Woohoo!

The whole chocolat-endive team is once again ready for a new LD jam! And by "whole team", I really mean two people:

• Bouteille, the code writer, who can also help with graphics (especially, if we make a 3D game, she’s the specialist).
• Zhao (me), ready to make some music, graphical assets, make coffee, and help with game design.

We're super excited, and can't wait to have fun trying to make a game in 3 days.

We don't have enough food, so I'll have to go out tomorrow and miss a part of the event. Also I'm super exhausted because of allergies, so this jam may prove a little challenging. But the challenge is what makes this kind of event interesting.

As usual, some photos of our setup. My workstatin:

Bouteille's setup:

And my music setup (sorry for the awful picture quality):

We don't intend to change our worflow, so here are our tools:

• The wonderful Godot engine
• Krita and Gimp for 2d
• Blender and maybe Magicavoxel for 3d (if we make some 3d stuff, it’s been a long time!)
• Synths and stuff (a gameboy? maybe a flute? some field recording? i don’t know, we’ll see) for music

Ludum Dare is always something special for us, and we are sooooo happy this event hasn't been cancelled (thank you @pov for your work on this thing. I really hope everbody will enjoy this LD, and I can't wait to see what you're all going to do.

Good luck, have fun, and don't forget to have some sleep.

We're participating in The Jam format, and maybe we're looking for YOU to join our team.

Who We Are: We are recently and nearly graduated game designers and programmers responsible working in Unreal Engine 5. We'll be using Peforce for version control and collaborating in Trello and Discord. You can see some previous projects we've done here: here and here .

What We Need: You are a somewhat to very experienced 3D artist and/or 3D animator comfortable with working fast to get assets or animations engine-ready. You're free for most of the duration of the jam to collaborate. Finally, you are creative, you are fun to work with, and you're excited to make a great prototype for your portfolio.

If you're interested email me @ marshallsandoval@gmail.com 🎉

Who else is excited for Ludum Dare 57!? I know I am. I've lost count of exactly how many times I've done this, but I can see at least 15 Ludum Dare repositories in my GitHub. Looking back, I am incredibly proud of what I've done in that time.

The first game I did was probably lost to time, but the first I can find was Ludum Dare 34. That was "Bouncy Blob" - a flappy-bird inspired game about bouncing a blob through a bunch of obstacles (https://github.com/seurimas/ludumdare34). "Two Button Controls" and "Growing" were apparently the theme, so you would grow your blob with one button (sending you towards the ground faster) and you could dash with another. It was full of a bunch of cute details I sometimes forget to make time for in modern Ludum Dares.

A few jams later, I tackled Ludum Dare 39 with "Mystic Power". The theme was "Running Out of Power", and you would have spells that ran out fairly quickly (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mystic-power). It wasn't the best game, but it was a fun exploration of using the Elm programming language for game development.

Now firmly in the modern Ludum Dare era, Ludum Dare 47 was "Stuck in a Round". Very close to the theme of "Stuck in a loop", the conceit was that you were stuck in a "Round", a style of repetitive music (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/stuck-in-a-round). You'd have to run around and grab a scale of notes while the songs played obstacles raining down upon you. This was the first game where I really tried to lock in with the scope, and I think the results were pretty clean.

I did some Jams over the years, but, mostly, I've stuck to the Compo. I get some really cool games I'm proud of in these past 5 years: LD49 Kinetic Space Mining was pretty clever and complete (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/kinetic-space-mining); LD51 10 Second Tower Defense got my best Fun score at #67 (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/10-second-tower-defense-1); LD53 I impressed some people with an innovative runes system in Signs of Corruption (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/signs-of-corruption); and LD55 my auto-chess battler, Summoner Chess, got my best Overall score at #147 (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/summoner-chess).

I'm not sure what I'm doing for Ludum Dare 57. Sometimes, I go into a Ludum Dare with a mechanic I really want to use (the runes in Signs of Corruption), or a genre to explore (auto-chess for Summoner Chess), or just a library to kick the tires on (physics in Amethyst for Kinetic Space Mining). Some of that kind of thinking has been kicking around in my head lately, particularly with a few new tools in my toolkit I'd like to showoff. Looking back on this history, though, I just want to make a cool game I can be proud of. Here's hoping it's a great jam, for me and all of you!

I realized that LD57 was soon. So I made a repo. https://github.com/GameMaker3001/LD57

We're participating in The Jam format and maybe we need YOU to join our team!

Who We Are: We are recently and nearly graduated game designers and programmers responsible working in Unreal Engine 5. We'll be using Peforce for version control and collaborating in Trello and Discord. You can see some previous projects we've done here and here. What We Need: You are a somewhat experienced 3D artist and/or 3D animator comfortable with working fast to get assets or animations engine-ready. You're free for most of the duration of the jam to collaborate. Finally, you are creative, you are fun to work with, and you're excited to make a great prototype for your portfolio.

If you're interested email me @ marshallsandoval@gmail.com 🎉

Code/Engine: Visual Studio 2022 (C#) / Unity 6 Art: Krita
3DModel: Blender 4.2 Music: FL Studio

Ohhh so many memories

Astra Delivery (Ludum Dare 53 - Delivery)

Ice Moon (Ludum Dare 49 - Unstable)

Terra Nova (Ludum Dare 47 - Stuck in a loop)

A Short Tale Of Small Kingdoms (Ludum Dare 38 - A Small World)

Sidereal Lifters Corp (Ludum Dare 37 - One Room)

When the Stars are Right (Ludum Dare 33 - You are the Monster)

Shield Of Eternal Night (Ludum Dare 32 - An Unconventional Weapon)

Chef's Legend (Ludum Dare 31 - Entire Game on One Screen)

Stellarlink Corp (Ludum Dare 30 - Connected Worlds)

HammerHead in the Sea of Monsters (Ludum Dare 29 - Beneath the surface)

Hard Point (Ludum Dare 28 - You only get one)

Mission Luna (Ludum Dare 27 - 10 seconds)

Alien Raid (Ludum Dare 26 - Minimalism)

Moon Rise (Ludum Dare 25 - You are the villain)

(I can't predict with 100% certainty that AI is going to get to a level where it will replace most people current skills, but I am basing off my prediction on the latest events. I am happy if you challenge my way of thinking about this issue.)

I agree, that would be the ideal way would be to opt out of certain categories if person submitting it is honest. But there are no processes that validate someone's honesty about these things with the advancements in AI.

Right now it's more of a thing where you include the category if you want to get feedback on your own work and not some AI tool's work.

I don't like it the way it is, I don't want people to use AI and claim it as their work, but what is anyone going to do about it? There is no way to validate that, except if they blatantly use Midjourney art - then you can use online tools to identify that they did use it.

All I mean is that there will be time in 1-2 years where submissions will be littered with AI music/sfx and art, and no one will be able to tell authentic work apart from AI generated.

I myself going to opt out of Audio and Graphics because I will definitely be using AI for those, but I bet 100% there is going to be at least someone who doesn't opt out and use AI. And some time in the future they will even win the competition in that category.

So the problem with these rules are they are outdated and won't work anymore. It's really sad that it's happening, but it is what it is, and we can't change that.

They kind of have always been hard to enforce, but other people could kinda see if the art was generated or if it was stolen from somewhere, not anymore.

I will very much miss the days when people from different fields gathered together and HAD to gather together(if they didn't have required skill) in order to get some kind of game working. Voice actors, musicians, sound designers, artists, programmers, designers.

Now it's going to be transformed into something different, dunno what. VIBE CODING, artistic vision, good music taste, sfx use-cases, etc. At least 3D art is safe for a little bit.

People are going to change field/type of work(because the skill is no longer going to be required this widely). And there won't be so many artists, voice actors and sound designers, probably even programmers. Thus with the lack of such people - most participants are going to use AI tools for that, especially because it's going to give them better results than entry level people that are usually interested in the JAMs.

Ludum Dare format has to change to adapt to it, or keep it's style and play cards in old school style. Because there is definitely going to be a more popular game JAM format where lots of students who like Video Games are going to participate and use AI.

This JAM might be one of the last LD jams where teams form out of people from different fields of work to create something with their "own" hands.

I would suggest everyone to enjoy it and remember it like it's the last time they are doing this kind of thing in teams. Future holds something different and it was lots of fun. People who were able to enjoy it for more years in the old format are lucky.

I know the post might sound sad, I am kinda sad about it, but I am also excited that the games are going to be more complex, bigger in scope, more fleshed out, and maybe we will find many new ways to collaborate.

Came back after years off 56 was great but the theme was slightly tricky tbf, Can't wait for 57!

react to this, i want to know how many of you guys are online right now!

Here's the traditional, "I'm in!" post.

Tools of choice? The normal (for me).

• Unreal Engine
• Blender 3d
• Krita
• VS Code
• JetBrains Rider
• AbundantMusic (probably) - https://pernyblom.github.io/abundant-music/index.html
• LMMS (probably)

Good luck everyone!

Two hours till theme time! I'm not gonna lie though, I'm probably gonna be boring and head to bed and find out what the theme is when I wake up lol

My game from last year, Snow Flipper, just hit 200k plays in its post-jam version! Feels pretty full circle, I still hope to add a bit more to that game in time :smile: :penguin:

If you feel like playing it, check out https://snowflipper.shop/

Let's create something cool! I'll use Construct 3 :)

Hey guys! I am going to participate on my first Ludum Dare!

Heres the tools that I use: -. Coding: HaxeFlixel and VS Code -. Music: FL Studio -. Visuals: Adobe Photoshop

I hope I can make a game this year, particularly a rhythm game! I'm going for the jam since it's easier.

Ready for the compo :fire:

• :thinking: Brainstorming : Mind maps using Vym
• :computer: Dev: Java with LibGDX
• :pencil: Editor : IntelliJ IDEA
• :paintbrush: Graphics : LibreSprite
• :musical_note: Music : LMMS

Hop, here's a wallpaper I made for this edition.

Good luck everyone !!

I haven't had a successful Ludum Dare since LD46 :cry:. I'm hoping to change that this time around.

I'll probable use my normal stack:

MonoGame/C#/.NET Visual Studio Paint.NET/Gimp/Inkscape Bosca Ceoil

Boilerplate code: https://github.com/srakowski/LD57 (mostly empty)

Have fun everyone!

Joining for my 14th LD in a row!

As a little bonus, I wanted to share a helpful Unity tip that I've been using in my last few projects — especially handy during a game jam when speed matters.

It’s about the Singleton pattern, which is super useful for scripts where you only ever want one instance in your game (like your SceneManager, AudioManager, etc.).

I used to write the singleton logic manually in each of these scripts. But now, I use this handy base class instead — whenever I want singleton behavior, I just make my script derive from Singleton<T>!

For example:

public class SceneManager : Singleton<SceneManager>

instead of

public class SceneManager : MonoBehaviour

I hope this is helpful to someone out there, here is the script: ``` using UnityEngine;

public class Singleton : MonoBehaviour where T : MonoBehaviour

{

private static T _instance;

public static T Instance
{
    get
    {
        if (_instance == null)
        {
            // Search for existing instance.
            _instance = FindFirstObjectByType<T>();

            // Create new instance if one doesn't already exist.
            if (_instance == null)
            {
                // Ensure that there's a GameObject to attach the singleton to.
                var singletonObject = new GameObject();
                _instance = singletonObject.AddComponent<T>();
                singletonObject.name = typeof(T).ToString() + " (Singleton)";

                // Make sure the singleton persists across scenes.
                DontDestroyOnLoad(singletonObject);
            }
        }
        return _instance;
    }
}

protected virtual void Awake()
{
    if (_instance == null)
    {
        _instance = this as T;
        DontDestroyOnLoad(this.gameObject);
    }
    else
    {
        Destroy(gameObject);
    }
}

} ``` Good luck to everyone jamming!

Gonna try to do the jam this time. let's not sleep for 72h straight

This will be my third Ludum Dare and probably somewhere in-between my 9th-12th game jam.

I'm going to be using: Unity for all my dev stuff, Pixelorama for pixel art, Krita for non-pixel art, Good ol' pencil and paper for writing things down, And my brain for generating ideas (No AI over here, but there's no shame in it).

Hope you all have fun (cause that's what it's all about baby!) and whether you finish or make a good game, you might find that you learned something along the way!

I intended to sleep before ludum dare starts so i can push throu some hours before needing my first break, but as most of the time, i'm way to hyped to even think about sleep... Guess it'll be brainstorming an idea, sleeping, rebrainstorm that idea and then start - lets see ^^,

finally joining LD jam ... See you all in battlefield :D

On Standby for Standby (Filmmie term)

Into pixel art and arcade games, been so for quite some time.

Poisons as follows.. * Lang: Java * IDE : Eclispe / Eldian / CodeNodeDesigner * GFX : Paint Shop Pro * SND : Ableton and Audacity for Audio * APP : Several custom command line apps for stuff * LIB : Jorvis, OpenCV, * You all and this overcast Chilly Autumn Day as inspiration.

72 hour jam, it's 48 hours with 3 x 8 hours sleep.

See you in the soup. 👾👽🧚🖤