yes, its a whiteboard. no, its not especially exciting. but! if it weren’t for LD10 and lerc’s youtube of his room, i never would have realized I NEEDED IT SO BAD IT HURT. so i wound up getting it as a gift from my folks.

this is the result of a chain reaction caused by a simple competition. a chain reaction of LOVE. thank you, everyone in the LD community! happy holidays to all of ya!

Now before everyone’s going into hibernation again here’s a small Post Mortem for Chain Reaction.

First i was not sure i was actually going to enter. I’ve partitiated in a few Ludum Dare’s before, but usually only when i could really use the full time. This year round that was not the case. I didn’t even reserve some extra timeout from the family.

Still, once the theme was up i couldn’t help it. I strived for a rather simple game (simple as in simple to make) since any greater planning would go down the drain anyway. I’m rather glad how it worked out. My entry is not particularely innovative but things fell into place pretty nicely.

What went right:

• Having the general gameplay up and running as the first step

This is actually the most important part for these kind of competitions. If you have a flaw in your gameplay design you still have time to refine it. It’s no use having nice technical gimmicks all around when the gameplay is crap.

• A working editor

If a game is level based it’s one of the rather convenient things to have. Sure, with the given time nothing stops you to hardcode level data or even store it in some text file. Once you have an editor you can churn out levels at an alarming rate. And it’s a nice polish plus for the final version.

•  Sound effect (thanks to DrPetters awesome tool)

Usually one of my bad points. It’s easy to use a microphone and grunt/hiss/snarl some stuff but it also sounds exactly that way. DrPetters tool is a most awesome help as you can experiment and modify in just a few clicks.

What went wrong:

• Innovation? We don’t need to stinkin’ innovation!

Not thinking too much about what to do i was glancing over the first shots of the other competitors. Lerc’s shot looked very nice and i thought about these circles being bombs. I’m glad that the gameplay came out very different though.

Didn’t know about this.

GFX - Gimp

Language - Python/Pygame

Sound - Didn’t have anny

Developer - Gedit (I started with DrPython, but quickly got frustrated with it).

Tools I used!

• GraphicsGale - Art / Graphics
• SFXr - Sound (Yaay DrP)
• Komodo Edit - Python (and others) IDE
  • Komodo ran really slow for me. Someone on IRC said I could turn a bunch of stuff off to make it faster. I use Ecplise sometimes, but I can’t get my Linux install to run it right. I need to just use Xemacs.
• python & pygame
• pen & paper: Ideation

I intend to post a follow up as soon as my family visit settles down a bit. If I could do it differently I’d probably pick a different graphics program that works on Linux As it was I had to transfer graphics from my laptop to my desktop. And, as I mentioned above, I wasn’t happy with Komodo Edit.

I guess people are posting tools lists… so I shall join in!

I used MSVC 6 (yes, 6!  Not 2006 or whatever), The Gimp, and SFXr.  Chatzilla for a whole lot of IRC action.  Probably Notepad for the readme. The library I used was PTK for graphics, input, and sound.  I made the font with Bitmap Font Builder.  I tried to use Musagi to make music, but failed.

And that’s that!

well, i shoulda wrote this the day after, but whatever.

 this was my first actual entry in a competition on the interwebs, ever. HAVE MERCY ON ME! actually i couldn’t really come up with anything decent that didn’t require a physics engine. i didn’t have one ready so i had to make do with what i had. which was nothing. not even kidding. i had jack squat.

actually one of the ideas that came to mind involved a spin on games like bust-a-move and snood and all those. it was a spaceship game where you had to get to the core of a circular space station by knocking off the hull. the hull would be made of different colored hexes or circles and you would shoot colored shots that would connect to it if it was the wrong color, or pop them all and possibly break off sections. i actually wanted to have an asteroid field of random collections of these blocks that you could tractorbeam and catapult at the station. you’d have a weapon you’d have to charge and blast the core with once you had an opening. hmm. that’s still a good idea. i didn’t need a physics engine for that. why didn’t i do that one?

anyways, i pretty much kicked back and took it easy for the entire one. had alot of family trouble keeping me from the project, too. wasn’t a pretty scene there.

 so yeah. i’m sure i could have put more effort into the game, but it was a pretty crappy idea and i knew there wasn’t any substance to it. i saw it as one of the Dud entries, just there to fill out the ranks and to get my name out there. also, it was a chance to get some funnies in. i think i aughta score ok for that. got some giggles out of the gf, it did.

wrapping up, i’d say there’s no way i’m gonna beat out some of the other entries. they were looking super good and i knew i didn’t have a chance in hell. i had a blast though! good luck everyone!

Here is an exe and some dlls for my game if you use windows. You still need the data (graphics and levels) from the other archive though. Just put the contents of the two zip-files into the same directory.

Here’s the zip:

http://d.skalle.googlepages.com/ld10_final_exe.zip

If nobody gets any problems with this zip then I will probably make a new zip with the EXE, the datafiles and the source code together.

LD10Tanks is ready (and yes, sorry for “LD10″ in the name; just felt bad calling it “Tanks”, especially as it has no tanks in it :). So in the game your goal is to make the cannons shoot every bullet they have. The first cannon you select shoots first and the rest shoot only if they get hit with a bullet. When one chain reaction makes all cannons shoot all bullets, the level is complete. You can aim every cannon and some have more barrels and ammo than others. Some you can even move (gray cannons). You can also shoot through walls (the terrain deforms freely).

Direct download link (4.4mb download):
LD10Tanks v1.10

Website for the game (in case the direct download fails):
Homepage for LD10Tanks

The game requires:

• Fast PC preferred
• .NET framework 2.0
• XNA 1.0 Refresh (included in the package; be sure to install the additional DirectX files too)
• Vertex Shader 2.0 and Pixel Shader 2.0 support (not really sure what happens on any other hardware except NVidia 8800)
• 32bit floating point buffers as render targets

NOTE! If the game doesn’t look like below, then this means that your graphics hardware doesn’t support 32bit floating point buffers as render targets (the game turns off the fake fake-SSAO post processing effect). The game should still be fully functional.

Screenshot:

Some technical details (more in the included Readme.txt file). All the meshes are generated using constructive solid geometry (CSG). A mathematical model is generated (currently out of spheres, boxes and cones/cylinders) describing the whole world. The a marching cubes algorithm is ran over the model to teseslate the scene geometry. This allows for deformable meshes, such as the terrain here (some volumes are solid, some are cutting volumes). I also wanted to try some sort of fancy post processing filer, and I came up with this fake fake-SSAO (ScreenSpace Ambient Occlusion). The basic idea was taken from some forum (found by google). I basically estimate the ambient term on each pixel by comparing the depth at the pixel with the blurred depth at the same pixel (so I blur the depth field). It’s not perfect, but for example on this screenshot you can see some nice shading in the small holes. I also made a level editor in .NET 2.0 (C#) and used that to craft these levels. The level editor is included in the package.

Alas, I couldn’t include sounds/music because for some reason XACT (the XNA audio authoring tool) refused to boot up on my vista.

you can find it here:

http://members.gamedev.net/steelgolem/downloads/ld10-sg.zip

you’ll need .net and dx10 i think 

wheeee!

edit: someone told me it wouldn’t decompress without winrar - anyone else having that problem?

edit 2: whooooaaa crap i just saw that you need to include source! its in there now. everyone else, don’t forget!

edit 3: whee bugfix!

Here’s the 1.0 version of The Chain Fight

The python only link: TheChainFight.zip — Unzip the file, and run ‘python main.py’

The Windows link: TheChainFight-Win.zip (Mirror) — Unzip the file, and run ‘main.exe’

Please find me on IRC, or leave a comment if you find anything wrong. Thanks! If the debug info from the AI bugs you, you can hit ‘D’ during gameplay.

As a note, notice that above, the python is 133 KB, and the Windows version is 2.6 MB. You’ll save yourself a lot of downloading for the python entries if you download and install python and pygame

My game is done now. You can download it here, enjoy

http://d.skalle.googlepages.com/ld10_final.zip

This zip countains source code and linux executable. Windows executable should come whenever I have the time.

As usual after a bit of playtesting i happened upon one crash bug. Yelp.

Fixed the bug and added yet another level. So it’s 15 now.

The new version is uploaded; i’ll remove the final tag from the older entry.

Click here to get it.

 Tools used:

• DrPetters über-awesome sfxr tool
• my own crappy paint app
• Visual Studio 2003

So this looks like my final game. My wife’s got that look so i doubt i’ll work on it anymore

Link removed. The final can be found in my latest blog entry.

It’s not the most innovative but it has been fun. It sports 14 levels, sounds due to DrPetters awesome sound effect tool and ugly pixel art by myself truly.

Position bombs and use the chain reaction of exploding bombs to fulfill your goals:

Either bomb open all diamond devices or push all target balls (with an X) onto any goal area (or both).

Do not forget, that you can go back and reposition bombs for another attempt. And another. And another.

An editor is included, which lets you build your own nasty contraptions.

There source comes with a Visual Studio 2003 solution file. It’s not the cleanest code, esp. the resource loading is an ugly hack.

The game itself requires any Windows since Windows 95, DirectX 8.1 and shouldn’t need any other DLLs beside the one i included.

You want a screenshot? Ok:

Okay, I’ll call this version final.

Yep, added music - generated fractal midis. Plus option to turn them off when they drive you mad. If they do. Anyway, grab the final version of the game here - includes sources. Have fun!

If I had known that ludumdare would actually end, I’d have started earlier!!!
Here’s another picture of my game. I have updated the graphics a lot (and I think that these would do for my final submission unless I need more), what I still have to do is gameplay, sound and levels.

Okay my entry is here:

http://cs.uku.fi/~ralaatik/boostcraft11.zip  (~500 kb, win32).

I can’t work on the game today so I have to submit what I have. Did all nighter on it (Yawn..) My timelog is in the zip. If you want to check it..

Visually it looks quite a lot like my last game ld9 game, bumpcraft. Had to pick this simplistic graphics style again because I really had only 24 hours to spend on it. Hope you like it.

Woke up this morning after some nice sleep.

I added the solve code, menu screens, tuned up the editor and level names. It’s always nice to have that simple stuff out of the way in the middle, since in the end you always need to tune things a bit. The simple stuff usually takes quite some time, so don’t leave it for the last minutes!

I see that my game is not that chain reactionary, but it’s playable and i can spend most of the day coming up with levels and maybe some new elements.

Nice stuff is coming up from you guys (and gals). Hope to see a lot of finished entries!

Here’s my game over screen. Once again, it looks the same as every other screenshot I’ve made.

It may look the same but the gameplay is much more fun now.

hey get off my game idea!

grrr this’ll show ya.. BOOT

gonna drop a timer in there and make successive waves deadlier than previous ones. then some sounds and probably a backdrop. tomorrow i continue this madness!

Seems like I had to give up on a billion ideas, but today I finally got one I liked… making progress, bit by bit. Basic mechanics are in, but still lot’s to do to make it a game. Hopefully I don’t die from Red Bull before I can finish.

Well, there’s about 25.5 hours left, so it’s about half way.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

I think it’s a game now.   At very least, you can win or lose; there’s some limits, and everything on the screen functions as intended (except the score readout, which I honestly plan on pulling off)

The Menu to select game options is 95% done.  Here’s the rest of the stuff on the to do list:

• Other Unit Ideas - I have at least 2 more units I’d like to introduce
•  AI - The Random AI makes some very stupid mistakes.   I need to write one that works a bit better.
• Tutorial - How to play screens, etc.

Yawwwwwwn…

Started to add sounds, DrPetter needs to auto-win this competition singlehandedly for his awesome sound effect tool. I can’t thank you enough for this one.

Now beside chain-exploding bombs there’s also an objective of the form “bomb-the-ball-into-the-goal”.

Innovation, where hast thou gone to?

Still, i’m happy with my programmer art and it’ll look like i can deliver an albeit simple but finished entry. Yay!

Sleepy good nighty night.

This is it probably for today, i’m going to a restaurant with wife and kid, empty their buffet and then waltz to bed

Anyway, there is sort of a chain reaction going on, i decided to add another element, so you get a real goal. Any gameplay fun seems to be decided by level design. Again. Dang!

At least i’ve put an editor inside