My entry to F**k this jam

My entry to F**k this jam and other parodies featured on indiegames.com -

http://indiegames.com/2012/11/fuck_this_jam_gets_personal_de.html

Cool!

2nd game jam - f***thisjam.com

f***thisjam is all about doing a game in a style you dislike. I chose a hybrid of simulator and facebook games....and came up with a facebook simulator. Done in construct 2, with some help from audacity/bfxr and photoshop of course.

The competition is a week long, but I did this basically over the weekend. Might do a second entry if I get time.

http://bmo.fuckthisjam.com/submissions/7-simface-a-facebook-simulator

http://codymaines.com/games/facesim/

Adventure Time Game Jam - 12hr remaining

Adventure Time Game Making Frenzy!

Hey guys, sorry no post for a week, but I have indeed been busy working on a game. It's my entry for the 48hr adventure time game making frenzy that is happening right now (~12hr remaining). What I’ve spent the better part of the last 24 hours on. I’d like to thank my fiance for putting up with me :p.

My First Game Jam

Warning, the controls QWOP-Like. Not for the light of heart.
You can play the demo here

You can see a video here

Some things I learned

- Art takes a long time
- Prepare as much material ahead of time as possible
- Try to finish all external work prior (I didn't even start the jam until Saturday due to work/homework obligations)
- Audio/Music can really make or break a game experience. Luckily Adventure Time has so many cool tracks and sound effects that we were able to sample freely as needed.

mp3 to wake - rough prototype

So I hatched a rough prototype in Construct 2 for mp3 to wake. Basically I took an mp3 clip open in Audacity, traced it out in Photoshop, and exported the song to .ogg

Then in Construct 2, I traced the collision points to the waves in the audio clip I had just added. The rest is basic platforming mechanics I used from the platforming demo.

So basically, the song clip rolls along to the left and you must move with the arrow keys to keep up and stay on screen. Your score goes up when you jump - and that's bad for now. Try to get through with the least amount of jumps, because lower score is better.

MP3 to Wake rough prototype

Next steps:

• Bouyancy/water physics?
• Art ++
• Intro/pre-loading screen
• Scoring system - tricks?
• Generate level profiles from chosen song (like Audacity)

Obviously there is still much work to be done, but it's a start! I'm probably going to move this into lua/Love2D since it'll be easier to do the audio generation/profiling. 

Game Dev Tree

Game Dev Tree in paint.net - basically :p

MP3 to Wake - Idea

MP3 to Wake

Idea Spark
Mp3 to Wake is an idea that came to me from a Brainy Gamer podcast I listened to on the way to school about audio and sound-effect based games. AudioSurf was one of my favorite games on steam a few years ago, and I thought the concept was executed very well. Your game is inspired by the music, but it doesn't punish you for not memorizing the song like the "Guitar Hero" series does. It is like a casual integration that is pleasing and refreshing.

Concept
The basic concept is this - you are a wake-boarder in a giant wave pool (like a water park). The pool is also an endless flow system (think flow rider or endless swimming lane). Now, the waves in the pool are proportional to the audio levels of the music. When I imagine it, there is basically a wave-form that matches a local average of a Music EQ Visualizer.

Visual

Here is a rough sketch of my idea done in paint.net. Nothing crazy advanced. You can clearly see the wake-boarder, the wave system, and the mp3 w/EQ visualizer onscreen. After looking at this image, I've decided the best name for this game is probably audio-surf, but it's already been taken :p.

Week Indie Games - First Post

Welcome

Hello everyone, and welcome to my new blogging endeavor! This blog was created and inspired after reading through some forums over at TigSource, NMcCoy's weekly game blog (not current), and some other blogs/social media sites.

Weekly Structure

After a little thought, I realized that I wanted to have a weekly project timeline as well. Week Indie Games will follow this structure: Prototype Week, Polish Week, Prototype, Polish, etc. Polish week is not necessarily designated to the previous week's prototype, but can be any game I've created in the past and may want to improve mechanics, art, audio, story, etc.

Language/Format

I'm mostly going to be using scripting languages and prototyping tools(construct 2). So expect games to be Javascript, Lua, Processing, and maybe Python. Eventually I'd like to get deeper into C#/XNA and Unity platforms should a game really take off.

Competitions

I plan on tailoring my entries into Game Jams/Competitions @ CompoHub where applicable. Next one is Adventure-Time game-making frenzy! So I guess that means I'm also planning on using this as a dev journal during competitions.

Thanks for reading!