I have a Patreon now, right now I'm serving rewards for Goo Building updates. I made Goo Building for Ludum Dare 42, but me and my friends liked the game so much we've decided to update it
Link: https://www.patreon.com/Lilkkgoog/overview
I just launched Lamplight on the Google Play store, based on my entry for Ludum Dare 39 over a year ago.
I listed it for $1, but for this week it's on sale 100% off. Feel free to pick it up, any and all feedback is appreciated!
It was a challenge for me to stay focused on one project for so long and make it to completion, and I truly have Ludum Dare to thank for that. Being forced to complete projects in 72 or 48 hours has taught me so much about scoping and planning, and I've acquired a lot of skills making games for LD. Thank you!
Specifically, I'd like to thank @togis and @aevek for featuring my project on their streams way back in LD39 (although it would be impressive if they remembered), and everyone else who played and rated my entry!
I like randomness as much as the next person Binding of Isaac, Spelunky and lots of games here on Ludum Dare uses it in really cool ways to spice up their games.
But what if we made the seed of the randomness player-decided?
My suggestion is letting the random system be determined by factors within the players control.
For your next Ludum Dare try using a factor the player has control over as a seed for your random number. For example: - amount of jumps - amount of clicks - seconds since start of level - half-seconds since start of level
Note that this does NOT mean, the player walked 205 steps so we spawn 205 things.
The result could be 1 or 1000 or 5, the important thing is that each time the random event triggers from seed 205 it spits out the same number.
So if Random(103) = 67 the first playthrough then Random(103) = 67 in the next playthrough
For most players this will work identically to normal randomness but people who want to speed-run and optimize strategies now have complete information which is awesome.
It changes nothing for casual players but strengthens your biggest fans.
This random system could of course be a "secret to everyone" or tucked away in a mysterious book the player can find. (Or maybe the secret is tucked away in a nes-style game-manual).
I hope people use player-influences semi-randomness in their next games
The following is a clip of people speedrunning Super mario for NES and using semi-randomness to influence game-events it inspired me so I hope it inspires you.
In Mario this is unintended and many parts of Mario is out of the players control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQJEzJcQw
I know, I know.
"There's still *THIRTY days!"* you say.
But, I'm still getting hyped! Ludum Dare is my favorite thing ever! It's like Christmas to me! Of course, it will only be coming twice a year now, but you can't blame poor Mike, I'm guessing running this game jam is a massive undertaking for him. Anyway, have a happy and safe Halloween everyone! See you all in thirty days!
P.S. Mike, if your reading this, is there anything we can do to help out with the jam other than donating?
Hoping for a good theme this time around. Asked off work for the entire weekend :D:D:D
So this past Ludum dare I produced probably my favourite game yet. I received fairly good comments from friends, family, and reviewers and I am really happy with the outcome! Lately, I have been thinking of expanding it, turning it from a 72-hour project into a much longer-term project. I don't know where to start, so asking people who have continued their own games in the past - what would be a better course of action? Do I restart from scratch, maybe borrowing some art assets and glancing at the code, or do I continue with what I have got? The way I left it I didn't think I would be coming back to it so it's VERY messy and most of the code I would have to change anyway, but if I start from scratch it adds a, probably large, chunk of time into the development.
If you are interested, you can get the game here: https://micdoes.itch.io/dwn
Hi, finally got my game released on steam. The game was the result of ludum dare 41 and is called “Soccer Battle Royale”!
Lemon is finally out on Kickstarter! Thank you all for your tremendous support! Come check it out if you would like to join in on this project
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1843122730/lemon-1?ref=creatornav
Time goes sooooo fast :D Welp
My game DRIFT RACING is now on playstore. It is a racing and drifting 2d game. If you download then please share the experience via review.
Link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prajwal.drift_racing
Video:
https://youtu.be/6J8Y19WbndU
I hate People doing this! 👏🏻👏🏻
Surprisingly, keeping 61 themes (~2% of the suggestions) is a lot for me. Last time I kept 20 themes (which was under 0.5% of all theme suggestions). Now that's not saying there's more good themes, just that I was more generous this time around.
I can't understand how people can keep hundreds of themes unless they've never done an LD before.
I'm a programmer with artist friend will create a game this weekend.
Let's try to do something in Voxel 3D as we did #LD41
My principle: Android+Supercasual+NonViolence
I am so exited. After Ludum Dare 42(my first Ludum Dare game jam),I was already exited for the next. Good Luck to Everyone 🍀. I HOPE THE THEME WONT SUCK😂
I am so exited. After Ludum Dare 42(my first Ludum Dare game jam),I was already exited for the next. Good Luck to Everyone 🍀. I HOPE THE THEME WONT SUCK😂
We’re an hour and a half in and I finally have an idea! You are a stock broker and are only able to hold a certain number of stocks. You have to sacrifice stocks to get better ones, but the market will change so you have to think ahead as well. If you have any suggestions on what to add, feel free to let me know. Good luck to you all!
This time I change my usual software setup. I quit using Unity, Photoshop and all I've been using before. During this jam, I'll attempt to create a game, using Web development - php, js, html. Wait for progress reports!
What do you guys think.
I'm trying to get my game to work with different resolutions since I've had issues with UI elements and game objects not scaling to different aspect ratios and resolutions in the past.
I currently clamp player positions within the viewport so they can never go off screen and I'm going to be anchoring UI elements and keeping them a fixed pixel width. However, I still have to deal with moving all game objects without limiting the amount of space players have to work with. At higher resolutions, players have more space to move around, but at lower resolutions, players have less room to move around.
Is there any good way to solve this? Or is my best bet just to force a single resolution like how I've been doing before?
It's been a couple of days now and I have been thinking a lot about this entry.
I set out to make something that was satisfying to play from a moment to moment "game feel" perspective. I spent time early on tweaking controls, character size, animation and camera to make the shooting and moving feel simple and smooth. Although I feel this was OK, I ran out of time to add vfx, shadows and emphasise the actions a bit more.
I wanted to play with the idea of players getting attached to the characters and then needing to sacrifice them. By naming them and having them "rank up" to add perceived value, this seems to have worked. At least in the playthroughs I have seen! My wife in particular actually screamed the soldiers name when she lost a high ranked trooper. "Mathers!! No!!"
I think I probably spent too long on the gravestone system and passing the rank and name information to them and I don't think it added enough to the game experience to be worth the time spent on it. Considering the level design was unfinished and I didn't get to add some of the core mechanics, I would have done that differently. Prioritisation is a tricky one at 4am on day two.
I played around with the idea of "wobbly trees" before the jam and decided they would fit in this game. Idea being that they move around when you move through them, and "ping" when you shoot or pass them. I made them from scratch again here BUT... they don't feel as good as my first version. So although I am happy with them. Coulda been better and I have no idea why :D
I am very happy with the intro screen as it took me 20 minutes to make and feels great. I held my recorder up to my radio and just captured a few seconds of station noise and music, then found an old video I had of a helicopter and put it all together, changed some reverb and speed values and blended it together to make this cool sound loop. Added a moving camera and a small amount of tilt on the helicopter and it all just worked. Staggering the appearance of the game title, instructions and help also felt very smooth. That was a solid 20minutes work :)
I had plans to make switches that killed soldiers to open areas and other mechanisms for sacrifice vs progress but I ended up with just the one and a just about functioning level design. If you take a look at the post-compo version you can see closer to how it was meant to be, but still not there completely.
I am thinking of updating the post compo with some of the things I never got to finish. Such as...
Moving enemy types that "patrol"
Hidden "traps" that zap the soldiers
Grenades and destructible walls
New Weapons
Request Reinforcements
And probably a few other bits as I go.
Overall I am pretty happy with this one. It's more of a case of "it works, but I didn't get to add the polish" rather than it missing core parts of the game. The level design suffered most as that was left until the last hours and didn't get the care and energy it needed. One thing I wanted was for players to grow attached to their soldiers but have to sacrifice some of them to move forward. This means you play in a way where you have "favorites" and keep leveling one of them up at the expense of the others. I should have added a "request reinforcements" option though as the only way that more soldiers arrive is when you have one left... might change this later. I was planning multiple small objective based maps and ended up with one, fairly repetitive level. May address this in a future version.
My closing though are that this is a fairly solid foundation that I could make something more out of and I am happy with that.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/advanced-battalion
Hope you enjoy playing what I made as I had a lot of fun making it.
See you next time!