The 27th Ludum Dare was a great experience and lots of fun. Also, a lot of people gave some good feedback on my game. Brian Devins was one of those. He commented that he really loved Catch A Train and even composed a soundtrack for it! I think the soundtrack he made fits in really well, so I decided to do an update on my game.
Many thanks Brian, I love the soundtrack you made!
During the last year of my previous education, IT Mediaproductions, I did my internship at a web design company called TiDi Graphics. During this period I made a game where you bump your way to the finish line. It was called Bumper Madness.
Note: The text in the game is Dutch.
Before I started developing this game, I barely had an understanding of game development. So I started learning Flash. Because TiDi is a web design company, I thought it might be suitable to build it with Flash. After some weeks I discovered this 3D engine for flash, called Papervision3D. I had some experience in using Blender, which came in very handy in making 3D assets as the one shown below.
Most of the assets of the game I made myself. Two sounds I downloaded from freesound.org, an excellent source to get your sound effects! Especially if you don’t have the resources or the time to create your own sounds. The other sound effects were created with my synthesizer – a Korg EMX. I made the graphics using Photoshop.
Sadly, this game has never seen the light of day… Until now! So go and beat that hiscore!
Pfew, that was tough, but fun! After 48 hours I made my first game for the 27th Ludum Dare – Catch A Train. First, I brainstormed about the theme – 10 seconds. And I came up with this simple, yet fun idea, where you try to catch this train in 10 seconds.
The simple sketch I drew, shows the characters who will hold you from catching that train. But in the end I stuck to the idea to push your way through the mass of passengers who just came out of the train.
I only had 48 hours, so I used tools that I was familiar to (A lesson I’ve learned from the 7DRTS). I used the following two tools to build this game:
I had some trouble with coding the physics of the game. Definitely something I need practice with. As I’d like to participate in future 48 hour competitions, I will learn some cool new tricks about physics.
If you like my game, please vote and/or comment on the entry page of Catch A Train. While your there, check out the other cool games!
Made this model of a jet engine about three years ago.