Does youtube do some big compression on videos? I just uploaded my first video and the moving parts have quite strong compression artifacts (while the original video has not, recorderd with fraps).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fjFwc7W1jU
...and I have a Mac :scream: :cold_sweat:
Inferno is a wave-based arena shooter set in a hellish realm where you fight hordes of demons and robots. You can fight from a wide-range of weapons, including a Laser Beam Staff and a Shotgun.
Inferno was created by Zyro, Jackass and myself. If you are interested in playing the game, or listening to the soundtrack go to the links below.
So I made Pixel Driver for LD JAM: https://casualgamesnu.itch.io/pixel-driver
But I've keep working on it and would like to upload new versions. My plan is to use "LDJAM version" in the name of the JAM version and in parallel use another name and version and make it very clear in the download instructions.
Is that allowed?
Hello everyone :)
I just published a new version of my compo game the last light :)
give it a try :) i contains a lot of improvements based on the feedback i have received (and also additional content :D)
* Link to my compo entry *: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-last-light
Hi there ! Fory first ludum dare I made a little retro runner where you control a gear based robot ! You can go check it out here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/runn-score Thanks for all the feedbacks and ratings I had ! It's amazing ! Ratings and feedbacks are still welcome ! Here is some screenshots ! ->
It's very lonely and dark in space
All of the projects I previously started were never finished. Not from the lack of resources or skills, but from just how insanely high I used to set the bar. It was always my mind, nothing else, keeping me from finishing. To be fair, even for this project (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/comms), I set the goal a little bit above my reach: somewhat AAA look, VO, high quality sound effects, etc. I'm yet to get a voice actor.
The lit interiors look cozy and safe...
...Contrasting with uncomfortably dense darkness
One important thing I learned is to prioritize getting the project released over hitting overly high quality standards ("overly high" for an one-person developer). This means that some things have to be replaced or removed, e.g. I had to replace VO with text boxes that narrate what's happening in the game. I think it doesn't break the immersion as much as mute subtitles would, and it doesn't leave player wondering what's going on.
The story is explained through text boxes
Now I'm getting back to some of my previous projects, and my mind now seems to be able to draw a development path that has an actual end, and considers solutions that get the thing done timely, instead of doing something overly ambitious that takes indefinitely long (e.g. writing a level generator for a game, going crazy with features for it, never finishing it, forgetting there even was a game in the first place).
That said, do I consider Comms finished-finished? No. I'll keep adding more to it, take it to Steam, and hopefully start making money. But besides Comms, I've a lot of projects to get back to and finish.
Follow me on twitter (@biocrust) for updates!
Ok so we are very proud of saying that based on all your critiques we made an 1.1 version of the game now you can run whyle you attack, walk for both sides and the best thing we implemented a way better camera we also removed some minor bugs nothing special but thats what we have for now hope you guys like the new version https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/drain-2
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/drain-2
Hi all!
That's my first my post, I hope that I will join in next edition of LD :) .
I am a developer of Fat Fireman - very simple game, which I like but it doesn't look as I want it. But overall, I made that in 16 hours with all assets, so I'm somewhat impressed :) - but later I saw your submissions and I was shocked about high level of your work. Wow!
I want to thank you for all your comments, ratings and feedback - you are great, and changed my vision of game development. I work as an intern in gamedev company, and for a long time I have in my mind that I MUST develop games to be in market. But making games should be fun :). Ludum Dare was my first experience for a long time, where I made a game without stress (or with good stress - to finish game ;P ). I made a game, help my parents, visiting girlfriend, spending time with family during weekend. And it was fun - as rating your games which was great experience and I feel that I belong to some type of community. Thank you again, developing games could be fun again :D.
This is Fade. A story about doing what's right despite all odds.
If you're into atmospheric games, I think you'll like it. I had you in my mind when doing it.
Play it at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/fade
We put a lot of effort to make you like it! GAME: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/scale-of-life
another 3% of games are ranked from yesterday!
Thanks to Zack West @zwrawr who created some wonderful live charts of our rating progress, you can see some examples of his charts below.
Keep up the good work: playing, rating, and leaving quality feedback. Remember if you need ratings, the best way to get them is to get out and play, rate, and leave quality feedback. The sorting algorithm does a really good job!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/astromouse
The basic idea of this game is quite simple: you play as an astronaut that have to carry all the task in a spaceship: pilot, fire laser and produce power. What makes this game so ingenious is the fact that you're alone and than you can just do one think at a time.
Want to move the spacecraft ? Play the hero in the command room
Want to fire laser? place him the the turret room etc..
Try it! It really worth it !
Want to be reviewed here ? You need to have less than 20 votes, be web playable and have a good quality game. I do one post per day so I wont be able to post every game. Send me an email at savemygametoday@gmail.com
You can also check my game to encourage me digging those rough diamonds. :wink:
But if you did not play it yet, be sure to check it out! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/spacy-adventure
First of all, thank you all for ratings and feedback! This is my first game, so I appreciate the opportunity to learn from this!
I'm happy to say that I've made enhancements to my game based on the great feedback provided by you folks here at LD39. I'm hoping that the post-jam version will pose more of a challenge. Whether you've played it before, or you've yet to see it... I'd love to hear what you think! :-)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/runnerbot-ld39entry
If you haven't ranked my game yet, just know that there have been several meaningful changes to the base game since my jam entry. You can see what's different in the Changelog (see V.1.1a and anything after that).
We made a trailer for our game, because why not? If you haven't played it yet, you now have a glimpse of what's to come.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3PC7tOfIjw
The Overseer should be fully playable now with no annoying game breaking bugs! Go give it a go, any feedback is appreciated. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-overseer
Thanks for playing and rating Turtle's Quest. And for all constructive feedbacks :)
If you haven't played our game, you can check it here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/turtles-quest
(p.s. if you leave your link in the comments, I'll play and rate them :) )
We have hit 50 ratings on MoonBall!
I am very happy to know this!, Are you?
Within 5 days. We hit 50, Can we hit a century in upcoming days?
Not sure
But please, Do play and rate my game MoonBall - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/moonball
Watch the official gameplay and make sure to subscribe our channel! For more non - monetised content!
https://youtu.be/PvonZb_fW9c
Want me to play your games?, Leave your game's link in the comments. I will play and rate them
Peace \/
So during this LD we managed to make a decent playable build with win/lose conditions, it still has some issues obviously, but thanks to the community's feedback, we've managed to iron out a few things, so thanks again to everybody who gave the game a shot so far :D
Here's the first Updated Build in web form : Power Bot Update 0.3
And Here's whats new at the moment :
You can also play the original version and local Windows build on our LD39 entry page
So what are you waiting for ? Come fix these generators and shock those rogue bots :)
Third's the charm they say, right? Time to have a look at our Ludum Dare 39 entry with @Mindhead.
Check out Gain Quest: The Art of Muscle
Considering how disappointed I was at my own personal performance last time around, I can safely say that I'm relieved. I had this idea pretty much instantly from the get-go, which enabled us to really hammer down on the work right away (well, right after some sleep). We decided to really tone down on the scope which resulted in a much more comprehensive end result. I had some downtime due to some electrical outage, and yet we we're able to push a submission in good time.
What went right?
* We aimed for a small game this time. This is the main takeaway for anyone who has participated on Jams and hasn't gotten preferable results. Large-scale ideas will most likely not succeed, for 72 hours, let alone 48 hours, is simply not enough time to flesh out those intricate details. Scheduling and concentrating becomes easier the less filler you have. Even more so, people rarely play LD games for more than 5-10 minutes, so having less content makes it easier for you to make that 5-10 minutes awesome. Add to that how much easier it is to test your game. KEEP IT SMALL. This is obviously something we failed at last time.
* Accept that you're going to run out of time. Instead of trying to desperately include things I really liked, I actively shortened our feature list as soon as I had the hunch that things weren't going to get done in time. That was pretty often, and resulted in a playable, fun little game instead of a possible bug-crash-fest.
* I started on the UI right away. First, this game was very UI-oriented, with minigames done with UI components being the main mechanic. Second, I have a slight disdain towards Unity's UI system all things considered, so I thought blasting through the painful process from the very start will help me afterwards, and also help with the concurrent problems regarding the lack of visual feedback we've been having in earlier entries. I was right, and while there is still to improve upon, we performed much better on that area overall.
* The choice to go with 2D. While 3D is very much manageable and my usual preference, 2D just usually requires less work from both graphical and coding perspective. It is also lighter.
* I designed a more efficient, yet still simple state machine to run the game loop. Incidentally, it does not require much code to create a custom IEnumerator-swapping State Machine complete with transitions. Such state machine can make sequential gameplay so much easier to code and manage than with the quick-and-painful Update-loop switch() type crapjob I had in my two earlier entries. Sometimes a more complex solution can land you an easier time afterwards, so plan carefully. This was an adaptation of an earlier, more complex State Machine I had made a Node GUI Editor for, so I had enough experience to build one quickly from scratch.
What went wrong?
* Did not take enough breaks. I'd like to believe I did, but the fact of the matter is that I was mostly bashing my keyboard 24/7. I didn't sleep much at all, didn't go get some fresh air, and all that combined really toned down my ability to work efficiently the longer it went on. This is the main reason for mistakes, errors and especially balancing issues in the game. It's a fact, yet I still can't win over my obsession to just keep going :P
* No documentation. Ok, I had a small, unfinished feature list lying about somewhere but other than that, I had no documentation on what we were doing. Luckily we had the idea rather clearly set out, but still, it's a grave mistake to not plan things "on paper" and resulted in some time wasted on trying to remember what I was supposed to be doing.
* Not much actual game-making documentation either. Not really game-related, but I'd have really liked if I understood to leave a stream on or something to catch my working hours on tape. It's a thing that would only make that time even more valuable as a learning experience, considering all the split-second solutions and efforts you're making to race for that finish line.
* Still not enough time left for sounds. This is more of a pet peeve for me, and pretty much related to me simply not being in best shape at the last day. In any case, in reality sound often happens to be one of the most crucial things in getting the feel of the game right, and I didn't get all music and sounds in and that always bugs me. I should start prioritizing them earlier, or try making them the centerpoint of a game for a change.
What was left missing? * Better balancing of minigame difficulties. * Other random people training in the gym. * Status effects that alter the game.
So, we had a blast with this Ludum Dare. I'm currently playing and rating games, and hope everyone else had fun with their creations! Can't wait 'til the next one.
After all the positive feedback I got on https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/pixel-driver I decided to keep on working on it and this is the first update since the LD Jam, checkout the details and some tech insights here: https://casualgamesnu.itch.io/pixel-driver/devlog/6844/more-randomness
PS make sure that you pick the LD JAM version if you want to rate this game.
I have been rating games like crazy.. And I would like to have a more even number :grin:
Link me your games and I'll check em out until I have 100 rated games :thumbsup:
PS: If you already have a ton of received raings, odds are I already rated your game :)
After testing and rating a few dozen games, I found a few hidden gems. Without talking too much, here are my favorite games which you should totally check out!
All these game are definitely worth your time, give them the attention they deserve!
Try out the Leech on Mac by taking a quick look at this video. Here's the game btw: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/$37134
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPXuo7ZMGdg
We added controller support for our game!
Play: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/night-driver
Hi all so I've just fired up for my stream and and my target audience to day is everyone who made a game for LDJAM39! gladly come by: https://www.twitch.tv/jacksendary if you want your game played, simply just link it in chat, and I'll add it to the queue of games to play! - Please add a note if it needs to be downloaded or played in a browser, ONLY accepting links to ldjam.com!!! now on with the show which will start shortly! :)
https://www.twitch.tv/jacksendary
Hey folks! I want to do a little post-mortem / how-stuff-works post about one of the parts of my game that I thought turned out well, and hopefully encourage people to try the same kind of approach in future projects. This is what your character in Shutdown looks like:
…and this is how much code it takes to draw it:
love.graphics.draw(quadMesh)
How? Well, I lied (gasp!)—there’s more code. Everything in that animation is being drawn by a fragment shader. If you already know what that is, skip this paragraph and read on. Otherwise: a fragment shader is basically a small program that runs on the GPU for every pixel in a thing you’re drawing (in this case, a simple square). Unlike drawing libraries you might be used to, there’s nothing high-level to work with: there’s no “line here”, “circle there”, “gradient this way”; each pixel has to figure out what color it is independently. If you want half of the screen red and half of it blue, then each pixel has to do the math to figure out whether it’s on one side or the other and turn itself red or blue accordingly. This sounds complicated, but it lets you do some fantastically cool stuff—if there’s a mathematical way to express some pattern in an image, you can draw it with a fragment shader. Also, since the pixels are all independent, the GPU can do a ton of their calculations in parallel, which is way way faster than calculating each pixel in sequence.
So what’s happening in this shader is less complicated than it might seem—there’s a few basic-ish fundamental components that’re getting mixed together in a way that your eye can’t quite follow. Here’s a simplified earlier version of the thing:
A little easier to follow, right? There’s a layer of wide triangular stripes moving continuously outwards, and another layer of narrower stripes moving continuously inwards, and they’re being blended together with the mask of three equally-spaced triangles which are oscillating in and out from the center. There are reasonably straightforward mathematical ways to express all of those patterns in terms of a given pixel’s location on the screen—it involves a thing called signed-distance fields, which is a way bigger subject than I can get into here but a lot of which I learned from Íñigo Quilez’s excellent articles. Each pixel, again, is doing all of these distance calculations and deciding which part of the pattern it’s in to determine its color. The final, full-color image is made up of three layers of evaluation of the pattern, each using a different color and running at a slightly different speed, which gives the overall pattern a neat sort of ghosting / echoing effect.
One really convenient thing about having an entire image procedurally generated out of numbers is that you can poke at the numbers and get a way different image. In this case, I realized that there was nothing particularly requiring that the pattern be made out of triangles—all the math functions I was using just took a number of sides to use for their distance calculations. It was barely any additional code (albeit with a lot of fiddling with color values) to make a menagerie of other digital creatures for your character to be chasing after:
An indispensable part of this whole process was Shadertoy, which is a website that lets you edit and preview fragment shaders in your browser. There’s a community of amazing people there who’re constantly making incredible things, all of which are open-source—I highly recommend spending some time browsing through the gallery and checking out how things work. You can see the in-progress-ish version of this “creature” shader on my page over here—edit the code (the “SIDES” bit near the top, for instance) and hit the Run button to see how the result looks.
So that’s about it—I ended up with these pretty nifty-looking animated creatures without having to draw anything and with, in the end, only 69 lines of shader code. Worth trying for your next game, no?
If you’d like to see all of these effects (and more!) in their full, non-GIF-compressed glory, Shutdown is right here. Thanks for reading!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJKRWPruE9U
Finally got OBS to not drop frames on this game.
So I had to make some of the fight happen earlier than intended for people to get what to do, as well as text on the HUD and some text instructions in the weapon select.
Here's hoping for a more enjoyable fight!
Would anyone want multiplayer duels?
Save My Plane ??
- Here is the game i made please do check out and score high 
Hello everyone,
I have released on itch.io the last version of Quoala, and probably the last one (I'll just need to correct english mistakes but after the game jam because I need help for that).
VERSION 1.1
Thanks for all your feedbacks, development is over. And If you didn't try it, don't hesitate to give your opinion about this new version ! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/quoala
This game is inspired by I wanna be the guy!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/d34th
... but people actually liked our game and left a lot of feedback! Now we have no doubts development must be continued. Linux build is on its way! I think we will add it tomorrow morning. We're working on the update to add some audio and make it more clear for newcomers when exactly they need to start typing. But we have a few questions for you, our players: - do you want a game mode without timer to just calmly explore all dialog outcomes? - what do you think about overall difficulty? - do you want to tweak difficulty by adding new contacts? - would it be interesting to see resulting dialogs on the endgame screen? - do we need to make clear bad/neutral/good answers? - would you prefer classic sentences instead of live-like language with smileys?
Please, try and comment. We really want to hear from you! Ofc ratings would be appreciated as well=) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/answer-me
As a bonus i'd like to post an early version of our cover. Our wonderful artist NeylaTL (@neylatl) made it right on the first day when we came up with the final concept=)
Hi there ! For my first Ludum Dare I made a little runner arcade-based you can go check it here -> https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/runn-score
Thanks for all the feedbacks and ratings that I had !
Here is some screenshots of the game !
We already got 240 votes! Can we reach 300? I also will very appreciate, if you support me on patreon :wink: Play the game here!
Many people have played our game and the feedback is mostly about that one thing - it's too hard to beat it, or even to enjoy playing it due to flawed balance and less than obvious controls. So we have a question for you, people who may or may not yet played our game.
Have you beaten our game or up to the challenge? Do you have something to say about this particular problem? Is it the balance? Is it the lack of tutorial? Would it be better to first present you some easy level to beat? Maybe we should consider adding little quests or achievments to guide players at first?
We would be glad to get all the feedback you could generously give us, any harsh words are welcome. We are not asking to vote for the game itself, but you are free to do it.
Here is the game. Looking forward to your comments!
The Game (If it will work for you) Here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/plasma-arena
Part 1 Here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/plasma-arena/the-making-of-plasma-arena
TLDR:
Windows is an awful platform to develop for. Bill gates is an evil man who made a terrible operating system and peddled his crap to computer companies and schools to establish a monopoly. He collaborated with U.S government to spy on the public as well.
Day 3 -7 : Porting
I develop my game on my linux laptop and use gnu Make and C. As soon as ludum dare is over, it is a simple process to package my game and make it compatible with all linux computers. Life is good. But, due to the impenetrable stranglehold windows has on the market, despite being an inferior operating system in every respect, I must port my game to windows. Windows always creates mind boggling problems when I develop for it. I have never been able to reach 100% windows compatibility.
Here is the list of problems I experienced (In order) on windows but not on linux
Memory management problems (Fixed)
Graphics driver inconsistencies (Still not 100% fixed on all computers)
Audio driver instanity (Fixed)
The Audio problems where especially devastating because I put a good amount of time into making audio for my game. The issue prevented audio from playing due to driver weirdness and I assume many gave the audio category 1 star due to there being the appearance of no audio. Graphics driver weirdness still prevails and It is absolute insanity. It will work perfectly on one computer and then fail in 3 different ways on other computers.
Sorry for the rant, just needed to vent about the state of personal computing.
I heard a rumour that you Ludum Dari (plural?) like making games. We run a partnered server over on Discord called GameDevNetwork for all things gamedev, whether that be in the form of code support, bouncing back story ideas or just sharing your lovely work.
GDN is a friendly, supportive development community that aims to help you become the best developer you can be!
We host monthly(ish) jams with fabulous prizes (by which I mean stickers and PR mentorship, we strictly avoid monetary prizes, we're here for creativity after all!) and love spreading community flair.
We also have a #gamejam channel reserved to contain the intense action of fantastic jams such as Ludum Dare.
Drop by and talk about anything from your Ludum Dare project to what your favourite pizza topping is over here: https://discord.gg/gdn :tada:
I'm also an avid game jammer/hackathoner, feel free to poke me about AR/VR, code things or just some of the cool projects you've worked on :heart:!
Oh hey! we've also got an awesome game jam coming up next month! Check that out here: https://itch.io/jam/game-dev-network-dragon-jam
It's been a week since the event, during which the verysoftwares entry ZETPACK-99 has reached the necessary 20 ratings. To celebrate, here's some notes about its level design, which has been very well-received.
But before reading, perhaps you want to try it yourself: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zetpack-99/
(1/5) During development, one important thing was making a solid level editor first. I worked with a database of reusable pieces, which made fast prototyping possible. I planned to include the editor with the game, but left it out for usability reasons. Certainly something for future versions.
(2/5) A key theme coming directly from the main mechanic was backtracking and reusing spaces. Besides being interesting as individual sections, each room also had to work as part of a larger strategy of power conservation. In the end, I felt like I succeeded - and also got positive feedback on this, which is a relief.
(3/5) Lots of iteration went into the progression of the scenario. I made sure that gameplay elements are introduced one at a time, even cutting out rooms that seemed to teach too much at once. This way, each game element is explored thoroughly, and the locations become more memorable. With as little explanation as possible, you are naturally lead towards more complex uses of your trail.
(4/5) The way rooms are loaded into the game isn't just a visual effect. It also allowed me to design open spaces, proper for your zetpack ability. If the game world were static, I would've had to limit the player's progression with walls and tunnels a lot more. Loading also made the world build up as you play, which is delightful.
(5/5) Whenever there's a new ability or object, I made sure the player can't progress without using it in a safe environment. It's an interactive method of learning by doing, familiar from metroidvania type games.
Well, it's good to write down these making-of thoughts before I forget. I am overall satisfied with my LD39 entry, it's quite a complete experience in itself but also has potential for further development.
BONUS: Currently doing LOWREZJAM, carrying the creative momentum from Ludum Dare - I enjoy designing virtual environments, and this time I'm doing so in a tiny raycasted world. Here's some sneak peeks:
Before making all of my actual art and animations, I made a mostly-functional prototype with crappy placeholder images. Does anyone else have any funny placeholder or "programmer art" to share?
You can also play my game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/mountaintop-groovy-robot-laser-battle
We're almost hiting 100 ratings. We couldn't be more happy with your feedbacks!
Thank you Very MUCH ❤ A neon hug to you All!
Thank you for all your votes :smile: :kissing_heart: :thumbsup: Also thank you for all your kind and usefull comments.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/daemon
I've been playing and rating games all weekend, the amount of work and talent is as always incredible.
For my 12th LD game, I made a bullet hell with a unique absorb mechanic, and I'm so proud! I wonder if anyone would like to read a post-mortem on it, I'll gladly write one
<3
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/fuse-cell
Congratulations everyone, once again!
I'm live streaming games on https://www.twitch.tv/timbeaudet so join and come hangout. I prefer to play games while the developer is in the stream so that takes precedence over other games in queue without developers.
I've been working on a better version of our XenoSiphon game over the last few days.
It will be set in a crashed ship (which could be a model/diorama) with the camera focused in designed positions for each 'room' - so that gameplay can be more like a traditional platformer. Still trying to get to the escape pod before your power runs out and avoid the XenoSiphons who are attracted to any elecricity.
I've blocked in the rooms of the ship and started the whitebox layout of the medi-bay and a joining room. I wrote a bezier spline editor and a spline follower component to make it really easy to string this little demo together (off-site gif link).
We still need a few more ratings on our Jam entry - play it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeHwpuF6EaQ
We are very thankful and really surprised with all the positive feedback we have received. If you haven't played our game, try it here
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/lost-in-translation-at-space
The idea of using only voice commands was risky, but we've been thinking on it for a while, and what better opportunity to try it than a Ludum Dare. The game currently works only on Chrome (Desktop and Android) because it uses the html5 speech recognition api, and also you need a microphone to play it. Because of those restrictions we uploaded a gameplay video for those who are not able to run the game on their machine. You can find the video on our entry page
We have lots of ideas on how to improve the game, and we definitely want to make a post event version, so any feedback is welcomed and encouraged.
Thanks in advance for trying our game, and congratulations to all for the amazing games this community is creating :tada:
Hey. I made some changes according to the feedback I received from the first version of my game. Here is the updated game link: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/697238. Try it out! Also post games in comments for me to rate please. Thanks, PhasedEvolution
Every jam, we follow a certain tradition - we say "we're gonna make something minimalistic so we can do a more relaxed jam" and usually end up with "this is the farthest thing from minimalism". This time was no different. The only difference this time was in the sense that I had even less time to work on this (work on Monday, had a gathering to attend on Friday), so it was effectively 2 days. This also compounded with our usual problem of teammates being 6 and 12 hours apart from each other timezone-wise.
Instead of the usual detailed what went wrongs and right list, I'll mainly talk about our process this time (from my perspective as the programmer / designer).
GRAPPLING HOOKSPost theme reveal, ideas were thrown around - starting from kings losing power to running after batteries. Someone at some point mentioned grappling hooks like the ones in Attack On Titan (maneuver gear) are cool. And everyone else was like YAS GRAPPLING HOOKS ARE COOL WE'RE GONNA MAKE A GAME WITH THAT!
Didn't take long to come up with an idea around that, since we went with the least nuanced and most literal interpretation of the theme. Our original idea had the player running, jumping and hooking around, building, recharging and upgrading turrets, as well as attacking enemies with the hook.
This may have been our first mistake. We built a game around a feature because we thought it was cool, cramming the theme in. We didn't ask "Why do we need this feature again?" (I asked it actually, the reply was because it's cool.)
This was a mistake, not because it's a bad idea - but I spent almost the entire 1st day getting the player movement and hooking just right, trying out several combinations.
FEATURE CREEPThis left the 2nd day for... literally everything else from turrets, AI, player attacking, recharging, a building and upgrading system etc. Around midway through Sunday, after I programmed the system for turret upgrading in, I decided - screw this. I wouldn't be getting enough time to balance anything with different upgrade levels, seeing as I'd barely have any time to finish programming all of the systems. I could forget about designing a level and waves.
PLAYER AGENCYAt that point, we decided to scrap the upgrade, building and player attacking systems (even if I had the upgrade system programmed in). We'd be doing just the core running around with hooks (cuz it's fun), recharging turrets and managing resources. We decided to take away control from the player.
This led to our 2nd mistake - taking away agency from the player to some extent. The player never had any direct interaction with the enemies, and basically once enemies ganged up - you'd have nothing to do but hopelessly watch things get destroyed (it also didn't help that it's not the most balanced game, considering I had like an hour to program the waves).
TRUSTING TEAMMATES TO GET SHIT DONEBy Sunday 4 am, I finished programming everything - but the game looked like this.
I had to go to sleep, and the artists in our team are 12 hours away from me timezone-wise, so I told them that I'm gonna go to sleep and you guys need to make it beautiful by tomorrow.
I woke up to this.
Quite a change huh? I love having teammates I can trust without telling them what to do. :) (Ignore the background, it's controlled through code.)
TRADEOFFSAnd I proceeded to upload the game after that, which is where the jam version is at. Sure, the artists changed some depth layers over the UI and you can see the UI arrows going beneath walls in the jam version, but that wasn't a big deal considering I had to push the level's design almost entirely up to them this time. Are we satisfied with the end product? Can't say on behalf of the others, but yeah - to an extent for me. I keep thinking whether we should've kept all the features and removed the hooking, or kept the hooking and removed features (like we did). Giving weight to these tradeoffs are the hardest decisions in a jam.
Protip for next jam: Make it minimalistic for once.
Oh, and you can play our game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zapdune
DEAR GOD! There where so many little bugs in my game that made it impossible to run on some computers! Finally it will run on all of my test computers! Do my a favor and go try it out! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/plasma-arena
Bug fixes, balance, difficulty levels and intro/game over screens!
The game is finally starting to match the epic (and ridiculous) vision I had in my head.
I would love for some experienced game devs to play and give me some feedback + tips.
Now I'm off to bed 'cause it's almost 5am and I'm about to collapse!
Edit:
Oops, forgot to add a link
After the jam I did one small bugfix and some porting, so there are now both Windows and OSX versions available.
But, I also realized the game page was really bland, so I worked up some character art for the Doctor in my game!
As well as recording a final gameplay GIF to show off what you're gonna be playing before you download!
I'm short on votes, but have had good feedback from the people who have played so far. Hope I can make the minimum before voting ends, so please help! I'm trying to play as many of everyone else's entries as I can, too. There are so many great jam entries to enjoy!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/patient-out-of-time
If your game is a web game, send it to me! :D
This is my second LD, and luckily, this time I knew the rules about the voting system (unlike last time). So this time I reached 60 votes :') (unlike the last time, where I barely made it to the minimum limit right before the result day. I'd almost given up hope of seeing any final results). Seeing these ratings is no less than getting paid for a tough task you did, and it feels great :D. I want to thank the community for being awesome, and also everyone who has spent time playing and rating, especially the ones taking time to leave long and detailed votes. Thank you everyone :D
By the way, here's a product placement. If anyone wants to play my game, here it is:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/motherboard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikouUdeEFRY&feature=youtu.be * https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/fuuuuuuck * https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/fuuuuuuck * https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/fuuuuuuck
The year is >2063. Refrigerators have become self-aware. For the first time you can experience a mind-lifting adventure of a refrigerator running on batteries seeking the meaning to existence.
"Oh, and don't forget to drop a comment/feedback so we can return the review-favor!" - Bosch KGE36BW40, year 15 of the Refrigerator era
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/is-your-refrigerator-running
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/is-your-refrigerator-running
It's as the title says, you can now play Scrapjunk Couriers in your browser right here: https://rebtf.itch.io/scrapjunk-courier
It also does technically work on mobile devices but the window size doesn't scale so unless you have a massive device then you'll have half the game cut off. You also can't press any keyboard buttons so if you lose you'll have to reload the page.
It was a super simple change as well, I made the game in Game Maker Studio and I did already have the HTML5 export but when I tried it during the jam it was super laggy and all the sprites were on the wrong objects. Later on I did a bit of research and found that I literally only had to press one button, to clean the project asset compiler cache, and it worked perfectly.
So if you haven't already played my game or were previously unable to I'd love it if you could check it out!
This is my second Ludum Dare and my first time compo
I'm too excited to create the Post-Jam version so I need a lot of feedback.
Comment your game so I can rate and give feedback too.
Game Link:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/lucis
This is my first ever ever ever Game Jam, hope you like it, but please dont expect too much, but I did my best, enjoy ;)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/power
I made a timelapse of the development of my entry!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/powerwatch
Hi folks! Some of you guys reported problems with our game related to random crashes and an annoying bug with the double jump... Fortunately we were able to solve it!
You can keep giving us your feedback here. Thanks!
PS: If you want to get the improved version of the game, you can play it here.
So I'm quite unfamiliar with the new site but I swear last time there was a Dare to Play? This entry more than ever is one which I'd love to watch someone play, but there doesn't seem to be a place for streamers/youtubers etcetera!
Incidentally, I didn't get to post much of a journal in these last few entries. This time was similar, but I had a blast helping my friend out - having someone to program alongside myself was a fresh change and really handy. Also the first 3D LD entry I've done, though Cameron did the modelling. That'll be on me next time :)
Also the first time, I believe, that I have used my voice in a game, and I think it really helped add to the creepy atmosphere. Both Cameron and I don't enjoy horror games, but damn if we didn't make quite a spooky one for three days! I urge you to check out the Robotic Ethics and Morality Server - REAMS!
No idea how to post images in this new-fangled site so I'll just link to imgur
ICYMI Here's some things recently fixed:
- Fixed jumping not always responding.
- Made platforming motion more reliable.
- Fixed mouse moving outside of window.
- Fixed survival probability not displaying as a percentage.
You can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zombies-and-rvs
At the same time do not miss the opportunity to leave your feedbacks about the game :stuckouttonguewinkingeye:
Odisseus : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/odisseus-1
I do weekly game development vlogs, so In this week's video my brother and I discussed our game ChargeBot! Watch it and let us know what you think! :smiley:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1YnUjjGhRg
You can find the game here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/chargebot
I think it's finally time to announce that i'm going to remake my LD39 entry: PowerCrisis!
Here's a sneak peek:
GAME: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/scale-of-life
I heard a rumour that you Ludum Dari (plural?) like making games. We run a partnered server over on Discord called GameDevNetwork for all things gamedev, whether that be in the form of code support, bouncing back story ideas or just sharing your lovely work.
GDN is a friendly, supportive development community that aims to help you become the best developer you can be!
We host monthly(ish) jams with fabulous prizes (by which I mean stickers and PR mentorship, we strictly avoid monetary prizes, we're here for creativity after all!) and love spreading community flair.
We also have a #gamejam channel reserved to contain the intense action of fantastic jams such as Ludum Dare.
Drop by and talk about anything from your Ludum Dare project to what your favourite pizza topping is over here: https://discord.gg/gdn :tada:
I'm also an avid game jammer/hackathoner, feel free to poke me about AR/VR, code things or just some of the cool projects you've worked on :heart:!
Oh hey! we've also got an awesome game jam coming up next month! Check that out here: https://itch.io/jam/game-dev-network-dragon-jam
After all of this amazing feedback and ratings we got to 75 ratings and what i wanna do now is kinda crazy and kinda impossible for me but can DRAIN get to 100 ratings thats the challenge im giving to you guys and to me lets see if until the end of this friday DRAIN can get 100 ratings
link if you havent played : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/drain-2
Thank you all for your feedback. With your help we've passed the neccessary threshold so now we're officially in competition :)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/unlit
Gameplay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDbC72TaL58
http://edocentrique.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/gamepreview900x600helloelia.png
Heya, it was a really long week after the LD, I didn't have time to promote my game or anything, so I'm taking time now to do so ! Have a look at my entry, some of you may recognize the universe (all my compos are in the same one so...) I hope you like it. I'll review every one I can of course, as usual. Anyway, hope you had a great time, I did.
See you soon, Edo Miyamoto!
Back in ludum dare 38, people just posted word arts of their game. I joined the bandwagon back then.
Please play my game Lucis:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/lucis
Well, since this was my third ld (although I don't really count the first one because I only had about three hours to spend on the game) I figured it might be time for me to do my first post-mortem!!
Initially I couldn't come up with any good ideas for the theme, so I decided to skip this event. Later that day in the shower (seemingly THE place to have ideas) I thought of an interesting and new concept (at least for me :grin:) : an idle game.
More importantly, to pass the time I'd implement a physics based toy: the lightbulb.
The scope of that concept left a lot of time for polishing the physics, graphics and sound design of the play thing. The actual gameplay came out a little too boring though.
Part of my idea was to make the bulbs power deplete faster the more the computer's CPU is used. Working in Godot I figured a custom module would do the trick. It turned out that to compile Godot with a custom module requires a lot of other software which, like the DirectX SDK is bundled in a WindowsSDK download of about 2.5GB!!! Sadly, my PC already os really low on storage, so I had to drop that. Not to mention that, after installing all that I'd still have had to figure out how to actually code that module, having never worked in C++ before :smiley:
-How to write custom modules for Godot (kinda... may come in useful one day though) -Writing shaders in Godot (check the shadow under the time display when the lamp comes near it) -I definitely need a more professional microphone than my phone :grin:
That's it for now, thanks for reading! Check out the game if you haven't already!
Have a good one!!
I am acctually working at post-jam version of my game. Many peoples complaint about lack of progress meter, so I add it. It is simple but will works. I will publish that when I do more changes/updates.
I think about change a model of ship (to little less smooth, more in asteroids style). Maybe I will add mines which will explode when you come to close? Player need to keep distance or shot them down.
Any other ideas? What you want to change? What you want to add? Maybe next stage of game?
Play, rate and give me feedback!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/asteroid-runner
Hey everybody, I've been playing and rating a lot of games, but this one was especially good. I'm really sad that it has only 12 ratings.
Sure, it doesn't have too much gameplay - it's just one big level - but the graphics are SO detailed. Please check it out, I really think it deserves more.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/voltrush
This is part 2 of me playing some of your games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQCQ5LjoLgg
Thank you all for submitting your games and watching! But before you post some more links in the comments, be aware that I won't make a part 3 :sweat_smile: This little series was just intended to be a quick one-off, but in the end, it became quite a project in its own right.
Gotta go, I have a documentary to finish!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOz9nNVTS6M
It aint easy being metallic and running low on energy. Sometimes you've gotta tangle with a tough crowd to survive.
Got a game you'd like to submit? Use this handy Google Form! http://bit.ly/LarryDoesLudum39
Heya everyone! We'll be live on Twitch for at least the next hour or two rating your games, so please feel free to stop on by, say hi, and let us know if you'd like us to take a look at your game.
If you're just in a game-rating mood yourself, check out our game, Shoulda, Coulda but Didn't. You can help Will and I drive to the Aaghshop in a run-down electric car along a windy road with a number of off-road distractions.
We had a blast working on ZapDune this LD. This time around, there were two artists working in the team - Me and Rahul. We mixed the art up- both of us worked in part on the background, sprites and other things. So...wouldn't this mean there'd be a clash of art styles? Of course there was.
My Assets:
Rahul's Assets:
We didn't even stick to the same palette, heck, we didn't even stick to the same theme, as you can see!
So how do you get the overall art to look coherent and compatible when there are two different artists, each with their own different style, working on the same thing? This is what worked for us - putting a 1 pixel outline around all foreground elements!
The reason this was successful was because it was pixel art- and we already had the screen and asset sizes decided. Not only did it make the art look consistent, but it also improved the overall readability of the game so you could distinctly see which elements were part of the foreground and which weren't.
This was an improvisation, really, we never sat down to discuss what the things were going to look like and decide color palettes in advance - we should've done that! We were lucky this time - we'll definitely keep these things in mind next time.
Here's the link to out game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/zapdune
Check it out and judge the art for yourselves.
Sunseeker is our first Ludum Dare project. And we tried our best to make it worth your time. Even now, we continue our work to make Post Event version of the game even better. And the first visual update is a clot of sun. :sunwithface:
We read all of your feedback, draw conclusions, fix and supplement the game to bring the idea to its logical ideal state. Don’t worry, game is not as hard as in the base version now. :upside_down:
Thanks to everyone who played and appreciated our game. We overcame the 50 points mark (Woohoo!), and we hope that we will overcome the mark of 100. Soon we will prepare a global update, which will significantly improve the Post Event version of the game and add even more colors to it.
And do not forget to rate our game, if you didn't already done so: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/sunseeker
Ok I may be quite a bit late in making this, but anyways,
here is the first Android app to notify you of any new ratings and comments that your LD entry receives.
Just enter your entry's URL and the app will check in background for new comments/ ratings and notify you.
https://github.com/RishiRaj22/LD-Notify-App/releases
Don't forget to share it and feel free to contribute.
Another GIF from our game Modular Destruction Labs. Here we demonstrate the dangers of working in a laboratory environment without the correct protective clothing
You can build your own scientist-abusing robot on our game page here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/modular-destruction-labs
I really love pixel art!
So if you made a game with pixel art graphics, go ahead and post it in the comments :slight_smile:
Feel free to also take a look at my "game". I didn't manage to finish it so it's only a tech demo. Still, I'd love to hear what you think of the concept and whether I should finish it in the future.
I've now fixed most of the visual bugs.
If you have not played my game yet, there is no more reason not to try it :smile:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/daemon
Hello!
We've uploaded a video with a few of the shorts seen in our LD39 game as a trailer kind of thingy :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqvpdwdV9D8
Hope you like it! Play Chimster Gigafactory for the rest of shorts, all of them done with love ♥(the whole game is not longer than 3 minutes): https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/chimster-gigafactory
New version is available for Win, Mac and frequently asked Linux! Thanks to all who gave us their feedback and ratings=)
Changelog: - added background music and button sound - game now ends if all dialogs are completed in time - typing prompt added - focus stays on last character if you made a mistake
The upcoming patch is on its way!
You can find a link to the latest build here as always https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/answer-me
If u want to rate our game, please, download the original version on the same itch page. Version 1.1 is a post-jam update made for fun of our players. Thank you!
We created FACEBOOK PAGE and VK PAGE for CYEBERHELL CLEANER!
You are welcome! ^^
I've uploaded a timelapse video for creating my game, Tesla Defence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5JXVyRnerM
My game is based on real life events.
I live at a place that gets super crowded during the summer holidays, so running at a place like this is quite challenging. The sidewalks here are really narrow: I can pass one pedestrian, but if there are two or more they always try to use the whole space up, so it's impossible to get through them. Sometimes there are other obstacles like garbage, a pile of bricks, a parking car, and so on. Another random encounter are eldery people, who just completely stop moving when I get nearby. With all my respect, but could they just at least... try, maybe? Occasionally??
But my all time favourites are dogs. Tiny, tiny dogs with very long dog leashes, preferably with their owners talking on their phone, looking at something very interesting far, far away. The dog is on the right side, its owner is on the other. What do you do? Do you jump the leash and risk hurting yourself and probably the dog too? Do you rather run over the dog, or the owner? Or maybe you choose to run on the road instead...?
Dogs, get outta my way!
From time to time I've felt more like a video game character who has to jump away to avoid hitting other people and stuff. I regard this is as a test of my willpower. I've felt like this was a perfect fit for the current Ludum Dare theme, "Running out of power". So, this is the back story of my game. :)
If you think you'do better (hah!), give it a try: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/long-distance-runner
Hey if your game still needs a few rates, just write a comment. Then I'll check your game out! Maybe you can also try mine https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/powerman. SO go ahead and write a DIRECT link to your game into the comments!
Thanks to Zack West @zwrawr who created some wonderful live charts of our rating progress, you can see some examples of his charts below.
Keep up the good work: playing, rating, and leaving quality feedback. Remember if you need ratings, the best way to get them is to get out and play, rate, and leave quality feedback. The sorting algorithm does a really good job!
Boring technical guy from Volcanic Giraffe is here. If you don’t want to yawn while reading about coding stuff - better check our Galvanica game. It is much funnier that its source code :)
A good thing in JS-based open source game engines like Phaser.js is that you may patch them if needed. Phaser.js has structure obvious enought and lot of in-code comments which very help to understand what is going on. Some things could be configurable, but they are not for performance issues. Well, we are programmers here, aren't we?
One of problems we met: if one sprite is added to another one as child, it is drawn OVER parent sprite. That’s very useful if you want to draw a gun or some clothes. But we wanted to draw a shadow, and it shall be drawn UNDER parent sprite. Why to add it as child? Well, we’d like shadow to «inherit» some properties of main object (position, alpha, rotation, etc.). If not adding as child - we’d have to apply sprite’s props to shadow manually on every update.
Here how it looks by default:
What we did: overriden _renderWebGL method of Phaser.Sprite in our BaseItem class and changed order of rendering
So, how it goes now:
Much better, isn’t it?
Did you even fix/patch your game engine code during LD? It shall look like burning spaceship furniture in its furnace while flying… oh, wait, this is what Galvanica is about!
I can't even believe what I'm seeing. I want to thank everyone for playing my game and leaving feedback and rating it. It means a lot to me.
WOW! OMG!
Play my game on windows. I appreciate it: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/the-box-of-power
So I found time to make a new version way more enjoyable, and I do think it is easier with feedback (I tested it too much to know if it's hard :sweat_smile:)
Then... I would like you to meet... brand new glowing arrows!!! And there's a score display too!
I also added some noises in the menu so you can understand that I put an Options menu without having any options yet :face_palm:
You can play my game here : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/till-the-last-spin
The updated version is in the... Update section :sweat_smile:
If you already played my game, don't hesitate to give me new feedback about how it is now, it would be adorable!!
I have been using my Postmortem to collect all my thoughts about what went well and what didn't go so well. One thing that became very evident from the feedback was that Art/polish makes a massive difference in the reception of a game. I took some time after the jam (6-8 hours) to do some Art/polish. Those few changes made the game into almost a completely different game even though the base mechanics are exactly the same. You can see the difference below.
So have you had any similar experiences?
If you want to play the before and after, you can find them here: Artifact Dive (Post Jam is in the downloads on the itch.io page)
A procedurally animated rhythm game where you scare away a monster with the power of Funk!
Any feedback much appreciated. Also tell me if you feel like the audio is lagging behind on your system.
If you want me to rate your games: Just add yourself here!
Hi guys! Our game (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/last-job) is almost reaching 50 ratings! Thank you for that!
If you have not tried our game yet, we will appreciate if you do it and you give us feedback as we want to continue working in this idea. It will be nice if you vote us too ;)
Cheers!
Link to the latest game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/nightwalk
