Projects

Ludum Dare 27: Triad

For pretty much all of this year I haven't really been doing any game development (nor posts). But I'm starting to get back into it now; a couple weeks ago I started working on my arena shooter again, and now I've participated in the 27th Ludum Dare. It would seem my period for "not participating in the main competition" was only eight months. :P

The game I made is called Triad. You can download it from the previous link, or rate/comment at its Ludum Dare page.

Ludum Dare 25

Well, I participated once again in Ludum Dare and managed to succeed in creating a game (unlike last time). The game I created is called Amongst Shadows, and you can play it here on my website, or rate/comment on it at its Ludum Dare page.

Anyway, on with the post-mortem.

The theme was "You are the Villain"; I had hoped it would be "End of the World", given the date and that I had a good idea for it, but that was not to be. Now this was a somewhat difficult theme for me, because I hate playing characters of the evil archetype; I wasn't going to create some mindless mass-murder simulator. I decided to make the morality of your actions somewhat ambiguous. You're on an infiltration job for some mysterious organisation, you're probably a mercenary, making you morally grey. Furthermore, it isn't clear whether this organisation is good or bad, though it's hinted that they're bad.

Ammo 1.0

This is just a post announcing that Ammo 1.0 has been released (changelog). After a couple months in the 0.x range, I feel it's ready to be pushed up to 1.0. Hopefully soon I can create some tutorials for the library; the documentation is complete and up-to-date, but documentation isn't particularly good at conveying the big picture.

Anyway, if you've got any feedback on the library, please let me know.

Ammo

This announcement post is a bit overdue, but, better late than never. A short while ago, I released the first version (0.1) of Ammo, my organisational library for LÖVE. Its current version is 0.1.3. I plan to let the library stay in the 0.x range for a while as it's tested by me and any others who use it.

Along with the core library, there's a number of extensions available. The one I'm most excited about is ammo-debug, a versatile, highly customisable debugging console. It provides stuff like output logging, a command system, info graphs, and even simple live coding support. At present its version is 0.2.

Illusive Dreams: Test Build 5

Well, it's been some time since I've released a test build for Illusive Dreams hasn't it? Work on it has been very slow lately; both I and Jeremiah haven't done all that much on it during the last few months. Nevertheless, a lot has happened to the game since the last test build, and I thought it best to release a new one before I go off to Brisbane. You can find the build here: /games/illusive-dreams/test. Any feedback, suggestions, etc., would be most welcome.

Rock 'n' Slash: Ludum Dare 23 Postmortem

Well, I think it's about time I made my Ludum Dare 23 postmortem. First of all, I blame not posting in a long time on my seemingly inherent laziness. Procrastination is an easy trap for me it seems, but that's another topic altogether.

Back on subject, the latest Ludum Dare took place between April 21st and 24th, with the main competition ending on the 23rd. It just so happens that this event was Ludum Dare's 10th anniversary, which is pretty awesome.

Ludum Dare 22 Postmortem

Last weekend was Ludum Dare 22, and of course, I participated. The game I created is entitled Uncorrupted; there's more information available at its page on my website and on Ludum Dare. You could also check out the time-lapse of my work on the game.

Illusive Dreams: Test Build 4

The fourth test build for Illusive Dreams has been released. Chapter two has been finished, with nine new levels, in-game text replacing cutscenes, and many other modifications and fixes.

I haven't been able to do anything with the commonly reported "white screen" bug, as I'm not able to reproduce myself. Please let me know if it occurs in this build. If it hasn't disappeared, I'll have to put more effort towards hunting it down.

Anyway, all feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Illusive Dreams: Test Build 3

I've now released the third test build for Illusive Dreams, and as usual, it's bigger than the last one. There's eight new levels, re-arrangements of previous levels, another night time music track, and many modifications and fixes. Check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Illusive Dreams: Test Build 2

I've just released the second test build for Illusive Dreams. This build has six new levels, two music tracks, chapters for level ordering (although there's only one at present), and a number of other modifications and fixes. Once again, I'd really appreciate any feedback or suggestions you might have, as it really helps to improve the game. Thanks!

Illusive Dreams: Test Build and a Composer

Quite a bit has happened (as usual) since the last update via my blog. I've created more levels, added a system for chapters, and many other changes and additions. But there are two main things which I'll cover in this post.

First is the release of a test build of the game. I needed some people to test the game, to find problems and things that could be improved (the main thing of interest for me was the difficulty). A few people (negativeview, @PeteDevlin, @b1naryth1ef, and @headchant; thanks guys!) volunteered to test it, and gave me some pretty helpful feedback. I plan to release another test build sometime soon.

Pixel Says: A Game with One Pixel

A couple days ago I felt like doing a quick game for a little change from the game I've been working on for the last seven weeks. For some reason, I decided that limiting myself to only one pixel would be a cool idea. So last night, in an hour and a half, using FlashPunk, I put together a Simon Says remake called Pixel Says.

Obviously, the only thing that I wasn't able to do successfully with one pixel is have instructions given inside the game; other than that it was perfectly possible to do.

Facilitated Escape 1.0

This post is to announce the release of the first version of my game, Facilitated Escape (other than the one submitted to Ludum Dare). I've been working on it for nearly two weeks since I started work during Ludum Dare 21.

The game revolves around escaping a collapsing facility in your rocket, dodging oncoming "blocks" that are in your path. It's got quite a retro feel to it, with pixel art and 8-bit music.

Anyway, I won't repeat what I've already written, you can get more information and download the game from its page. Also, I'd really like to hear your comments and suggestions regarding it.

Ludum Dare 21

After my complete failure in the last Ludum Dare, I didn't plan to take part in the next one (the 21st), however I decided to give it another shot. I'd learnt a number of things from my failure last time: go with a concept that's really simple, and use simple art, like pixel art, at least if you're a programmer like me.

I also decided not use my personal framework for LÖVE; the biggest reason I failed last time was that my framework was riddled with bugs. My framework is much more solid now, nevertheless my main reasons for not using it are:

Strong 1.0.2

This morning I released strong 1.0.2, which adds three new methods to the mix: camelize, center, and underscore. center is the complement to ljust and rjust, and the others are from Rails' extensions to Ruby's String class. Take note, they aren't yet documented in the function reference.

Anyway, go and grab 1.0.2 at its repo. Enjoy!

Strong 1.0.1

Just posting a blog to let everyone know about the latest release for strong, which is 1.0.1. There's no API changes, just a few things that are better under-the-hood. For more details see the change log.

Enjoy!

Ludum Dare 20: My Experience

From April 29 to May 2 Ludum Dare 20 has been going on. For those who don't know, the main competition involves making a game based on a certain theme in a 48 period; tough call. Hundreds of developers have a shot at this every four months, and I thought I'd give it a try. In this post, I'm going to write about my experience in it, and the lessons I learnt. I'll let you know now, however, the end result was me pulling out not long after half-way.

So anyway, I started when the competition was about 6 or 7 hours in. My plan was to use the Love2D engine, along with a personal framework I'd written for it. The theme was "It s Dangerous to go Alone! Take this!" So my first idea was to have sort of dangerous test facility which was pitch black with darkness (making it dangerous to go all alone), and you're given a light or something (the "this") to see your way through. Well that didn't work too well, so I switch the character to a rolling ball, and made "this" the ability to propel yourself in any which way.

Strong: Make Your Strings Stronger in Lua

For the last few days I've been working on a library called "strong". It's a string enhancement library for Lua. Strong adds a few operators to strings, and many methods to Lua's string library. I've already written more information in the README and the wiki, which you can go to for more information. Here's the direct link to the GitHub repo by the way.

Launcher

I've been working on a little game (in the LÖVE game engine), which for now I'm calling "Launcher". The core gameplay mechanic is this: you are a circle, which can stick to certain surfaces, and then launch yourself at great speed off them in the direction of the mouse. It's completely controlled by the mouse, you aim with it, and the distance between the player and the mouse determines the speed of launch.

On my YouTube channel I've already posted three gameplay videos of the work done so far. Here's the first:

ClosureClass

I've recently created an experimental Lua object-orientation library using the closure approach to OOP. It's based largely on MiddleClass, sharing a lot of design features with it.

I've already written a README, so go and visit the GitHub repo for more information.