April 17th, 2010 - LoneStranger
The latest in the Ludum Dare 48 Hour competitions is less than a week away! Time to get out that base code and wait, right?
WRONG! There is so much for you to get ready and practice. You could be doing any of these:
- Draw some sprites for a random animation, either directly in a bitmap editor or on paper and scan them.
- Polish that basecode to fix that thing you found last compo that really bugged you.
- Install GIMP or Audacity or other development related application and practice how to use it.
- Pull out your microphone and record yourself and other sounds around the house to create a song in Audacity.
- Create a Towlr.
- Think of witty motivational posters.
- Rip CDs to MP3s and create a great 48hr in-the-zone coding playlist.
- Stock up on food for the weekend.
- Clean and organize your desk.
- If you are feeling adventurous, take your first steps with that new language.
- Vote!
- Spend some quality time with the family so they know you still love them when you ignore them over the weekend.
Whatever you do, please share it with us on Ludum Dare! And also, no matter how much or what it is that you do, you’re a winner in this pre-compo competition!
Of course, none of these things will actually be used in the LD competition since that is against the rules (except the basecode) however they can’t keep you from using the skills you just learned!
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December 4th, 2009 - LoneStranger
Like a broken record, my Java basecode for the Ludum Dare 48 Hour Game Programming Competition #16 is largely the same as the past two three four five competitions. I haven’t made any changes to it since the last compo, despite saying that I wanted to. Recently I have been dabbling with C++ again, though I don’t feel that I’d manage very well using it in a compo at this time.
Download it here.
Goals are pretty much repeating what I said last time:
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Keep the same art style as last time. I sketched things out on paper and scanned them in so I could colorize. Keeping with bold colors and gradients is probably what I’ll do.
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KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid! Making something too complex is just a recipe for a headache at 1pm on Sunday afternoon.
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Make useful additions to the basecode that can be used in later competitions. The screenshot stuff is an example of something I did previously that helps out a lot.
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Finish most of the work by Saturday night so I can spend Sunday polishing.
- Don’t run into dumb problems that eat up eight hours.
Tools in use:
- Java 6 SDK (though last time I included a version for JDK 5)
- Eclipse IDE
- Photoshop, maybe some Illustrator
- DrPetter’s sfxr for sound effects
- Audition, if I can get it to play well with my sound card
- HP OfficeJet 6450 All-In-One for scanning doodles
- No Fear Energy Drink Sugar Free (Hopefully Boris Said and Carter Racing will run some Sprint Cup this year)
- Everlasting Gobstoppers
- mIRC for chattery
- Killer Game Programming in Java and the base code I mentioned above.
Can’t wait to see what the theme is. Hope it’s a fun one!
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August 31st, 2009 - LoneStranger
[This is a crosspost from the Ludum Dare competition blog. You can download my entry here.]
This was probably the best Ludum Dare weekend I’ve had. My game was more than just a tech demo or an ‘unfinished’ idea. Of course, they never are truly complete after 48 hours time; there is always something else that can be tweaked or added. When all was said and done, however, my entry was a playable game.
Background
The theme was not one that I had put much thought into before it was announced so I really had zero ideas at Go time. One thing that kept popping into my head was the Kroz series of games by Apogee software back in the late 80’s/early 90’s. They’re all pretty much the same engine with a new collection of levels, but one was called Caverns of Kroz. The object of the game is to take your hero through twenty or thirty levels to find or capture some relic. Along the way you had to run, whip or out-maneuver swarms of monsters and solve puzzles. I had always thought those games were neat, and it would be interesting to try and ‘recreate’ some of that nostaliga. Caverns of Kroz didn’t have anything special that made it more caverny than the rest in the series, but I thought I could do better with actual graphics instead of ASCII art.
Kingdom of Kroz
LoneStranger's Caverns
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December 5th, 2008 - LoneStranger
My basecode For LD48_13 is largely the same as the past two competitions. I have updated it a little:
- Classes are now organized into the package net.lonestranger.common, game and network.
- Network isn’t really too useful yet. The only class that exists in it is called Report. It’s job is to take a string of data and send it via POST to a website, where it can be digested as fit. For example, sending scores back to a central repository.
- You can take jpg screenshots by hitting F10. They are named based on the current date/time and dumped into the working directory.
Here is the link to download it.
I didn’t really list my goals in my declararion post a few days ago, so I’ll do it now.
-
Keep the same art style as last time. I sketched things out on paper and scanned them in so I could colorize. Keeping with bold colors and gradients is probably what I’ll do.
-
KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid! Making something too complex is just a recipe for a headache at 1pm on Sunday afternoon.
-
Make useful additions to the basecode that can be used in later competitions. The screenshot stuff is an example of something I did previously that helps out a lot.
-
Finish most of the work by Saturday night so I can spend Sunday polishing.
Ok, time to finish work and then I’m off to Thanksgiving, The Sequel, but I’ll check in after 8pm Pacific tonight to see the theme I need to start thinking about. I expect everyone to be in FULL CODE MODE when I get back. 
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December 2nd, 2008 - LoneStranger
The 13th Ludum Dare 48hr Game Programming competition starts this Friday, so it’s time to get the tools in order so there is less fussing when time is running short. Also, my wife and I have been invited to Thanksgiving, The Sequel this Friday, so I won’t be home when the topic is announced. I’ll try to check in to LD.com with my phone so I can at least start planning things out in my head.
So let’s take a look at what I’ll be using… Read the rest of this entry »
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September 11th, 2008 - LoneStranger
The next full fledged LD competition is still months away, but I was thinking the other day about concepts and ideas that I’d like to try. If the theme is right next time, perhaps I’ll use one of these.
‘tabletop’ wargame – Something along the lines of Axis & Allies. Simple combat and strategy. Perhaps even as simple as the old Global War bbs game would be doable in 48 hours. Global War was troops only, while Axis & Allies has many unit types.
Economic/Military strategy – Like Nobunaga’s Ambition. Might have to simplify the combat a lot in order to get it done in 48 hours. It also would be difficult to balance and tweak the economics.
play by email game – There was a game a few years back where your Kung Fu fighter fought against another person’s Kung Fu fighter. You would challenge them by sending them an email and then it would play the match, and send the results back to you and the main server. After awhile you would level up. It got kinda weird when you had multiple challenges out and leveled up after one of them, but I’m sure there is a way to work around it.
sidescroller – I’ve always sorta wanted to make one of these, but never really got around to trying it. When I was in 3rd grade, my friends and I used to make video games–on paper–and it would be neat to actually do it. I think I have one or two of these sheets back at my folks’ house, so next time I’m there I’ll grab them.
Driving game – I think if you break it down to the basics, and stick to simple features, you could do a driving game. Wouldn’t want to overdo the physics. I’m thinking a lot more like Outrun than Gran Turismo.
Sports – It would be neat to come up with some kind of new sports game that could be simple enough for a 48 hour compo… and also fun. Combine two sports or come up with a new one.
Any types of games you’d like to prototype if you had a chance and a compatible theme?
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August 7th, 2008 - LoneStranger
It’s time again. Seems like just a short bit ago I was working on LD48 #11, and maybe it was. The contests are on a much better schedule now which should help in participation.
I’ve been keeping myself busy working on a reborn and re-imagined project from back in ‘03. I’ll probably release more info on that when I have something good to show off. If we get a compatible theme, perhaps some of the work on LD48_12 can be reassigned afterward to my other project. Honestly, working on that project the past week has kept my skills and mind frame in the perfect place for the LD48.
Last time around I had to take time out from the alotted 48 hours to attend a baseball game. I won’t have that problem this year, though I am in the mood for a good egg and bacon breakfast at a local joint Saturday morning. I hope to remember to take a picture of that for the food compo.
This time around isn’t going to be much different than last time. I’m going to use mostly the same tools as before:
- Java 6 SDK
- Eclipse 3.3.2 IDE
- Photoshop CS2
- HP OfficeJet 6450 All-In-One for scanning doodles
- No Fear Energy Drink (Go Boris Said #60!)
- Everlasting Gobstoppers
- mIRC for chattery
- Killer Game Programming in Java and the base code I used from last compo.
The only thing we need now is a theme!
Good luck, and see you in 1 day, 9 hours and 48 minutes!
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April 20th, 2008 - LoneStranger
I managed to cobble together a mildly playable version of my game in time for the end of the Ludum Dare 48 Game Development competition this weekend.
It’s a concept that I had been toying with this past week, jotting down some ideas and refining it along the way. Quite simply, it’e the game Breakout, only with a twist. In regular Breakout, you move the paddle back and forth on the bottom to keep the ball from falling off the screen. At the same time, you are trying to use the ball to destroy all the bricks on the screen. In my game the computer plays the part of the paddle and you instead try to defend a goal at the top of the screen by placing bricks.
It’s a neat idea, but I by no means was able to implement all my ideas. The number one thing that was lacking is multiple types of bricks. This version only has two: normal and 2X Hit. As you can probably guess, normal takes one hit to be destroyed and 2X Hit takes two. I wanted to add more bricks that did weird and interesting things when the ball hit it, like explode or eat it.
You build your wall of bricks by buying them from money you’ve earned while playing. So far, the only two ways you can earn money is to play, where you get one credit every so many seconds, or when the computer misses the ball with the paddle and it goes off the bottom of the screen. Eventually you’ll be able to get money by doing other things.
One thing that doesn’t seem to work very well is the collision. The ball seems to react well when it hits the top or the bottom of the bricks, but if it hits the side of two bricks, it can sometimes bounce in a way that causes it to go ‘inside’ the wall. I have a few ideas on fixing that but I didn’t have enough time to implement them.
The AI could be improved, letting it think ahead instead of having it just react to the current position of the ball. If I project the location it will be at when it gets to the bottom, I could have the paddle waiting for it.
There are no skill levels implemented. Smarter AI, less money and multiple bouncing balls would make it more challenging and could be set to differing degrees.
I also didn’t do any sounds for it, as the compo requires that all resources be generated within the 48 hours and my recording soundcard is not quite working. I will create some for the post-compo version of the game. Same for music.
I tested it on the Sun JVM 1.6.0, though it should work on on JVM 1.5.0. It will not work on the JVM 1.4.2, as it requires System.nanoTime() that was introduced in JVM 1.5.0.
I programmed it in Eclipse 3.3.2, and used Photoshop for the graphics.
You can download the game here or the source code here.
[update: changed the above link to the .zip file. The jar just wasn't handling some class-pathing stuff well and I don't have time to troubleshoot it right now.]
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April 18th, 2008 - LoneStranger
The LD48 #11 Game Compitition starts in about eight and a half hours. The theme has yet to be decided, but it seems like it will most likely be one of the following: Minimalist (+28), Endless (+24), Defense (+22) or Flood (+15). My personal wish is to get Defense, as I’ve been thinking about a good concept this week for it. I haven’t been able to come up with anything decent for Minimalist yet, and Endless and Flood shouldn’t be too hard to design about. I don’t think we’ll get too many Tower Defense entries for the Defense theme, but even if we do, there has got to be at least one of them that does something in a new and interesting way.
When all is said and done, and I’ve completed a game, I’ll post it here. If for any reason I don’t get it done… well, I’ll still post something.
So if you have a (mostly) free weekend and you want to try your hand at designing and coding a game in 48 hours, come by the compo. Even if you don’t have the time, come by and check out the reports and progress of those who are. You can also check my personal coding blog at LD.
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