Great pizza’s from Papa Murphy’s ready to bake up. Fuel, glorious fuel.

So far, Ludum Dare is easy.

So, tips…hmmm…the only thing that really matters is scope. The less you attempt the better your chances of success. Start with a really small idea. Like an Atari 2600 sort of idea. Then reduce it further. Then reduce it again until you think “this is crap and not even worth doing”. Then you’re in the ballpark. A small, simple idea, nicely polished is better than not finishing or not polishing.

If this is your first LD, then the goal is just to try to complete anything. No matter how simple – even if you just make Pong – you will have made a game from start to finish and you learn more from doing that than anything else.

Try to shoot for entertaining someone for 5 minutes. Polish matters a lot. Try to have your whole game together as soon as possible. If you plan 3 levels, make 1, with an ending, then add more levels/content as you get time.

A good reality check. Every 30 min chunk of time is significant. You may only have a max of 60 of these time units. You have more than 60 things to do

/I smell my pizza cooking….yummm

I’ve followed Ludum Dare for a few years and really enjoy seeing what people create. I decided to take a crack at making a small game this weekend which will be simultaneously exciting and terrifying. Talk about crunch time.

I will be working on my iMac and intend to create an action shooter playable in a browser so the most people play it.

Engine: Unity Pro 3.5 (“Oh god, how does ___ work again? Sh!t”)

Editor: TextMate

Graphics: Pixen (2D retro style all the way due to time).

Sound: cfxr

Music: Figure (iOS) (assuming there’s any time left, lol)

Will definitely focus on a very small scale 2D game to have any hope of completing things in the very short 30-35 hours to actually make the game. Did a little pre-design thinking about what I wanted to do and hoping that I can just hit the ground running and loosely wrap the theme around the game. I expect any planning to fall apart exponentially as time marches on.

Hoping that “End of the World” wins just due to the Mayan stuff, so that would be appropriate

Need to run to the store for a food run real fast but here’s the obligatory shot of my desk where I will be chained for the weekend (Yes, Hobbit you may have to wait until Monday).

Good luck all. See you during and on the other side. Look forward to seeing what you all make.

I’ve been trying to rate as many games as I can and try to do a few a day.

I figure it’s worth focusing on the most active people as well. If you play and rate my game (and leave a comment so I can click back to your game), I’ll return the favor. May as well swap ratings in the final days of judging?

>> Here’s my entry <<

It’s very quick to get into and will take you 5 minutes total. Look forward to checking out more of your games!

Woke up at 3pm! Fortunately I think I’m pretty far ahead this time, being mostly done last night and just polishing and wrapping up today. But still, skipping shower and food – gotta work!!!

I didn’t have much trouble with the theme and took it literally. I went for a really minimalistic visual game where things are reduced as far as I can go, and the controls are minimal as well with left, right and jump. The gameplay is pretty run so far. You run to the right and avoid obstacles and see how far you can get. Trying to get it to where it has that “just one more try” feel.

Pretty happy with this entry as it’s more polished than my last due to be knowing my tools better and that generating more time for actual work. I just want it to be fun to play. That’s my #1 goal.

Here’s a peek at the game via Vine:

https://vine.co/v/bxgv30rnA65

I already see some great looking games. Some of you guys are way too talented

This game jam thing is addicting! This is my second Ludum Dare, the first being #25 in December where I made this game.

It was a fun learning experience and figuring out how to work best in a jam setting.

My new entry is The Road. It’s a minimalist looking game but has a high twitch factor arcade sense. You age and grow (get larger) over time and that makes it harder to avoid the dangers of life.

CLICK HERE TO PLAY THE ROAD!

I would be really appreciative if you’d check it out, play and rate it. Leave a comment and that will direct me to your game. I try to rate a TON of games each jam, so no post-n-run here.

I’m going to be available this afternoon so if you swing by my game and rate/leave a comment, I will do the same for you!

Play and Rate My Game!

I’m going to be rating as many games as I can in the next few hours and am already at a 100. Didn’t have as much time to rate in the last week as I wanted.

What went right?

• Super small scope. Picked an idea that was easy to do but left ample time for polish and iteration
• Played with tools beforehand like the autotracker.py script to randomly generate music. You should get stuck on a bug during the compo but never “how do I do music?”
• Had a better set of base code this time for doing text and basic housekeeping things like screen fades etc. More time to focus on the game/idea vs grunt work.

What went wrong?

• Still ran out of time and as a result there isn’t a nice ramping difficulty curve. End result is that the game is hard right off the bat. I kept intending to do it but as it was nebulous and not a 15 min task I let it slip. The fact that it wasn’t a 15 min task is precisely why I should have gotten it in as a major priority.
• Was pretty anal about submitting before the close time, but there’s a 1 hour grace period to submit. In reality I could have saved off what I had, and worked another 45 minutes and done more stuff and submitted, or fallen back to the saved / safe version. Next time

Overall, pretty happy with this LD.

Um,

Good luck all! Tweet me game ideas!

Ok I’m super wiped, but I put in a marathon session Friday night. I swore I’d do 5-6 hours and sleep, but um, yeah…

I have a lot to do but I’m pretty happy where I am. Most all the core mechanics are in, and what remains is art, sounds, polish and testing. That’s where I want to be.

The gist of it is you’ve crash landed on some strange planet and your suit will only hold about 10 seconds of air. So you run around levels grabbing air pockets, while avoiding, or fighting robots of Doom, and you can rescue the slave girl for health. Will work on robot ai and attacks, and balance. May toss in a couple more pickups, powerups or items.

The levels are randomly generated too, so that’s cool.

Here’s a pic. I’m hoping to do better art. We’ll see.

Where does the time go?

Up at 11pm after a 20 hour day. Looks like another 20 hours today. Will probably stay up till the 8pm LD deadline.

Good luck out there!!! TICK-TOCK!

Actually have time to do an ending screen!? After this I need to do sound effects, a few small pieces of art, then just playtest as much as possible. Should end up with a legit, finishable, complete game. It’s fast, so you can get through it in 5-10 minutes.

I just uploaded ROBOT PLANET and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. A lot of things I want to add, and I might extend it post-compo, but as it is, I think it’s my best effort yet. Hope you do, too.

I’m wasted after putting in 30+ hours this weekend. Time for dinner, Breaking Bad and sleep!!!

The game is here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=8631

Here’s some shots.

Hope you enjoy the game. I look forward to playing and rating a lot of games. Leave a comment on ROBOT PLANET and I’ll be sure to check your game out and rate.

I plan to play a bunch more games tonight as we’re getting down to the wire on voting. Would appreciate it if you’d take 5 minutes and check out my game!

Robot Planet on iPhone 5

I’ve been thinking about porting the game to mobile, as the quick session time seems to fit the platform. In fact I ported it to iOS last night and added swipe controls to move in the 4 main directions, similar to NimbleBit’s Nimble Quest. It works pretty well. In fact, the frantic swiping adds to the overall suspense and chaos of the game.

I’d improve the graphics, sounds, and add more planets and lots of robot types. I can see having several planets to unlock and you have to complete one to unlock the next. Each with a new setting, theme and robot types.

Please check the web version of the game and drop me a comment if you think you’d enjoy this on your phone. I appreciate the feedback.

I think I got everything set up and did some tests. I should be streaming my game all weekend if you want to drop by, or bookmark/follow my channel:

http://www.twitch.tv/georgebroussard

Good luck everybody! Let’s pray for a decent theme

I blew the first 2.5 hours trying to get streaming to work. Finally did but it was really slow (I have a good iMac, quad core…can I not stream 720p)? Any tips?

Here’s a shot so far.

I got a fair bit done.

• Levels are random via cellular automata so that will make for a neat little action roguelike?
• You can kill guys and pick up loot
• Basic weapon that “moves” and attacks
• You can destroy any wall in the dungeon and that’s kinda cool. Minecraft-lite? More like Wolfenstein meets Krogar the wrecking machine! Not sure what I will do with this yet, but my thought is to have some mazes that don’t complete (some don’t anyway) and hacking through walls will be how you get to other areas.
• You can find ladders and go down to another level

So the goal is to make a little rogulike where you kill stuff, collect stuff, smash stuff and descend for some uber item. I can pretty easily make the levels start small and get larger and more varied and you progress.

Overall I’m real pleased as I’ve  done three 2-d games in a row. If I can finish this it will be pretty neat. It’s going to be real close, but I can “see” most of it.

Thanks for those that watched my stream. Will stream again after sleep (maybe early evening). http://www.twitch.tv/georgebroussard

I waited a couple of days to write this to let my head clear and I’m not sure it is, so I’m just going to write it

This was a brutal LD for me. I slept 6 hours throughout the whole thing (1pm till about 7pm). I was up sat night from 7pm until close of LD submission. I clocked my time and I put in nearly 40 hours on this game and my second Twitch stream is nearly 24 hours! I was basically underwater most of the time and had too much to do so I was virtually never away from the computer. Whew. Don’t try this at home.

The unfriendly Underdeep.

What went right…

• Streaming. I decided to try to stream the whole process. It had good and bad associated with it, but I think it was a good experience overall. I had some dev friends watching and providing support. Some watchers posted some great ideas and it was fun to provide a peek at developing the game.
• Building on experience from 3 past Ludum Dare’s. I never could have done this as my first game.
• I finished and the game feels solid, controls well and is technically competent, due to Unity. I was able to make 16×16 pixel art look sexier with nice fog effects.
• I barely finished, and had it not been for doing 3 LD’s before and being as comfortable with the tools as I was, I would not have…and that said…I almost didn’t finish…

What went wrong…

• I over reached in terms of scope, but dammit, I wanted to make an FPS and a 3D game and make the leap from 2D. I knew it was going to be very difficult, and it was.
• Streaming. I hadn’t streamed before, so I had setup and technical issues. I spent the first 2.5 hours of the compo trying to get to steam on OSX (which has terrible options). I finally broke down and purcahsed Wirecast (which is not cheap) so I could do it well, then had lots of setup issues. As it was, there were still audio issues. So as usual, make SURE you have all your tech setup before hand…and not just tools/base code.
• I struggled with Unity a lot. I hadn’t really done enough work in 3D and had some issues moving things around, even though it turns out it’s trivial. I had some issues with my billboarding script messing with Unity moving things, and wasted lots of debug time. In short I spent 90% of my time implementing things and struggling, vs polishing and tweaking and getting to gameplay. As such the game is there but it’s pretty lite.
• I was displeased with the “AI” and it wasn’t working well. This was 5:30pm a couple hours before submission…and I started to re-write it, after being up since 6pm the previous night. Oh boy…it nearly fell apart. My head was too fuzzy to think. I was streaming and felt added pressure there to perform and the wheels were coming off. Literally a half hour before deadline I snagged some code from the Unity forums and just pushed guys around randomly with physics impulses and that seemed “ok” and avoided some of the other issues I was having (need to revisit a better way to billboard sprites that doesn’t mess with LookAt headings etc). But I was very seriously facing missing the deadline. My pulse was racing, my heart was beating, I ignored the stream for like an hour. I pushed the cat off my desk. I don’t have panic attacks but I imagine this was what one felt like.
• Massive sessions. The final was literally 26 hours at my computer with only a few 15 min breaks for food/restroom/clear head etc. That’s WAY too much, but it had to be done. I wanted to finish. I didn’t want to fail. I had streamers watching. Sacrifice the body I’ve done crunch mode in the game industry many times before, but this was more painful. Maybe it’s because I’m older now and not 30 anymore
• I was so rushed at the end that the sounds are complete throwaway and I’m disappointed there. No ambient cave/dungeon track, etc.

So, this was a beast of a project for me, but I leveled up a lot and could do a much better fps in less time next time (which I might). On one hand you want to reduce scope to increase chance of success but on the other hand, sometimes you just gotta say “f*ck it” and reach higher than your ability and see what happens

Hope you enjoy the game. Please rate it and comment and I will do the same in return.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 19th, 2013 at 11:55 am and is filed under LD #28. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I’m in again. I just can’t help myself. Ludum Dare is fun. Truthfully I wish it were more frequent. I have no idea what style game I’d like to make this time. Well, not entirely true. I’d like to make a 1981/2 Williams style arcade shooting/blasting game, but have no idea on style or genre. Will see that the theme is.

On creativity…originated from a friend at Remedy (IIRC) made this little chart on the Creative Process. I find it very accurate and particularly suited to Ludum Dare.

The Creative Process

Most everyone goes through the above on most any project from Ludum Dare to iOS to Steam to Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty. The trick is to not get discouraged in steps 3 and 4. Fight through it. Don’t second guess everything. Don’t doubt everything. Don’t give up.

Also there’s this fantastic video from Ira Glass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ResTHKVxf4 (hope it embeds, but it may not). Watch it.

Stay focused and lean and mean on the jam so you increase your chance of success. Don’t reach too far. Don’t scope too large. Better to do to little, and add, then get halfway into Saturday and realize it’s not gonna happen. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is finishing – something, anything. A complete work. Good luck!

Tags: motivation, tips

Struggling a little with this one, but I purposely tried to pick a game that I had no idea how to make so it will be a learning experience no matter what.

Trying to make a game focused on drowning. The idea being that you tread water and hold your breath and just try to survive as long as possible Trying for a more somber and serious approach vs being arcade-y and having pickups and powerups.

Struggled a lot last night with tech issues so not as far along in terms of art and polish as I’d like but that’s for tonight, as well as more mechanics and gameplay – to try to find the fun/skill/challenge.

Tread water, and hope.

Will be streaming in a few minutes over here: http://www.twitch.tv/georgebroussard if you want to check in over the rest of the weekend.

Been up since 6pm Sat night, so getting pretty tired. Think I’m about done apart from sounds and final polish and play balancing.

Stay Afloat

Or else…

This was a fun LD for me. I went in cold without a pre-disposition as to what genre game I wanted to make. I was a blank slate. In honesty this was due to bad preparation and planning, but it meant I had to pick an idea quickly and get to iterating.

Please play/rate my game and I’ll do the same.

How long can you last?

What went right…

• Streaming. I got the kinks worked out from last time’s attempt and this time it all went smoothly with voice/picture and everything from a technical standpoint.
• Settled on an idea quickly. Like a lot of people I took the top 3-5 themes and sort of wrote some test ideas for each. For Beneath the Surface I was going to do a game about drowning, or a game about being a gopher under a golf course, hiding from groundskeeper attacks, ala Caddy Shack.
• Super small scope. I wanted an idea that was simple. One-button, one mechanic, one idea. I was thinking about mobile games and zero training. A pick up and play and instantly understandable game.

What went wrong…

• I struggled with a major physics bug for several hours. I switched from 2D to 3D physics and back and forth a couple of times. I’d used physics for every game I’d ever made and knew it cold. Why weren’t gravity and impulses working properly? Turns out if you have an Animator component attached to your object, uncheck the “Apply Root Motion” box. I had no idea. None. It was my first time using the animation system. But as soon as I unchecked that box, everything worked flawlessly in terms of physics.
• The animation system bit me in the ass and cost me 3-4 hours – again. I still do not fully understand it, but someone in the channel mentioned “don’t have any parameters on your transitions” and it worked. I wasn’t even triggering the anims via the parameters, but once defined it appears Unity *requires* you to do so, vs triggering ala “animator.Play(“Swim”)”. The animation system in 4.3 seems to be a mess but perhaps I just need more experience with it.
• I had NO idea what I was making. It wasn’t a familiar genre with expected mechanics. I’d never made a game like this nor had one for reference. So I stumbled along until I found mechanics and things that seemed fun. But I went to bed Fri night thinking “yeah, this might work”.

In the end I think the game came out well. Most people score 40-60s. But you can break 100s and reach near 200s as the game has a narrow band of skill and timing you can exploit, so more skilled players can score higher, and there’s some tricks to learn. I’m pleased with that.

Please play/rate my game and I’ll do the same.

Looking forward to another Ludum Dare. Haven’t really been looking over the themes or thinking about ideas too much. Maybe a couple hours before it starts, after I wake up.

Tools:

• iMac 16g
• Unity 4.5.3 (2D game, retro style)
• UnityScript / Sublime Text 3
• Pixen for art (switching to Piskel as soon as they add a few more features)
• Audacity / cfxr (never have time for music and no skill at it)
• WireCast to stream to Twitch (streaming on a Mac is a pain in the dick).

Looking to keep scope really small so I can maximize polish. Thinking portrait, one-touch game again, like last time. We’ll see how the themes go.

Obligatory desk shot:

Where the magic, will (or will not) happen.

I should be streaming the whole affair over on my Twitch channel. Feel free to follow and drop by sometime.