Here's my entry, Snowday — it's a gentle game about playing in a fresh snowfall. Thanks to everyone who's played and commented so far!

Enjoy ~

Learn More: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/snowday

We're there! 500 people have hit Cosmic Cleaner's itch.io page! Were YOU one of them? Toss us a rating and comment and one of us (or both of us maybe!) will hit you back with our reviews and ratings!

https://burgee.itch.io/cosmiccleaner

optional additional question: how did you achieve most of those views/downloads? including most successful marketing strategies etc.

Technical Sharing: How I make a photo-based AR game

Hello everyone. Finally I've finished my mid-term exam so I have some time to explain how I use reallife photos as game scene.

Actually, I was inspired by FF7. That famous game also uses a prerendered photo as the game scene and only draw the animated characters realtime. That makes cinematic scenes real on PS1.

So I decided to adopt this technique. There is a trade-off. The photo will makes my game more like a amateur game. But I think the innovation worth that defect.

First of all, welcome to play my game:

* https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/clean-the-dorm *

Rendering Technique

In unity3d One can decide the order object was drawn with the * Render Queue * property of one material. In may project, the Render order is

Step One

First we draw the photo as the background image using a unlit shader with a camera space canvas with ZWrite on.

Step Two

Obstacle phase. What is an obstacle? In the scene view I turned on wireframe mode. We can see a lot of transparent boxes. They are the simplified geometry of the reallife scene.

The Obstacles plays 3 roles: - Colliders in the gameplay - Cut the virtual objects out if they should be obscured by the reallife objects. - Receive the shadows of virtual objects and blend them onth the reallife photo.

I should emphasize the importance of shadows. Not because they increase the sence of reality. The Irreplaceable role shadow takes place is that they indicates the spacial relationship of objects. Without shadow one cannot tell whether the character in just on ground or floating in air. They cannot tell if it is a big character near the camera or a small character far from the camera.

Let's draw the obstacles. we keep ZWrite on, writing the depth of all the obstacles to block out the virtual objects to be drawn. We donnot use opaque mode to override the background photo by litted color. We use transparent mode, calculate the shadow intensity of the fragment and alpha-blend it onto the photo.

Step Three

Draw the virtual objects. I means the characters, the monsters, the particle fxs... Since the depth buff is already set by the obstacles, when the character should be occluded out by reallife objects, they cannot pass the depth-test.

Step Four

Ofcourse it's for ui.

Shaders for obstacle

``` Shader "FX/Cutout" { Properties { _Color ("Shadow Color", Color) = (1,1,1,1) _ShadowInt ("Shadow Intensity", Range(0,1)) = 1.0 _Cutoff ("Alpha cutoff", Range(0,1)) = 0.5 }

SubShader { Tags { "Queue"="Geometry-20" "IgnoreProjector"="True" "RenderType"="TransparentCutout" } LOD 200 ZWrite on Blend zero SrcColor

CGPROGRAM

pragma surface surf ShadowOnly alphatest:_Cutoff

fixed4 _Color; float _ShadowInt;

struct Input { float2 uv_MainTex; };

inline fixed4 LightingShadowOnly (SurfaceOutput s, fixed3 lightDir, fixed atten) { fixed4 c; c.rgb = lerp(s.Albedo, float3(1.0,1.0,1.0), atten); c.a = 1.0-atten; return c; }

void surf (Input IN, inout SurfaceOutput o) { o.Albedo = lerp(float3(1.0,1.0,1.0), _Color.rgb, _ShadowInt); o.Alpha = 1.0; } ENDCG }

Fallback "Transparent/Cutout/VertexLit" } ```

* Important, You need to rewrite a new unlit shader in order to customize the Render Queue. The default unlit shader template is just ok. *

TODO find the original post I find the shader and make credits

Scene Setup Workflow

Camera Alignment

How to align the camera with the photo? Because the time limit I didnot try to challenge the maths monsters of computer vision. Instead I align the scene by myself.

First I googled my camera's field of view. There is something subtle: The field of view of reallife cameras are measured by the diagonal line of the sensor versus focal length. However in computer graphics the fov means the vertical height of the sensor versus focal length. It needed some calculation and I found my iphone6's fov is 34.55 Deg when it takes videos.

Later I found that several degrees of error in fov doesn't matter.

After setting the camera I should * align the camera to the scene *. If you are familiar with maths of transform, you will notice that it is identical to * align the scene to the camera *

It will be good if I can rotate the ground grid. How I cannot. So I created a virtual cube called "coordinate"

Then I selected the camera gameobject, Menu-GameObject-Align View to selected. Now we can edit the scene from the perspective of camera.

Now ,select the "coordinate", move, rotate and scale it until it fits the scene.

• One cannot perfectly fit because the error in fov and the lens distorsion
• donnot worry the z-position (distance to camera) of the coordinate. You can only align the xy-position, since the increase in z-positioin is identical to the decrease of size.
• according to maths, you can synthesis z-rotation by x-rotation and y-rotation. There is only 2 degree of freedom in rotation.

Finally, I will show you the magic.

Since the "coordinate" is aligned with the camera. You can build the ground or something else under the transform of coordinate. Now we want the coordinate transform to be the world transform. How to do that?

• Drag the camera into the coordinate gameobject
• Reset the coordinate's transform to 000 position, 000 rotation and 111 scale
• Drag the camera out of the coordinate gameobject

The unity engine will automatically calculate the camera transform if the camera was transformed by the same transform that transforms the coordinate to world.

Finally we will decide the actual size of the scene

• Drag the character into the scene and make sure her transform is identical, and she is not under coordinate gameobject

• Drag the camera into the coordinate gameobject again
• Scale the gameobject until you are satisfied with the character's size

• Drag the camera out of the coordinate gameobject.

Congratulations! You have finished setting up the Camera.

Fitting in the obstacles

As I mentioned before, From 2D picture one cannot get enough information about the object's actual position. One cannot tell if it is a small object near the camera or a big object far from the camera. Luckily we can infer more relationship form the shades and common knowledge.

The common knowledge I used is the fact that most of the objects are on the ground. They are not floating in the air. With this addition information I can obtain the object's actual size and distance.

• create a cube
• assign it with Cutout material
• Wrapped it with another gameobject called "CubeObstacle". Make sure the cube's local transform is (0,0.5,0;0,0,0;1,1,1). That makes the gameobject's origin is on the bottom of the cube
• Make the "CubeObstacle" a prefab
• Also, you can make more prefabs such as cylinders or horizontal cylinders or spheres and so on
• Create a plane with Cutout material and name it "Ground"
• Make sure the plane's position is 000. Then size it bigger.
• Select the camera, Menu-GameObject-Align View to selected.
• Now From the camera perspective, drag the obstacle prefab from the project tab onto the Ground gameobject. That will make sure the obstacles are on the ground. So you can drag them to the correct position according to photo
• Size and rotate the Obstacle to fit the photo. Donnot size the cube gameobject, size the CubeObstacle gameobject.

Additional Mention

• Donnot forget to set up the lighting correcting. I used a directional light for shadows. And I use photos to make a cubic skybox for ambient. You can use the same photo for 6 sides of the skybox since skybox mainly provides low-frequency lighting informations.
• Donnot use your dirty uncleaned dormitory to take photos. Art is someting atrificial instead of natural. Actually I cleaned my dormitory first then mess it up manually, to carefully design a game level.

I'm still going. Leave a comment of your game page and I'll play it and rate it.

Don't forget to also check out 'In Good Hands': https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/in-good-hands

I'll be getting around to playing all of them over the next 24 hours! Hope you have fun, I know I will!

Yourselves is a puzzle platformer in which your past actions and selves will hinder or further your goals.

Play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/yourselves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khu6sw7hQMc&t=1s

Hi all, we originally used this game as a testrun for an idea we are working on outside the jam, let us know what you think! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/avaricious-abyss

First of all, why the f* is it called post mortem? My game did not die, nor did I...

Anyway, all of the wonderful feedback for my GAME (which I am grateful for) seems to show one major flaw, and that is, people feel like they are out of control, or that they have little control over the Photon that they are controlling.

This was intentional, because, if they had full control, they would not be affected by anything in the game, and the game would be too easy, not to mention unrealistic. during the development, I even made the controls more responsive three times even beyond the point where I was satisfied with them, and it's still not enough apparently. despite the fact, that you have a trail, from which you are clearly able to tell which way are you controlling the photon.

Despite this, I decided to make an update, but I have no clue as to how to fix this issue. I can't just ramp up the force in which you are controlling the photon, the game would be too easy (believe me, I've tried that) I can't also use some UI elements to show what forces are being applied on the photon, because there would be just a mess of arrows pointing in lots of directions...

I have only one idea, your control over the photon would be greater when in low speeds, but it would be lesser when in higher speeds, but I don't think it would completely eradicate the issue here...

That's why I decided to write this. If anyone has time to give me an advice how this could be done, I'm listening (or better, seeing)

Thanks a lot for the feedback I've got. It's been great :slight_smile:

Don't know what to play? I discovered a few great games so far!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139474533

Here's a few of my discoveries so far

Recommendations: - Nucleu - Intergalactic Goldrush - Super-Collapse Guy - MicroChip - Evacuator - Small Trek - Routine - Destructo Island

Complete list in TribalMind https://www.tribalmind.co/Journey/ludum-dare-38-judging/5253

These are some of the game that I've found to be particularly interesting (difficult to narrow down for convenience):

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-small-world-cup

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/test-test-test

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/6-sided-sojourn

These are worth a look as well:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/dimpock

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/murder-mitosis

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/shrinking-planet

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/scenes-in-a-globe

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-spoiled-prince

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/galactic-girl-and-the-puzzle-planets

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planetary-remains

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/quantum-catburetor

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sunny-world

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/flovala

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/slife-of-life

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/rashlander

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/protolife

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/tiny-tony

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/crater-creator

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/headroom

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/petty-puny-planet-38

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/clean-the-dorm

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-raiders

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/microspace

Shameless plug:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/amoebros

:)

Post your top picks in the comments and I'll check them out.

The title is exaggeration, but we sure tried to make it.

The main point of Communitas is to build a "healthful" city. But you have to deal with tile placing timeouts and other people messing with your city. Organizing in groups is the key to success, although, for now, people are being very polite e collaborating with everyone.

We never tried to do a online game before, so we kinda knew it was going to be difficult. It's a simple game and the server itself was not a problem to code. The same cannot be said about the server host. Damn, we needed to replace the server right after the deadline because it was too slow (Azure to Google).

But where we really did get a beatdown was in trying to make the client in HTML5. None of us had experience with it and we couldn't make a performatic client in HTML5. We even tried some engines like Phaser and PixiJS, but no dice. So we ended up with Unity again. The server is an ASP.net WebAPI app hosted on the Google Cloud (yay for trials!).

We had many cool ideas, like naming the cities, city walls, bridges, pollution control, job demand, well you know the city sim drill. But in a more simplistic way, of course. And some things are implemented but we ran out of time to really show it and explain it, like building effect radius that some kind of tiles have.

For now, we're waiting for the feedback to validate the concept and maybe get courage to make a real attempt at this idea.

We'll be waiting for your comments, so check our entry.

Thanks! See ya around.

My buddy @jorgegamedev already posted a timelapse video about our game, Petty Puny Planet 38, highlighting the evolution of the project from the coding and developing point of view. However, there’s nothing there about how the art assets actually got done, because I did that on the side. Hooray for teamwork!

Let me talk a bit about why I used Krita, a free open-source digital painting program, to make the game assets for our 3 game jams so far, plus some other projects with varying degrees of success.

Some sprites from Hyper Holomayhem 37, made for Ludum Dare 37. It’s a quasi-randomly generated shooting arcade platformer.

The most important part comes first: Krita is free and open source. Completely free. No hidden charges, no recurring payments, no shades-of-gray morality involved, no account making. I’ve been using it for years now, and it’s a solid alternative to others like Paint Tool Sai, Fire Alpaca and even Photoshop (as long as you don’t need to use vectors or text, which are Krita’s weak points. In which case, yes, I use Photoshop).

If you check the website, you’re probably thinking that it’s mostly a program for digital painting art, and yes, it is. Regardless, like pretty much any other art program, it can be used and adapted to suit your needs. For example, I’ve been using it to make 2D assets for a few projects that @jorgegamedev and I have worked on. Our most recent one, made for this past Ludum Dare 38, is Petty Puny Planet 38, which uses full layered drawings.

A sample of Petty Puny Planet 38’s assets. Check it out and leave us a comment!

During Ludum Dare 36 and 37, however, we instead made games that used sprites. With brushes, guides and tools that can help with it, I also used Krita to make everything that you can see in our games, minus the text. All the UI, buttons and such were made with it as well. Krita is just that flexible.

*Colossorama 36 made for Ludum Dare 36, was our first game jam project. The original title screen was too gory, so we later updated the game as just “Colossorama”, with this more refined and appealing title screen*

Thus far, I’ve shown that we’ve used Krita for a platformer, an arena and even a simulator of sorts. While it’s not public, we also made a tower defense game at some point. The assets, again, were made with Krita, even though the animations and what not were done inside of Unity itself. (Krita actually supports animation, but that's something I haven't dwelled on yet)

Some enemies made for out tower defense game, which we might release in the future. It was a school assignment. Here, you can see some enemies, with their limbs separated, ready to be animated.

Since we’re a team, it’s been a breeze to separate our work and allow for the coders to code and the artists to art, which have resulted in appealing and polished experiences, or so we’ve been told. But if you’re a one person game jammer, well, with enough practice, you can have some of your most needed assets done within minutes. I’m still learning a lot about this, but so far, I’ve had a lot of fun.

Platformer shooter concept art and assets that never were put to use. Oh well. Not all projects can be winners.

Aside from games, though, I’ve mostly used Krita to draw fanart, comics, original characters and even channel art for youtubers, streamers and what not. Feel free to click on this shameless plug if you’d like to check my deviantArt.

Krita doesn’t reinvent the wheel nor try to do some arcane magic, so whatever you know about art theory, layers, filters and what not still applies.Here’s the link again if you’d like to check it out! Take it out for a spin and see if you can put it to use in your own projects. As for me, I can see myself using it in Ludum Dare 39 as well.  Before I leave, if you liked this post, please give Pretty Puny Planet 38 a try. I hope that you like what you see there. In behalf of the team Whales and Games, thanks for reading. Cheers! :whale:

Follow moski on Twitter

Follow Whales And Games on Twitter

DEEP BOTTOM IS READY

* rate us on https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/deep-bottom*

Got any spare time? Why not spend it playing our Ludum Dare game, Chroma.

INFO

There has been an awakening on the moon of Juovis... An army is rising, commanded by a strong force the call ‘The Guardian’ - Disciple of Astro.

He will use his army to destroy the planet Oarus, then conquer the solar system!

You, a complete badass, called to arms and fought the invasion, until they captured you, and locked you in a space prison orbiting around the moon.

Locking you up was a bad idea, and you’re thirsty for revenge.

In Chroma you’ll fight through hordes of enemies, to find The Guardian and kill him, taking back the freedom that’s yours!

MUSIC

While playing this game you'll be able to hear some of the greatest tracks, created by my friend Jackass. If you're someone who likes futuristic, synthewave style music then this is the game for you.

DOWNLOADS

• Ludum Dare: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/chroma
• Soundtrack: https://soundcloud.com/jackassmusic/sets/death-by-laser-chroma-ost

Guys, if you're going to play a Ludum Dare game, knowing that there is little to no quality assurance on any of them, and you see a big button in the game that says "controls" ....

CLICK THE BUTTON THAT SAYS CONTROLS

Devs can only suggest that you do things so far. If you don't know that you have an ability, it does no good for devs to suggest you use it. Click the damn button, read the damn controls.

It'll make everyone happier.

Much Love,

Guy Who Knows You Can Dodge Lasers And Not Lose Segments

We'll be reviewing Ludum Dare 38 entries in a youtube coverage. To enlist your game, please fill out the following form:

Google Form

We look forward to playing your games! Also check out our entry Naughty Gnomes.

5TH TIME! I just cleared my storage because it's being filled with ld 38 games.

As long as your game is on web or windows (under 100 mb) I will play it

Check out my game also:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/statera

A whole bunch of people commented that I should add sound, so I did (amongst some other changes).

It's a bullet hell, where the world gets smaller each time you get hit. If you've been playing almost exclusively puzzle and strategy games like me, here's an action game to spice things up.

Hope you enjoy!

In our game "The Epic of Gilbert", we attempted to convey existential dread in the most fun and lighthearted way possible with only 3 days to do it. You play as Gilbert, a recently captured fish who dreams of nothing more than to see the open ocean once more. Play through short bursts of story followed by bursts of arcade style gameplay! If you are interested in playing the game, it is (of course!) very short and will hopefully leave you with a smile on your face.

Play the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-epic-of-gilbert-1

Thanks for reading!

Post games in comments, and I'll check them out. I'll start once I collect enough links, likely will pick some at random myself. Make sure they're all Windows or HTML5 games, else I can't play them.

My twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/cavecoder

Make sure to try out our submission and leave feedback as well :Đ

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/batter-bros

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9mYWh9Qgb8

Most people don't know how their microwave works... well, now they can know, check it out! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-microns

Some people had trouble with webgl at gamejolt, so I added a windows build too

Thank you all for your feedback and for your kind words! Ludum Dare community is the best!
I hope you've had fun with my game!!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/daydreaming-island

I'm just interested in trivia like total number of games submitted (in each category), entry with most comment currently, blog posts with most :heart: etc.

I'm guessing the only way right now is to delve into source code on github?

We created EXTREME mode to see if there is brave warriors out there that can actually finish a couple of waves of our drone AI...

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/destructo-island

Watch @morbidcamel101 suck at it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/140042143

Very short adventure game, that focuses mostly on mood and (kinda story) telling. The gameplay is very much typical for an adventure game, and is not long.

Story is about a man, who wants to see his love. Because they are living in a huge building structure, after apocalypse, it is nearly impossible to do so. If he wants to see her again, he needs special permission. It is your quests to get it.

Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/haven-the-small-world

WINDOWS DL:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6BuTl2JR98_YWdtZ2tuaXdVT3c/view?usp=sharing

Hi all,

I've updated my LD games browser to include the entries of LD38.

As always, you can search over all text in all entries with immediate feedback, …but sadly due to the much looser data format of the new site I had to disable the platform filtering as there's often just not enough info in the entry. Additionally, only about 1/3 of participants have set a cover image so it's a bit harder to go by quick visuals.

On the other hand, you can still search through all entries of all events all the way back to LD15 from 2009, so if you need to look for games to vote on or just to get some inspiration…

➡️ Browse and search LD games! ⬅️

I've posted Treekeeper on itch.io

Anyway check it, rate it and leave comment so I can play your game.

Thank you all.

The highest score (yet) on Lil Planet is 870 by @those-30-ninjas ! Can you beat it?

Play it here!!!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/lil-planet

So, it’s time for a post-mortem, I guess. Not that game’s dead or anything, but I do suppose they are interesting to make. I’ll start by thanking everyone that tested or might test Le Petit Shooter, the game we made this LDJam. It was my first LD, and only my second Jam. Most of the team had a little more experience in those, so there’s that. That being said, let me make a few considerations on what we built.

The Cons

Drunk people enjoy drinking – I, as the manager and jam host, started it all by messing up and giving shelter to 2 drunken friends (which, in my defense, weren’t drunk by the time I gave them shelter) at the start of the jam. They stole the artist’s laptop to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race and overall went around being drunk and bothering people while they were trying to work. It was fun, tho, and we still laugh about it. I mean, I’m making fun of them right now, so there’s that. Also, when they sobered up, I managed to use them as balance testers for the game’s mechanics, so it was a decent tradeoff.

Build it and they will come, except they didn’t - we had 2 more people that were going to work with us, which would make the amount of people raise from 5 to 7 developers (me included, even though I didn’t develop anything at all). One of them dropped out because of connection issues (he was remote), and the other disappeared in a Deadmau5 concert and never showed up at all (he was also remote). While the first one was on the programming team, and we did quite nicely with 2 programmers, the second one was supposed to be a graphic artist. That overloaded our already overloaded solo artist who was struggling on a workstation that wasn’t his, and we can say art department worked in decent conditions for only a day and a half (which you can notice by the fact some of the Unity assets ended up showing in the final jam build).

It’s just too big – As the jam progressed and our developers were getting tired, one of them decided to rest from the necessary work by expanding the project’s scope and doing stuff that wasn’t originally planned. We had to, then, rebalance the project accordingly so the new functionalities would be seamlessly integrated to the already existing functionalities. That generated a lot of extra content and combat diversity, but may have generated a few glitches and issues on some machines that we couldn’t anticipate because we had little to no time to check and fix them. Some issues we detected are that, in some machines, you won’t be able to ride bullets, jumping above someone’s head will create a strange flying collision glitch, and sometimes the game plays a little slower than it was supposed to. We fixed them after the jam ended, and you can check the most recent build to check how it was supposed to work by following this link.

Not that small – We had planned to end the game’s development by Sunday night, because we thought the jam would be over by then. One of our programmers even had classes the following day. When we noticed that we had a whole extra day, team was already exhausted from overworking. While we could add a lot of the final artwork you see on the build we have, programming and bugfixing took a hit because of that.

Two people hindsight harder than one – This one’s kinda obvious, and we actually noticed it by the jam’s start, but we decided to go for it anyway: creating a multiplayer-only game for a jam is a bad idea. Not because development has to be more polished or stuff, but simply because it’s harder to test and evaluate the game. I mean, if you are reading this by yourself, you’ll probably be sad by now because you lack someone else to test it (but if you do have someone, please test. It’s really fun. I know, I’ve tested it for half the jam’s duration, until it became fun). We knew it, but we went for it anyway because a jam is also a time when you try doing something you want to do.

As you can see, we had quite a few problems, and they were mostly my fault, which means I’m not a good manager yet. Sorry, still learning. Now, let’s talk about something else.

The Pros

The Team – Holy s*, the team. I mean, look at all the issues we had. Now look at the final result, made in 72 hours. We’re goddamn proud of ourselves. Programming team was top notch, and would solve issues that were considered to be 3-4 hours long in 30 minutes most. Graphic art was made by only one person in half the jam’s duration. SFX are all original and composed for the jam by our musician (the 5th member that I didn’t mention until now because it was completely issueless). If I were a little less of a failure of a manager we’d probably have a complete MMO in 72 hours (laughs).

The Game - We enjoyed creating it. Jams are supposed to be fun, at least, and boy did we have fun. We enjoyed so much doing it that we are still working on it, so if you want to check up later on how it’s wrapping up, I assure you that your time won’t be wasted. Visuals and sound are gorgeous and our artists really captured the essence of Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince and Mexican Standoffs and mixed them in an improbable but fine mix.

The Balance – A general rule of management is to get the worst possible situation and make the most of it. Two drunk people are probably as bad as a situation can get. Two sober dedicated alpha testers are way better than you could expect from the start. Both were also fighting/smash game dedicated players, so that also helped to get everything rounding up the way we wanted it to go.

The scope expansion – Sure, it’s never good to work more than you anticipated, especially if that extra work generates extra bugs. However, more features do also make the gameplay better, and still having stuff to do is one of the reasons we decided to keep working on a full build of this game and releasing it later. Expect a few more friends to show up as playable characters, and a lot of extra content.

The experience – Even though I’m not new to playing and studying videogames, I’m new to this whole concept of creating videogames. So was one of our programmers and our graphic artist. The 3 of us started doing stuff like this together in the last GGJ. The musician and the lead programmer already worked on other full games, and you could tell that by watching the amount of time they took to create stuff from scratch. After these two jams and with a project on the works, I suppose there’s only one maxim that works on this field:

“Just like, make game.”

If you reached it down here, you’re a hero. I’m not sure how I ended up here in the first place. Thanks for reading our post-mortem, and try Le Petit Shooter with a friend.

The Development Team

Don't want to end up spamming the main page, but I'm live on twitch playing the games you posted in the comments. Post more here I guess :D

https://www.twitch.tv/cavecoder

Alright, I'll be playing games like crazy for the next few hours. Comment with your game page and I'll leave you some feedback! And, of course, if you feel like checking out my entry, rovR, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Lets do this!

It's one of those days where you are just dancing with your horse and he gets abducted by some aliens... Happens to the best of us. Explore planets, kick some trees and try to update your spaceship until you can take on the big boss! Good luck and leave your games down in the comments so we can have a look at your games too!

Our page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/small-planets-2

So this is my first game dev post mortem. It's also my first Ludum Dare, first solo jam and first time I've been properly happy with what I've released. I've done two jams previously - one 4 hour one at a friend's party with no internet access, and another 24 hour one to raise money for www.specialeffect.org.uk (a great charity that aims to help people with disabilities to access games). Both were free mobile games - Emma's Escapades on the Android Store, and Coffin Dodgers on both Android and iOS.

The game is here - please give it a go and leave feedback, criticism is completely welcome as I'm aiming for a proper PS4 release. My twitter is https://twitter.com/theChief - I appreciate follows and retweets, and I'll do the same for you ;)

So why am I pleased with it? I think I've ended up with a fun game. I achieved what I set out to achieve, didn't get bogged down with feature creep and it doesn't look like trash (I have literally no artistic skill). Obviously I want to win, but failing that I've got something I'm more than willing to polish and sell on an actual console - my university has really good links with Sony and they've got a game studio with the licences needed. I've actually started work on the PS4 port now - it runs on the PS4, I just need to make it an actual game :D

What Went Right

I actually planned this one! It seems planning goes a long way. Before I even started the jam, I had this picture of something I thought might be fun. It was certainly achievable, especially with the lack of any artistic skill, and the theme ended up fitting! This meant I could start planning features and timelines as soon as the jam started, which worked really well - especially since it was 2a.m. UK time so the likelihood of producing any usable code was very slim. I don't work well with no sleep! After a suitable plan was produced, I had a couple of hours sleep before beginning development. The plan was split into 2 sections: the MVP and the list of incremental changes that would be nice - something I found very effective during my year of industry placement. For the MVP it was decided that the game should generate a destructible map, have a countdown timer as the lose condition to create an arcade-style pick up and play game, and generate gems that increase score and add time to the timer. Optional features included a leaderboard, levelling bonuses, map regeneration, and enemies/bosses.

Planning also allowed sleep, exercise and proper meals. I slept 6 hours both nights, which vastly decreased the amount of stupid mistakes I made. I'm not saying I didn't make ANY stupid mistakes, though... I'm opposed to the industry's obsession with crunch for that reason - if you've not had any sleep for 48 hours and are being powered by energy drinks, coffee and/or pizza, there is no way your brain is working at its best. Sleep properly, drink lots of water, and eat well. Your body will thank you, and you'll get more done and it will be better quality. The "Game Outcomes Project" in 2014 found that crunch time does not increase the quality of the game or the speed at which it is completed.

Anyway. Keeping the scope of the game down was key, I'm a sucker for feature creep - I've been well known to add extra enemies, attack types and patterns, etc. just because it looks cool. That may be why I rarely finish a project... Not this time, though! When my housemate tried it and said "you should add multiplayer", my immediate answer was "well, my skeleton program does have multiple controller support...", but I resisted! If it wasn't on the plan, it wasn't going in. Well, except that really cool bug that makes everything explode, but that just needed fixing and attaching to a new type of gem!

The generation was also much easier to set up than I expected, and haven't really had many issues with it. It was really nice to get the core component down quickly, with a relatively small amount of tweaking needed later. I'm glad I researched it beforehand - the Youtube series I followed is linked at the bottom. Going through that in the days leading up to the jam really gave me insight into how the generation worked and how to fill the generated caves. It also served to give me a couple of ideas - I wasn't really expecting it to be feasible to add gems and things placed in the caves, I thought I'd be making the score based on destruction alone.

And finally, I think I'm allowed to say the game was fun ;) I tested it with friends and family for the duration of the compo and all my feedback indicated that it was pretty satisfying to destroy the whole place, only to have it regenerate so they could do it all again. There's loads I want to add and was suggested to me, but at it's core I think it's a pretty fun game.

What Went Wrong

It wasn't all perfect though, obviously. I was originally going to spawn a boss every time the level regenerated - I still stand by that and think it would make the game much better, but due to time constraints it was completely left out. I couldn't even start to implement it, which was really annoying. As I said earlier, I have a tendency to want to add all of the features - but I resisted this time.

I also had a lot of trouble with the lava. The physics just didn't play nicely - to increase performance, colliders were turned off if they weren't in view, and that caused all sorts of strange things to happen. I make the executive decision to not waste any time fiddling with it and just got back to the important stuff. It was a real shame, because it looked really nice and would have added a different type of danger to the game. Dropping a feature is always quite disheartening, and made me feel like I'd never get any of it to work.

Performance was a real issue when I increased the size of the world. Every single destructable block has its own collider, which meant there could be up to 40,000 collision checks per frame. Obviously that is a massive issue, and I attempted to fix it by only rendering the blocks that were visible. That ended up causing way more strain than the actual collision checks, so I opted to just disable the colliders. That ended up being much more efficient, but also meant enemies sometimes flew through walls! To fix that the simulations on their rigidbodies were paused. I really need to make it more efficient before the PS4 release, and I think to achieve that the loops that turn off the colliders that aren't needed will be multithreaded...

Another issue is with player movement. It's not particularly obvious that there's gravity, and jumping by pressing the left thumbstick up didn't seem particularly intuitive - but it did make jumping and shooting at the same time more accessible. Keyboard input was also obviously not the intended input method and really isn't as satisfying as input with a controller. Controller input is also disabled for the WebGL version, which is the most accessible - and needs remapping on Windows, which is the second most common platform... sigh

Conclusion

In conclusion, it was a great experience and I'll be doing every single LD possible, for the rest of my life. I look forward to playing all your games, making more games and reading your reviews of mine! Please play and review it. Pretty please.

Dom

Youtube Series

Hey guys!

So many awesome games to play and rate, this was a good run!

You can play our game here!

Another technical post to talk about some of the shader stuff and related things done for our jam game, Blomst 🌻! There's also part one about procedural planets and their shaders.

Go here if you want to play Blomst 🌻!

This time, I'll talk about two more minor effects that play into the game's mechanics: the rendering of the atmosphere that builds up around the planet as you plant more things on it, and the change from a brownish, dead planet coloured in sepia to a lush, green world with sharp colours!

The transformation

This picture shows clearly the contrast between what the planet looks like at the start of the game and nearing the end of a completed level. Initially, the colours just blend together into a brown, lifeless mush, and not much of an atmosphere is there; what little there is is also brown.

As the atmosphere builds up over the course of the mission to terraform the planet with various plants, the sepia effect tones down and the true, radiant colours emerge, while the atmosphere also grows, and reveals its blue colour. 🌎

Atmosphere

Let's start with the simplest effect to pull off. I've seen a bunch of other LD38 games with planets use the same trick, actually! As you can see, the atmosphere is at all times rendered behind the planet itself and everything on it, no matter how it twists and turns:

Normals

The answer lies in the surface normals, and how front/back face culling works. The normal vector of a surface (generally a triangle) in 3D space is perpendicular to that surface, as illustrated by the blue arrows in this figure from the Blender documentation:

These basically tell us in which direction a surface is facing.

Culling

As a way to optimise rendering, most rendering systems have a system where faces that are facing away from the camera are completely disregarded and not rendered, as they can generally be safely assumed to be invisible to the camera, as generally 3D objects are properly filled in without any holes, and are not usually just flat triangles.

Here's a wireframe example to illustrate what it means. To the left is a sphere with the back faces (the ones facing away from the camera, that are supposed to be invisible due to being obscured by front facing geometry) rendered, and to the right is one with these faces culled, as they need not be rendered:

The trick to the atmosphere is inverting these normals, so that all the faces of the (atmo)sphere point inwards. This has the interesting effect that faces that are closer to the camera are actually pointing away from it, and are therefore culled, while the faces far from the camera are facing towards it, and therefore being rendered! Another way to achieve this could've been to actually cull front faces in the shader for the atmosphere, but this allowed me to use existing back face culling shaders.

Essentially, with the regular back face culling, we would get this, with the planet obscured by the atmosphere:

But instead we get this, where we see into the atmosphere like a bowl, rendered only behind the planet and not in front:

Mission accomplished!

Sepia to saturation

So this one involves shader programming. Shaders allow us to mess with pixels before they get rendered to the screen, and so changing the colour of them is one of the simplest things one can do! The little shader program works on each pixel individually and applies the same operation to each.

So we start out with this fully saturated planet before applying any effects, of course:

Greyscale

The first thing we need to do in order to achieve a sepia effect is to simply convert the image to greyscale, giving us a single intensity value for each pixel instead of three values (red, green and blue) to encode a colour.

We can convert an RGB triad to a single greyscale value by treating the values as a three-dimensional vector and extracting the dot product between this vector and another vector containing NTSC conversion weights, a set of values chosen on the basis that the human eye experiences different wavelengths of colour differently; we are especially good at greens, which is clearly reflected in the weights vector:

fixed grey = dot(col.rgb, fixed3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));

Now we get this:

Sepia

Once we have this, we can convert the greyscale into sepia, which needs the three colour channels again, so we take a vector where the red, green and blue values respectively are all equal to the single grey value we extraced, and multiply this by a sepia vector, which boosts up the red, leaves the green as is, and decreases the blue a bit, giving us that characteristic brownish tint:

fixed3 sepia = fixed3(grey, grey, grey) * fixed3(1.2, 1.0, 0.8);

Done! Voilà:

Interpolation

Finally, I needed to make the planet interpolate from full sepia to full colour throughout the course of the game depending on the current atmosphere levels.

The game presents the player with the goal to make the atmosphere 100% completed, so 0% would mean full sepia and 100% full colour. Thus I passed a value between 0 and 1 into the shader to use for blending. Easy-peasy!

The blending is a regular alpha blending algorithm. This one:

source colour * source alpha + destination colour * (1 - source alpha)

Or, in actual code:

source.rgb * source.a + destination.rgb * (1.0 - source.a)

In our case, source colour would be the full colour (the colour to fade in depending on the atmosphere percentage), and the destination colour would be the full sepia. The alpha value is simply the number between 0 and 1 representing the atmosphere levels. Thus:

result.rgb = full.rgb * atmosphere + sepia.rgb * (1.0 - atmosphere);

And so we get a smooth transition:

Then it was just a matter of applying the same effect to the atmosphere as well as the bar showing how much of it is complete, and presto:

Moving on

Next writeup will be about lighting, including the rim lighting of the planet and all the stuff on it, as well as the revolving sun that gives plants the power to grow as it shines upon them each new day on the very small world! 💚 See you around soon!

I've been playing a lot of games (50+, I think, in two days), and I was wondering if anyone has a favorite yet. Post it in the comments below!

Headroom - @philstrahl
Until Tommorrow - @msiddeek
What are your favorites?

Stop the planets from getting past you in my chaotic breakout-like game. How many crazy bouncy planets can you handle? 100's of potential combinations! And does Pluto deserve a spot among the planets? You decide!

WebGL build!! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/small-world-collider

Game: https://www.dropbox.com/s/awhgk5b0sgmn9lw/DarkLittleWorld.zip?dl=0

SourceCode: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0dydnkmr56pirm/A%20small%20world.%20LDJAM%2038.zip?dl=0

Secret guide:

There is a eighth hidden world to the left of the seventh. Death World. It was added in minutes before launch for an extra challenge for the more exploratory gamers. Thanks to everyone who has played the game and link yours as well to rate!

Play and Vote here!

Try a classic adventure game of investigation! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-nedludd-club

Hi! There is a lot of questions about how to play Keeplanet. So, here we are to answer this! First of all, what is a goal? You need to place as much objects as you can on planet and keep it spinning around its axis. If planet rotating population will grow, its only one this condition. Also by placing some objects such as trees and houses your population will grow.

Why my planet stoped? How much these objects weight? Which sides I need to balance? Okay, lets start with sides. You need to balance right and left side. If on the left side whole weight of all objects more than on the right side then planet stops, but if on the right side whole weight is more on the left then nothing happens. Right side should be always more or equal to the left. And thats all!

Objects included in the game: - Tree weight: 1, population: +1%; - House weight: 3, population: +2%; - Desert/plain weight: 6, population: 1%; - Vulcano weight: 8; - Mountain weight: 8.

We apologize for the fact that we did not have time to realize the indication of objects and other things, we hope that this small article will help you!

Also don't forget to rate our game!

Thanks!

We want to share our result during LD38 and ask for some feedback in return :)

Feel free to say anything.

Link to our entry page

Thanks for help :D

When I try to join jam time was it.

Rushed to draw gameart after saw end time , there are 18 sprites . I searched gameboy colors then watched gimp indexed color tutorial . The game idea come while itching :D . I used my old object pooling script. Coding was easy because of game isn complex and the font isnt mine

Softwares:

• bfxr = for sfx
• Unity3d
• GIMP
• LMMS for terrible music

What went right:

• Game art was easy ,it was 2-bit
• I'm late , Even so timing was good
• I had fun while don't sleep for 48 hours

What went wrong:

• Making music was terrible I spent 2 hours for 4 seconds loop
• BUG:When pressed X all npcs go out from house
• Can't added breeding and parent-child
• Hand drewn wrongly
• I forgot simple unity codes (-.-) watched few tutorial for those
• UI isnt pixel perfect
• Idiot charging cable disconnected therefore record didnt encode , I had to use this tool for broken record
• COULDN'T BUILD TO WEB

And the links:

CHECK GAME!

TIMELAPSE

Links

https://soundcloud.com/zambonimacaroni/sets/slice-of-life-ost - written by @ropedog

Game- https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/slife-of-life

• Unity
• Blender

My process - Wing it

( https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planet-hell )

So, yesterday we had the 'Changes based on Ludum feedback' patch. Today, we have the 'Ludum's feedback made the player OP' patch. Kinda had a feeling this was going to happen while I was tweaking all the acid spitting goodness, but I didn't have a chance to playtest it. Wow, both these patches have done wonders for pacing! I really wish there was some way to get previous players back in for another round... Ah, well.

I was already super pleased with how Antagonistic: Hamburger Hill launched from Compo (The original version is, of course, still available for downloading as well). Implementing feedback based on just a handful of players has pushed this title to heights I certainly would not have imagined back on that despair filled Saturday evening when I was slashing features left and right while crying about what a crap game I had created.

Anyway, if you're burned out from pixel-art puzzle platformers, I made this experimental little 3D Shooter/RTS/Towerless Defense thing about ants invading beetles to capture a hamburger. I'd love to hear your feedback on it.

My game page is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/antagonistic-hamburger-hill

Thanks a million! Love you folks!

We felt that it was time for some shameless promotion... and we're all really excited about how many people have tried out our game, uP-8: Microprocessor! We've almost reached 450 views. uP-8 is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and in your web browser!

Hey guys, I updated the game a little bit. New map, slightly more details and better difficulty system.

Give it a try if you like! :)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-raiders

Smaex

We are pleased to present our Ludum Dare 38 project : Bubblenaut !

Come play and vote here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/bubblenaut

Bubblenaut is a slow-paced adventure game set in a dreamy world. Born inside a small planet, you will explore several realms to find the Heartfruit, and witness the might of its taste ! We hope you enjoy our work :)

Send me tips plz

The game is here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/batter-bros

Hey everyone! If your game is playable on Mac, please leave a comment with a link, and I will play and rate it!

That includes Web-playable games, but I'm especially interested in games with Mac downloads. Still, web games are good too.

If you like, feel free to rate my game, Strangeness, as well (it's playable on Mac, as well as Windows and Linux).

I've compiled and released a selection of the ambient music from my LD38 game, Snowday! This album was recorded directly from the game itself -- the game composes the music in real-time based on the player's movement. Hope you enjoy ~

Listen: https://jontiburzi.bandcamp.com/album/snowday-ost

Play game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/snowday

Thanks to everyone who's played, voted, and commented so far!

We are really happy to present all of you our small game. SurviBall

It is game about wood, spinnings and life. We hope you like it!

And remember if you have any doubts or any tips, don´t hesitate to write in the thread.

Come and play it here.

If you would be so kind as to rate my game. It wasn't as featureful as I expected, but it has win condition this jam, and sound and music.

It was based on my family vacations as a kid in the late 70's-early 80's where the station wagon was pretty much your whole little world.

my game - Don't Make Me Stop this Car!

Thanks, Uncle Chris

Hey guys! Just wanted to post this, because my game got fairly buried in all the commotion :P This is my first year competing in Ludum Dare, and I'm happy to say that I finished in time, and have a working game! In my game, you play as a small alien on a barren asteroid. You must use your tractor beam to attract meteors into the gravitational pull of the tiny planet, and pick up the ore chunks they drop! Use the chunks to build three machines, the Atmosphere Generator, the Moisture Collector, the Ground Fertilizer. You can also use ore chunks to fuel the machines, and once all three machines reach 100%, the planet will turn green! Be sure to vote if you enjoy my game! Thanks for stopping by :)

Hi all! Newton's Cannon has had some much needed updates (mainly just bug fixes) you can find them here I'm also in the process of making a post mortem. I originally was going to make it a video, but I don't think I'm going to do to my tight schedule. That's all! :wink:

Play with it in Until Tomorrow

Come catch him in our game Murder 38!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/murder-38

Soooo...uhmm...I guess I'm just gonna leave this here...

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/throw

Don't worry, this gif is sped up, you won't have to be that quick.

If you can't figure a level out, here's a walkthrough for ya!!

https://youtu.be/LROWRArUJSg

That's all folks, I'll leave you alone now...

Did you read the «I am legend» book of Richard Matheson? It is awesome, and our Protolife game got some thing from the book: the hero lifecycle. Maybe you remember how it goes:

• Day:
  • Repairs what is broken
  • Builds something new for defence from vampire attacks
  • Kills asleep vampires
• Night:
  • Waits until vampires attack ends

During our brainstorm we found that this lifecycle fits well the tower defence gameplay. We switched setting to micro-life to fit the theme, otherwise - who knows - may be instead of battle with gray-red infection you’d messed up with vampires 😃

BTW, that is reason why two main tracks are called «Day» and «Night». Maybe it is time to listen to them one more time - and imagine yourself as Robert Neville locked in his own fortress-house.

https://soundcloud.com/alexey-grishin-1/sets/protolife

What books, movies or games inspired your games?

You should try to escape the time loop. Pixel art

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/time-loop

We see everyone is having a great time judging and rating each other games, but let's not forget there's also another very important event going on today! Of course, it's May 4th - The Star Wars celebration day! Hope all the fans are having a great day! To commemorate we even have a poster to celebrate!

Click here for the full-size poster. We didn't want to have it cover the whole page.

If you've got a break between revisiting the movies or what you might be doing to celebrate, check out Petty Puny Planet 38! There's no actual Star Wars stuff in-game though (for hopefully obvious reasons). But it has a moon, just not a space station one. :new_moon:

If you're curious about the game's art process (such as the way the poster above was also designed), @moski posted a post earlier today about how we uses Krita to make the our project's art. We also still have our post-mortem to do and post, so if you've been keeping tab with us, we hope you look forward to it!

Thanks! And have an happy Star Wars day from Whales And Games! :whale:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-adventure-of-malvin

There is now a standalone .zip file for the Windows version of A Relatively Small World.
Wanted to play but didn't want to install it?
Now you can! Play it in any old port in the storm.
LINK

I made a really hard game. Oops.

Just for fun, I wanted to see if someone could get to the end.

* Anyone who can upload a screenshot of the credits page gets a Steam key to my game, Adventure Lamp. *

Don't feel obligated to rate or comment on the game, this is just for fun.

Also, feel free to request a play of your game. I'm happy to return the favor.

Play RASHLANDER here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/rashlander

After an overwhelming amount of people (250+) playing and liking my tiny gardening game I figured I'd talk about how I made KUMO. a tiny bit.

So I wasn't sure I could join the jam at first, since I had to work all weekend and I thought the Compo times were the only option. Luckily I had the entire Monday off so I had about 12 hours to cook something up.

1 Hour in

I've been experimenting with different approaches to game-design lately, this time I focused more on mood and art rather than mechanics, what I usually do. Luckily the theme allowed me to try my hand in something like that.

As for programming, I cobbled together some code snippets from previous projects to create what you see in the gif above, within a single hour. All basic controls were already in place by then, which meant I could focus on procedural generation (something I've been getting into only lately) and granting me tons of time to tweak art and audio.

5 Hours in

Practically finished. Tweaks on "seed" generation amount, tweaks on seed positioning, tweaks on colours, tweaks on particles. This was basically the entire design process; tweaking everything until it felt nice and relaxing. I've never taken the time to do this properly before, usually stopping at 2 or 3 passes on "gamefeel". However I think it bore fruit, as I read the comments and feedback. Once I ported it to WebGL, it had some draw order glitches that looked horrible. I forced in some fixes a few minutes before uploading and now the sun passes behind grass which made it look worse, but I didn't have enough energy left to fix it.

Takeaways

• Take your time tweaking the focus of your game...
• Even if the scope/amount of content suffers for it.
• Take a few prolonged hours for making builds,
• and the problems that come with them.
• LD is tons of fun!

See you next year!

Twitter

KUMO. LD page

Play KUMO.

Say something

For my game for Ludum dare turned out a little less on the gameplay side, and more on the mood, using graphical feel and music to set the mood.

So if you want a (hopefully) emotional and heart wrenching experience, check out my game Kanjo!

Things to note: The "gameplay" really isn't much but random walking and "fighting", but still, hope you have fun.

And thanks, thanks for playing my game.

Hi ! I realize I did not write a single blog post since the beginning of Ludum Dare 38. So, here is my game :

:twohearts: A Cage of Love :twohearts:

It tells the story of two lovers stuck in a world that is shrinking around them. How will the story end ? You will know if you go check the game :grin:.

PAGE OF THE GAME

Usually, I tend to do games that try to be funny or at least not serious. This time, I wanted to tell a more serious and sad story, which is actually a kind of metaphor based on personal experience. As I wanted to mostly work on the narrative part, the gameplay part is not great. Still, given the few comments I received and after I retried it myself, I feel quite happy with it. I hope to be able to do more games like this in the future !

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

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/legend-of-helda-breath-of-the-mild

I'm working on redesigning World Destroyer in an art style that I might be able to accomplish: flat design vector art.

I'm pretty excited by my first attempt at redesigning the main character, Winston. Here is a comparison of the old character and the new design.

I obviously still need to practice a lot, but I'm excited about trying to get better at some form of visual art.

If you haven't already, check out World Destroyer. Your comments and ratings are much appreciated!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/world-destroyer

Hey folks! Going live to rate and review your games! I had such a blast doing it yesterday that I'm going again. To add your game to my queue, just show up and check out the panel below my stream! It has a link to add your game to my queue. Come hang out, see your game played live, and chat with other LD devs!

www.twitch.tv/iron_leonem

I finally finished writing up my post mortem for my entry One Small Step.

You can find the link to the post mortem as well as a link to the game below.

Links https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/one-small-step-1

Since I started working a full time job, I've found it harder to keep doing jams with the same vigor that I used to. I didn't think I would do this Ludum Dare, but then I convinced myself I'd do something simple and quick. I thought I would make a space shooter and mix in some light Dark Souls elements. Turns out even this was too much work for me to finish! Still, I had a lot of fun making it and I stayed up crazy late working on this.

I learned out to use Inkscape for this jam so I could make some simple vector graphics. It's a little plain, but I think it looks nice and I'm happy with the shooting and movement effects.

I ended up spending too long on the little details, so I was rushing during the last two hours to put some levels together. I wish I could have had more enemies and more guns. I didn't put in the ability to save progress, which makes it pretty difficult. I also put in an untested puzzle, that I think that turned out being harder than I thought.

Also, I ran out of time to pick a cool name - so we've just got Space Caves for now.

Please let me know if you liked it! I had fun with this one, so I'm thinking about fleshing this out a bit more if I get some time.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/space-caves

I played one TD/RTS game so far and I had a blast while on it (it was this one https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/edge-of-the-abyss)... I 'beat' the game but now I want to play more entries on that style lol. Is your game a tower defense and/or RTS game? (I'm more interested in TDs actually). If it is, please link it here so I can play it!

I promise I will play/rate all games linked (this is my 3rd post of this kind, did the same for the previous two)

My entry is not in this style, but i'll link it here if you want to check it \o/

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/what-remains

Come play Carefulzilla, I'd love to hear your feedback! Also, please, leave a link for your game on my game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/carefulzilla

:) Check out my game, Destroy Blocks. It is basically a game that is kind of inspired by Minecraft. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/block-destroyer

In the game, you are in a "small world". Your objective is to destroy as many blocks as you possibly can within a minute. The graphics in the game are real simple but not too ugly. Also, the game has some minor funny easter eggs. Finally, the game has some sound that I created. I used Sfxr to create the sound effects and Audacity to record the music. Note, I am a noob at recording music so please don't think there is an error if the music sounds like it is not working. I'm also a noob at creating music. However, I don't think the music is too awful and it is kind of good.

About Me: I'm a noob hobbyist game developer. Here are some games that I made: https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=D-Studios

Hey, you should check out our game, Planetoid Piracy, if you haven't already.

Basically, you fly around, destroy other planets, take their stuff, and add it to your planet. It's got lots of action and pretty deep gameplay. It's the game you've been waiting to play for years, but never realized until now.

Also you can stand on a planet as it's exploding beneath you, which is a pretty thrilling experience.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/planetoid-piracy

Bear + Deer = Beer

Just a fun little thing you may or may not have caught while playing 'In Good Hands' over at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/in-good-hands

Sounds sweet? So get the one in the Candy Cave Quest - http://oleggrachev.org/playcandycavequest/

LD game page - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/candy-cave-quest

Now that I have your attention: please do not. But I need constructive criticism on my entry https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-giant-called-frederick

I know that audio would be great so that's a no brainer. But how does the game feel to you? Is it fun? What would you personally change in order to make it more fun / more intuitive / more fluid... To make the game better? You can be as brutally honenst as you like - just don't get insulting.

Big thanks for everyone who follows this call! Anudin

Life is hard when global warming melts your glorious castle, and thus the invasion of the seal peasants. There is only one thing that you can do…

SLAP THOSE PEASANTS AWAY

Hey everyone, check out this short, and “seally” game we made for this Ludum Dare 38. Promise, you won’t regret playing it!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/king-of-the-seals

We try, but we're not :(

Since we are not, I feel I have to promote a bit the game here...

Sooooooooo, Have you met Den ?

You can play it here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/den

Game-play Link:https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/sunken-mystery

https://youtu.be/iiDC6gCw2yw

Watch the game play of my first LD game and give your Valuable ratings and reviews

You know Llama, the cute, crazy, lovely llama?!

C'mon, come and try Llaama's World!

Possible pool of questions - Videogame - General culture - Math

- History

Grow normal-sized vegetable in a tiny world, try Johi Farm!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/johi-farm

Over the past week or so I've been working a bit on a post-jam version of Landshift! For those who've played the game and read the comments you would know that I've been intending to port it to mobile.

Well, before that, I wanted to make the game look nicer. Here's what the jam version looks like:

And here's some work-in-progress on an updated design:

Also, after a heck-ton of work, I finally got it on Android (a working, functional one that looks identical to the above picture).

And if you haven't, check out Landshift!

This poor helpless cube is trapped on a wasteland planet armed with nothing but a pick-axe, help him build a rocket out of here. Mine the planet for all of its resources and fight to stay alive!

Come play our first LD entry here:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/lift-off

When I was doing the game for this Ludum Dare Exploroka I wanted to do something more complex and fun. But I had not the time so now I would like to do another game using the world generation algorithm.

So I ask you,

what kind of game would you like to play in a map like that?

Thank you for your ideas.

Things have been quiet from Stuck in a Lift Studios this week, as we battle other commitments in the form of university assignment deadlines and full time employment, however the weekend is before us, and there will finally be time for us to play and rate other people's games as well as continue developing our game K.R.A.B.S. (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/k-r-a-b-s).

If you would like us to review your Ludum Dare entry, please drop a comment in response, and we'll get to it over the next couple of days.

After 10 days of feedback the biggest problem I have with my game is the camera. (The other problem I have is instantiating too many sounds but that's another story.)

"Globe Trot" was created in Unity - here's a link to the game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/globe-trot

The camera tracks the player object - if the distance from the player to the camera exceeds a certain amount then a force is added in the direction of the player. The further the camera is from the player, the larger this force will be. If the camera gets too close to being directly above the player (where gimbal lock would occur) then a force is added to repel it. The direction of this force is always to the "right" of the player object.

It's the issue of the camera being directly "above" the player (relative to the planet) when the problem occurs - because which way is up in that situation? To experience this - just move down as soon as the game starts and you will experience the camera rotation.

One solution would have been to keep the camera a fixed offset from the player (i.e. be in the player's local coordinate system) but I fear that would feel too rigid (it would be similar to those bits in movies when the camera is attached to the actor and they are supposed to be drunk).

Having gone back to re-play Geometry Wars 3 for the first time in a while...I am now wondering if the camera is actually moving around the globe at all - or if the globe is rotating (as well as the sky box) keeping the camera's up direction fixed. That would certainly make the camera orientation a lot simpler!

When the compo is over, I will re-visit "Globe Trot" and try different camera solutions to find something that works better - and I will fix the audio issue and any other problems reported. Until then, happy gaming!

Well we do! And we finally have some time to play your games too. If you have time please check out our game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/small-planets-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qJigvh612o

Leave your games in the comments and we will check out as many as we can. Let's have a feedback party!

Hello there! Here is the first part of the post mortem for Pod2000, our Ludum Dare 38 compo submission we made in 48h. In those articles, we’ll give you all the details on the making-of this game! Let’s go :)

The Dream Team

For this 38th edition, we decided to team up with a lot of crazy birds! We were a bit curious about how we could work with so many people, in 48h.. But it went really smooth, and especially, it was hell of a party! Old colleagues & friends, together, in a castle, with the sun, to make a game. Here is the dream team, in a chaotic order:

• Nicolas “nidup” Dupont - Code, gameplay, story (@nidup)
• Geoffrey “toxinu” Lehée - Code, gameplay, story (@toxinu)
• Gildas Quéméner - Code, gameplay, story (@GildasQ)
• Baptiste Quéméner - SFX, music, gameplay, story (@baptisteq)
• Pierre Allard - 3D, illustrations, logo (@pierallard)
• Mylène Larnaud - Pixel art illustrations (@mylenela)
• Adrien “grena” Pétremann - Code, gameplay, story (@grena)

From left to right: Baptiste, Nicolas, Geoffrey, Gildas and Pierre

Visual Part

Most of us are developers, but we had the chance to team up with multiple talents, so we decided to create everything from scratch (so no pre-made sound/graphic assets). This way, we could end up with a coherent visual & audio experience.

Mylène joined us on Sunday to draw the lovely & stunning pixel art illustrations we used to visually bring life to the small world:

Pixel art biomes, aka pictures sent by VJ-Net42, by Mylène Larnaud.

As Pierre is mastering 3D rendering, he made the scene with the pod computer, the 2 first “cinematic” pictures and our logo. \o/

The computer in the pod, 3D rendered (Blender), by Pierre Allard.

Audio Part

Last but not least, Baptiste made a huge work on the audio part, recording a lot of sounds, creating this very particular & immersive ambiance you have in your pod and in the small world audio captures.

That's all for the team presentation!

Some of us already worked together in the past, but we never joined our forces, so it was the first time we worked ALL together. In the next post, we’ll detail the 2 days of the Jam. See you!

And don't hesitate to give a try to Pod2000!

This game isn't suitable for newbies - skill required. Abaddon is a FPS in a small world - my entry for this 38th LudumDare session. Rate my project (or take a look at the video which is embedded) and I will rate yours. I promise ++

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/abaddon

I've got a bit of time over the weekend to have a look at/play/rate as many games as I can. Promote yourself here ;) If it's especially good I'll tweet about it (not that I've got many followers...)

Mine is here if you'd like to give it a go :)

come on! try again!

at least you'll fail in a funny way :joy:

game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-small-world-cup

'Coz the treashure of the Candy Cave awaits!

Play online - http://oleggrachev.org/playcandycavequest/

LD game page - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/candy-cave-quest

Consume the World!!!

Web wersion: http://voronkov.me/gacu/

LD game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/gacu

If you don't know the Whole truth about Nature selection you need play in that game! That game will say you the whole truth about nature selection. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt!

What's new: + game stability improved; + game is balanced; + game is simplified; + bosses added; + increased speed boost effect time; + added giving live if not losing it at level (max - 3 live); + appearence improvements; + fun improvements; + many, many, many bug fixed!

Play on web: https://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/422870

Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/the-whole-truth-about-nature-selection

Enjoy!