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[jO]

We successfully finished our first Ludum Dare Game Jam.
It was a tremendous experience and a lot of fun.

You can check out the game on the Ludum Dare site. If you have the time, please use the voting tool.

Play -->Planet Corp <--

[JobLeonard]

Funny how much that looks like

from a distance, yet is a completely different game (I think)

[AF]

Great work guys.

Simple but challenging mechanics, sweet pixel art and a good sense of humor. Points off for limited audio?

Overall a great result for 48 hours.

And seriously, has anyone beaten Venus?

[jO]

Great work guys.

Simple but challenging mechanics, sweet pixel art and a good sense of humor. Points off for limited audio?

Overall a great result for 48 hours.

And seriously, has anyone beaten Venus?

Thanks a lot! Yes, audio is our weak spot - we're still rather happy with the result, even though it's obviously the area we really lack the most in quality.
We did participate in the jam, so we actually had 72 hours.
And yes, Venus WAS beaten by at least one person called @8bitdamage on twitter. We considered making it easier because the ending is something we put quite some effort in and are proud of, but then again it's one of the luxurities of a non-commercial LudumDare release to be able to accept that just a super small fragmet of players will see the ending. Maybe in some time we'll do a difficulity setting or something similar. Or maybe there is a YouTuber out there that picks up the challenge and does a let's play, we'll find out. I can assure you however, it IS possible :-)

[jO]

Hello there! 

We've been rather quiet in the last few weeks. After participating in the Ludum Dare game jam we decided to take a step back and strip out everything out that was not directly related to what we considered to be part of the core.
After finding a version that worked how we wanted, we started adding back the features of the "full" version, always in context to the core. This helped a lot, the process is ongoing and we feel that we currently have the best version of the game since we started working on it.

On other news, we are currently preparing our submission for the IndieCade, which is going to be a huge milestone for us. It's quite nerve whrecking, but we are in a good spirit to reach a satisfying version of the game until then.

On to something fun! We really want Taxonomy to be a part of our game, so we decided to start with collecting small insects; for example Butterflies! Everyone loves Butterflies, and the idea of creating them somewhat procedurally was very enticing to both of us. We're almost finished with them, and I wanted to share a small insight on how we are doing it - enjoy:

[Rostiger]

Very cool! Sounds like the generator must have been lots of fun to do.
Good luck with the IndieCade submission!

[Vanhail]

That looks great. I love when game development breaks off into mini-projects like that. It's nice to take a break from the heavy lifting sometimes and focus on executing a single concept.

[AF]

I like the creation process. Will butterflies be a unique item or will there be similar systems for other insects/creatures?

[jO]

The Butterflies are, like most things, a bit of an experiment. We have ideas for extending the feature to incorporate other things like bugs / beetles, but also the creation of unique treasures as well. We'll keep you updated on which direction this will go.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

THE PROCEDURAL GRAPHICS REVOLUTION CONTINUES

[thatjaneng]

hey there,

just want to share that rock paper shotgun did a little writeup about you guys, in case you missed it.   http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/06/02/devlog-watch-space-death-curious-expedition-firewatch/  (that's how i got here!)

really excited about this game, really glad it's coming along so nicely. I'm definitely going to follow the dev journey.

I also want to say how much I sincerely love/admire/appreciate you taking the effort to equal the roster of women explorers.  As a woman developer/gamer, you have no idea how much the care you put into it means to me personally.

[jO]

We're currently in our final stretch for the indiecade submission. I'm really tired and exhausted but extremely proud - the submitted version is the best and most fun version of the game we've ever had.
I'd like to tell so much about it, but as I said, I'm really tired :-)
Anyway, the least I can do is dump those pics for your viewing pleasure. 

[Greipur]

Procedural Butterflies

That's a fascinating way of generating them (and a great infographic). Especially since you want to enforce the aesthetic of taxonomy.

We at ECS did a similar approach (albeit less of a cut-up method) for a sprite based ecological simulator where we wanted all the fishes in the pond to have unique characteristics. We used different textures made from fractal flames and let the fishes have their own unique placement of the texture. One texture per species. We then multiplied it on top of the general species sprite. When the fish generated offspring they took the coordinates (and some mutations) from the different fish (of the same species) and combined it to a different place on the texture map. A way of keeping track on offspring, though I don't think anyone noticed. We also had a randomisation on hue.

Speaking of taxonomy, I can recommend on reading up on Peircean visual semiotics, and visual pattern recognition (if you haven't). It's a great tool working with if one wants to see the general sub-symbols one can work with in a given asset. It can also be fruitful if one want the player to be able to easily comprehend and be able to categorise species. If you want a general summation you could take a peek at my thesis.

The project looks great by the way. Following.


Edit: I like your #Femcrunch iniative.

[JobLeonard]

Hey, that thesis looks interesting, thanks for that!

[Greipur]

Hey, that thesis looks interesting, thanks for that!

Thanks, if you (or the OP) would like to talk more about it just send me a PM.

[makerimages]

This hasn't been dropped, has it?

[Canned Turkey]

Hey, it looks like there's an offset on the bottom row of explorers, almost like you need...
One more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Macdonald_(engineer)
Just say'n.
Also following.

[SamLouix]

Looks great, if you need music - I'd be happy to try out.

http://eclipsejapan.jp/ << some of my work

Sam

[jO]

Ok, this is way too overdue - let's talk.

As most of you have noticed through our small update snippets in the last few months a lot of things have changed for us. Here's a brief timeline of the most important happenings of this year:

• Jan 2014: Riad quit his dayjob at YAGER
• Mar 2014: Johannes quit his dayjob at YAGER
• Mar 2014: We got note from the MedienBoard Berlin-Brandenburg that we'll receive a prototype funding for The Curious Expedition. While the funding will help us to set up a proper company and pay for a small office and outsourcing, we'll still need to earn money by selling the game to be able to pay back the funding and be sustainable.
• Apr 2014: We started the process of founding our company, called Maschinen-Mensch. This involved seeking out a notary, setting up a bank account, paying a lot of money and fees to all kinds of people and in general running from one official institution to another for the better part of the next 2 months.
• 25. - 28. Apr 2014: We participated in the Ludum Dare #28, which had a massive influence on how we've been working ever since on The Curious Expedition. How exactly our work changed is a story of its own which we'll maybe give more insight sometime in the future. Our game Planet Corp marked the first time we ever participated in a game jam, which was a great experience for us.
• July 2014: We submitted an early build of The Curious Expedition to IndieCade, Fantastic Arcade & Ludicious
• July 2014: We committed and booked ourselves for our first public showing at the ZTG in Poznan, Poland, where we'll present our game in October. We'll also give a talk there.

That should give an overview of what happened in the last few months, which was a very interesting but also busy time for us. We have now all the basics sorted out and can finally concentrate on what lies ahead, which will be the most important time for our little endeavour; releasing our game through early access, which will happen, if we keep up our current pace, sometime in October. Whenever we think about this it feels rather unreal to us to make this huge step, but we need to keep moving if we want to raise a sustainable small company and be able to keep making games on our own.

We feel like the game is coming along very nicely, the feedback from our growing playtests becomes better and better and it really feels like we could start selling it soon without feeling bad for the asked money. I'm sorry to not be able to show any big insights into the game itself at the current state, but this will hopefully not be necessary since we're very close to hand out the first preview versions to the press. So expect more articles about the game and, if there is interest, some let's plays of the pre-alpha access version.
However, since I don't want to close this post without at least some pictures here are some screenshots of the current version.

Thanks a lot for your support and talk to you soon!  

[harperrb]

Looks fantastic, I for one and very excited to see your project come to a realization.

Can't wait guys!