I plan for Ludum 26 to cure my inability to finish games.
My tools of therapy:
Good luck to all,
Daan
Steve’s antics are “weird but funny”, which suits me perfectly fine!
As a first time ludumer I really was surprised by a lot of things. From the friendly Ludum enthusiasts, how well the honor system functions, the energy it takes to push on without a break, to the value of just pushing on when you start to doubt your original concept. Just having a finished game is such a great feeling.
Things that worked for me:
Things I wish I knew before I started:
I hope you guys enjoyed yourselves as much as I did.
If you have a moment, Give ‘Steve Can’t Zen’ a try!
Daan
Tags: Steve Can't Zen
The youtube celebrity Maxwell Damages reviews Steve Can’t Zen and other LD26 games.
Ok, maybe not a celebrity /yet/, but he is really funny! (Steve even got a harmonica tribute, can’t leave that unrewarded!)
Spermy and Petunia: Life is Short now available for download! (Windows, Java 7)
When a bowl of petunias suddenly yanked into existence miles above a planet, it finds itself plunging towards the surface in the company of a rather happy go lucky sperm whale.
Full disclosure, SaP: Life is Short uses some public domain sounds and music, and reuses some parts of Steve Can’t Zens framework.
Review page here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/minild-42/?action=preview&uid=22396
Thought I’d have some fun and post a little warmup entry this LD.
Can you use this glorious toy to create and share the wonderful hairdo’s from your dreams, all while the beat drops? Yes you can! Probably. I wouldn’t recommend it.
Download it here. (Windows, Java 6+ Jar)
You can see people’s creations here.
Anyway, I can’t wait to be waist deep in all your games, digging for gems!
LibGDX will be my weapon of choice For LD27. Beyond that Fireworks CS5, Audacity, some base code from my previous ludum entry Dreamcake Rescue (which you can get here), and the typical free content creation tools.
Daan
Tags: dubstep, hairdresser, libgdx, warmup
Thanks for all your Dubstep Hairdresser hairdo creations so far!
Amazing given how much your character bobs to the wobwobs!
Here are some of my favorites:
. . .
Is it Saturday yet?
Unable to finish, I made the game automatically open a webpage intending a victory screen plus post competition version. Bad form fueled by time shortage and sleep deprivation on my end. Luckily the first reviewer called me to my senses enough to fix it.
My question to you, what constitutes good form for releasing post competition versions? Wait till the judging period is over? One week? Two weeks? Are blog posts about it ok? Just trust the honor system? I’ve seen download links tagged on to reviews just days after a submission.
I sometimes get called upon at 3/4 am to deal with technical issues for a friend’s gaming community in the US. Downed website here, some crashed game servers there, it’s all in the game, and the vampire hours are fine.
This Ludum however, they got DDoS. hard. Got called both nights. And you know what? I /enjoyed/ getting my sleep cut in half and losing several hours to the roll of the dice. That’s right. Ludum made me a masochist. It felt like true initiation into the Ludum Dare, and I probably need help.
On another note, streaming was so much fun! Just having a handful of friends around made the experience so much more pleasant and entertaining. Plus the instant feedback helped a lot. Thanks to everyone (esp Liam and Flaterectomy!) who sat there whispering words of encouragement!
Love Your Pets went horribly wrong in some areas, mainly control scheme, levels and polish, but I think the graphics turned out great, and I’ll be able to salvage a great post compo edition out of it.
Anyway, time to play some of your games!
Darkness loving Xenomorphs invaded and severely damaged your ship. With the ships’ generator failing every 10 seconds, you have to use timing and sacrifice to save as many crewmembers as you can. To make your escape quota of course, so the damn ship’s AI lets you leave.
That’s Love Your Pets in a nutshell. Love Your Pet aims to be survival horror puzzler slash meat grinder in a scifi setting. It preys on the constant threat of the invisible evil, and on the player being helpless in the dark.
the main mechanic in the game is the duct grates, and avoiding those grates. Scattered about the map are grates with Xenomorphs in them. Crew members passing the grate wakes the Xenomorph. During the next blackout the Xeno will attempt to devour a nearby Ensign. The lights flip on and reveal a bloody corpse and a bloody trail leading to the vents.
Simple no? Grates equal death. Death equals horror. Or so I thought.
This is what really happened.
For maximum effect the player needed to be at least tensed up enough to dread the lights going out, only to be freaked out by the sudden fresh corpse.
In reality this did not happen. Prior knowledge of the grates is critical to the player understanding and getting immersed in the game, and this mechanic was simply not obvious. I hinted to it in the narrative of course, and the blood and damage to the grates helps, but since the action happens in darkness the players eyes are never drawn towards the danger.
How can we fix this?
To remedy this in the post compo version we need to educate the player beforehand to help build tension, and draw the players focus to the ducts, and the inherent danger.
A clear threat should help build tension better and enhance the survival horror theme.
Next up: Don’t Forget Adding Content!
This MLD45 coincided with my girlfriend and I acquiring a freshly baked Puppy!
We’ve been in a perpetual state of pee dodging, sock changing, fragmented sleep, and overdosing on cute.
Still eager to participate but with diminished mental capacity, I tricked a friend into ‘just making a game’ together. Bwoehahaha!
He occasionally sprites you see, but lacked a coder to get things out there. Each Ludum has been a great boost to everything I needed boosted, so figured he might enjoy it as well.
Out of this collaboration Sword, Stealth and Sausage was born, is a top down dungeon crawler/puzzler with a focus on a class switching mechanic to solve puzzles and a disturbing overdose of sausages.
Looking at all the other entries MLD45 entries it didn’t feel right submitting the game. It’s not exactly a text based Pac-Man. Instead we’ve decided to give it a proper polish and release it separately. It’s progressing great so far!
Tell us what you think!
Dev banter and some (low resolution Twitch.tv) gameplay:
Coding timelapse:
What do you think, should we use it for the October Challenge?
Timelapses! More timelapses! Ok, LD27 is far behind us, but getting things done counts right?
Dubstep Hairdresser Timelapse
Love Your Pets Timelapse.
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Time to put my cat^H^H^H brain in gear!
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Also just a quick promotion for the potato equivalent this LD, if you missed it ->
Tags: Bestiam Dare
And here I thought I was just making an innocent game about a silly floppy elf. Tooth decay was an afterthought.
Sounds fine right? Well, not exactly.
ಠ_ಠ Here’s another tip: Don’t write tips right after LD sleep deprivation!
While the game got quite a few comments, I wonder if any true tooth collectors discovered nefarious tooth fairy’s true plan and coincidentally the secret bonus level; the biggest tooth heist ever!
“Thanks for the teeth! Here are some railguns”
“Left by his team, this marine has been naturally selected to defend his commander from waves of Sulks and Gorgels. He must juggle his natural desire to shoot things with an overzealous jet-pack and resource greedy turrets!”
It has become a whirlwind of particles. And I love it.
Natural Selection 2 is a strange duck; trying to be an FPS and an RTS as the same time. It’s a difficult marriage but a loved one by many. It certainly sucks up my time in more ways than one. Given the level my team is involved with it it was the only choice for a demake.
Our first two man Ludum Jam, but I’ve been hugely enjoying the collaboration. @Flaterectomy did a great job on the art!
There can never be enough timelapses!
Art Timelapse: Flaterectomy
Code Timelapse: Meeeeeeeeee!
If you like what you see, you can try it out here!
Warmup weekend concept art. Going where the pixels take me!
Now to make a game around it. q_q;;
Hoping to have some fun next weekend! Using Java, LibGDX and artemis-odb, Tiled and Audacity. Prepping a little library too!
Hello my lovely devs! Hope you are having fun!
A Lady shan’t wait for things to surface!
Bring me treasure so our keep may grow ever stronger!
Day #1 complete, Signing off!
So many brick walls this Ludum. I feared for the timelapse!
Good thing anything looks good when you speed it up and add a spiffy soundtrack.
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If you’ve been crunching on your dayjob I salute you, fellow cruncher!
My girlfriend tells me it’s high time for a crunch break.
LD it is! (Just don’t tell her it involves coding D:)
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*Crunch Crunch Crunch*
I’ll be using the usual:
Java, LibGDX, Artemis-odb,
IntellIJ IDEA, Adobe Fireworks, Audacity,
And my libgdx-artemis-quickstart (github) library!
~