Ludum Dare Results + Current Projects

As the Ludum Dare results unveiling date approached I thought a lot about how well I imagined my game 'Darkness Creeping' would fair in terms of overall position etc.
I had a hunch it would do well, and potentially score highest (out of all the categories that is) for the Mood category. I thought Id get into the top 50 for Mood - at least.
And if I did, Id be satisfied and happy about my first complete Ludum Dare entry.

So I was pretty shocked when the results were finally announced, to find that Id scored 5th position for the mood category. This meant that for one of the categories Id actually made it into the top 5. This was way beyond what I expected!

Overall I placed #125, which was also surprising when you consider there were just over 1400 entries. This put me in the top 10% of entries overall, very please with this result!
You can see for yourself at the main results page here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/

So with that out of the way I look forward to participating in Ludum Dare 24 in August.


[snip]


So Ill soon have a month of holidays before the next semester of uni starts up and Ive realized I have a ton of work I want to get done during that time. In summary I have this major project to 'manage/maintain' and improve, a WIP game to continue working on (the failed Ludum Dare entry from mid-2011), a Zelda animation I'm super-keen to finish and (hopefully) a Kerbal Space Program video series to start at some stage. Im also considering entering into the next Operation Moonfall contest as well... Throw AvCon + normal life ontop of that, and July will be one busy month....

-Thats all for now.



*Edit*
I did just realize I had another large-ish project go public earlier this month (also 3D printing related), and I completely forgot to write a post about it.
So I will cover that one here soon enough.

2012 so far

2012 has been a busy year so far, Ive been trying to focus a lot more on uni, and so this blog has suffered because of that (was hoping when I started this blog, to be posting at least once a week!)

I have been working on one major project however, late last year (December I think) I dropped all other projects to pursue this 'secret one' which Id been working on since the final months of 2011. I don't want to say too much about it until its closer to being ready - for fear of being caught unprepared, but it is Minecraft related and involves 3D printing - a LOT of 3D printing.
The whole thing should be 'public' early May (fingers crossed). I initially aimed to have things done by mid April and was on track until some computer issues arose...



My laptop GPU nuked itself for a 2nd and final time (the first time it went bad I pulled the whole laptop apart & ended up putting a bolt through the motherboard to hold the heatsync down... That amazingly worked (initially), and it kept my loyal little laptop running fine for another week or two)

Either way, I have a super modern and exciting (not to mention expensive) laptop on order, which should last out the remainder of my studying years at uni, and should arrive before this weekend - just in time for.......

.....Ludum Dare 23
In my last post I talked about Ludum Dare 22 (and the failure my 'attempt' of a game was)
This time round I have 2 other LD's worth of mistakes under my belt, and a more structured plan of attack. It will be interesting to see what theme it will be this time round, as of writing this post, round 1 voting has started. Theres been some interesting themes in the first round, and I feel like I'm leaning towards making a horror or creepily atmospheric game this time round, so hopefully the theme will be geared towards that initial idea/plan of mine.

I'll be screen-capturing the whole thing this time too (for a full 48 hour timelapse on my youtube channel)
So, third time lucky??



Previously, in March, I also finished a Minecraft based video - 'Minecraft [Real Life] EPIC Creeper Explosions' which I filmed and then spent a week editing in both Blender and After Effects. The video itself was a test for various things leading up to my bigger Minecraft project mentioned at the start of this post, plus it gave me an opportunity to tap into the Minecraft community and get some more Minecraft based subscribers on board.
The video was featured on episode #50 of the Minecraft Monday show (@ 8:08) [link], and the Minecraft daily show #217 [link]

(we'll be seeing more of the Minecraft Monday show with this other project as well, more on that in the near future)

On a more technical note, the video also provided an opportunity to test Blenders newly implemented camera tracking module. The results weren't as good as Id hoped given the amount of time I had to spend on the video, but it was good to finally do some camera tracking in Blender!
I also discovered that as of Blender 2.61 there has been a AE exporter built in, so this project gave me a chance to give that a spin as well - and it worked exactly as Id hoped. I was able to track a shot in Blender, insert 3D elements and render it out. Then using the script I imported the camera data into AE, and continued working on the shot from there. Its the first time Ive used Blender and AE so closely together, and it was great to see the process made so efficient with the inclusion of this script in current and future versions of Blender.

The finished product:



The node rendering setup:


Camera tracking:


Creeper footage breakdown:


Intro footage breakdown:




I had a couple of other things to mention, but since this post has already become quite large I'll save it for another later this week (I'll be trying to get back to posting a blog update at least once a fortnight from now on)
So that's all for now.

New YT Video - BGE realtime slideshow

Mid semester break from Uni is into full swing, one day in and I've already got a new youtube video up demonstrating a recent project from uni. The project was associated with a speech I had to do a couple of weeks ago, I chose to use BGE for the visual side of the presentation instead of a powerpoint slideshow. The topic of the presentation was something I'm very interested in: Nuclear Fusion.




Using BGE made the project into something interesting and motivating to work on, rather than several boring hours making powerpoint slides. It also gave me an opportunity to have a mess around with videotexture, something Id wanted to use properly for a while.
And of course theres also the advantage of having a presentation which engaged people more directly than what boring PP slides with a few pictures could do.


If I have time over the next couple of weeks Ill be working towards finishing a couple more projects, most which have a large percentage of the work already done, just in need of some finishing touches.