I visited the profiles of the latest theme-complainers. Oddly enough of those only one has taken part in more than 2 jams.

Kinda makes me think, that those who are overly critical of themes maybe just lack the experience of what can actually work as a theme.

NOT...

I really hope I can get to make something for this Ludum Dare. I am going to be traveling the weekend of though, so who knows. Maybe I can get something done on the Plane. Whatever I do, I'm sure it won't be great, given the limited resources and time, but still, hopefully something.

So I've been a long time lurker and have always wanted to take part in a jam. I'm thinking this one might just be the one! Not sure whether I'll pull in some friends or have at it solo... It's been a long time since I wrote some code for my own fun.

Tools: - Godot, LIBGDX, or Unity (not entirely sure yet) - Audactiy - Paint.net, GIMP, Piskel, Pixlr - Various other things....

Should be a good time!

This is gonna be my first OFFICIAL Ludum Dare! I'm going to be using Love2d, VSCode, LMMS, and Photoshop CS6 to make everything. Let's hope it turns out well and good luck to everyone participating!!

~~Unrelated: what's up with all the hitchiker's guide theme suggestions? Is it some kind of inside joke??!??~~

That was tiring! This is the first time I was able to go through all the themes. Hopefully, we will have a great theme this time (fingers crossed)!

But whatever the theme is, don't forget one thing:

HAVE FUN!

Is it me or there is too much "42" related submissions?

IMO I don't find this relevant for an LD theme, and through these 3k+ themes, only a bunch was interesting/new.

What's your thought people?

Fancy a warmup but don't have enough time to spare? Try a 30 minute jam! I've done it twice now and boy is it stressful. Livestreams linked below for proof :wink: sorry, there's no audio - I couldn't get my mic working. I've got a new one on the way, though, so I'll be able to stream LD42!

You can play my latest one here - the aim is to get the green ball to the gold star, without hitting the red ball. Click and hold with your mouse to affect gravity.

If you do one, feel free to tweet me or reply here and show off what you've done! Looking forward to seeing what people come up with :grin:

https://youtu.be/9icn5uanICU

https://youtu.be/tTAq1fcayDY

If anybody is interested here about me streaming the hole ludum dare 42 i am more than glad! Let me know in the comments down below!

My channel: https://www.twitch.tv/ahagge

Hi everyone, so from thursday on, there will be intense art practise for the upcoming ludum dare event. Probaby going to practise Low Poly and Voxel art, because these styles are fast and easy to realize during a game jam.

Greeting Luca =)

Just 1 lesson in storytelling for you. If you are watching / playing as someone who is not the main character, then they ARE the main character, regardless of if they are a villain or not.

Likewise if your hero is not the player character, he is NOT the main character.

Imagine a book where we follow Voldemort for the whole thing instead of Harry. Guess who the main character is for this book..

Now, to learn something more about vector art and animation and I'll be ready to go. Perhaps anyone has some quick tips for Affinity Designer? ;)

Alrighty! 42 is a good number.

And it happens that I still have free time on the weekend of the LD. So I'm most likely in!

So there are always people who show their slaughter charts, where they killed of about 95% of the themes. I made this little graphic to show why that's a bad thing.

To read the graphic a couple of things are important:

1. There are no objectively good themes that everyone's going to pick. Every themepick comes down to personal preference in the best case and chance in the worst case.

2. There are more theme-suggestions than voters. If we took the ideal case, which would mean anybody who picked suggestions also votes for all themes we'd still have three times the themes than voters.

In this overly simplified example I chose to show the voting process for 6 voters and 18 themes. So that would be the absolute ideal case.

See how the first variant fails to generate any meaningful data? Even putting the entire first set ontop of the second one would barely impact it, even though the same amount of people voted.

So - the conclusion I came to is, that if you vote to sparsely you'll just waste your time because your vote will impact the result extremly little if you can't generate enough overlap.

Because the slaughter-process is long and arduous certain random factors like fatigue will inevitable creep in - the stricter you vote the more impact those random factors will have.

@Samusoidal @Shelvid @GexAlmighty @EX3D0

I'm so hyped, my first Ludum Dare I participate to , wish you guys luck with the coding , probably some don't need it and probably some do anyways let's create awesome games guys, I can't wait anymore.

Anyone co-locating in London for LD42? Enquiring minds want to know.

Hi! We all know that LD42 is near ,and its comming fast!soooooooooo Im looking for a teammate to work with As everyone says "two brains is better than one"so if you are intrested to work in groups please contact me at discord My tag :Nag games#3992

Good luck everyone!🍀

Id Like to Have The User Fexgem to be part of my game but i need to friend him first. Please help me.

First Ludum Dare ever, first game jam in a long, long time. Going straight into Compo!

Using:

• C++ + SDL2
• sfxr
• WolframTones
• possibly runtime generated graphics

Wish me luck!

I'm notoriously picky when it comes to slaughtering themes. I maybe say YES to 3 or 4 out of the 2,000 theme suggested.

So here's my list of rules I use, and 50 themes, what rules they break and why

I Reject if the theme is:

1. 1 Word
   • Often overlaps with rule 14. One-word themes are often too broad and can be interpreted too liberally to be nearly pointless
2. A Meme/Too Meta
   • Everything from TV shows to Internet-in-jokes to development In-jokes. That instantly puts people who are out-of-the-loop off joining the jam.
3. Restricts Genre(s)
   • While having too broad a theme is a bad thing, restricting the theme narrowly is also undesirable. Rules 3-6 reflect the desire to be able to make almost any game you want with the theme.
4. Restricts Game Mechanics
5. Restricts Setting
6. Restricts Graphical Style
   • This is a short, intense, game jam. Entrants are not always the best designers and will not join if they don't feel comfortable switching up the graphics style they're used to using. It would also eliminate certain development tools like, say, Pico8 (with its 2D graphics and limited colour pallete) if the theme was "HD Graphics"
7. Is a Simple Contradiction (ie 'Destroy what you create')
   • Usually the opposite problem to rule 1, these are often too restrictive and limit the kind of game you make. With the example you'd first have to have a game where you both create and destroy things. Be it in game-play or narrative. And they're usually incredibly unimaginative.
8. Too wordy
   • Ideal themes should be between 2 and 5 words long. Often they get too specific.
9. 'Fill in the blank' (ie You have too many _) , or implied blanks (ie One too many), or emphasis on pronouns (mostly 'it's')
   • Similar to rule 1, often too broad.
10. Starts with "What" or "You"/"Your"/"You're"
    • These often feel like demands from a topic, rather than a request. Tend to be very broad topics too.
11. Is a Question
    • Often are unimaginative, regularly bleeds over to rule 2 as well.
12. X the Y, X to Y, etc
    • Again, unimaginative and vague.
13. Overtly Political
    • Not against political games, but you shouldn't be forced to make one if the theme demands it.
14. Very Broad Concept
    • Really a catch-all for any theme that still feels too broad without falling directly into the above
15. Already been a theme, or very similar to an old one
    • Simple explanation, people love submitting old themes, slightly tweaked... and it's unimaginative and boring to retread old ground
16. Bad Spelling/Grammar
    • You're not writing a novel. It's a single line. It's not hard to proof read.
17. It's just bloody stupid
    • Come on, some of these are just stupid
18. Would put off Beginner Devs from joining
    • While this is at the bottom of the list, it is a very important one. I will instantly slaughter a theme if I think it would put off a dev who is new to Jams, or new to development, from joining in. A theme, at face value, must allow you make something simple, like snake, or pong variants or something, out of it. If the answer is no, then it's not a good theme. If the theme passes this test and doesn't have very many creative variants, then it puts off experienced devs looking for a challenge. I'll slaughter it then too.

Not all of these rules are created equal. I know a lot of you wont' care about rules 7 through 14, and that's your prerogative. These are my rules, subjective as they are, but any theme that passes them is going to be a great theme.

And the Themes I slaughtered:

• Pathfinding
  • Rules 1, 4, 18
  • Forcing a game to involve pathfinding, or at least suggesting pathfinding (even if you come up with a creative alternative meaning for 'pathfinding') would put off new or uncertain devs.
• Carrot and Stick
  • Rule 12
• Drift
  • Rule 1
• At least one thing procedural
  • Rule 18, procedural generation is difficult. To the point that there's a Procedural Jam that allows you two whole weeks to make something, and doesn't care if you submit something you've been working on for years. It's not something you can do in 48 hours, especially if you're a new dev.
• World drained of colour
  • Rule 6, for all the reasons stated in Rule 6.
• The Keyboard as a weapon
  • Rule 4 because having a weapon restricts the Genre to one that requires a weapon. It would encourage people to make a game first and shoe-horn in the theme after the fact, which doesn't make for fun games.
• 2d shooter
  • Rule 4
• Build-a-Dungeon
  • Rules 12, 14, 18
  • Again, while creative ideas can be made with the theme that don't involve actually building a dungeon, it's incredibly limiting, and at face-value many new devs would feel put-off by such a daunting task.
• Cheat to Win
  • Rule 12
• Close to Home
  • Rule 12
  • Note: I submitted this theme. I never said I was perfect.
• pixel art
  • Rule 6
• Buildings
  • Rule 1
• Not enough power
  • Rule 15, "Running out of Power", (See the game I made for LD 39)
• communism
  • Rule 1
• Just a minute
  • Rule 12
• pirate
  • Rule 1
• If you're moving you can't ____.
  • Rule 9
• Background
  • Rule 1
  • Honestly, this wins the award for the vaguest theme I've seen yet.
• your weapon will not help you
  • Rule 4, 8. Again, restricts the game you make to something that has a weapon.
• Make Two from One
  • Rule 9 (Implied blank: Make Two ____ from One ____)
  • Rule 12
• Platformer Gimmicks
  • Rules 3 and 4
  • Seriously, I love making platformer games. And Gimmicky ones at that. But I wouldn't force that on everyone.
• Survive in Space
  • Rule 12
• Time to Think
  • Rule 12
• Heat
  • Rule 1
  • Okay, got something that's ousted Background from it's vague throne
• not a game
  • Rules 2, 3, 4, 7, 12, 14, 17 and 18. But mostly 17. Definitely mostly 17.
• With Wings
  • Rule 9 (Implied blank: ____ With Wings)
• These Themes All Suck
  • While true, it's definitely breaking rule 17, and 2 (those rules tend to go hand in hand to be honest)
• Random Powers
  • Rule 4
• Superpowers in day-to-day work
  • Rule 8
• More than the sum of its parts
  • Rule 8
• Joke with battle royale
  • Rules 2, 3, 16 and 17. This structure sentence english not.
• An unusual form of currency
  • Rule 14, really vague. This could apply to almost anything in a game. Easy to shoehorn in to anything, makes the jam too easy.
• Charge
  • Rule 1
• Lose to Win
  • Rules 7 and 12
• Why Are We Still Here
  • Rules 11, 14
• Topsy turvey world. Roles are reversed
  • Rules 7 and 8
• Fusion
  • Rule 1
• Never Ending
  • Rule 9 (Never Ending ____)
  • Rule 14
• Love You Enemies
  • Rule 7 and 16
• Lost the Instruction Manual
  • Passes!
  • Firstly, I can think of numerous different ways to apply this to very simple games that would make them fresh and exciting. How this theme might inform everything from story, to mechanics, to presentation. It's a very open theme, but not too vague. It's not restrictive, but instead provides guidance into more creativity.
• heat wave
  • Rule 14
• Always expanding
  • Rule 9 (Implied blank: ____ Always Expanding, or Always Expanding ____)
• Glow
  • Rule 1
• It's alive!
  • Rule 9 (Implied blank: 's alive!)
• combine game and gamedev tool
  • Rule 18, very much so. Like, I've been programming for 20 years and making a game-dev tool in 48 hours is daunting, let alone a game and a dev tool that can be used in game at the same time.
• Anti meta, meta game
  • Rules 2, 7 and 18
• Big world, small you
  • Rule 7
• Decremental
  • Rule 1
• Maze
  • Rule 1
• OS simulation
  • Rule 3 and 18

Well, if you made it this far, good for you. I hope you're not bored to tears, but it felt good to get this all down in writing.