Here’s a timelapse! If it doesn’t show up, it might still be processing on YouTube.

Music by Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts - Track 34

miniPals is a minimalistic co-operative platformer. It features 7 levels of fun! 2nd player requires a joystick (sorry team)

Keep in mind that even though this is a co-op platformer, you can still enjoy it by yourself!

controls:

z - use power

x - switch player (1P mode only)

left & right arrows - move

check the README.txt for more information!

screenshots:

win32 download with source: http://fydo.net/programming/fydo-miniPals-LD11.zip

Oh yeah, that’s raspberry cream cheese. Mmmm.

Also, here is what I ate last night. Om nom!

*Fydo participates!*

Woo! In a few mere hours, the 11th Ludum Dare game development competition is starting again!
This is a hectic time for gamedev compos, as the judging for Pyweek isn’t even over yet and we’re already starting on another one! Har.
I’m looking forward to this one, hopefully I can finish up all my Pyweek judging before Ludum Dare starts. It’s especially exciting because this Ludum Dare competition will be occurring during my birthday! Hooray!

Once again, the theme “Kittens” was voted out. *a big sad panda face*. Oh well, the final themes are usually pretty good, so I’m not too worried.

In addition, Ludum Dare has an optional “Timelapse Challenge” where you post a timelapse movie of yourself developing your game. If I can get my webcam working, I’m definitely going to participate in that. There is also a challenge to document everything you eat, using pictures, but I think I’ll probably sit that one out as my digital camera is out of commission.

Post a comment!

Here’s some art that I made for my team’s pyweek 6 entry. I’ll post a postmortem after the judging is over. The time, the theme was ‘robot’.
Click to make the pictures bigger. Om nom.

Howdy!

Here is my entry. It’s basically a cross between robotfindskitten and a generic platformer.

DOWNLOAD: http://kittay.ca/kittay-fydo-LD105.zip (1.0 mb)

Written in C, uses OpenGL. Didn’t have time to make a linux binary, sorry team.

I’m planning on doing a post-compo version, with bugfixes and better level graphics. Also, I’ll incorporate the other 3 mini-songs that I recorded, too.

Enjoy!

EDIT: Note that I’ve created a launchpad project for kittay. So you can file bugs there! Yay!

For the purposes of education and the prospect of writing a new game, I’ve been doing some poking around in C. I’ve certainly learned a few things (and expect to learn more in the future) Prior to this, I’ve only had experience with C++, which some would argue is a completely different beast altogether. However, this post is not intended to discuss the differences between C and C++.

Anyways, I figured I might share a few snippets and wisdom that I’ve picked up along the way, so here’s a quick (?) rundown of how to use structs and pointers to create “dynamic” arrays that will resize as you need them.

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About a month ago, I participated in the 10th (semi-annual?) Ludum Dare 48-hour game development competition. This time the theme was “Chain Reactions” and I created a fun little game in Python called spaceReactions. The aim of the game is to destroy planets using the pieces/fragments of other planets, which you explode using rockets! Bam! It also features 9 unique levels.

Screenshots (click to enlarge)

Take a look at the full results. All in all, I think I did pretty well. Although I did place 19th overall, (out of 50 completed entries) I did manage to get 2nd place in the audio category! Alright!

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Meow!

Since the music to my game, Space Reactions, has become a little bit popular, I figured I’d tab it out for any fellow guitar players here. I haven’t got a guitar in front of me right now, but I think this is pretty accurate. I’ll update this post if I find anything wrong with it


---------------------------------------------------------
-------12~~~-----5/8\5~~-------12~~~---------------------
------------------------------------------7/9-----5/9----
----14---------7------------14----------9-------7--------
---------------------------------------------------------
-12----------5-----------12----------7--------5----------

Sounds good with some light distortion and little bit of tremolo. Enjoy!

Hey, not sure if everyone noticed the edit to my last post, so I’m making a new post…

It appears that I missed a source file (.py) in my original zip, so I’ve updated the zip to include it. If you were having problems running the game in linux or OSX, please re-download and try again

Thanks for your patience.

Hey everyone!

I’m happy to announce my final entry, Space Reactions. The aim of the game is to destroy planets using the pieces / fragments of other planets, which you ‘asplode using rockets! Bam!

There are 9 gutwrenching levels to tease your gravity-lovin’ brain, and it also features a totally original soundtrack! (special thanks to DrPetter, as I used his sfxr to generate the sound effects for this game)

SCREAMshots:

Game download (includes both win32 executable and python source) right here:

http://fydo.net/programming/spaceReactions-fydo-LD10.zip

edit: Updated the zip to include a missing source file (check the dates, I didn’t cheat! )

You don’t need to re-download unless you’re interested in looking at the source, or playing on a non-Windows machine

I’ve got some small bugs to work out, but I think I’m on track for a release before the deadline. Whew

Hello,

I’m off to a slow start. Due to some circumstances, I’m using my wife’s laptop to work on my entry. I was planning on doing something in C, but I couldn’t get the build env to work correctly and I didn’t feel like wasting more time getting it work. So I’m back to the good ol’ Python

I’ve got an idea involving planets and gravitational physics. I made this nice intro/menu screen (it’s animated! wowee!)

This was my very first LD entry ever!

It was written with python + pygame. I don’t have my original compo submission version handy, these screenshots are from the slightly polished version of the game that I have available on my website. Since “Anti-Text” was one of the themes, there wasn’t a title on the title screen, nor was there the status bar on the bottom of the screen when playing the game. The final version has the same original 3 levels as the compo submission though.

All in all, I’m quite happy with the result. It’s a nice simple game that allowed me to show off some of my ‘graphics-making’ abilities. I spent the majority of my game development time doing the graphics. The first level in particular took a very long time because I digitally painted it using my wacom tablet (see the second screenshot above). Phew!

You can download the game (both win32 and python source available) and find a bit more information here:

http://fydo.net/projects/buggygame

The theme for LD9 was ‘Build the level you play’ so I thought a neat game mechanic would be a board game in which players take turns constructing the board before they play. As it turned out, I was leaving for my honeymoon on the second day of the competition, so I really only had about 24 hours to work on the game.
With this game I did the development a little backwards. After planning a little bit, I usually jump into coding, but this time I did all the graphics first, then did the coding. I may adopt this methodology for future competitions because as I’m working on the graphics, I can think of more ideas and such.

Graphically, I think it looks pretty good. However, in terms of gameplay, this game is a little boring (as the title may suggest). I think the extra 24 hours would have helped me flesh out the ‘building stage’ part of the game, which would make the resulting game a little more fun.

Game written in Python+Pygame, here’s a zip with a win32 build and source: http://fydo.net/programming/LD9-boredBuild.zip

Since my last blog entry, I’ve released a very small update to pillows, mainly just bug fixes and making things a little nicer for linux users.

My friend (and best man!) Jeff Powers recently started a new webcomic called GeoGuys. It’s a funny little comic about three friends who are “nerds at heart”. I think it’s pretty good, so you should go look at it.

In addition, another friend, Dave Butt (a groomsman at my wedding!) also started a new blog, called d:\blog.exe. To be honest, I don’t really know what’s wrong with his old blog, but I won’t ask the hard questions. He recently became engaged (exciting!) and has asked me to be the Master of Ceremonies at his wedding reception (also exciting!). So congratulations to Dave and Ashley!

Oh also, if you’re into game development competitions, the “Ludum Dare X” competition is starting soon! Dec. 7-14th for Registration and Theme Voting, and Dec. 14-16th at 7pm PST is the competition. Of course, see the Ludum Dare website for more information. For what it’s worth, I’m hoping to take part in the competition (if time permits)

I’m pleased to announce that one of my little game projects, pillows, is now ready for general consumption. I think you’ll agree that the game has a very interesting premise behind it (take a look at the storyline, har har!) I’ve got a win32 build and sources for non-Windows users (like you cool Linux and OSX guys!) As usual, it’s under open source licenses, so do what you like. However, if you find a bug, fix a bug, use my graphics in your own project, or have any comments about the game, I would love to hear about it! You can contact me via my contact page. Most of all, I hope you enjoy it!

The Pyweek team I joined this time around, Hole in the Head Studios, received a 16th place standing overall in the Teams category. See the final results here. Looking on the bright side, our teams highest score was in the production category, and we ended up with the 9th highest production score in the Teams category. Not nearly as good as I’ve done in the past, but certainly better than nothing. In my opinion, the reason we received mostly low scores was because our team’s idea was overly ambitious for only a week of development time. They wanted a full-fledged isometric Real-Time Strategy game, with nearly a dozen races to choose from. In the end, our submitted entry was minimally playable, and players didn’t get to see many of the other races available. It wasn’t from lack of trying, though! The lead programmer in our team actually was sick on the last day from staying awake for too long. Yikes! After taking the first couple days of Pyweek off to get married, I spent the remaining days working solely on unit graphics for the different races. All in all, I completed 4 races for the game, plus a few extras. On the left you can see one of my favorite units, the “Frostlen Captain”, in action! You can download the game and take a look at the resources to see them all if you’re really curious. I’m looking into making a nice page for them and releasing them under a free license for everyone to use. EDIT: I also want to add a quick message to everyone: If you haven’t yet tried Disk Field, go do it! It’s super fun and totally fulfills the theme, too! The game totally deserves the first place it received!