which I satisfied in Hero of Rain by placing the world within a raindrop.

The fall is near its end.

See the Ludum Dare competition entry. This fleshes out some of the plot and describes the controls (although they are presented in-game), so it would be wise to go here.

Directly to the game.

Woot! From this handy image that I’m hotlinking from here, you can see that Secretnet did well in the minild:

And congratulations to everyone else who participated, too! Fun times.
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Another Ludum Dare event, another game.

This one, the Mini Ludum Dare #27, had the theme of all talk, as well as a phrase that was suggested be included in each game: “I think we can work something out…”

So, I made Secretnet. It’s an adventure game that takes place inside a fake IRC client. It’s short, so instead of writing a description that would likely take longer for you to read than to play the game, I’ll just give you a link to the competition entry page:

(Click on the image. Or here. I made the text a link because people usually look for text links and assume image links go to bigger versions of images. Anyway, just click one or the other, and you’ll be fine.)

Now I’ll get back to work on Minerbot 2.

A while back, MiniLD 24 took place. I didn’t make an official entry, but I did partway finish a game called Danger Love. A few posts back I linked to the most recent version of it, which is right here.
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First thing you’ll notice when you go to the entry page for Mystery of Yrevoc Sid is that it’s unfinished. Although it is partially due to ambition (and chatting on IRC), I blame most of all my incomplete entity system (ES) basecode.

(In the Ludum Dare competition you are allowed to have some code ready, as long as you release it to the other competitors, ideally so that they can use it for the competition themselves if they want to.)
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I’m going to do the next Ludum Dare.

So, what does this mean for my entity system articles I plan to make? Even though it looks like I’m using up one of my precious weekends for non-ES work, I’m planning on doing this 48-hr game with the engine I’m coding. The base is at a point where I think I could finish it in the 24 hours between my last final and the LD. Then I could code the game with it.

With the LD done, I would be much better off writing those articles. Right now I have the theory I want to present understood pretty well (and have the documents to prove it!) but hands-on experience coding using an ES will really help. Also, being forced to release my source with the entry will make what I’m explaining tangible.

I’m not going to do 3d graphics for this game (in fact, not going to use hardware acceleration at all!) so hopefully I’ll be able to really utilize the ES for what it’s worth.

Wish me luck! Or don’t. Whatever you want.

I decided to do another Ludum Dare, and I think my game came out nicely.

It’s called A GREEDY PROFESSION, in all caps like that because of the font renderer I wrote only having capitals. You can find the entry page here, and at that page you can read instructions on how to play.

I did it! My first full Ludum Dare. Also, my first relatively complete 3d game.

Go over here to look at the compo entry page, or click here for a direct link to a zip with the game files. Instructions on the LD entry page. (Just use the mouse.)

That was fun. Even though I started late, I got something done. Admittedly, it was coded as if it were made of pasta (look at the source if you really want to), but it was so much more than I expected to be able to make. I even succeeded in making a little tune, and non-distracting sound effects!

On the downside, the gameplay was a bit… lacking. At the very end I hastily increased the number of levels in the game by a factor of two, adding three levels without making the game worth those three levels. If I’m to work on this game again, there shall be cities and increasing numbers of gameplay elements rather than just more terrain to eat.

But for now, to continue development of my old LD16 entry into something palatable by the Kongegrate crowd. I haven’t got much done yet, but I added some particle effects that look pretty cool. I’m currently reorganizing the code, though, so beware of bugs.

The Ludum Dare is a game-making competition. The challenge is to make a complete game on a weekend–in 48 hours. Looking around the website I noticed that there were mini Ludum Dare competitions that take place monthly, and decided I was going to try it out. So I did.

In a normal Ludum Dare, everyone makes their game at the same time and it becomes very intense. The Mini Ludum Dare aims to make it easier to take part by flexibility. I couldn’t fit in the time for the 48 hours on the weekend the mini LD was scheduled, so I did it the next weekend. I went over my time limit by two hours in the end, but I did manage to get a game done and playable–something I didn’t really expect at first. Since then I’ve added instructions, but the game remains just about the same. (I did make it a bit more difficult.)

If you want to see it, go here for the Ludum Dare site entry, or here for a direct link to the game.

Remember to press “2″ at the beginning for help! (And if it doesn’t work, remember that Flash Player might need focus–just click it and try again.)

In the future I hope to do more of these mini Ludum Dare competitions, and maybe a normal one if it lands on a school break.

For now, I’m going to be improving the game overall and adding some more variety. After it’s “fun enough” I’ll put it on Kongregate and maybe after that make an iPhone/iPod Touch game.