distractionware: devlog

Yey! Another unfinished project! I’m considering “Randomly generated tales of lies and betrayal” as a title, mostly to tease Perrin. Probably won’t stick.

So this is what I was working on for Ludum Dare 18. I was happy enough to just mess about with technical stuff this time, and decided to try doing some procedurally generated content. I like where it’s going, though; I’ll going to try and quickly finish it up before returning to Nexus City.

You can see my posts about it and play some early builds on the Ludum Dare blog, but be warned that it slightly spoils a few things.

Radio Silence is a game I made on day two of Ludum Dare #17, which had the theme Islands. It’s the first game I’ve made in Unity – a big thanks to Dock and Perrin for helping me get somewhere with it! The game’s Ludum Dare page is here.

Audio is important in this game. Best played downloaded, fullscreen, and with headphones.

Downloads:
Windows (9.2MB) | OSX Universal (13.5MB) | Unity Source (18.3MB)

Alternatively, you can play it in a browser if you have the Unity plugin installed:

[Play Online]

Ludum Dare 17 is this weekend! The theme is Islands, and for some bloody reason I thought it would be a good idea to try making an RPG. It actually went quite well, well enough that by 8pm or so I had a project that I wasn’t going to be able to finish without scaling it back radically and compromising what I wanted to do in the first place. So I’ve put it to one side – I’m going to start something totally new tomorrow and try to finish that by the deadline. This RPG thing I’ll try to finish up next week, along with that two player shooter from last weekend.

I tried making a timelapse this time, by the way! Think of it as a teaser, I guess:

Developers! I am hosting this month’s Mini Ludum Dare, and it’s happening this weekend. More info here, if you’re up for it.

Ludum Dares are normally solo events, but this one requires you to find a partner!

So, here’s what I put together for Ludum Dare 15, in the end. It’s a rushed little platformer called Ascent. You’re at the bottom of a deep cavern, and you have to climb out of it. Or, er, double jump your way out. oh also watch out for the cannons

I’m not really that happy with how it turned out – it’s not even close to my original idea, which was to make a platform-puzzler. The problem is that I made a mess of my time; I spent Saturday working on a game that wasn’t going anywhere, then started from scratch on Sunday. And then by about 1am, it was looking like my Sunday game wasn’t going anywhere either…

So I figured finally finishing something for a Ludum Dare was more important than anything else at that point – I took what I had, made a few changes and turned it into a quick, traditional platformer. Thankfully I had enough implemented elements in the game to make a couple of interesting challenges, but it’s pretty weak, and so rushed that I didn’t even have time to tile the second map properly. My description on the Ludum Dare upload page just reads “aggh aggh aggh 2 minutes left”, which should give you some idea of the panic I was in on Sunday night.

On the plus side though: I finally finished a game for Ludum Dare on time! Hopefully next time I’ll be better prepared and be able to make something I’m happier with!

This year’s second Ludum Dare is starting in a few hours – I can’t wait to start working on it! Judging from the results of the first two voting rounds, the theme is either going to be Burrowing (with 59 votes), Caverns (48), Castle (45), or possibly Connections (31). (Actually, it’ll more than likely be Burrowing unless there’s a really dramatic change of opinion – that’s quite a lead. It’s a pity – I really like “Connections” as a theme.)

I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing yet. Hopefully this one will go better than my previous attempts at Ludum Dare – this is my third time participating, and I’ve yet to finish a game by the deadline. Though since the last one I’ve had quite a lot of prototyping practice, and finished two Mini-LD entries – so hopefully that’ll help

The Best Years of my Life is a game for two players, seated at one keyboard. Made in 48 hours for Mini Ludum Dare #10, which had the theme “Domestic Violence”.

Playing alone is not recommended. The game won’t make a lot of sense if you do.

Play it here!

Bullet Time is my game for Mini Ludum Dare #9. It’s finished, and playable on Kongregate!

The game’s dead simple; the goal is to survive as long as you can. If things get too hectic, you can activate Bullet Time, which slows down enemy bullets long enough for you to navigate to safety. The highest rank is “Martha”, which requires you to survive for 3 whole minutes.

Making this reminded me of how much I enjoy shooters. I really should take a week out and make a more ambitious one at some point!

Here’s a video, courtesy of Tim!

Been working a little on my flash framework – I read somewhere that you can pretty much eliminate lag by structuring things in such a way that you work around flash’s garbage collection. Not sure if it actually works, but I need a decent flash framework so decided to approach things that way.

Anyway. For fun, and practice, (and since PoV couldn’t get the Klik and Play version running), I ported Kowlr to flash. Play it here!

Will be interesting to see what Kongregate think of it , heh.

Had planned something of an all nighter to finish the gameplay side of my Ludum Dare game, but ended up taking a relatively early night instead. It’s not really coming together in a way that I’m happy with…

The idea I had was pretty simple; you’re exploring a dungeon, finding treasures, that sorta thing. A sentient darkness is creeping up right behind you at all times, seeping in through walls and blocking off paths – you can slow it down by throwing torches at it, but you can’t stop it. You can only really explore about half of the dungeon: Trying to keep ahead of it forces you to make permanent choices about what items you can take with you and which ones you need to leave behind. By the end, you’d have a character which had “leveled up” based on the choices you made (if you avoided combat, for example, you eventually find some items that increased your speed, and so on). At the end of the dungeon you’d find a weapon, a sword of light that allowed you cut into the darkness and fight the creature at the heart of it.

I knew this was a lot for 48 hours, but despite previous experience to the contrary I thought I’d be able to finish it anyway… But it’s not looking that way. Right now I’m still undecided about whether to just scale the idea back significantly and try to finish something, to start something new and simpler, or to just abandon the whole ludum dare thing entirely