I think it had great potential as a theme last year, I hope to see it back

Ludum Dare 51 will be my tenth Ludum Dare. As always, I'll be competing using the TIC-80 fantasy computer, and I've booked some time off work to give myself more leeway in case I need to switch from Compo to Jam. Instead of trying to push my boundaries and try new things, this time I'd like to cut loose and focus on simply making the best game I can.

To celebrate my tenth Ludum Dare entry, on 10/10 at 10am BST - one month from now - I'll be re-releasing my first seven Ludum Dare entries on itch.io. My most successful entry, 15 Minutes to Live, will also finally be coming to Newgrounds, with a long-overdue update featuring new music, enhanced graphics, extra content, and more.

As well as itch.io and Newgrounds, you can follow me on Twitter for occasional dev updates. Life has slowed me down recently, but I'm hoping to ramp up work on my current project Prism Warriors, and get a demo out before LD51 starts.

I'd like to say a massive thank you to everyone who's supported me throughout my ten Ludum Dares and counting, as well as those whose own entries have captivated me. May we all continue to grow and support one another for many years to come.

i can do pixel art; check my profile to see my work

Following is doing nothing meaning I cant add my team :/ anybody have any workarounds?

Our Theme Suggestions

• Sanctuary
• Ancient

Its a bit of a shame we can't do 3 suggestiins anymore, then "solstice" would be our 3rd suggestion

It's actually harder to think of something generic enough it could spawn 2000+ games and be original.

I like the idea of machines / vehicles / creatures running amok - could be interpreted a number of ways, from a runaway train, to herding animals etc.

That or I reckon something with sticky / magnetic abilities could be cool and interpreted a number of different ways.

Like some sort of physics sim with electromagnets, or cats climbing on curtains , lizards up walls, or spiders down drainpipes , or the whole world covered in treacle.

Which weekend were we talking about with regards to signups opening 'by the weekend', eh? :eyes:

Anyway, obligatory 'I'm in' post. Won't be sharing my themes (at least for now) because I'm not sure I've committed to them lol, the ability to delete them and put in better themes always exists up until it doesn't. Shame to only get 2 suggestions this time though. :slight_frown:

Never ended up making a post-mortem for or continuing development after LD50, which to be fair, I was under a lot of pressure. Grief & schoolwork are both very difficult to balance. Since then, I've graduated and gotten some distance on the grief - still sad a lot, but sometimes managing to function. I've worked a bit on my music skills lately and followed most of a godot tutorial to learn tips and tricks I wasn't able to figure out on my own. So, not exactly learning things in the calculated order I came up with in that one analysis/post-mortem about my skill levels, but maybe that's okay. Maybe it's okay to just grow in random, interest-based spurts.

I don't know how well my mental health will be holding up by the time the jam's truly upon us, but I look forward to trying. My goal this time is to seriously scope down whatever I come up with in favor of being able to make a "full" game: functioning mechanic, tutorial, menu screen, pause/options, end screen(s). Maybe that's still a lot to chew on, but if I scope down my mechanic like hell, the others should be doable, right?

Planning on using Godot and Beepbox for sure, not sure yet what I'll want to do for art. Might keep things simple pixel art, might do some extra shenanigans. Probably no AI generation, though I do find the thread discussing it to be fascinating.

Good luck everyone!

Hello everyone! About a week ago we launched our Kickstarter campaign! We are working on 8 games with this funding! Thanks, Wobble Blocks! Please feel free to check it out, a trailer is coming soon! http://kck.st/3PWRL4I

With the sudden burst of AI art generators and high quality art being available to anyone, there should be an update to the rules which would explicitly state if those are allowed and if they are, in what capacity.

@pov ?

therefore I, too, shall share them for all to see

I'm very excited, it's my third LD and the first time I'm suggesting themes. Those are my ideas:

• Based on a true history
• The art of storytelling

awesome. Because that means that the theme slaughter round is not soooo big (sometimes slaughter around 3000 themes isnt really fun haha).

I thinking about: why not reduce it just to one ? I mean one theme you can suggest is enough. So people have to choose more wisely :)

enjoy

You might remember Warhead Stroll, game from the LD #49 in which Old Roger walks his dog and must not explode.

Last week I ported it to mobile! I didn't add any content so it remains pretty short, but it's still completely free. My first mobile game, so maybe controls are a bit clunky or something, let me know!

Play it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.cagibidev.warheadstroll

Or here for the jam/desktop version: https://cagibi.itch.io/warhead-stroll

…And here's my theme suggestions

Hi there,

I am actually still working on my LDJAM50 game whenever I have the time (not often) and it is nowhere near playable, but I am already excited about spending 3-5 hours (ideally more, but realistically that's all I have been able to pour in during previous LDJams) on October 1st and 2nd dabbling a bit with Unity. Hopefully I'll manage to finish this time, but even if I don't, I am sure I'll still have a great time and I am very much looking forward to seeing all of your creative entries.

For the Theme Suggestions I decided to go with "medicine" (perhaps still too relevant to the real world, with the ongoing pandemic.) and "newspaper".

All the best and see you in October,

Kai

Last year, some of you will remember I gave you access to the winning LDJam 49 game, weeks before it was announced with Unstable Genius https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/unstable-genius

This year I have even bigger plans! My theme submissions: Hack the Planet! You can't do that in Ludum Dare!

Starting to weave my tangled web now, and by the time LDJam51 starts I'll have a huge knotted mess! Muhahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl3mWgaVCQw

Hi! I am a beginner game artist that is able to do pixel art and 3D Modelling, however I have never joined any game jam before and this is my first attempt. Im good in arts and Im looking for a team that I can contribute in making a game together :)

Excited for another Ludum Dare. Going to be entering the Extra category as I don't like submitting my game competitively, but planning to just use the 3 days of the Jam to make it.

Over the next few weeks I want to nail down which platform I'm working on. It's going to be from this selection: * Windows (Unity) * Amiga * SNES * PSX

I want to decide ahead of the start to get a basic framework up and running.

Whatever I make is likely to be some sort of adventure game as that's what I'm enjoying working on the most at the moment. I tend to go with the more risky approach of trying to get the theme to fit around the kind of game I enjoy making rather than designing from the theme outwards.

This time I'll use BlitzMax, Gimp and Audacity

Obligatory "I'm in, and here are my themes."

Not too serious about my choices, but here they are!

LD 49 was my first, skipped LD 50, and am looking forward to learning a lot from LD 51!

Considering challenging myself with an 8X8 sprite size with pixel art, and if I absolutely can't manage, bump myself up to 16x16. I know the trend (so far from my POV) seems that for pixel artists, higher res (64x64 upwards) with good notions of shading is the way to go if you want to get hired.

I still feel like by going smaller, I will go back to the basics of how to consider just how much placing each pixel matters. Hopefully, my shading game improves.

How are you challenging yourself this time? A new kind of feature, completion goals, something else? I would love to know about it!

Excited for this Ludum Dare. It's going to bwe a real corker.

I'm going to use Godot to build my masterpiece.

My themes are

"Keep em' guessing..." and "A roll of the dice".

Good luck to everyone!!

anyone got a clue why it's 2 this time instead of 3? My intuition was that it was to make up for seemingly starting late ("should open by the weekend" :eyes: :eyes: ) but on further reflection I'm not sure how that would change anything assuming the same number of participants and same slaughter/voting timeline as previous LDs. So what's up with having 2 suggestions then? :thinking:

last 2 times im baby now i'm a gamer :sunglasses:

Last Ludum Dare (April 2016 Shapeshift), I created a small puzzle game. Now that I'm a jobless new grad, I have endless time to rediscover my love for creating games. Let's get it, yuh! Zander is in.

I plan to use: - Unity, - Blender, - AR

My suggestions were: - Combinations - Non-verbal communication

Theme always sucks

Theme always sucks

You probably don't know me, but I was here at LD50 in April, I didn't submit a game because I suck at time management plus I was worse at game development than I am now. Anyways, I made a game for Jonas Tyroller's Wowie Jam and I'm ready to make something new. You can play the game if you wish to see if I am any good at game dev here: https://abysssal.itch.io/balance

I suggested 2 themes, though I am kind of bad at theme making. Here they are:

Good luck on your games!

I should've checked wiki - So my first entry was 2013 :laughing:

https://youtu.be/_hRpO6gvsk0

Hello I'm in.

I started a while back but skipped a few ludum dares.

Anyways my theme suggestions are;

  Use enemies to win
  Ancient ruins

Good luck!

Here lies my obligatory "I'm in" post, may it forever blog in peace.

I'll be doing the jam solo again after collaborating with a few people on the last few. It's time to take my extremely mediocre game art skills out of their box and wipe the cobwebs off them... then berate them for not being better and accuse them of not trying hard enough to improve themselves. That's sure to inspire them.

I'm also going to be using Godot instead of Unity for the first time. I've been messing around in Godot for a while now and I LOVE it. I'm even willing to put up with the far-too-Pythonic-for-my-liking-and-desperately-in-need-of-static-typing-because-I'm-a-grumpy-inflexible-bastard GDScript.

So the toolset will be:

Engine: Godot

2D Art: Aseprite/Gimp

3D Models: Blender

Music: Logic X and a couple of Pocket Operators

SFX: Bfxr and Logic X

Looking forward to the jam!

See you all then.

Hello I’m in.

Skipped a few Ludum Dares, but I will be attending this one

I plan to use:

Unity or UE5, Blender and a smear of others

My theme suggestions are;

~> Conspiracies all around you ~> Frank Frazetta atmosphere

Good luck!

Good morning good evening or what ever time of day you find your self in. I am currently looking for team members for this ludum dare I am a programmer and looking for people to join me. Message me on discord at KingOfNova #9334

Will do my best despite an 11 month old crawling around in the house.

I use the ldjams to stress test a 3D engine a mate and I have been developing for the past few years. But this time I will also put a new personal project on the battlefield: sndc, a sound effect compiler that can do pretty much anything.

• Language: C
• Engine: 3dmr (homemade)
• Assets: Blender, gimp
• SFX/music: sndc (homemade)

Hey folks!

There's lots to talk about, so lets get right to it.

Theme Suggestions are open! Pick 2 instead of 3

Since this keeps coming up, earlier this year we were having a conversation about the Theme Selection process. "The Theme Sucks" is a popular meme within the community, which is why we have multiple rounds of selection. But once you drop the crude and senseless themes, the true "quality" of an individual theme becomes more gray. Like pizza toppings, we'll never have a consensus on pineapple. :pizza: :pineapple: :yum:

Aside from denying some users the right to vote and make suggestions (yikes), a less controversial suggestion was to simply lower the number of suggestions everyone can make. The proposal was to give everyone 1 suggestion, but that felt too low to me. I think 3 is a good number, but given our size, I have been concerned about the amount of work giving everyone 3 suggestions has been creating. Not everyone completes the Slaughter, but those that do are heroes of the community, and I don't want them to get sick of it. :sweat_smile:

So for Ludum Dare 51, you can only make 2 theme suggestions, and we'll see how that goes.

The Theme Slaughter, like all systems, has its flaws. It lets us broadly find preferred themes and bury inappropriate suggestions, but it leaves a bunch of cleanup work after the fact. Currently this means I need to take an hour to manually filter through the top 100 themes, and remove themes I decide are too similar ("Shadows" vs "In Shadow" vs "Shade" vs "Shadowrun"), until I get the final 48. I'll be honest, this is probably my least favorite "running Ludum Dare" task, but I also feel extremely uneasy calling our process democratic while I personally control the theme list.

I'm not kidding, this genuinely bothers me.

An alternative system I've been meaning to try is something I call "Theme Fusion". Instead of "swiping left or right" to yay/nay a theme, themes are presented in pairs. "Evolution vs Swarms", which do you like better? This format also lets you help me find suggestions that are too similar. "Flying Islands vs Floating Islands", these are really close so you flag them as "the same", but you still choose a preference like Floating. Right now when I remove similar themes post-slaughter, the highest scoring theme is added to the list. It doesn't matter if I prefer the wording of a later suggestion, highest wins. I think shorter more concise themes work best, but the "highest wins" rule means "Flying Islands over the Atlantic" might beat "Floating Islands", to get crushed in the later voting rounds. Grouping (fusing) same themes together, AND deciding a favorite among the grouped (fused), I think this should yield better result than "highest wins".

Theme Fusion isn't without its flaws. The biggest thing I worry about though is the amount of work required to "complete it". It's exponentially more than the Slaughter! I don't like wasting anyone's time, so I don't think I'd be comfortable switching to Fusion until we've reduced the amount of extra work it creates.

Today unfortunately the Theme Fusion isn't ready, and the Theme Slaughter has been stagnant. Later parts of this post should help clarify why, but in short term, reducing the number of suggestions should make completing the Theme Slaughter less work, and I think that's the least we should do.

Core Software Upgrades

Some really big fixes and changes to the website are about to drop. The first lines of the code used by ldjam.com were written nearly 8 years ago, and if I'm honest I was not an experienced web developer back then. :sweat_smile: I've been building software since the 90's, and as much as I would like to "start over" with a clean slate, that would suck and we'd be left stagnant (again) until I finished.

So I've gone back, and I've been cleaning things up. I've upgraded dependencies and removed some fat (goodbye Internet Explorer support). There's some initial TypeScript support in there, and in general debugging works a lot better. Builds are still slow and take several minutes, but groundwork for switching to a fast compiler (transpiler) is almost finished: minutes to seconds. There'll be lots more to do post merge, but if you wanted to know why fetaure X or Y hasn't been done yet, besides the lack of time the TL;DR is the code got kinda gross these past 8 years. :sweat_smile:

Anyways, I hope to get this pushed in the next couple days. There's a lot of little fixes (things I haven't mentioned like the cache bug), but the point was to make working with the code more sensible and less of a pain. As things stand, the page styles are a little broken (meh), but more importantly game browsing is broken. We probably want that to work before this goes live though. :sweat_smile:

Game Uploading and Embedding is coming soon!

I'm really excited about this.

I've been working with Akamai to support uploading and embedding your games right here on ldjam.com.

Security in the web browser changed a lot this past decade. It used to be fine to create an <iframe> and stick another website in it. That's how we supported game embedding back when web games were Flash. Today we need to be careful of side-chain attacks (Spectre), malicious JavaScript, or data leaking though something as harmless looking as an <img> tag. We also need to explicitly set HTTP headers to allow or deny features, like putting our own website inside an <iframe>. It's complicated and it kinda sucks, but that the price we pay for the breadth and flexibility of the web.

When we launched ldjam.com, we locked everything down. No more off site images, no more embedded iframes (except a short list of approved websites like YouTube, SoundCloud, and Twitch), no more HTML styling of posts. With web browsers constantly adding new features AND getting exploited, that the safer approach was to opt-in to a feature than to opt-out.

There's also the cost: storage space and bandwidth isn't free. Services offer it for free, but the costs are paid in some other way. I think I'm pretty good at keeping my server costs low, but I didn't have burden of file hosting (only images).

So when Akamai and I were brainstorming what we could do together, we agreed that making embedded web-games a part of Ludum Dare again would be the perfect project.

We've been testing this feature out for the past couple weeks. We found some problems, fixed some problems, and we're nearly ready to open this up to you. I think the UX is a bit ugly, so I'm working to finish the core upgrade mentioned above, and then give it a polish pass.

Early next week I'd like to host a short public beta test. Follow us on Twitter, ~~sign up for the newsletter~~, or check back this weekend for details.

Until then, for a sneak peek, you can check out the embedding guide page:

https://ludumdare.com/resources/guides/embedding/

The guide is brief, but it will be expanded as we go. We were quite aggressive with our security sandbox. Cookies, storage (local, session, DB), and making outgoing HTTP requests are all disabled. That may require you to tweak your library code. In our testing, Safari halted games that used storage when the sandbox blocks it, where Chrome and Firefox errored but let the game run. Our environment is cross origin isolated, so WebAssembly exported games should run at full speed with precision timers.

Oh, and you can upload your "regular" games to Ludum Dare as well--It doesn't have to be a web game.

We have no plans to stop anyone from linking off site. All existing links will continue to work, and you can add more links in the future. To me, the point of all this was to bring game embedding back to Ludum Dare, but as a side bonus we also support "regular" game uploading. If nothing else, it means we could host a backup copy for you.

In the future, I would like to support tracking download numbers, provide statistics, and do some analysis on uploads themselves. The last one is something my friend Lars and I have chatting about. Last year he did some work with SteamDB to detect what tools Steam games were built with (Unity, GameMaker, Godot, etc). We unfortunately have years of untagged games in our catalog, so I would love a way to auto-populate that data. Not to mention, once we had this data, we could see what tool trends have emerged in Ludum Dare over the years and compare them to Steam. As an example, I have anecdotal evidence from watching Ludum Dare events that Godot usage is growing fast, but since it's still early, the number of published Godot games on Steam is still low.

Lots of exciting possibilities here, not to mention it will make submitting games simpler for new users.

Spam

We're working on it!

Akamai is helping us investigate our suspicious incoming traffic. I'll save the details for another day, but a shocking bit of early data was that in "the off season", nearly 50% of all requests to ldjam.com are clients probing us for an attack. Things like requests for ldjam.com/wp-admin.php. While technically yes we did used to run WordPress, that was on ludumdare.com, never here.

Basically, if we weren't running custom software, our spam problem would be much worse. :sweat_smile:

That said, just because bots can't spam us doesn't mean people can't. I wish I could remember the name, but there's a good documentary about this modern "human assisted" spam business. The TL;DR is that humans solve captcha's, create accounts, find textboxes to dump in, and run macros that spit out bile.

What's funny is our SEO is completely broken (on the TODO list). The way the website currently works (100% JavaScript), search engines can't index us properly. We're being spammed, and the spammers get zero return from it. Someone is being paid to dump trash where no search engine will see it, and no user will ever care. :laughing:

Anyway, it's one thing to hunt down and delete spam, and another to solve it.

In the near term, I'll be adding a report button to comments and posts. That might be a week or so from now, sometime after the Core Software Upgrade goes live. As we collect data, we'll see what we learn, what patterns emerge.

Sometime after the event, I'll go back and add what folks have reported on GitHub:

https://github.com/JammerCore/JammerCore/issues/1775

SEO issues aside, now that Ludum Dare hosts games, we will potentially become an even juicier target. I've had to be extra careful with how we added uploading and embedding. I guess what I'm saying is that I do take this seriously, but it's not enough to just delete a few posts. I don't see this getting better without studying it, and some engineering.

I guess it's one of those "good" problems to have? Signs of success? :sweat_smile:

Other Interesting Threads

Before I go, there's been some good conversations going on that I want to bring your attention to.

• Using AI art/content generators in Ludum Dare? Should they be allowed?
• Is the Karma system working?

Thanks everyone!

I have noticed a trend in Ludum Dare themes, there are two categories that I have identified, these are descriptive themes and meta themes.

Descriptive Themes

• Roads (LD13)
• Caverns (LD15)
• Islands (LD17)

These themes have no design requirement, they just require you to have your game themed with this setting.

Meta Themes examples

• Delay the inevitable (LD50)
• Stuck in a loop (LD47)
• Keep it alive (LD46)

These themes are more of a design constraint for the game designer. The challenge of this type of theme is to create a game satisfying some requirement, such as having something inevitable eventually happen or being forced into a loop.

Which ones do you prefer?

Most recent LD themes have been meta themes, except "Unstable" which is a bit of hybrid. For this reason, I would like to see more descriptive themes like "Garden", "Ocean", etc.

This time I am sure that one of my suggestions are going to get to the final round!

I am working on an Interpreter written in JavaScript. I speculate to challenge myself by using it for the upcoming Compo. I think it will be funny and frustrating at the same time... But... damn it... I'm in the mood for it XD

Me. In LDJAM 51. Can't wait to torture myself for 48 hours straight when a random tiny bug eats about 20% of my time again.

Let's get the theme thing out of the way first:

The funky tool lineup consists of (and this is basically the same as every single jam I've ever participated in):

• :video_game: GameMaker Studio 2 for coding bugs
• :paintbrush: Aseprite for making pixel art that is honestly decent at this point
• :musical_note: Ableton Live 11 for making the banger soundtrack
• :pencil2: Typora for taking notes in a slick and stylish fashion
• :globewithmeridians: GitHub for hosting my code forever so future generations may avoid my codestyle

Yeah that's pretty much it. I think I'll stream the entire thing on Twitch again so if you decide to not make a game but still want the feeling of time crunch and dread or if you just want to check on my progress, feel free to stop by.

Have a nice day, see you in two weeks :D

Cause it's time for the "I'm in" posts...

I have a feeling this is going to be good! I wish good luck to everyone else who will be participating as well.

I will be using:

• Clip Studio Paint - 2D Art
• Aseprite - Pixel Sprites
• Visual Studio Code - Programming
• Audacity - SFX
• HTML/Javascript - Platform

Still haven't decided if I will be doing pixel or vector art, I think that will depend on the idea I end up having.

My submissions from previous Jams that I'm proud of:

LD 50: Ydunian Prune

LD 47: Loophole Kingdom

LD 45: Ground Zero

Let's hope the theme doesn't suck too much this time!

This will be my 28th ludumdare in a row. xD i started at LD24, and am still here apparently. I’ll be using these this time:

IDE: Eclipse - Eclipse Foundation

Engine: LibGdx - Open Source, originally written by Mario Zechner

Graphics: aseprite/paint.net -david capello/Rick Brewster; Tiled - Thorbjørn Lindeijer; TexturePacker - main guy: Metaphore, also: tommyettinger, devjn, terafog, thefacecore, hangman and voidburn.

Fonts: FontForge - George Williams and the FontForge Project contributors

Sound: Audacity - Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg

Music: Cakewalk by BandLab

Timelapse: Chronolapse - keeyai

Good luck fellow Ludumdarians. Also, drink up Unicorns! I'm hoping to avoid the deployment headaches, but so far I haven't gone a recent LD without tooling issues. Test out those tools prior to the event!! :D :O :/ haha!

I'm gonna join my third jam! Tools are TBD though. Good theme ideating ;)

This is my first jam since #40 whew time :o

I have gotten more comfortable with developing in C++ and want to use this as an opportunity to try and release something that way and see if it works out.

Hope to finish something small, reasonably polished and very dumb.

Expected setup:

• Language/libraries C++ and SDL2
• IDE Visual Studio Code
• Graphics Aseprite
• Music Ableton Live + Serum VST
• SFX Same as music + some library sfx I guess

I'm in

Here are my suggestions:

I'm gonna be busy with other things, and then I'm doing this... Life is gonna suck!

Finally had some decent ideas for a theme to suggest... Though I still like the words "Jiggly wiggly" :/ I just can't imagine what to make from it, except a jelly simulator or smth.

I'm currently browsing and looking at various game engines/programs to find one that I like better, but so far none of them has really caught my attention :(

I'd love an engine/framework/something that really allows you to handle text in a creative manner, but so far all I've found has been the same kind of print text to screen. No animation or transformation like skewing.

Let the game (development) begin

I'm going to spend a little time this weekend touching up the code base I used for LD30 and LD48 and try to get that published before the compo.

Super late update: I've published my starter code base here: https://piratehearts.com/files/LD4851Base.zip

Using Godot this time even though I'd rather use my custom stuff but I need a job so bad and I have no time

So last time, my first jam...well I went with a game idea I concocted beforehand that barely bent around the theme. Plus it just didn't feel fun to play. Or code, for that matter. But, I've got 6 extra months on my engine of choice under my belt (Godot), and an itch to make a project by myself that I can keep simple on launch. Still haven't...made any, full games...from Godot. But I had a lot more engine tinkering since then. Something that will keep me from programming for most of the damn thing.

Doing digital archeology on old projects and discovering you'd wasted the first hours of a compo doing a completely different game to your final entry. Couldn't find the music files this time though. :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ha54wABPgQ

First time, inexperienced, scared but excited!

Here we go again... 😋

The usual toolset for LD51: Unity, Aesprite, lots and lots of coffee. One jam I might try something different, but it is not this jam. 😄

Hello everyone! I'm one of those guys that have a hard drive half full of unfinished projects, might be nice to finish one for once :D

I'm a little nervous and almost scared but I am looking forward to the challenge.

I'll be using Unity for the most part and performing programmer art via GIMP and some very basic blender work.

Good luck to all! May the inspiration strike us all!

Participating in a jam has always been something I made excuses to not do, but now that I have a bit of confidence and some experience with the needed tools, I'm stoked for the challenge!

My main toolset will be:

• Godot
• Aseprite
• PreSonus Studio One
• M-Audio Oxygen 49 MIDI Controller

I started university back in August, but thankfully that won't stop me from entering the Ludum Dare for the ninth time in a row! I'll be entering the compo again. Same tools, but I'm hoping to experiment in a few places.

Good luck, everyone!

Looking forward to my 6th Ludum Dare. This year I will be working with my middle-school daughter. She will be doing the artwork. So, I created some videos on my YouTube channel of a Game Jam practice with my daughter. She is just learning to do pixel art and wanted her to try some artwork styles out before the jam. I plan on making videos for this event. Hope everyone has a great experience this year!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=worok7pfaHo

first ever ludum dare gamejam letsgooo!

ill be using construct 3

speaking of construct 3, I was looking through the rules and was wondering how exactly I should go about posting my source code if Im using construct.

Another game made in Construct 2 , Music in FLStudio etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-k4snSh7Yo

Transformation, Sprites and Audio is finally working. A few things still need to be done. But I have a feeling my
Tool will be ready in time for the Jam. What a challenge before the challenge :laughing:

In case anyone is interested what I am doing - Repo: https://github.com/themelektaus/tausly - Litte Pong Demo: https://steinalt.online/tausly/editor/#game-pong

I'm interested in hearing how do you prepare for the jam? Do you for example create some boilerplate code to save time during the jam? Do you practice?

I usually prepare for the jam by opening Unity and doing some initial testing few weeks before the jam. For example now I am very interested in doing some hex-based strategy game, so I have been doing some initial testing how the unity tile-maps work etc. I have never used the Unity tilemaps before and I dont want to spend the whole jam learning it. I have also already implemented some basic path finding algorithm that I plan to use during the jam, as the rules allow to use ANY previously done code.

What about you guys? How do you prepare? And do you think it is ok to start coding before the jam has started?

Hey, Guys! Ludum dare viewer is on itch.io now.

You can check some entries from previous events for good time spending and get some ideas for your projects. Feel free for your feedback about bugs and any ideas.

It's always such a pleasure

(hyped for LD 51)

This will be my 11th time taking place in Ludum Dare, but it also marks a special occasion for me! You see, for the last 5 years or so I've been taking part in other game jams here and there with one goal in mind: making a game starting with each letter of the alphabet. And now, I'm finally nearing the end! I only have one letter left - X. So look forward to a game about xylophones or xenon or xanthan gum!

I'm not sure if I'll stick with Unity or switch to Unreal this time around, but the rest of my arsenal (GIMP, Blender, FL Studio, BFXR) is going to stay the same.

We are a very open and friendly bunch, who have done many jams together now in a row and our usual artists (who do not usually do art for games at all, so we are VERY open to having people join in from all walks of life) are not able to join in. If you, or anyone you know, is interested in saying hi, get them to follow me / comment on this post and I will find a way to get you into our uber lovely discord server for the weekend - and we can have a chat about how/if you want to join in :)

We use unity but we probably will look at 2D or 2.5D. We are open to 2d art, graphic artists, pixel artists or 3d artists. Just whatever, we work around you ! That's half of the fun in our jams :)

Going solo this time, feeling confident though. I had a ton of fun last time and I'm totally stoked to see what awesome stuff comes out of ldjam 51.

Hey! This will be my 6th Ludum Dare back-to-back, and I talk about jam themes sometimes :D

LD50 was a huge accomplishment and celebration for everyone who took part, everyone who has ever taken part in LD, and everyone who has made these events possible. :tada: I think it's super important for us, creative individuals, to look for innovation at every step of our journey, and what better opportunity to focus on it than the opening of a new chapter in Ludum Dare history?

Personally, I think one of the things that can make a great game jam is a great theme. So why not take this opportunity to think about what you would really love to see everyone - thousands of people! - have a go at?

I've previously written and meandered about what makes a good theme, but it can be distilled to this:

it needs to be open-ended enough so that everyone can find their own interpretation, but grounded enough so that all the games have something in common.

Notice how the semantic depth of a word or phrase can help it be both grounded and open to interpretation.

The biggest tangible benefit of a good jam theme is that we get to see games of almost every kind imaginable. It doesn't dictate where your game should take place; whether it should feature minor violence, total mayhem, or no violence at all; what the objective should be; what vibe it needs; whether you play as a hero on the ground, a mastermind in the sky, or, indeed, the environment itself. These things have so much to do with individual style, preference and ability!

For LD51, I've looked back at my previous theme suggestions, and took two different ideas. The first one is meant to be a reference (cookies if you know where it's from!) and a starting point to think about gameplay or story; the second is meant to bring up everyone's individual concept of what's "at the entrance", "threshold" or "beginning", "in between" things, times or places, and let that spark the creativity.

Just like last time, let's make the themes interesting, and LD51 an amazing event! :sparkles:

https://www.kamnikaur.in/ Independent Escort in Delhi

Hi everyone!

I’m a sound designer (specialising in sfx), and dialogue editor, looking for a team to collaborate with for the jam.

Here’s my portfolio https://www.paulshelleyaudio.com Discord – PaulS#0175 Would love to ideally work in a medium sized team on a 3D game.

If you’re looking for members please message here or on discord :) (My timezone – GMT +1)

Best of luck with the jam folks!

If anyone is looking for a designer, or a unity developer, or both, I'd be interested in joining a team. I have a few years of experience in both of these fields, plus I can make some simple pixel art if needed.

I'm been so looking forward to the next Ludum Dare! :heart: This will be my 5th one!

Just yesterday, the Godot 4.0 beta came out. I'm a little sad that 4.0 isn't officially out yet in time for the compo but I'll try using the beta. We'll see how it goes... In the previous Ludum Dare, I've tried using Godot+Vim integration to better write scripts (I don't hate the internal editor in Godot, I just miss Vim 🥲). I remember that there were a few problems with the integration, something with clashing tabs/spaces for indentation. As a preparation for the compo, I'll try making a setup that works so I don't have to tinker with it during the weekend.

Last time, I made my first 3D game for a Ludum Dare. I've bitten a lot more that I can chew, it was a fantastic experience but left me with no time for polish and sounds. The game suffered from it. This time, I'm gonna switch back to 2D and try to keep it as simple as possible. Also, most of my game jam games have no sound... Do you guys have any tips for making sound effects and music for a programmer? Previously I always used sfxr/bfxr and that worked great. I also heard about Bosca Ceoil, haven't tried yet.

I have done the slaughter and I'm positive that nobody can possibly complain about my technique this time. Not too many, not too few.:8ball:

I will make a thing for LD51.

My current theme slaughter favorites are as follows:
Shy Pirates,
Everything is on fire,
Get rich or die trying

slaughtered 1807

kept 37

the second to last theme was literally "the end is almost near"

Hello,

We are a group of friends (with several professional developers and an artist). We are looking for at least one french 2D artist to join and help us (we plan to use Godot engine). We participate for fun.

Feel free to DM on Discord: fraxken#8064

I'm not 100% sure if I'm joining this round, just in case... I come prepared!

I built an AI-powered "game idea generator"... and no matter what the theme is, I can throw the theme at it, and it'll pump out as many ideas based on that theme I could ever want.

Bring on your hardest and most ridiculous themes, LD!

I've done so many LDs I've lost count, but this was the first time I actually finished the Theme Slaughter! I don't know if there were a bit less themes than usual because of the new 2 suggestion limit, or if it was because I've already decided I'm going to make an RPG for LD51, so it boiled down to "can I make an RPG out of this?" (ok, there were other things like not keeping themes that have been used previously) and thus it was a simpler process. Also, a lot more keeps than I have usually had (it's been like 1-2% previously).

So, yeah, I'm in and whatever the theme is, my game is going to be as full-blown RPG as I have time for. Hoping to get at least character creation, items and level progression in, with around 20-30 minute story and some combat.

:mapleleaf:

Hopefully the end result will be something that can inspire a good lengthy game or a deep thought... Bah, who am I kidding :laughing: Can't wait to see the next prompt

You don't have to go through all the theme suggestions to make an impact! Theme Slaughter picks random entries for you to vote on, so even if you go through just a few, you've helped! :thumbsup:

I'd like to encourage you to take your time with the Slaughter, and really consider each answer to the question "Would this be a good Theme?". If you don't know how to approach that, I wrote some food for thought earlier.

I'm hoping for something deep and creative to win :smile:

First time I've jumped on LD early enough to get involved in the theme slaughter and boy it's a lot of work. I don't know how some of you have got through the whole set.

I know, I know! I slaughtered too many. I promise, I tried to be fair. :cry:

I am done with the slaughter... Sorry to the people, who kept about a third of the entries - I didn't put every suggestion on the scales to see whether it would meet the minimum requirements of a decent theme. Instead, I asked myself "does this strike a chord with me?" I know, it's very unscientific, completely arbitrary, but this is what remained (for the most part, I wasn't even consistent and did not click duplicates on purpose with the exception of "dice" and "dices" that were in close proximity to each other):

• vacation
• help from AI
• classic PC game
• kittens
• ghosts
• Hold and Release
• Control Level not Player
• Protect the objective
• campsite
• arcade
• game in a game
• road trip
• bastion
• table
• go green, go nuclear
• build and barter
• road
• educational
• revolution
• medicine
• gravity
• barter
• scroll
• judge
• laboratory
• medieval dystopia
• falafel
• Volcano!
• Everest
• Forbidden territory
• newspaper
• anthropomorphic Cyberpunk
• changing gravity
• cycling
• camping
• travel
• lockpicking minigame
• dices
• dice
• treasure map
• tournament
• tidy
• seasons
• heist

• End with nothing
• To infinity and beyond
• There can be only one
• Different perspectives
• Only one mistake
• You are the level
• Control the level, not the player
• Something is off
• Who thought this was a good idea?
• Take one give two
• Wicked abilities
• It's Corn 🌽
• Light at the end of the tunnel
• Magical Girls
• Distract
• Become vulnerable
• You are not supposed to be here
• Now is already too late

Some keys for my game Theorem on Steam. If you like it, post a comment. I wish you the best ++

WGGK2-KTBA4-MYL33

4DK02-B6J0A-KJRTK

8Z9YN-7T4YC-KJ2QJ

44HZL-PTEQ2-QAPG5

CKV3E-RDVEW-B2A7V

HGP97-D3LVT-HAH29

IFI92-NPXF2-PITC3

LTXG9-DK9DA-5B6JF

AIYCX-CHYIX-IA30F

0B4YN-JPZQR-EVX3V

RXVLX-W06MX-PMGJ0

DJKK2-GX88T-Z7ANG

8QCMG-76PWW-XF7LQ

Q7K58-YM3Z8-9XPF9

2HYLP-57EX0-LI2C3

BVFXA-JRM52-VCEPQ

0CKBQ-3JKPR-PX4XL

8KPX5-Q0CJR-9KBIB

X9WXE-HV65B-3PVR4

GTT9J-7ER95-3DVR8

my criteria for slaughtering themes was whether they seemed too vague and open ended (a lot of one-worders in general), or seemed so specific that they would lead to generally the same style, type or genre of games (gravity control, medieval dystopia, etc)
i have to say my favorite so far is "control the level, not the player"

Ready to code !!!

I'll cut to the chase. I'm a writer, game designer, and programmer. What I am certainly not is an Artist, nor a music maker. I'll certainly get by without either, but I don't know any software and don't own any hardware that would make either thing easier (at least, without costing money). If anyone has some good places to grab this stuff or wants to work with me on the upcoming Game Jam, I'd be more than happy.

Oh, right. I should mention I'm a 2D Godot dev. Slipped my mind.

I'm in for LD 51 with Godot 3.5, C#, aseprite, musescore, rFXgen. Solo dev like last time :smile:

What are your tools? :thinking: