So, after my failed attempts at trying to Ludum Dare, I had a little break of it. But you’re too awesome, so I’m back here, though this time I’m organized and focused on the thing I’m best at: music and SFX. I’ve teamed up with Sigrath, he’s gonna do the actual game stuff and I’ll be doing just audio.

My setup:

• As usual, a ridiculously old laptop (Intel Dual Core 1.73 GHz and 2 GB of RAM)
• FL Studio / Reaper (depends on the style we’ll be going to use: Reaper for orchestral stuff, FL for electronic/ambient/chiptune)
• Plugins: stock FL/Reaper, Kontakt (with my favorite libraries, Kontakt 5 Factory Library, Drums of War 2, Evolve Mutations, Shevannai Voices of Elves, and some freebies here and there), Sylenth1, 3xOsc (it’s FL stock but it just had to be listed separately for its awesomeness)

Now, onto the advice part: currently I’m trying to really get OOP and generally train myself how not to fail and actually make games. It’s a sort of weekends research project, though I aim to finish a game this way. I decided to use NetBeans for a couple of reasons:

• Although I love coding in Sublime Text (I code most stuff in it, including my website), the autocompletion feature is really lacking for me (even with SublimeCodeIntel). I really miss being able to CTRL+Space and select functions from SDL/LÖVE, or my own functions from other files in the project folder. Sublime suggests just the ones in the file I’m on currently, which isn’t gonna work well when I’m trying to learn classes and code separation
• I want a sort of unified experience (same IDE) if I decide to try writing in Java (and I’ll need once I get to university) – NetBeans supports both C(++) and Java
• It’s free and open source, and I like free and open source

My piece of advice I’ve learned while coding: make a test run, write a game a week or two before Ludum Dare actually starts using the setup you’ll be on. You can’t afford losing first 5 hours reinstalling MinGW, setting up your environment variables, changing compiler settings and adding include directories. Have your libraries installed, tested working, with a skeleton project ready to code in. Make it already include loading settings, main menu, renderer code, audio engine. You’ll have time to focus on the game, not the engine. More time spent on what your game is about = more fun coding and more fun playing.

Second advice: team up! You don’t have to make a formal team and code together. Have a friend (or a whole bunch of friends!) with you, so you have someone to talk and give ideas for your game. Plus, hopefully, you won’t lose sanity that fast.

I guess that’s pretty much it for now, can’t wait for Ludum Dare, good luck everyone and most importantly, have fun!

Tags: advice, game, help, jam, java, ld32, Ludum Dare, motivation, music, tools, update

Time to prepah-ray for Ludum Dah-ray! – If you are not already hyped listen this song 😀
This will be my third time participating, but last time I didn’t submit a game

My tools:

• Language: HTML5/Javascript
• Engine: own engine
• Editor: Sublime Text 3 – last time: Sublime Text 2
• Task runner: Gulp – new
• Compiler: Babel – new
• Graphics: pyxelEdit + Paint.NET – last time: only Paint.NET
• Audio: Bfxr
• Hosting: Google Drive
• Beta Tester: Friends with What’s app – new

As you can see my setup changed a little. I finally bought a license for Sublime Text and PyxelEdit. Also I started using a Task runner and ECMAscript6 features, so programming is more comfortable.
I also worked on my engine. It’s quite experimental and isn’t super performing, but I think it’s comfortable for me, even if it’s quite low level (no particle system) I don’t recommend using it, but if you are interested I included a small demo in the source folder to show the basic features. There may be some minor changes until Ludum Dare starts.

Hopefully this time I can submit a cool Game. To be honest: so far I am a loser in Ludum Dare. The first time I submitted a crappy Game. But thanks to the people how commented on this game and pointed out the good things. You guys cheer me up 
Last time I just didn’t came up with a cool idea and didn’t submit a game.
But I will not give up. Programming and graphics work quite well so far (I got my best rating in graphics, never expected that 😀 ) I hope my testers can help me finding a good idea and making it fun to play.

As always: Good luck and have Fun!

This is my first game jam as well, so we’ll see how this goes. Going to shoot for C++ w/ SDL

Just happy to be here and to participate to the next Ludum Dare event!

We are Uka and Uko and this is our first jam as a team! We are probably going to smash keyboards and mouses and talk A LOT to the screen, we hope a good game comes out of that!!

Our Tech:

• Language: Java
• Framework: Libgdx
• Graphics: GIMP, Inkscape
• Audio: Sound Forge Pro, Acid Pro, Vegas Pro

Lets do some gaaames!!!!!!! yeeee…

First time entering and everyone else seems to be posting that they are in so I thought I better as well.

I’m a programmer by profession so I plan to do something technically interesting to try and hide my lack of artistic skill.

I don’t know if anyone has any advice for new people as I dont quite know what to expect?

I will be using GameMaker as I find it really quick to develop games and I think that will be key. I haven’t tried many other engines for building game but I use GameMaker through Steam and that tells me I have over 500 hours racked up on GameMaker and while I’m sure plenty of people have a massive amount more than that I’m quite confident I can finish something in the time frame.

How many hours do other people have using their tools of choice?

Over the past 3 weeks you suggested over 5000 themes! Wow! That’s too many, so it’s time for a slaughter!

It’s our version of a hot-or-not for Ludum Dare themes. Click the graphic above, and keep clicking until you can click no more! Every click helps, so click more and click often! Much appreciated!

REMEMBER: This is just Phase 1 of the theme vote. Next week, the top 80 themes from the slaughter will go head-to-head in 5 rounds of voting (Round 5 is best of 1-4). The winning theme will be announced at the start.

We will be competing on a joint team consisting of members of Hapax Studios and Cubic Timeline Productions. This is our second #LDJAM.

Tools

Unity3D
Gimp
Blender

Well, I’m in, but I’m approaching everything a bit differently…every single game I have created lacked music, good sound effects, and they never had the greatest art, so here is my plan:

• Create a music soundtrack first
• Create some general sound effects (if I have obtained an idea)
• Begin the art and really map out the idea
• Program and put it all together

I am doing everything I have done in the past, but in a reverse order!  Even if my game is not fun, hopefully it’ll look like my best game!  I’ll be using:

• Java (most likely along with LibGDX)
• Eclipse as an IDE
• Paint.net for graphics
• BFXR for simple sound effects
• LMMS for music/sounds
• I will be live at http://www.twtich.tv/codenmore!

No matter what happens, I always have fun!

Hey All!

This will be my first LD but I have been making web game prototypes for a bit now. You can check out some of my stuff here: https://github.com/bpeters

I am looking for a partner(s?) for the Jam, if I don’t find anyone I will try my hand at the Compo.

Hit me up if you are in! I am down for 2d, 3d, text, sms, multiplayer games. Basically down to try anything

Tech: Node.js Three.js Canon.js Sound.js React.js Socket.io Twilio Wit.ai

For #31 Connecting Worlds I made a pretty successful game with Scratch. This year I’ll be using LWJGL to make my very first full game written in Java. I promise the SFX won’t be as loud as last time. 😛

Tools I’ll be using for #32:

• IntelliJ IDEA 14.1.1 – A (very smart) Java IDE
• LibGDX – A nice 2D/3D game engine
• GIMP 2.8 – Image processing / graphics design tool
• Blender 2.69 – 3D modeling/mapping/animation tool (if I choose to make a 3D game)
• sfxr – Sound effect generator created by DrPetter
• Otomata – Procedural music sequencer
• OBS MultiPlatform – Livestreaming to my Twitch channel periodically (schedule)
• Spotify – My thinking music

Looking forward to a game dev binge! Here are a few of my potential tech paths:

• JavaScript/Canvas Renderer
• JavaScript/CSS Renderer
• CanvasQuery/Phaser/Custom Engine
• FL Studio/Bfxr
• Photoshop/Note Paper
• Most likely reuse some utility functions to get started

I plan to bring some attitude, not subtractitude. Good luck, all!

I’m in. This is my first LD so I can’t wait to get started.

Tools:

I’ve got decent experience in Game Maker 

(Demo: Here)

Spartan Tile Generator for tile sets

SFXR for sound effects

Decent Pixel Art experience on Photoshop.

And I’m going in alone. GLHF everyone.

I’ve decided to change the Reading event to be free, and add the option to donate to cover costs if you want. (I’ll cover the rest of the costs myself.)

If anyone’s interested, check http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ludum-dare-32-real-life-meetup-reading-uk-tickets-16402856385

Would be great to get a few of you together, there were a few of you that expressed interest but none of you have signed up yet.

First LD =D

I will be using as programming language: Java

Tools:

Eclipse

Paint.net

…hopefully I don’t have to work that weekend D=

First time taking part!

Might be using:

– Java (LibGDX)

– InkScape / GIMP

I love make games 😀

I’ll be in the 3-day category, working with one other team-mate and using Unity.

Hooray!

You may remember me from LD #31 when I made Hazard Hills.  This is my second jam 😀

Hey guys,

because I hate doing the theme slaughter on my notebook without a mouse, I decided to write a small shell script that allows me to do it from the command line. I thought I’d share it with you: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/195907563/slaughter.sh.

The script runs on Linux and MacOS X (most likely also on Cygwin and BSD, but I have not tested it on those, please let me know if it works for you).

But use the script at your own risk, I am relatively sure it cannot be exploited by malicious theme names, but I cannot guarantee it 😉

Also, I am not entirely sure whether the votes are actually counted, because as far as I know there are some safeguards against votebots in the slaughter backend. I keep using it myself though 😉

Have a screenshot:

Already 2 years ago I gave Ludum Dare a try, failing miserably not even being able to partially submit a tech demo.

But NOT THIS TIME, because I have a Ludum Prepare session reserved for this weekend and next weekend.

Learned from last time?

• Don’t website/web application, most time got lost in website stuff instead of game related stuff.
• Visual things, having text say “you’re in a room” can be fun but I’m not able to pull that off correctly.
• Get some tools ready before LD-Day and not spent hours trying tools.

So Paddo Swam, how do you Ludum Prepare then?

• Unity..
• Unity..
• Unity..

I’ll try to make myself as comfortable with Unity in combination with C# as possible in the coming 2 weeks and we’ll having some moving pixels.

Oh and I’ll use a LEGO creation to film it all! Find out more on my blog paddoswam.nl