Levels...

I am designing the twelve levels of the game. It is a hard work to get them done. I try to make them really atmospheric and even depressive, while respecting the evolution of the game. Unity is the key!

I first use Tiled to make a tiled level and then I make a picture from it when the raw shape looks good. (I am actually here) From that picture I add non-tiled details and many other things. And then I should quickly assemble them in Construct 2 to try them. And certainly go back to the previous steps because everything wasn't perfect!

Cool inspiring cloud animations in Braid

Th game Braid has some cool animated cloud. They have an obvious painted look and feel but here comes the interesting point: the animation. Considering a change of color tones, they might work for TGDOR. I'll try to get my clouds such animations. I also invite you to play to this game to see those clouds but also because it's a great game.

Continuing, after a deserved small pause!

We are taking a short break (until tomorrow). We really need it - in the good way: we worked a lot so we are a bit tired now! Creation is energy consuming, and don't have enough energy to support this work cadence. Just a few hours before returning to the process!

Just a message about what we said a few days ago about Stencyl: It is certainly a great tool but we had no real experience of it so we lost our temper with the number of problems and the pressure of time. All Stencyl users: we apologize.

Team name!

We are proud to announce you that we have a "work" name:

Jambon Frites means Ham & Chips in French

JambonFrites Games blog - JambonFrites Games Facebook page

Early Postmortem

This is the postmortem for the October Challenge, not for the game itself. After two days of full work, we can now take a look back at what we've done, what was good or bad.


What went right

 - Appealing idea
The earl ideas and concept art were appreciated by the other people. It helps a lot to start a project to be encouraged by others!
 
- Workflow
In two days we created a lot of things. Far more that I imagined. It is certain that Stencyl bugs slowed us but nevertheless we went really fast (we worked 12h+ a day!)

- Powerful tools
We used tools that are really efficient and that we knowed before. This makes a huge difference in the overall developpement. It does not only speeds up the creation process but it kind of motivates more due to the rarity of problems.


What went wrong

- No prototype
Seriously, we had no prototype! This should be easy with the engine(s) that we used, but we never got one. I know how important it is to always have a "working" thing during the developement but we never had something that looked playable.

- Lack of time
On the whole October month we started on the 26th. Looks a bit suicidal, given that we never participated to a Ludum Dare! We started the Design earlier but it's only about 10% of the work!

- No knowledge of the tool (the reason that we left the Challenge)
We, or I sould I say decided to use StencylWorks, because it works on Macs (I never used it before but more than that, I am not the programmer!). So when you use a new tool that gives you a lot of problems, there might be some kind of mistake somewhere!


The last words...
Even if we did not submit our game to the Challenge, I think that we learnt a lot from it, and that is the real purpose of Ludum Dare! :)

Day 3

Let's make a statement of the actual situation:
- We left the challenge
- We changed Engine
- We have more time to work on the game
- Some of the assets needs to be remade
- There is still a huge work to do!

Since we left the challenge we slowed down our progression. We must learn the new engine and create, think and design the new elements of the game that were set apart due to Stencyl limits.
This engine offers new possibilities and matches more our objectives. It is simple enough and though it seems more adequate to power our game. TGDOR will look more like the TGDOR that we had in mind with Construct 2. For the moment we encountered no problems, bugs or annoying things with it. The only bad mark is that it has nearly no documentation, wiki or tutorials.

Today we will certainly make a short pause, for two reasons: we haven't got the full day free (we will be absent tonight) and we will prepare the 0h Game Jam.
This Jam will start when the clocks will shift from 02:59:59 a.m. to 02:00:00 a.m., on the 30th October!

We officially leave the October challenge.

All the Engine problems delayed us too much, and now we realize that we won't be able to clear the Ludum Dare October Challenge. The project will continue, but unfortunately out of the contest.
The official withdraw post from the contest on Ludum Dare.

StencylWorks Demo

Arrows to move and W to jump.     

This is a demo made with StecylWorks, so it is not representative of the final product, now that we moved to Construct 2. A lot of elements are still missing, but it should give you a feel of what the game will look like. Hope you'll like it!

New Engine!

The is now developed with Construct 2. It looks promising, even if it lacks a bit of documentation. The only point is that we can't sell a game made with it under the Free Version (the Standard version costs 26€). It is no more flash too, it's now HTML5 which I find more elegant. But for now we are stuck with te problem of tiling our level...

Changing Engine

Unfortunately, Stencyl Works is a bad product, we had to much diffuclty, bugs and losts of work so we decided to change engine. I am lurking around Pixel Prospector lists to find a new stable and powerful enough Engine to power our project. We are far from the Ludum Dare objective.

Stencyl Works

Stencyl Works is really deceiving. We encounter a lot of problems with it! We won't probably use it again in the future.

Day 2

The assets are almost done. We have now as objective to make a playable demo as soon as possible.
Will it look like a real game for tonight?

The fist animations revealed

Here it is finally. Animated on flash and exported to images.

And as a bonus the first tiles too:

Radus is getting flahed!

One of the 5 projected tilests is done, but for the moment I'm workimg on the animations of Radus.

Radus

Just another picture of Radus

Ready to go

The "bible" (aka the big and boring design doc) has been typed on computer, and now the assets are waiting to be created!

Into design docs!

We have two day to make the game from scratch. Here is the schedule that we plan to do:

A typical design doc (the only proper one infact)

Pre-day 1 (now):
• get to konw the tools and think a bit deeply into the game universe
• make a blog, Facebook page + a Ludum Dare post

Day 1:
• design phase
• get something playable
• make the assets


Day 2:
• make the game (menu, levels, story...)
• correct all the bugs and fill the missing things

Post-day 2:
• correct all the bugs and fill the missing things

Hope it'll work!

Presentation of The ghastly death of Radus

TgdoR is a platformer in which you are a mentally ill person. You suffer of serious paranoia and hallucinations so much that you are closed to your world. In this illusionary universe you will have to face many events before the delicate hand of death takes you away from this living nightmare, but not so simply. Everything around will try to fool you while it falls apart and looses all sense and logic.

Radus

Here is the first sketch of Radus:



















And the Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-ghastly-death-of-Radus/180143335402755

Game Engine

It will use StencylWorks. It is a flash toolbox for PC and mac.

Hello World

This is the first blog post for THE game "The ghastly death of Radus" which is under development for the Ludum Dare October challenge 2011.

Stay Tuned! <3