My entry for LowPoly Daily with the theme: Magic Wand. Youtube process with fbx files (link included in the youtube video’s description).

Since the theme is about magic wands, Im trying to make the magic wand item in Dota 2. Not too close though but I think the structure is the same. I think I just need to add halo though but I got tired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWfx3JrBWGw

My entry for LowPoly Daily with the theme: Fireworks. Youtube process with fbx files (link included in the youtube video’s description).

I made the fireworks look like my logo. I found some quick tutorials in the net where I learned this keyed animation of particles. It turned out great and I am so proud of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEFv2bRpk-s

It's time to start counting down to Ludum Dare 39! The event kicks off earlier, on July 28th (or the 29th depending on your timezone), instead of in August as usual. This isn't a permanent change, just the best compromise to avoid conflicts with an August packed with major industry and related events.

Theme Suggestions are now open. Go make yours now!

This event will be a standard Ludum Dare event.

Thanks the adjusted schedule, there hasn't been as much time between events (a bit over a month). I had planned to check-off a list of major features beforehand, but between GDC, launching the site, and 15th anniversary stuff (some of it didn't work out, other things had to be aborted), frankly I pushed myself too far. Oops! :sweat_smile:

So going in to Ludum Dare 39, I'm not promising any big new features, just a smoother experience (*cough*, which I'll admit isn't saying much).

For my health I'll be forcing myself to move to a more normal schedule, instead of the death-crunches I pushed on myself these past few events. That means I'm not going to have enough time to do everything I want, but I'm hoping that means I'm left less broken after. Heh, news to me: full-time projects need to be both financially and mentally sustainable. :wink:

That's it for now. Go make your Suggestions, and come back next week to help us decide the theme!

I got quite a lot of :heart: yesterday on my post for showing the differences between my LD38 compo entry HexCity and my Android game Hexpert.

Today I decided I'll get a bit more technical (not too much :wink:) with the design decisions and the problems I've encountered while making my first game for Android.

If you've played HexCity, you know the game is hard to understand and the game itself is very hard to play. It's a puzzle that really makes you think a lot of moves in advance and it's very hard on new players.

I already knew I was going to implement multiple levels, so it was very important that my first three levels were designed in a perfect way. The player had to get a grasp of the core mechanics without the need of an external video or a wall of text (Please never do this to your game).

In HexCity, my compo entry, the learning was done like this :

Not only the fact that you can't hover on Android, it is not good design.

Hexpert uses a lot of small things, that together, teaches the player how to play! My game actually has a textual tutorial, but even if the player skips it, he will still be taught on how to play

Let's take a look on how I did that!

When you go in the first level you will get this screen (without the red highlight :sweat_smile:)

This is my textual tutorial, it doesn't matter if the player reads it or not, but it will help if he does.

The fact that the house is cut in half (shown by the red highlight) shows that the player can scroll down and read the rest that didn't fit in.

But let's assume the player just doesn't care and pressed OK without reading.

The player will see the content of the screenshot above. If you played HexCity, you will notice that there's no score, there's only the standard grass tile and the only available buildings are the farm, house, mine, wind turbine and factory. The first level removed useless complexities that will be introduced later.

The player will see the objective next to a shiny gold medal Build 1 factory. Now it is very likely that the player tries to place a factory (if he did not read the tutorial) By doing so he will click on the factory.

On the top of the screen the building requirements are written, he will see that he does not have the required buildings. If he actually tries to place it, an "X" will briefly appear with a sound that gives feedback that it's an invalid move.

The player will see the formula : Factory = House + Wind + Mine. It will be very likely that the player tries to build the house first, since it is first in the equation.

The house only needs a farm. The only tile you can place it is highlighted. This is not only to show the valid move, but it also teaches the player that the tile must be adjacent. A few players were confused in HexCity, because they didn't understand the fact that the buildings needed requirements that needed to be next to each other instead of being placed on the map somewhere.

Once the building is placed, the player will most likely try to place the two missing buildings : The mine and the wind turbine, which both only require a house.

Now he places his factory and has completed the first level of Hexpert!

But what if he misplaces a building?

Hexpert introduced a remove option, by clicking on the bulldozer, you can remove the buildings not used to construct others.

You can't remove the house, because the two mines and the wind turbine need it! You can't remove the farm either, since it's part of the level!

That was the first level!

You can play Hexpert on the Google Play Store by clicking this

Time to get into the next two levels. Note that the first level used a fork formation. You had a farm and house being the long part of the fork and you had the mine and wind turbine being the pointy parts that allowed the factory. In the next two level, we will reuse this fork formation that the player is already familiar with.

When entering level two we are prompted with the new building : A market!

Now let's get an actual look at the level :

Doesn't the level look familiar? It is basically the fork formation turned 45 degrees left with a bit added! :smile:

The player, already familiar with the fork formation is very likely to start like this screenshot above. Note that the fork formation is absolutely not the only way to make a factory, but it's definitely a decent way of playing that will help the player later on. In HexCity, some players really struggled to make factories, some had 3 houses to build it! By the way the subreddit /r/Hexpert is available to post Hexpert related strategies. The subreddit has no activity, because this is the first place I post it :smile:.

Let's finish level 2 now :

Once the factory is placed, the only tile left finishes the level with the placement of the market. The player also realizes that he can use the same wind turbine for the factory and the market. Another strategy that the player is taught here.

Level 3 is quite similar to level 2 :

The bank is introduced to the player, the first building with four requirements!

We have again the fork formation preceding a market. The player already understand that you can use the same wind turbine for multiple buildings. Once again, the level is not really hard, you can place the bank at the last tile and finish it!

The first three levels are done and the player knows how to place buildings even if he did not read the tutorial!

I have a lot of other things I can talk about, if you enjoyed the efforts put into this make sure to :heart: the post.

Heya,

I'd rather work with someone else this time around, find details at https://t.co/R1LWC5KkXb

Heya, gonna post again because I posted this yesterday at like 3am which isn't the targeted timezone i'd like. So I'm looking for an artist or something to jam with, would rather not do it solo this time around. This would be my 5th? ludum, I think 5th ye

more details at https://crowdforge.io/jams/ludumdare/teams/101

Let's do this again!

Basically, I have to study instead. I would love to be in but I just can't. But hey, who knows maybe I'll change my mind at the last second. Anyways, have fun! I might find time to play some of your games later though.

This is going to be my second Ludum Dare game jam in a row. This time I want to play a lot more submissions at the end so I can actually get a score at the end. I also want to do a timelapse and post updates on my twitter Software: Gamemaker 2, Paint.net, BFXR, ZDoctor on Musescore 2 and Audacity.

Good luck everyone!

Hi.

I'll use Unity2017 as usual, Paint.NET/Krita and try to make an awesome game this weekend! I may stream on twitch too.

Check out http://nek0las.xyz to see if I'm streaming (and read my recently drawn comics)

If you want to talk about LD, do not hesitate to reach me @nek0las on twitter :)

Have fun coding you all!

Before I begin, I just want to say that I LOVE Ludum Dare! I have done 11 LDs, but I will not be participating this weekend due to other plans.

This will be my 8th time sharing these tips, but each LD I revise them and (try to) add a couple of new things to the list. These tips are just from my experience, so feel free to disagree.

Preparation

On the day of the event, (in no particular order) get lots of sleep and take a shower. I recommend showering right before the time hits because personally I don’t like wasting my time showering during a game jam. I know it sounds kind of funny, but you want as much time as possible to work on your game. Also, sleep is really important too because you’re not going to get a lot of sleep during the weekend. Personally, I like sleeping 4-5 hours on both dev days, giving me a total of 8-10 hours of sleep during the weekend.

Sleeping and Eating

Buy some snacks, like right now! Buy super unhealthy snacks!-- Although if you can prepare healthy meals before the event, you should probably do so. I wouldn’t go cooking a full-blown meal during the jam if I were you, but I'm not you so you can do whatever you'd like. You'd be surprised how long you can last without food, but regardless you should eat. Stay up as long as possible. If you have difficulty staying up, have others around to talk to, drink caffeinated beverages, and don’t get too comfortable where you’re sitting because you don’t want to fall asleep. Most people say to cook healthy meals but since I'm more of a Hardcore All I Care About is This Game I'm Going to Make kind of Ludum Darer, I don't care about what I eat, if I eat at all, because I'm stuck in the LD Zone.

Making Your Game

If you don’t finish making a game, DON’T WORRY because you’re not alone!

GAMEPLAY is important! Yes, pretty Graphics are nice, good Music is even nicer, but you need Gameplay. Graphics, Music, and other things definitely improve your game, but you only have 48-72 hours to create something. Shoot for the gameplay. The first thing you should do with your game is to create the core mechanics. Make all the Graphics rectangles, and forget about the Sound for now. You don’t even need to turn in your entry with fancy menus. Sure, on the last day you can change the graphics, but earlier on just focus on the Gameplay.

Now this is just my opinion, you can do whatever you want. And if you’re going to make a narrative game or a game that’s just about the visuals, then just ignore what I just said about the Gameplay being the key. I'm just a Gameplay kind of guy.

THEME is important. THEME is not important. It all depends on who you are. If you can think of an idea for a game revolving around the theme in a few hours, awesome, but if you can’t, I would just start making a game that I have been wanting to make and then incorporate the theme down the road; or sometimes I just wouldn’t incorporate the theme at all. After the Compo/Jam is over, you receive ratings on multiple categories, and there is only one Theme Category so if you didn’t care about the theme, no big deal. (If you don’t incorporate the theme into your game, I recommend opting out of the Theme Category.)

Once again, do whatever you want; this is just my recommendation. Some people like to take their time to come up with an idea for a game, and that’s okay, I just recommend getting that out of the way fast. I just see LD as a great opportunity to make prototypes really fast.

Post Compo/Jam

If you haven’t completely finished your game (which is probably the case), try to finish/polish it even though your entry is already in. When you’re done with that, add the link to the Post Compo/Jam version of your game next to the 48/72 hr version so that people can play both of them. It’ll make you proud and make you feel better about yourself. And if you really like how your game is looking, continue development and try putting it on Steam, because why not?!

RATE GAMES! Rate as many games as you possibly can, and give everyone a comment! Comments help because some people will look at their comments and click on your name to see your game (also it’s just a really nice thing to leave a comment). If you don’t rate any games then just about no one will see your game, so…

RATE GAMES!

Streamers

Be on the lookout for Mike's Dare to Play post where Streamers and YouTubers leave links for you to submit your game to them. Look at this page everyday and keep an eye out for google doc links and email addresses! And don't be afraid to hop in on a Twitch Stream. You can watch people play Ludum Dare entries and you could leave a link to yours in the chat. Watching somebody play your game is a really fun experience!

What I do

I usually work on the core mechanics for the game first, and then make some music for it so it plays better. I personally think the graphics should go last.

That is just about all I have to say. And once again, these are just my recommendations, so feel free to do whatever you want!

Good Luck to Everyone Participating in LD 39! c:

My laptop's hard drive died recently and is currently getting fixed. I managed to get access to another laptop for the event. I was also able to save my important files from my laptop's hard drive(including my game engine). The computer I'm working with has about 10MB of memory left after installing python, pygame, and cx_freeze, so I'll be working mostly on a flash drive. It also has 2 GB of RAM, so this is gonna be tricky to work with. Still glad I can enter though! This is my 5th Ludum Dare. I haven't missed a single one and I didn't plan on missing this one. :smile:

What I'm using: - MS Paint or Px Editor(a pixel art tool I made for my raspberry pi) - Python - Pygame - SFXR or the mysterious place of outside(not sure if you guys have heard of this, but it's a great way to get audio) - Beepbox.co(pretty much my only option for music) - A cheap laptop I got my hands on

I almost ended up entering the LD on my raspberry pi. heh

Look at mah twooter!

The create post button is missing for some reason, so I wrote this post by editing an old un-published draft. xD

lets make something!

using SDL.net, I made a lil library that I'll be trying to expand and use to make something. I'll use Aseprite for sprites. Dunno about sounds. Maybe I'll record something? idk

I'm still working on my game of the last jam over here which I hope to release very soon.

I'm currently adding options for atmosphere settings. There are now well over 200 settings including solar system generation, gameplay settings, physics and lots of visual settings like this.

All these settings are also used for randomizing everything on the press of a button so every game can be completely new generated. But you can also unlock all the different settings for you to tweak and save as your own custom presets. You can shoot projectiles the size of planets or create massive destructive shockwaves or make the goal to be destroy the most or shoot projectiles that bounce off the planets Peggle style or be on a moon orbiting your planet... there is lots that mixes things up.

In case you never heard of Dots In Space, it is basically shooting whole solar system to pieces while trying to destroy your opponents planet, it share a good amount of resemblance to the Worms games but here you have to take the gravity of the planets and sun in account and if you are not careful your projectiles might come right back to you. Here is the old jam page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/dots-in-space

Here is how that looks: https://twitter.com/TocoGamescom/status/878617166068817920

Another LD? Another LD! :D

Hi, all you lovely LD jammers out there! :)

Last jam was a disaster, I didn't have the time, and the game ended up not even being a game.. :/ This time the jam falls on my birthday, so a good chunk of the time will be spend enjoying the company of friends. :D Should I join and aim for a very, very small game, or just let it go?

I want to join! I missed so many LD jams, it just feels like there is always something getting in the way.

Maybe, maybe..

Help me decide

My fifth LD so far. Hope the theme won't suck.

Our room setup is finished.
Have a look:

And yeah its the first book (in german) of "Song of fire and ice".

Decided last minute to participate in the game jam! Because after 1.5 years of game dev, I'm still a baddie and need more practice.

Will be using: -Unity 2D -Aseprite -Famitracker -BFXR -Google -Time -Computer -Soul

Send me your love. (or a teammate or two. thanks.)

Good morning ! (From Paris, 10AM)

So, I stayed awake until 3AM to see the theme announcement. Then I brainstormed until 4h30AM. With the help of a nice stream viewer, I decided to focus on one cool mechanic and polish it:

1 shot fired = -1HP for the player

The other execpted main feature is:

With another weapon, a parry/last hit, heals you 1 HP.

I would love to make a metroidvania (I saw lots of them in the past, but never actually tried to make one myself). If I have time, ofc :p

Good luck, HF all!

Okay people, let's create some game!

All streamed live, just come to my Twitch channel :)

https://www.twitch.tv/StaNov

Follow us on Twitter on YouTube and on Facebook

My concept is a land development and power generation game. I'm so happy to have the base mechanics working day one.

LOW BATT

Where can I get started playing others' games while I'm still basking in the afterglow?

IT'S DONE

Main caracter sprite its done ! After hours and hours I finally finded a way to make the main caracter looks cool, on my onpnion. I'm not good to draw sprites, but whatever, I need to draw more caracters.

Just a minute... Loading...

Windows / Mac / Linux

Thank you to all who have played and commented on my game! I'm thrilled that people seem to be enjoying it.

I am surprised that I seem to be getting a permutation of the above comment a lot, questioning LOW BATT's game-ness. Although I wasn't expecting this view, I'm always happy to inspire controversy.

Should I have tagged this as a "nogame"? To quote Bernard Suits, a game is:

...the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

Click here to play: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/sky-sea

I made a timelapse of my work for our game :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fyiw3kP8UQ

Play the game

• ITCH.IO: https://angrysquirrels.itch.io/back-home-ld39 (Browser & Download for windows)
• Newgrounds: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/697285 (Browser)

Rate the game

• https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/back-home-2

This was my 4th Ludum Dare in a row! The game I made is called Despot 3900, where you play as a despot whose power is waning. The goal is to accumulate as much wealth as possible and survive for as long as you can.

I was set to submit this for the 48h compo, but what I had Sunday night was pretty far from what I had in mind:

So I took an extra 24h to get my game to a point that I was happy with. The biggest pain here was my writer's block Friday night trying to come up with something for Running out of Power. I'm still trying to get past this happening every game jam, it sucks. Something I'm considering is setting up a personal game ideas wiki that I can search and refer to easily for quick inspiration.

All in all this was a lot of fun. I improved my ability to do something fast from the ground up since my first attempt at Ludum Dare 36 last year, which was always my main goal. If you'd like to read more about this, I also wrote a devlog post on my website.

Now I'll go play some cool random games :-) Congrats to everyone who participated!

this is a repeat post for those in other timezones

Hi all, that time again, my

• instantly searchable
• instantly filterable

games browser has been updated with the latest games. The new LD site is shaping up but you still can't beat the speed and ease of use of DTBB in my opinion. In addition, it has a full archive of LD games going back to LD 15.

Find More LD Games to Play!

Oh, and while you're at it, play my game as well!

NUEBO MUNDO, in an unprecedented partnership with CACHIBACHES S.A., is proud to announce the last revolution in portable consoles: The PowerCubeStationBox™. With breathtaking cutting-edge graphics and next-gen audio capabilities, this new-best-friend-of-every-gamer will change the way YOU play.

Why you say? Well, the PowerCubeStationBox™ is a fine piece of hardware designed to address the most critical flaw of a portable console: the BATTERY. While traditional on-the-go gaming is irremediably chained to the tyranny of the socket, the PowerCubeStationBox™ breaks those binds completely.

How you ask? Well, don't let our beautifully empty words and convoluted marketing chit-chat convince YOU. Watch this completely unbiased development video instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOq7vYsBwtc

That's right, the PowerCubeStationBox™ eliminates the constant need for external power inputs, just by giving the player ALL THE POWER. But, as you can see in the video, it does much more than that...

In NUEBO MUNDO we believe in innovation and taking risks, so in an unparalleled move in the console market, we have decided to add fully functional, fully featured devices all over the PowerCubeStationBox™. These bad boys come into play as soon as you enter the game world, giving you FULL control over the game's elements. Talk about POWER to the player.

Finally, we haven't even talked about the most important detail: The PowerCubeStationBox™ is already available all around the globe! On top of that, the system is launching bundled with the platformer adventure MANIBELLO, an instant cult-classic, with not 1, not 2, but 4 FULL levels. So, if you don't want to be the only one without POWER, don't take a nap, and get your own personal PowerCubeStationBox™...

NOW!

"Thinking outside the box... it's in the game"

Hello fellow jammers! My LD39 entry Jumping Jehosaphat has just enough ratings to score, but I'm hoping to get some additional feedback. The feedback I've received so far has been overwhelmingly positive, so I'm considering fleshing it out to a full game, but I'd like some additional feedback prior to starting that project.

If you have some time and would like to play a challenging platformer with a twist that features a cute, amusing robot, please give it a shot. If you leave me feedback, I'll do my best to play your game and return the favor. Thanks in advance!

Hey guys! I’ve always been into music as well as game jams, so I decided to make a site like Ludum Dare but for songs! We have week long song writing competitions every other week, they’re really fun, and if you’re interested in getting better at making music, we’d love to have you join in!

Here’s the most recent compo!

We also have a pretty fun discord community and you should totally come chat!

Open Jam is a game jam with 🖤. At Open Jam, you build an open-source videogame over the weekend, rate other creators’ games, and compete for a chance to have your game featured at All Things Open, a premier open source conference. We wanted to host a jam that promotes open source games and game creation tools. That's why we're teaming up with Opensource.com to bring you Open Jam, a game jam dedicated to doing just that.

How is Open Jam Different?

There are other jams that require the game source to be submitted. What we wanted to do with Open Jam is promote not only open source games, but open source game creation tools as well. This jam encourages use of open source game engines, authoring tools, and platforms, and Creative Common assets, and to link those tools in your submission. Anything open source in your game creation process is encouraged! That is why we are hosted by opensource.com and winners games will be featured All Things Open conference. Open Jam is all about open games and open game development.

Join Open Jam -->

As the title says, I'm going to do this Ludum Dare. It will be my third Ludum Dare, and I hope my game will be better than my last two.

What I'll Be Using

Programming Language: C#

Library: XNA, maybe I will try and port it to MonoGame for once.

I'm learning Unity!

Art: Paint.Net

Sound: Audacity, SFXR

Oh and I have a keyboard now, maybe I'll use it to try and make some music. I'm not sure if I will though...

I'm working on theme slaughtering. I'm not even close to finishing, I have no idea how people find the motivation to think about thousands of game themes, but I'm working on it.

I feel the theme suggestions aren't very good too...

So yeah, I'm in. Unless something comes up, I'll be creating an entry.

I will be teaming up with Decaxon to create a Ludum Dare 40 Jam game.

Last time did not work out well with our WebGL C++ engine, so for the past 3 months we have been preparing by developing our engine further. We will be creating audio in Audacity, textures in Photoshop/Illustrator/Paint.NET, models in Blender, and the game in Visual Studios C++.

Flounder Engine C++

Good luck to everyone!

Did not try to classify this under LD38 :(

Last Saturday my headphones fell down and the end snapped off inside my headphone port. I tried all the techniques online, but none of them worked and I feel like some made it worse. I guess I have to make a quick fix to my computer then.

I'm planning on buying a new sound card or Bluetooth headphones. I'll figure it out.

Right before Ludum Dare, how convenient. I wish you all the best of luck!

My Second Ludum Dare, good luck to all!!

Here's the obligatory "I'm in" post! I'm hot off the heels of completing my first commercial, albeit small, game release and I'm itching for something new.

This is my 7th Ludum Dare in the past three years and I'm pretty excited for it. I'll once again be using my custom C++ game engine and its recently added WebGL support alongside Visual Studio 2013, Photoshop/Illustrator CS 5, Notepad++, FL Studio 12, Audacity, and maybe a few others depending on the type of game I decide on.

Good luck to all and remember to have fun!

Hahaha I wish :P

This will be my 7th LD (I think)

Custom Engine : https://github.com/hamfirst/StormBrewerEngine Custom Pixel Art Tool: https://github.com/hamfirst/StormSprite Audacity FL Studio Visual Studio 2017

I finally finished my entry! I got really distracted this Ludum Dare with other things, but here it is!

You can play it here.

Hi everyone! We decided to talk a little bit about our LD40 game, how was the experience, and what we want to make for the future.

We're a group of 3 people. @jpiolho, @grlira (Programmers) and @SaraFilipa (Artist), with the exception of @jpiolho it was our first Ludum Dare, but first time in a group for all of us. We just woke up Saturday morning and while we had breakfast we just threw silly ideas around, I don't exactly recall how it was but we ended up deciding about an old lady having too many cats. Having cats is nice but as you have more, the more you have to do clean up and take care of them. Early on we decided that the cats would be pooping and peeing around the house and we'd need to clean up after them and later we came up with the idea of having friends coming over for tea parties.

Screen from early in development

There wasn't much game design involved as none of us are good with that sort of thing so the game just kind of evolved as we added more and more things. One of the first challenges was to decide how we'd make the movement style, we ended up going with free look without being tied to a top-down grid like movement. This wasn't so easy as we didn't really know how to do it make feel good in Unity but in the end we got something we were happy with. The lack of game design was a problem, especially when it comes to the losing condition, we only thought about it at the last day and it had to be put in a bit at the last hour. Making the game was a bit like assembling a puzzle, initially it didn't look like much but once we started adding graphics, especially the house, it suddenly started making sense and looking really good for us.

We thought big and we didn't have time to add all the features that we wanted to. These include things like cat pee, upgrades with prestige, a bigger house, more types of cats and old ladies.

Our artist wanted to say a few words about creating the art for this game.

@SaraFilipa Regarding the process of creating the art for this game, this was my first time making (and animating) pixel art, even though I had previous experience with illustration and vector design. But I’ve always loved pixel art (being a gamer since the 90s), and wanted to challenge myself. I made a lot of newbie mistakes, such as using the completely wrong software and not being very wary of the different proportions, and of course I didn’t have time to fix anything.

And finally some screenshots of the build we did for LD40:

As for the future, we're looking into continuing this game and develop it further and finish it properly. It was quite fun for us and we're definitely coming back for the new LD.

@SaraFilipa thank you ALL for playing (and rating, and commenting) our game! And of course, thank you so much for all of the lovely compliments and constructive criticism on the graphics, which is what I worked on. But since finishing LD40, I’ve been making some research and educating myself and for version 2.0 of Kittea Party, you can expect: - 100% redesigned character sprites and animations; - New background art; - New (and a lot bigger) map; - New and updated UX/UI; - New logo + title menu + new game over / victory screens; - Some cut-scenes and illustrated instruction screens

For a teaser, here is the concept art of our main character and cat lady overlord, Gertrude:

Link for our game entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/kittea-party

I haven't participated in this jam. But I played a few games, even though I wasn't able to rate. I really liked one of them. :smiley:

So, if you have nothing to do or are looking to play a game, here it is :point_down:

Oversize Load (by @quadtree)

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/oversize-load

Please play and rate this game, it has less than 20 ratings.

Im in i bet noone gives one but idc just a little post to let you all know

Haven't participated solo in a couple years, gunna see how this turns out. I'll be using Unity just like most people. Nothing more to say really. Its going to be exhausting.

Yo homies, entering the compo this time around. Using Unity and... who knows yet? Probably 3D stuff with Maya. If I go 2D it will be with PyxelEdit. Cheers, jammers :)

So i've decided to combine the 'Card Game' genre with 'Platforming'. I have very basic card, hand, and deck code working with a couple of test cards working (forwards, backwards). A quick video of it in progress can be seen here https://twitter.com/BradLSandford/status/987530304360472576

Tomorrow will be the bulk of the coding work including getting a base set of cards working (movement, jumping, weapons) and also working on basic enemies and environment stuff. Trying to find the right balance between platformer and endless runner will be interesting, almost tempted to go down the roguelike route.

I overslept a bit so i haven't made as much progress as I wanted too. Ive polished up the test environment a bit and got collision and jumping working along with some behind the scenes deck stuff. A video of it in action can be seen here https://twitter.com/BradLSandford/status/987717402849955840

Next up im going to work on basic enemy AI (think goombas from mario) and some more behind the scenes deck management code.

There's a lot of discussion about changing the way LD is scored, most of which involves adding additional layers between a game and a final score. This irks me, because as game designers, we should know better than to add additional friction between the user and what their desired outcomes should be. IE: Play Games, Get Score. Doesn't get better than that... simple information is highly compressible and easily learn-able.

My modest proposal: Don't change the scores. Instead, incentivize participation in the voting phase and being a good LD-Citizen both during and after the jam.

Reward users for going the extra mile with badges below their names, colored usernames. And allow the rating of feedback. A [<3] is great for passive posts but it encourages users to post fluffy or watered down comments. Instead, allow users to rate the feedback being given, and open up user awards for "Best Feedback". Have some kind of persistent score from jam to jam, and give us access to our analytics so we can see our numbers.

42 minutes avant le début ...

Bonne chance à tous ! :wink:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uME02Tb0n18

Hey Guys! I'm kinda swamped in Contractor-Land, I had a number of clients show up out of the blue and I've been doing my best to keep my head above water, but I've forgotten to really dig down and do some LD Entries and I'd like to rectify that.

If you like, post your game, and I'll do a video or longer-form analysis, critique the entry, and provide some suggestions, sort of like what I did with LD38. I'll be doing these in the couple days of free time I have this weekend between crunch sessions. (If I get an overwhelming number of submissions: I will do my best!)

All I ask: If you like action shooter games in space, Give my game a go down here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/detritus

Tech Valley Game Space live-stream at twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace starts now!!! To have your game in consideration for playing and judging, you can sign up on the form below:

goo.gl/forms/zQAhArQG3Lfp2imS2

As the form already states, we do enforce a Code of Conduct in our live-streams. As such, we do reserve the right to cancel streaming and rating a game for any reason.

Thanks for everyone who played DETRITUS! And grats to the winners! Already looking forward to November!

• Overall: 122nd
• Fun: 104th
• Innovation: 569th
• Theme: 429th
• Graphics: 71st
• Audio: 290th
• Humor: 379th
• Mood: 158th

I'm really pleased with slime escape's scores! Massive improvement on pixel world's scores, for sure. Next time I'm aiming for sub-100 in 4/8 categories :grin:

I'm particularly impressed with my score in graphics, since I'm a programmer with very little skill in anything artistic...

Thank you so much to everyone who played the game!

We're going to try and make this one as our team's fifth Ludum Dare. A member of the family passed away this past thanksgiving and we are a little unsure if we can commit to the full jam, but we really want to try.

Team: Programmer, Artist, Designer, and Audio Engineer. We're possibly going to be joined this time around by a Junior Programmer, and a UI Designer for a few hours as well. If we get too much overlap we may shard off a group to make a second game.

Production Tools:
Unity 2018.3 or Unity 2017.4f1 depending on how stable 2018.3 ends up being.
Blender 2.79
PyxelEdit and Aesprite 1.2.7 w/ Cintiq
Audacity 2.2.2, FL Studio 20, & A bunch of instruments we have in the house.
Adobe Creative Cloud
Substance Painter / Substance Designer
Unity Collaborate for Source Control and Distribution

Prototyping Tools:
Shadron 1.3.2 - Shaders
Pico-8 & Pixel Vision 8 - Mechanics Testing
More Notecards and Graph Paper and Origami Paper than you can possibly imagine.

I won't have an internet connection and I'll have MAYBE 3 hours free over the whole weekend, but damn if the theme is "Making Connections" I have to do something! Seriously who submitted that? That has to be one of the best themes to make it to the final round I've ever seen :joy:

This was an interesting jam, we were down our usual designer so the hat ended up with me. We've made it a point since LD38 to spend extra time in pre-production, getting everyone on the same page, and establishing a set of guidelines for us all to use, and I'm not sure we would have finished with the workload we had if we hadn't done so. I wanted to write this post to give folks some helpful advice as they look to the future, and hopefully someone will find it useful and avoid our mistakes!

What We Did Right:

Here's all of the stuff I think we did well! There's stuff to improve on after every jam, but we've managed to get a lot of stuff here down as a team.

The very first thing I defined was our Unit Sizes, in Pixels. This was rigidly enforced from the very beginning. It meant the artist didn't need to go back and resize things after the fact, once an Asset was done, I as the person in charge of integration (More on this later) could rest assured that it was correct, process it for Unity, and start using it.

We spent extra time Friday night getting everyone on the same page about what exactly we were making. I laid out the mood, what kind of mechanics I was looking at implementing, and what I was hoping for. We went as far as doing some light worldbuilding to make sure everyone was completely on-board with the project.

I spent the week before the jam doing warm ups, researching, getting re-familiarized with the API, and reading... so much reading. I felt very on the ball this jam, which was a good feeling I don't normally have.

When figuring out the game, we took time to figure out what the strengths of everyone on the team was, what people were comfortable doing, and what our tools and engine were best suited for. Everyone was busy 100% of the time, nobody finished early or late. Everyone had a list of things to do from start to finish. Our communication was much better as a team.

What we Did Wrong:

And the stuff we did wrong... Some of it is just endemic to it being a jam. Kludge and rush jobs happen, it's the nature of the beast, but there's a lot we could have done better.

We had our Artist install Unity ahead of time, and used Unity Collaborate to make things easier, but her lack of familiarity meant we had to have someone hand-integrate every asset for her. This is one of those things we'll need to fix by sitting down between jams, and doing some light training.

I broke my own rule here and waited to do a build until the last second. The first build is always the roughest, and if I'd been doing it nightly like I usually do, it would have taken 5 minutes instead of 40.

All of the new goodies in Unity's 2018.3 Beta were too hard to resist, but it resulted in a highly unstable Editor, and complicated the build process.

We are so used to working as a team of four that when one of us can't make it, it throws off our groove. I scoped as though I still had our Designer, but he couldn't make it this time.

I spent way too long on the character controller, sorting out physics quirks, that the animations and gameplay (And AI) suffered due to neglect. I need to better budget my time and not get bogged down in that.

I'm just not very good at it. I can make either totally braindead and uninteresting enemies, or I can make superhuman terminators. I can't seem to find the sweet spot...

What's Next

I'm gonna do a Design Post-Mortem because I want to talk about some of the decisions that went into the gameplay, even if we didn't quite reach our full desired gameplay loop. I think folks will find it interesting.

Alrighty, so I meant to do this earlier but work got pretty insane. So this is a quick and dirty design postmortem, I'm gonna lay out the decisions that went into De-Railed. I'm not gonna say I accomplished every goal, or even did everything particularly well, but I love chatting design and want to lay my thoughts out for folks who may take an interest.

One of the first Combat Design Decisions was: This character is not a soldier. They should not be able to tear through enemies quickly, and their hit points should be beefy enough to be forgiving, but low enough that if a player wants to run from combat they have enough time to do so. The level design was intended to funnel players into dangerous zones, but to give them opportunities to flee, hide, etc.

To Accomplish the Clunky, slow, unweildly feeling I wanted out of Melee, I decided early on to do a few simple things.
A) I set it up so that a Melee Attack would halt your horizontal Movement. This means you can't just "Hack and Slash" Run through the level, you need to time your attacks. I did not however, stop vertical movement, so it remains possible to jump up and slash at a target hanging out on the ledge.
B) Animation Commitment: Attacks take a Loooooooong time to complete, and once you attack, you have to wait until the animation completes before you can take other action, and you cannot cancel the attack. There's also a cooldown after attacking before you can take action.
C) Melee Attacks do 2 Damage to Ranged Weapon's damage of 1. This translated to general play as players shooting wildly at a target, and finishing the enemy off with a Wendigo as they don't have enough time to shoot the enemy enough to kill it before it reaches them.
D) The Weapon Attack Box is pretty small, and extends only as far as the very edge of the weapon. It's also only around for a single frame.

Ranged Attacks are designed less around animation commitment, and more around giving the player a choice in the accuracy of their attacks, they can either have highly accurate fire, or highly inaccurate but fast fire. It's a difference of a little over half a second, but in that time the enemy can close rapidly once disturbed. My intended play was that the first shot players took they would wind up, think about what they were doing, and then fire after a full second or so of aiming. I however, didn't want to penalize players too much for RNG making it so shots would "Barely Miss", so I applied light homing to the projectiles , as you can see in the editor view with the purple lines.

I think this is where I made the biggest mistake in that I didn't adjust the health pool after testing. I set the HP Amount at 5 early on because it was a good square number, but I didn't have enough time to really test how this played. I honestly think at this point I should have lowered the HP Amount to 3. Health Packs were added at the last minute (Really the last Hour, but still), and threw off the way the game played and I never revisited it.

If you're on controller, pressing (Y)/(▲) will reveal that I left this ingame, it was originally intended to cause the Wendigo to flee from an area, but it ended up getting cut at the last minute because the logic caused some really weird movements. If i had been more clever and less sleep deprived, I would have converted them to a flare of some kind and left them in, but alas, Hindsight is 20/20. My original intent was to make these very limited in use, they actually exist as a GUI Element and pickup-able item but it was disabled before I built the game.

1) Have a better Sprite Animation System. I had to cobble that together at the very last minute and it sucked.
2) Spend more time generating content and interactables. The character system is very overbuilt for what exists in the world to form interactions.

Hope folks find this interesting. Chat me up here or on Twitter (@OccultGameDev) to talk design!

I worked on it for nearly two years. Game will be released this week (19th July) for switch and pc. It was quite journey. But its done and im supper excited about it! Game trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCgCypQCb3g

link to original entry: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=88709

If anyone is interesting in store pages, here are some links:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/643940/JimisMoving_Out/

https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/jim-is-moving-out-switch/

Still planning on a Post-Mortem, but I've had a few friends ask how we did the procedural maps (Map, only the first one made it into game for the Jam) for Edge of Twilight, our entry over here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/edge-of-twilight

To Start, for those who aren't interested in playing (Side note: We could use a few more votes, give us a shot if you like Difficult Strategy Games!)... Here's a quick overview of the map configurations in games, and the XML that runs the procedural map generation service.

The Scenario File, which is an XML Data Sheet, holds all of the Data that makes up the Game Scenario. It's loaded at runtime and parsed out to all of the sub-game functions. The one we care about is the Map Generator Service. The MapGen gets two crucial pieces of information, how big the map is, which is used to create a set of initial valueless tiles. And then it gets the list of procedural rules that it runs in sequential order.

To flavor a map, I use the SETTILE function, and tell it to set the map to tiles of that type by using the @ALL modifier. I can also use it to set specific points on the map as specific types of tile, using the @(X,Y) command, or using the helper @CENTER. If no positional modifier is specified, it will be random. I can also specify a modifier inside the spawner data, using the "on" tag, which will only allow the tile to be set on that type of tile. I can also restrict the range on the map, using the minx/maxx, miny/maxy modifiers.

By adjusting the order in which I change things, and how I layer the changes, I can achieve pretty good results considering the limited Tileset and timeframe we had to build the game. I wish we'd had enough time to write the other two scenarios, but a lot more goes into them than just the Map Construction, and we cut it too close on too many other vital features. But I'll cover that in a Post-Mortem later!

Thanks for giving this a read, and, I guess, Follow me on Twitter? I Don't know: https://twitter.com/OccultGameDev

This will be our Eight Ludum Dare as a Team!

Our team is in a bit of flux, we may be assimilating a few recent grads from a local university, and our lead programmer recently got a new job in the industry, so things are a little uncertain.

Team Members: Programmer, Audio Engineer, Artist, Producer, Animator, and a Designer.

Production Tools:
Unity 2018.4, UE4, or GameMaker Studio 2
Blender 2.8
Houdini
PyxelEdit & Aesprite w/ Cintiq
FMOD Studio, FL Studio, Audacity
Adobe Creative Suite
Substance Painter / Substance Designer
Unity Collaborate for Source Control and Team Distribution

Prototyping Tools:
Shadron for Shaders
Pico-8 for Mechanics
Tons of Graph Paper and Origami Paper

Oh god. The theme's going to be quarantine isn't it? I can't wait to slog through the countless COVID-19-related themes during the slaughter. It makes sense, I suppose. It's more or less the theme of every day conversation here. But I'd rather escape it for the jam.

The Team

We'll see who's around (or even alive) for LD46, but these are the usual suspects: - :computer: @daanvanyperen | coding | twitter, github, website - :art: @flaterectomy | graphics | twitter, soundcloud, YouTube, website, portfolio - :musical_score: @meatmachine | music & audio | twitter, soundcloud - :warning: @troop | playtesting | twitch | festive cheer - :warning: MisterOizo | playtesting | LinkedIn

The Tools

• Artemis ECS framework (check it out!)
• libgdx-artemis-quickstart
• artemis-odb-contrib
• LibGDX, IntellIJ IDEA, Java
• Photoshop CS6, FL Studio, Audacity
• Chronolapse

Stay safe out there!

Hi folks,

I am looking forward to starting the LD 46!

While waiting to start, I wrote yesterday a blog post on what we learned during our 8 past sessions with our small crew (yeah jamming as a team). :writing_hand:

I'm sharing here some key learnings and tips & tricks. About how to manage our energy, pick our concept, prioritize what we do, be laser focus, carefully manage our time, polish our creation, and our accidental successes.

Here is the blog post :bulb:

I wish you all a great game jam!!! :rocket:

Good luck all! Wish you all no blue screens.

Finally finished my first Ludum Dare. Been meaning to actually do one of these for a while now.

Check out Circadian here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/$225330

Dancing in a limited space : hope it goes well

Left/Right animation to be done next.

With almost 14 hours to go I have random generation issues with my public bathroom

The girls don't seem to mind

Well, I've finished up my game, I unfortunately have work, so wasn't able to add things like audio and polish, but I'm happy with it.

it's a tower defense taking place on a floating island, and the more buildings you build the faster it erodes.

Here's a link if anyone's interested in trying it out https://ldj.am/$379386