There's been a lot of news lately, so here's a recap.

Event Status: Theme Slaughter ~~Final Days~~ Ends

We really appreciate everyone that helped out with the Theme Slaughter. This evening we crossed the 900k votes, which is pretty incredible. ~~If you'd like to help us reach 1 million votes, you can visit the link below and take part.~~

~~https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/theme~~

Over on Twitter, @philstrahl decided the Ludum Dare Theme Slaughter makes a slammin' poetry generator:

https://twitter.com/PixelProphecy/status/1440244005946621959

:laughing:

UPDATE: The Theme Slaughter has ended! Over 1.1 million votes cast in the slaughter!

Thank you everyone for your help!

We've taken the top themes, removed duplicates and previous Ludum Dare themes, and have assembled 3 lists of 16 themes for the Theme Voting.

Check back each day: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, for a new Round of Theme Voting! The first round is live now!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/theme

Intel sponsors Ludum Dare 49!

We're thrilled to have Intel on board sponsoring the event. We've got some exciting things planned for after Ludum Dare, so stay tuned for that.

And if you're commercializing an Indie game, check out the Intel Game Dev Boost program—details in the link below.

https://ldjam.com/.../ann-intel-sponsors-ludum-dare-49

GameMaker Studio 2 sponsors Ludum Dare 49!

We're also thrilled to have GameMaker Studio 2 as a sponsor. YoYo Games announced recently that GameMaker Studio 2 is now free to use, no more 30 day trial!

If you're looking for something to do this weekend and want to teach yourself GameMaker, we've collected some getting started resources in the thread below.

https://ldjam.com/.../ann-gamemaker-studio-2-sponsors-ludum-dare-49

We'll have licenses available in the coming days so you can export your games for the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JZAAbyUNsQ

We also asked @ShaunJS to share some advice for making Ludum Dare games with GameMaker. Thanks Shaun!

Finally, in his video @ShaunJS highly recommended a GameMaker Studio addon called GMLive. We reached out to the author YellowAfterLife, and they decided to offer a 20% discount on GMLive for Ludum Dare 49!

You can find more details on the Deals page.

Ludum Deals

Speaking of the deals page, it's live. If you have a product or add-on you want to share with our users, feel free to leave a comment here:

https://ldjam.com/.../ludum-deals-49

I'll try to update the post every few days.

Ludum Dare is hiring!

In case you missed the news, and in case you were wondering what the sponsor money is for, I'm hiring a full-time Senior Developer in Canada to work with me on Ludum Dare.

Interviews will start a few days after Ludum Dare 49. You can find out more details here:

https://ldjam.com/.../ludum-dare-is-hiring-a-senior-developer-in-canada

PS: I'm sure I'll regret this, but here's the meme template of me and my cat.

Boring Legal Things

To comply with various government regulations, we've added a privacy policy, a cookie policy, and terms of service.

https://ldjam.com/.../long-overdue-boring-legal-things

We'll soon require you to agree to those terms.

Twitch brings back the Game Development category!

After much moaning about the "Science and Technology" category, Game Development has finally returned!

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Software%20and%20Game%20Development

The Twitch widget in the sidebar seems to have broken since then, but this should be fixed in time Ludum Dare 49.

Bugfixes

I recently switched us away from running our own mail server to paying for SendGrid. This should resolve most e-mail delivery problems (account activations, password resets, etc). If you still have issues, you can contact me.

The other day I pushed a bugfix that should stop the website from logging some users out. Also if you happen to switch IP addresses (i.e. going from WiFi your mobile data plan), there's now some leeway before it automatically logs you out.

Community member Mario Bonales submitted a fix for the problem where comments sometimes don't load.

Wrap-up

That's it for now. We're almost 1 week away from Ludum Dare 49!