Ludum Dare Simulator by Hempuli

made by Hempuli for LD 43 (COMPO)

Ludum Dare has arrived! You have 48 hours - how are you going to schedule your weekend to get a game done in time, while ensuring its quality?

In the game you place coloured blocks representing different aspects of a game -- assets, audio, code etc. -- onto a grid. Every cell in the grid is one hour of development time. Different aspects benefit you in different formations, so you'll have to balance your time between them (while also taking time to rest) to succeed. Once your game is complete, you'll get a rating and some feedback on what worked and what didn't.

This game was made using Multimedia Fusion 2 by Clickteam.

The game uses plug-ins made by Lukas Meller, Justin Aquadro, Ross Picket and Sebastian Janisz.

The game uses a customized version of the Xlua plug-in by Lukas Meller (origin plug-in by Justin Aquadra) that fixes a crash. I'm hoping to get said plug-in available publicly as I'm not sure if it is so at the moment.

Source Code	http://www.hempuli.com/LD_43_source.zip
Windows	http://www.hempuli.com/LD_43.zip
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/ludum-dare-simulator

Ratings

Overall	58^th	3.859⭐	48🧑‍⚖️
Fun	88^th	3.685⭐	48🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	23^th	4.021⭐	49🧑‍⚖️
Theme	212^th	3.576⭐	48🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	223^th	3.435⭐	48🧑‍⚖️
Audio	129^th	3.38⭐	48🧑‍⚖️
Humor	15^th	4.064⭐	49🧑‍⚖️
Given		42🗳️	44🗨️

Feedback

acoto87

03. Dec 2018 · 06:50 UTC

I liked the strategy of chosing what piece to use, considering the space left and the energy. Good job!

Evan Overly

04. Dec 2018 · 01:18 UTC

(I see what you did there smartypants.)

My Score

_____________

*mostly negative comments*

*score of 0 for fun*

"CONGRATULATIONS YOU SCORED 1ST PLACE"

*falls off desk*
____________________
All in all, brilliant idea and I'm slightly pissed I didn't come up with it myself.

FireBug

04. Dec 2018 · 01:23 UTC

Interesting concept and fun interpretation of managing your time and efforts. The pixel art is charming, and I appreciate small details that add to the mood, like having the waste basket tipped over, or the hand-drawn letters that add to the feeling of this being a game within a game.

Swanijam

04. Dec 2018 · 01:24 UTC

This is awesome! the game goes far behind the initial joke of making a ludum dare in a ludum dare game, and introduces an interesting puzzle that made me excited for the fictional game i was making. I favored decorative and extra elements over actual gameplay and got a bad score.

Also, the generated comments are hilarious. Great job.

Shahroz Khan

04. Dec 2018 · 01:25 UTC

I found the live webcam of developer pretty cool. I am guessing that the movement of the character were relative to what you chose at the grid.

🎤 Hempuli

04. Dec 2018 · 01:56 UTC

Thank you very much for the kind comments!

Yup; every hour of livecam roughly corresponds to a square on the grid, from left to right.

Jaynerdworld

04. Dec 2018 · 02:09 UTC

Was a pretty fun game and great concept.

commanderstitch

04. Dec 2018 · 04:31 UTC

I really enjoyed playing this. Everything felt like a game. and the end video thing just flat out surprised me entirely. I have no idea how you did all that but it felt amazing. Great entry Hempuli. :D

MyFriendTames

04. Dec 2018 · 06:09 UTC

I think your game is pretty awesome, it's a great idea and it gave me a funny time.

Good job!!!! :muscle:

Lontrus

04. Dec 2018 · 18:31 UTC

Brilliant idea, nice take on the theme.

bulb

04. Dec 2018 · 19:10 UTC

INCEPTION !

Yaroslav Kravtsov

04. Dec 2018 · 22:20 UTC

Get 1st place in overall on the first try with a lot of free energy. A little tweak of balance and this game will shine like a diamond. Webcam idea is overwhelmingly super.

You can check my game too. We made our interpretation of participation in Ludum Dare too.

Luis Guariglia

05. Dec 2018 · 02:48 UTC

i really enjoy the game, the idea its fantastic!!

Josh Bothun

05. Dec 2018 · 04:15 UTC

Amazing concept, I LOVE the song and love the timelapse webcam animation. I guess the fact that its just turn based tetris didnt really bother me, was just having so much fun with the concept. Awesome job :D

Epicruins195

05. Dec 2018 · 12:12 UTC

This was fantastic! A nice simple idea executed well. I really liked the ending cutscene that matches what you selected for each hour, that was a nice touch, as well as the random (I presume :P) comments. I could see this being very replayable with a bit of balancing. Good job, one of my favourite entries so far.

Call_me_Nutty

05. Dec 2018 · 14:05 UTC

Great idea and well executed! I like the little details and the art-style is bliss. I would just say that the text muddled together for me in the review bit. Also the algorithm for calculating some of the scores seems a bit off. But I came first overall with my own LD43 game, so I'm not complaining!
![135ce7662eabdf101c925a8f421fd6a0.png](///raw/50a/c/z/1f107.png)

simonhutchinson

05. Dec 2018 · 17:16 UTC

This looks like fun! Any chance for a Mac or web build?

🎤 Hempuli

05. Dec 2018 · 19:25 UTC

Again, thank you for the very kind comments!

@simonhutchinson Sadly no, I use a lua plug-in that to my knowledge hasn't been ported on the tool I'm using. :( It'd be sweet, though.

@call-me-nutty (& others commenting on the balance) Yeah, the "Overall" score and standing are affected purely by your score total and I underestimated the scores you can get pretty heavily, resulting in it being easy to win (while getting very low scores in some categories). Also Fun/Innovation/Humor scores are kind of arbitrarily calculated - maybe for a post-compo version there could be more clearly related systems :)

MRUniverse

05. Dec 2018 · 22:19 UTC

The LD style rating system at the end was icing on a pretty good cake.

Nick Rafalski

06. Dec 2018 · 04:26 UTC

This was so cool. Somehow I got 3rd with most categories being less than 1 star, but hey, that's LD for you. Great innovation

skettyNmeebs

07. Dec 2018 · 05:38 UTC

This was really sweet hahaha I loved the little cutscene where it showed you freaking out. It was hilarious, good job. very creative.

shulololo

08. Dec 2018 · 04:57 UTC

I really like how meta this game is. The live webcam was a nice touch, it made me laugh several times. Great entry!

Chao

08. Dec 2018 · 05:59 UTC

Nice management game, it was fun trying to figure out the best positions for each piece. I was a little confused by what it meant by small clusters for objects though.

Love your other work by the way, can't wait for Baba is You release :)

dob

08. Dec 2018 · 06:07 UTC

Very fun, and a very cool concept. I managed to do OK (rank 1). I liked the video feed part (although I think it could have run faster - I didn't want to watch all 48 hours) and the user comments especially. Really neat entry - I hope it does well.

dcrdro

08. Dec 2018 · 14:25 UTC

Pretty fun, cool idea :)

Pompi Pompi

08. Dec 2018 · 16:01 UTC

Really fun game!

wisstopher

18. Dec 2018 · 14:56 UTC

This is such a cool idea! The only thing I dislike is how the first game I made in this placed higher than I ever have for an LD :cry:
Great entry! I'll keep a look out for what you do next time :smile:

Aurel300

21. Dec 2018 · 18:40 UTC

Nice … Got 1st place for my game, surprisingly – makes me wonder how this is actually calculated, given that other people in the comments got that as well :) The webcam at the end was a nice addition, although I was expecting the screen to reflect the individual features we worked on. Granted that would be a lot of additional graphics work. Had a laugh at the random comments at the end as well.

dunin

21. Dec 2018 · 23:33 UTC

Nice packaged game.

In fact, I think I prefer everything that's been added around, rather than the gameplay..

And my results were... unexpected...

![screen1.jpg](///raw/b75/z/1fc1f.jpg)

g12345

29. Dec 2018 · 14:38 UTC

I :laughing: LOL'd so much while playing the game. It's genuine funny, or perhaps it just resembles how much time I didn't spent on making the game during an LD.

Before I played this game I feel really bad not spending all my time developing during an LD, but now I don't feel that bad now.

The graphics and the music is also much better than I ever can do in 48 hours, well done!

sebastianscaini

30. Dec 2018 · 14:12 UTC

A neat entry! I really liked the results at the end and the gameplay is very challenging but fair!