Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Black Forest Programming

Black Forest Programming

Category Medals

YearLDThemeGameDivisionCategoryScore
🥈 2012 24 Evolution Evolution is the Key jam Theme 4.28
🥉 2012 24 Evolution Evolution is the Key jam Innovation 4.16

Games

YearLDThemeGameDivisionRankOvFuInThGrAuHuMoCo
201430Connected WorldsICCCjam2483.413.143.463.643.193.683.423.4249
201224EvolutionEvolution is the Keyjam113.893.374.164.283.632.613.203.5339

Performance over time

overall score (left axis) percentile (right axis)

Scatterplots

Fun vs Overall

Innovation vs Overall

Theme vs Overall

Graphics vs Overall

Audio vs Overall

Humor vs Overall

Mood vs Overall

Comments by Black Forest Programming

LD24 — Evolution

My Pairs and Me by Evilion 2012-09-02T01:57:00

Looks pretty cool!... even though I didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on. I read your explanation but it didn't seem to help any. I think adding some sort of GUI with average values or something might help to clear up a bit of confusion. I did notice a bug where if you ate too much your speed would go past 0 into the negatives. This happens to other people in the game too and messes up the AI. But the concept was nifty and the graphics were well done!

Bunny Jump by Fsmv 2012-09-02T03:07:00

Cute! The graphics were not that great but the fact that they contributed to the mood more than made up for it. The background music got very annoying because of the shortness of the loop. The randomized sloping terrain was pretty nifty... other than that not much else to say. It's pretty good for what is there!

Ancient Ruins by CappaGames 2012-09-01T01:37:00

It was very fun. And the graphics were my cup of tea. Definitely needs sounds. It seems to suffer from the same thing I found in my game: holding down the left mouse button can get really boring really fast. The one thing I couldn't stand was having the vitals all the way on the other side of the screen; I felt like I had to look half way around the world just to see my health, and it didn't help my performance. I didn't beat it because, gah, I'm terrible at these types of games, but nice job nevertheless.

Simulation by CarbonCoder 2012-08-29T04:07:00

I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 64bit. When I first run it I get an error:
"Error loading /select.wav:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid format"

When I press play or help I get:
"Exception in thread "Game Thread" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Master Gain not supported
at org.classpath.icedtea.pulseaudio.PulseAudioLine.getControl(PulseAudioLine.java:89)
at engine.util.Sound.setVolume(Sound.java:23)
at engine.util.Sound.play(Sound.java:61)
at com.MainMenu.update(MainMenu.java:22)
at com.Screen.update(Screen.java:32)
at engine.graphics.Display.run(Display.java:54)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:679)"

Pressing Exit works. I encounter errors running with and without terminal. I know I had audio problems with my game in Java on Linux; I think it's an OpenJDK thing but I can't say for sure.

Simulation by CarbonCoder 2012-08-29T04:36:00

PS. That was running OpenJDK 1.6.0_24. I'm trying to get the Oracle Java running, with little success. I'll try again tomorrow.

Clever Blocks by Cthulhu 2012-09-02T03:16:00

That was ridiculously fun! Not much to say about the graphics except that they lent themselves well to the concept. The music was very fitting too. It was relatively short though. I can imagine that it could be stretched out further if you create several stages and layer on the elements each stage or something like that. Very cool concept. Wow, just wow.

Paprika Blue by ekunminnowbash 2012-09-01T01:12:00

Art was fabulous and the music was awesome. Not much more to say other than that unfortunately. The wall jumping seemed a bit finicky and I still couldn't figure out how, exactly, it worked. I'll try and follow the post competition version because it looks promising.

Darwin's Turtle Race Challenge by endermath 2012-09-01T03:20:00

Fantastic. A very complete experience. I adore this to bits. The only thing I can think of is that the game gave out too many leaves, which made it more on the easy side. Bravo!

Robo[R]Evolution by NateNaterson 2012-08-29T03:13:00

That was really fun! You had me for several hours there. The gameplay is really solid, and I liked the durability on the turrets; that's something I've never seen done before. I didn't like that the second shot alternated randomly from side to side, it wasn't possible to tell what enemies were going to take the middle path, and that I couldn't figure out how the enemy damage system worked; for game based on strategy it's hard to work with random things. That being said, the graphics were very good and the music sealed the deal. Overall, very good job!

Pixels through time by Arsenio117 2012-08-29T11:15:00

I get the same problem on Ubuntu 12.04 64bit running both OpenJDK 1.6.0_24 and Oracle JRE 1.7.0_6.

Evolution is the Key by Black Forest Programming 2012-08-29T11:00:00

@Red_Holden ... That's really odd. I tested it on several different systems and I seemed to be able to get from start to finish. I'm at a loss of what to say. I'd ask whether you could run it through the terminal/command line so I can get the exact error but I know not every system is set up to do that. Would I be able to at least ask what operating system, 32 or 62bit, and what Java version?

Evolution is the Key by Black Forest Programming 2012-09-01T04:51:00

@cthulu: [SPOILER] Woops, a tiny bit of an error on my part there. When you "jump gap" you don't actually jump because you notice the key instead. The wording of the sentence doesn't make that clear. Then you can "get" the "key" and you should be good from there. [/SPOILER]

Evolution is the Key by Black Forest Programming 2012-09-02T13:43:00

@ubear: The simple solution is to not go right when you have entered the portal which won't cause you to go outside the level and it won't crash, but I guess since it has been reported a couple of times I'll put out a fix for it.

Cosmic Canvas by 7Soul 2012-09-02T04:02:00

This feels like a very polished game. I'm lost for criticism because it is so awesome. I just... wow.

The Tower with Traps in it by Moops 2012-09-02T01:22:00

Awesome! The lighting system was really cool, as well as the backgrounds and some of the other effects. I really liked the variation in the sounds too. Very unforgiving later on in the game however. I also saw little use it the shield because it was so finicky and hard to control. All in all I really liked it!

Darwinian Theory by bobbobowitz 2012-08-29T03:36:00

That was a larf! And addicting. This is one of those things that propels you to keep playing even when you've had enough because "I just want to beat my last score". The graphics, while not the greatest I've seen, did do a very good job and sticking to one theme and style while working with the mood. And the music was absolutely fantastic; I love it so much that I'm going to put it on my iPod. However, the gameplay was really repetitive with little variation. With a few more features and tweaks I would definitely see myself playing this on a mobile device!

NICE SHOOT by ambushsabre 2012-09-02T01:40:00

Overall, very very good! I really liked the art style; it's my kind of thing. The five weapons really add a lot of customization and replay value. I also liked that each weapon lent itself to a unique play style. With the poison weapon I was a lot more careful and strategic while with the laser it was pretty much run and gun. The audio problems affected my FPS and made timing jumps really hard. Again, very good.

Fire Frog by Jungorend 2012-09-02T02:40:00

Not much to say that has already been said: good graphics, nice background music, nifty concept, but not the best movement and view. I do love the first four bars of the "earth theme", but I don't really care for the rest of the piece. I would have preferred some sort of theme and variation involving just the first four bars. It would be great to see what this could become though!

Assimilator by jonnopon3000 2012-09-01T02:59:00

I really enjoyed this game! With the stat system you have going it looks like you can get a lot of replay.

Couple of things I noticed. It would be nice to have a few more sounds than the little chime at the beginning. The font is really confusing, with the "5" looking like the "S". The enemy attack should be a different color; one playthrough I thought I was attacking but ended up dead because it was the enemy who was attacking instead. I also found that when you need to relaunch the game in order to reset everything properly, otherwise you can't attack and there are no monsters. I had problems playing the web build in Firefox but no difficulty in Chrome.

Gameplay wise it was very solid; I find that for games that counts for a lot. Nice job!

Slime Slayer by Mjiig 2012-09-02T02:24:00

It was pretty cool once I understood what all the stats did. The easiest solution would be to put a short label between the numbers in the white space. It would definitely improve how easy the game is to understand.

The core mechanics are really interesting! But the graphics are so-so, there aren't any sounds, and the game just keeps getting slower and slower the more slimes are on the screen. It could become a much better game with more flair (graphics/sounds), balancing, and speed improvements.

That being said, the core mechanics are very solid, you just need to go from there; I'm sure you could do a lot with this. I'd love to see a post compo version!

500 years by imef 2012-09-01T02:13:00

Pretty nifty! It looks like there might be a lot of replay in this!... if it wasn't a tad bit on the boring side. The graphics and sound were okay, nothing really stunning. I would have really liked for a sound when a popup appears; quite often I found myself minimizing the window. A little background music wouldn't hurt either.

I gave high humour points! Some of the stuff that came up was pretty funny. Things like "blue tribe has invented art" and "yellow tribe has invented travel to space". It was bit interesting that you put in monotheism as well as God but no other "superior beings".

I might come back to play this more, just to see the other possibilities. Good work!

LD30 — Connected Worlds

ICCC by Black Forest Programming 2014-08-27T02:57:00

@Chaoseiro: Having inactive hubs on countries eventually leads to death. I added that as a hint in the description because it's not explained elsewhere and seems important. Thanks for playing!

ICCC by Black Forest Programming 2014-08-27T03:12:00

@tehskull + @LemmingSurvivor: The more hubs (cyan circles) you have connected to a power source (blue circle) the more money you get

ICCC by Black Forest Programming 2014-08-27T17:52:00

@eemmbbeerr: Power sources are not hubs and don't generate money (in fact they take money to maintain). Hubs are the smaller cyan circles which need to be connected to a power source in order to generate revenue. Thanks for playing!

John and the Arbitrary Gem Hunt by SteveSalmond 2014-08-29T13:41:00

Stunning. I loved the sound queues for the gems; I thought that was pretty cool. Arbitrary gem hunt is truly arbitrary, though, and the controls felt off (especially on the beanstalks). Everything else was very very VERY well done!

Beyond the Rift by Chaoseiro 2014-08-27T03:19:00

Very nice visuals and fun gameplay, just wish there was more of it! Would love to see this extended or even turned into a full game.

Kill ME by TagliatL 2014-08-27T03:42:00

Cool art style and intriguing puzzles. Ended up glitching through the walls half the time when I shifted planets though. Sort of hard to tell what to do at some points. But otherwise very interesting!

Planetary Devourers by Deozaan 2014-09-07T02:53:00

Very fun! But very short! Would definitely play more if there was more. The galaxy background was very pretty and the music was very fitting. I liked that the level had more than one solution but that made it feel a bit too easy... Overall very impressed.

Close Your Eyes by nonetheless 2014-08-27T02:39:00

This is probably the most polished, most memorable thing I've seen this compo. Needs more levels!

Galactic Dump by SoulGame 2014-08-27T04:21:00

Nicely done! I love how the puzzles were designed so that the easiest way to connect, or the first one I tried, always failed. The level of polish is through the roof. Just sublime in every way.

Going to Other Planets by jonnopon3000 2014-08-27T03:52:00

Looks like it has promise, but it's hard to play because the collisions are glitchy and some of the graphics seem off. The procedural generation was cool though; wasn't expecting the portal to generate new areas each time! Would be interested to see what it becomes!

Milky Rain by hydancer 2014-08-27T03:07:00

Stylistically very cool! Controlling the player was hard though due to the jerkiness of the game, but that could be my computer's fault (low specs). Loved the variety of enemies and enemy attacks. Overall very fun and amusing.

Corponnected Ltd. by Wan 2014-08-27T17:04:00

Very compelling and very addictive with quite a bit of polish; once I started playing I couldn't stop until I beat it. There doesn't seem to be any way to fail other than to go bankrupt but that's easy once you get the hang of it; I think a time limit would be cool because it would force you to optimize your factories. On Linux+Firefox I didn't hear any music. Otherwise loved it.