Play it here

Focus mainly on graphics today. I don't expect the coding to take very long so I hope to be able to polish it nicely.

Manage your windows as you need to unlock passwords, report users and send them to the FAQ!

Every 10 seconds you get an email. Can you answer your emails in time and not get fired?

> Play here! <

Started quite late, but here's what I got so far.

Summoner Symbols

Two friends try to summon a demon to fulfill their wish. Can you solve the riddles to figure out which symbols to use?

And I am streaming, so send in your game if you want to watch me play it.

Vox Regis is a game about a king who uses his voice to provoke conflict between the groups that are forming in his kingdom. For if a group were to grow too big, it could overthrow him. This is my game for the Ludum Dare #56 compo. Welcome to its post-mortem.

The idea

The worst part about Ludum Dare is coming up with an idea. As long as you don't have an idea, you can't start working on it. And as the clock is ticking you are getting more stressed, which often obstructs the process of coming up with a good idea. Last Ludum Dare I was lucky, and instantly knew what I wanted to make. This Ludum Dare I decided to try something new. Half an hour before the reveal of the theme I started meditating. Then, after I read what the theme was, I again meditated for half an hour. When I say meditating I mean sitting on my couch with my eyes closed. There is no meditation app or thought exercises involved. Just sitting, and let the mind do its work.

Did it work? Definitely! It's hard to describe, but my mind went places I doubt I would have considered had I been sitting behind my PC and looking up words related to the theme. I remember how my mind took me high onto a tower. "What does this have to do with the theme?" I asked myself."Look down," I answered, and so I did. There I saw them walking around, the tiny creatures. ...Okay, I might have romanticized this thought process a little bit, but I distinctly remember standing on the tower before I realized how this could relate to the theme. Anyway, as soon as I got this vision I was already sold. The visual of the POV of someone looking down from a high tower looked so cool, that I knew this is the game I will have to make.

But that's only a visual. What is the gameplay gonna be? There were some ideas:

• You are a cult leader, and you need to increase your following by saying the correct things. These followers could then be used to attack others, or to raid buildings.
• You are a boss, and you are looking over at your employees. Search for those who slack off, and fire them.
• You are a guard, and you need to track people who conspire against the king. Person A talks to person B, person B walks into building X. Person C walks out of building X, etc. Could work with a daily routine, trying to figure everything out in a certain number of days.
• You are a king, and you use populism tricks to stay in power.

That last idea is the eventual idea of the game, but there were still many questions left unanswered. Should I go for a completely different idea after all? I decided to go to bed (it was like 06:00 AM), and to figure it out after I woke up. The next morning I again meditated for half an hour, but no luck. I basically had two options:

1. Start working on the game, even though I haven't had the gameplay worked out yet.
2. Let it go, and try to come up with a completely new idea.

Starting a game where you haven't had the idea fleshed out yet is risky. Because that fleshing out might never happen, and you end up with something unplayable that you wasted precious hours on. I've had this happen before multiple times, and it's not fun. But I took the risk, because I believed in this idea, the visual.

The art

I can't even remembering thinking about the art style for the game. I just straight up started taking pictures of my hand with the goal to pixelize it. This is done in Aseprite, by setting the color mode to indexing while having a limited color palette. Though that doesn't always lead to favorable results, and often you need to do some color tweaking. One trick that I like to do is to simply pick some colors in the picture (normal, bright, shadow) for the palette before I apply the indexing. It also helps to improve the constrast and brightness of the picture.

Creating art like this is quick and easy, but if you use it for something, you'll have to use it for basically everything. If I were to try to pixel a balustrade, then it would probably look weird in combination with the hands. Unfortunately I don't have a balustrade near me that I can take a picture of, so I went for a search on the world wide web. Finding a picture of a balustrade from the exact angle that I need would be quite a search, if such picture exists on the internet at all. Luckily I had another trick up my sleeve. On the website Sketchfab you can view, buy, and download 3D models. Sidenote: This is also a great way to find references when you want to draw something from a particular angle. Just search for a 3D model and rotate the camera to get the angle you need. That's what I did for the balustrade. Whether I should have paid for the 3D model is up for debate. The same question goes for whether this should be allowed in the compo, where you are supposed to make your own art. But I believe I have made enough changes to the original work. Anyhow, with my hands and the balustrade I achieved half of the visual that I had in mind. The other half is the town to look down upon.

I needed a town with a big open spot where the people would be. A village square. Again, I searched the internet to find something that I could use, but with no luck. Even Sketchfab wasn't able to help me this time, as I wasn't able to find a town with a big open spot that I could use. So now what? I could attempt to draw it myself, but again I can only assume it would look weird in comparison with the detailed hands and balustrade. Not to mention my artistic capabilities are not that great. No, I needed something different. Something that allows me to build my own town. I laugh to myself as I come up with a plan. "This is so stupid," I say on my stream, as I open up Townscaper.

Townscaper is a sandbox game where you can build your own town. It's similar to the recently released Tiny Glade. I didn't go for the latter because I'm unfamiliar with the tool. Not that I have a lot of experience with Townscaper, but at least I know how it works. I spent a little more than an hour building a town. Every time when I thought that I was done, I zoomed out and decided that another empty spot should be filled. I still wasn't sure what the game was gonna be like, and I considered that the camera might have to move around. When I was done I made much more town than I ended up using in the final game. Like with the balustrade you can ask yourself the question whether it's valid for me to use Townscaper for my game in the compo. Sure, I made that town, but I didn't make the art style of the buildings. But again I'd say that because I use no more than a screenshot with color indexing that it's fine. And because it's a sandbox game. If I took a screenshot from a town in Skyrim, then it would be weird, but I made this town myself. I've also stated that I used Townscaper on my game's page.

Slowly I started to get a better idea of what the game was gonna be like, and I started spriting icons for factions and complaints. Originally I had the idea that the fourth complaint was going to be injustice, which is what the scale was for, but that didn't make much sense as a thing to blame a faction for. I changed it to criminiality. Using the scale as an icon for it is a bit of a reach, but it works. For the factions I started with a lion, because don't all kingdoms, fiction or non-fiction, have a house with lion heraldry? So what about the other three? I couldn't do a fish, because I already drew a fish for the complaint icon. So what other blue animal? A bird perhaps? And how about a green snake, and oops, I just copied Harry Potter. So I went for less conventional animals in the heraldry world (to my knowledge). The hare was originally supposed to be a wolf or a fox, but it started looking like a hare, and I went with it.

On the start of day #2, and the final day of the compo, I decided to make a menu screen. Why so early into the compo, when the main gameplay is far from done? Well here's a bit of silly advice: do things that are low on your priority list early, because you might not have time to do them later. That sounds counter-intuitive, but I believe it to be true. Because let's say I started with the gameplay. Because of how much time I still have left, I take my time to tweak and perfect it. It's high priority after all. But before I know it, there is too little time left to do the low priority things. And just because something is low priority doesn't mean it can't enhance your game big time.

So like I said, I started working on the menu. I thought it would be cool to get the other perspective, from the people on the ground. This time I needed a picture of a tower, again from a certain angle. And why search on the internet, when a perfectly good tower is at a few minutes walking distance? In the middle of the compo I went outside to take pictures of a tower from a church near me. The tower is not perfect though. The king is leaning on a balustrade, so where is it? Again Sketchfab comes to the rescue, where I take a screenshot from the angle that I need. Finally, it needs a king. A bearded man would fit the role, and thus I took a picture of myself from a low angle. Draw some simple colors on top, indexing, scaling, and there you have it. A king at the top of a tower leaning on a balustrade. A picture of my fist, and an image of a blue sky found online, and the menu is done.

Finally, I had to make a logo. For this I used the font Augusta. A simple border, and I'm done. Not much more to say about that, but how did I come up with that name?

The Latin

For the name I wanted something related to the saying Vox Populi, because I think it sounds cool, and it was relevant to the game. But it's not the people's voice you hear, it's that of the king. So the name became Vox Regis (The king's voice). Because of this title I decided to use more Latin in the game. The factions also have Latin names ([Animal] [Color]), and at the end of the written speech something is written in Latin.

In rege veritas, et ego sum rex.

The text means "Truth is in the king, and I am the king." In other words: The king always speaks the truth, so believe me when I say that a faction is the cause of this problem. Shoutout to my Ludum Dare colleague @AlexRose for helping out with that one. When you see him, pronounce Ludum Dare the Latin way for me, will ya?

Finally, we hear Latin spoken whenever the king gives a speech.

The audio

Originally I just wanted to make my voice sound mumbly and distant, so that you couldn't clearly hear what was being said. But that was weird, because you play as the king, so you should hear your own voice loud and clear. I tried pronouncing the Latin phrase, or the names of the factions, but I just couldn't. It sounded horrible, and I wasn't sure what to do. I figured I should use a placeholder, and what better to use as a Latin placeholder than Lorem Ipsum? What followed was the idea to use common Latin phrases. This way I give the game a bit of humor. I was afraid that it might feel out of place, people have said that they think it's funny, and that it lightens the mood a bit. It was very tempting to pronounce Ludum Dare they wrong way, but Alex would have rated this game, and all my future games, all 1 stars for it, I am sure.

The audio of the town I took from Youtube. I did consider going to the city to record my own sound, but I'm fairly sure that it would have sounded shit. Now, officially the rule is that you are not allowed to use third party assets, unless you heavily edit those like I did with the art (see derivative work in the rules). In my case it was more a lack of resources rather than a lack of skill. Being bad at music is not a good excuse to use 3rd party music instead. But if you have a game with a chainsaw, and you have no chainsaw, what should one do? Mimic the sound with something else? Simply don't have a sound for it? Compo is a test of skill in multiple areas, but lacking resources is not the same as lacking skill. I would find it silly if we were to punish participants for it by forcing them to make their game worse. Though I will say I could have done an attempt at mixing multiple sounds. That's how the audio that I copied came to be. Instead, I opted out of the audio category.

The gameplay

I'm not interested in making a post-jam version of the game. I don't think there's much to scale. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things to improve. The game is really easy in that you can keep spamming the speeches without problem. An easy game isn't necessarily unwelcome in Ludum Dare, as games often tend to be too difficult as a result of bad balancing. And an easy game can be fun as well. The problem with my game, however, is that the easier you make it for yourself, the longer the game takes to beat. The game pauses during a speech and fight, so if you have lots of speeches, the game's duration can extend to over 10 minutes, instead of the expected 7 minutes. You can challenge yourself by trying to beat the game with as few speeches as possible, but perhaps I should've made it so that you can do no more than 10 speeches. That way you don't need to make up the challenge yourself; The game gives you a challenge to beat. Post-jam I've also checked what it would be like if you can destroy factions. Meaning that if a faction has no members anymore, it is removed. It makes it more difficult, as the other factions will grow faster, if it weren't for the fact that you could still just spam your speeches. So perhaps a combination of the two is what is needed. Another problem is that you lose on the exact moment a faction hits 30 members. This makes it very dangerous to wait for a faction to grow, as they could suddenly gain a bunch of members. It would have been better if there was a minimum time of like 5 seconds before you are actually game over. So definitely not perfect, but not enough to motivate me to make a post-jam version.

Final thoughts

I'm really a happy with this game. I'm happy that I was able to come up with this idea, and that I took the gamble of continuing this game even though I wasn't sure how it was gonna play out. I still think it's a great visual for a videogame, and I find it to be a creative use of the theme. The graphics were a matter of improvise, adapt, overcome, and I overcame.

In ove veritas, et ego sum ovis.

Vox Regis

Hey! I have quite the ambitious idea, and can't afford to spend too much time on art. If you're an artist looking for a team, hit me up! We already have a programmer (me) and a composer (a friend).

I'm looking for someone with a bit of a silly art style, as that's the vibe I want to go for. Don't be afraid to reply even if you think you're not that great. Your simple style might be exactly what I'm looking for!

In our game Captain Peggles: That Man's Chest you bury treasure, then you draw a map and then you find treasure using a map drawn by other players!

We want to thank everyone who played our game, and who contributed to the pool of maps! Our game has been frontpaged on Newgrounds and because of this have seen an increase in players, and with that, the maps submitted.

Today we reached over 400 maps submitted! Look at all these beautiful artworks!

Go play our game and draw your own map!

Wow! Thank you everyone who played and rated Cut to Pieces! To be #1 among the competition that Ludum Dare has to offer is a great honor. I'm also really happy that we won innovation as well, which is the category I value the most. And I'm happy for our artist, who's skill has been recognized with a bronze trophy.

So, time to tell you how this game was developed in 72 hours.

Idea

Like last year, I tried my method of meditating half an hour before and after the theme was announced. The idea is to empty the mind, to make it bored in a sense, which then results in more creative ideas. Last year that got me to come up with Vox Regis, this time that was less successful. One idea that came to mind during this session is a game about someone who bought fake paintings, and where you need to go back in time to change history, in such a way so that your painting is accurate. A bizarre idea, of which I wasn't sure how to implement it. I quickly decided to let that idea go, but I liked the idea of doing something with art forgery.

There were a few ideas with asynchronized multiplayer. That, for example, you need to redraw a paiting, and that other players need to guess which painting you drew. There's definitely potential there for some great ideas, but we already made a similar game last Ludum Dare, with Captain Peggles: That Man's Chest. And there's nothing wrong with using a similar idea, but Ludum Dare is also a way to experiment, and to challenge myself. I don't want to be the asynchronous multiplayer guy. I want to see if I can come up with a new innovative and fun idea.

Later on I got this idea of stealing paintings in a museum. But, to prevent the security guard from noticing that the paintings were gone, you would have to replace them with similar looking paintings. You would do so by using stamps or stickers. My older Ludum Dare entry Harvest Heist came to mind, where three bandits need to steal vegetables, while avoiding the farmer. I was actually considering to make it a sequal. But it would be a lot of work, and I wasn't sure if it would be fun. I considered what the game could be like if I took away the walking, where it's just the painting, the stamps, and the canvas. It was then that I came up with the cutout mechanic. What if there aren't stickers, but you need to create your own "stickers" from pictures in a newspaper?

Every Ludum Dare I start with a big question: Will I be able to come up with something fun and unique? In my opinion, for the past five Ludum Dare jams, the answer is yes. That's a very good feeling. Even though I won before in the past, I've always had self doubt about myself as a game developer. Imposter syndrome is very real. But, with three Ludum Dare victories, and the innovative types of games I produce, I feel confident in saying that I am, in fact, a good game developer. That doesn't mean it's easy for me to come up with these types of games, but I should trust myself that I am capable of doing so.

Cutting

To make the game work, the player needed to be able to cut out image. The first part was easy, where I keep track of the mouse coordinates as it makes the cut. I then draw the line using these coordinates. The challenging part was the cutout. How do I figure out which part to cut out of the newspaper. The inside of the circle, of course, but how to figure out what the inside of the circle is? I asked for help in the LÖVE Discord, and got the suggestion to do a floodfill on the outside of the circle. Because, while you might not know the inside of the circle, you can know for certain which part is on the outside. By starting a floodfill from that position, it will fill all but the closed circle. By using the non-filled pixels, you now have the cutout.

At first this floodfill happened over the whole screen, but this gave the game a subtle lag each cutout. So I optimized it. While drawing the cutout, the game keeps tracks of the boundaries of where the mouse has been. By using this rectangle, with an increase of 1 pixel on each side, I have the box in which this floodfill should happen. Because of the 1 pixel increase, I know for certain that the upper left corner will not be inside the cutout.

Cutting out the image is done using LÖVE's ImageData API. Using the mapPixel method you can go through each pixel, and return what the new pixel color should be. Using this method it's a matter of checking if the pixel in the cutout canvas is transparent, and if so to copy that pixel to a new canvas, and to return a transparent color.

Solving

The second problem was to figure out whether the player beat the level. Somehow I had to keep track of the cutouts and their placements, and whether this was good enough to consider the level solved. It was already getting late on the first day of the jam, but I really wanted to get this done early. The way I solved this is by giving both the newspaper and the empty canvas an invisible colored layer. When you cut out part of the newspaper, you also cut out part of this invisible layer. The apple of the first level, for example, has a brownish color. Then, on the canvas, the apple also has the same color. When you submit your painting, the game checks how much of each object's color is being overlapped by something of the same color. All objects have a purple border, which is the safe neutral color. Cutting this out gives you neither good points nor penalty points. Around the border is red, which does give you penalty points.

This system works great. Using Aseprite's spritesheet and JSON, I could export the colored layer in the same image, and then easily figure out what part of that spritesheet is the colored layer. Luckily, exporting and utilizing separate layers with Aseprite was something I looked into recently. The system is not perfect though, and the expanded game will require a system that allows for more options. Some newspaper images were smaller than what was visible in the painting, and therefore would never be able to cover the whole image. You could solve this by creating a smaller area, but then depending on where the player places the image, which should be considered correct, could miss that small area and fail. In this case, a better solution would be that a certain percentage of the available color is part of the cutout, and that the entire cutout is covered by the color on the canvas.

If we didn't have a solution mechanic, the game would still be fun. Players, unaware of this lack of solution system, would still try their best to do well. A lot of players were very careful when making the cutout, and were worried that their slightly wrong cutout might give them a penalty, even though they didn't have to be so perfect. The problem is that if a player beats the game without failing a single time, they can wonder whether it was even possible to lose at all. In an expanded game I would add a percentage, or a 5 star system, to show the player how well they recreated the painting.

Paintings

There wasn't really a plan as to what the paintings would be. I also didn't have time to direct our artist, so I let him do his thing, with sometimes giving him an idea of what to implement. One such idea was the mermaid. A combination of two cutouts to form a single subject was not something I considered when we started making the game, but upon realizing this is something we could do, I saw the true potential in this game mechanic.

I've seen multiple comments praising our artist, and rightfully so. They love the character design, think the paintings look amazing, but mostly think it's very impressive that he was able to draw all of this in 72 hours. All those newspaper articles and cutscenes as well. But to Shores this was business as usual. He's fast, he's experienced, and most of all, this is his comfort zone. He just drew what he wanted to draw, which resulted in fun newspapers, cool paintings, and silly characters.

The game has four different type of solutions.

1. Two items of the same subject. Example: The apple in the first painting, and the apple in the newspaper.
2. Two items of the same category of subject. Example: The old ship in Mermaid, and the modern ship.
3. Two different but similar looking items. Example: The mountains in Hood, and the icecream cones.
4. Two items with similar properties. Example: Medusa's hair, and the spaghetti.

When thinking of the game mechanic, I was mostly considering 1 and 3. It was therefore that I protested when Shores came with the suggestion to use spaghetti as the replacement of Medusa's hair. I figured it was too vague, and people wouldn't figure it out. Shores thought it would be more than obvious. We compromised by adding the handle of a fork, which mimics one of the snakes on Medusa's head, and making it partially a type 3 solution. It turns out that I was completely mistaken. In the far majority of the playthroughs I watched, people quickly figured out that it was the spaghetti they needed, and often ignored the fork.

Steam?

Yes, we are going to expand the game. It's something I didn't want to do at first, but after reading the comments, and watching people play, I realize how much people enjoy this game, and the potential it has. We don't have a Steam page yet, but you can follow me on Bluesky to get updates.

Thanks again everyone who played the game, and thank you Mike for hosting Ludum Dare among all your financial troubles. I hope you will find a job soon. I'll be there for Ludum Dare #59.

Last week Mike (@pov) announced that Ludum Dare will come to an end. As someone who participated in every Ludum Dare since #21, I was sad to read this news. Ludum Dare has shaped me as a game developer, and got me to make many games I am very proud of. Luckily, Mike has stated that they want the legacy of Ludum Dare to continue, which is a big relief. However, I see many problems in Mike's vision for their continuation of its legacy, and fear that it will not succeed.

In this post I'll be talking about - The lack of community leaders - Why a new Ludum Dare is useless - How Mike is vague about the future - The importance of Ludum Dare's legacy - Why we are what makes Ludum Dare - The failing of Mike's leadership

Note that I will not be talking about any plans for a future Ludum Dare. That's not what I'm here for. Perhaps another time. For now we must address the problems with the mission that is given to us.

Community leaders

On Bluesky, Mike posted the following:

My hope is that leaders within the community can build something better, more welcoming, that honors our legacy.

I think what's great about Ludum Dare is that there aren't really leaders in the community. There might be people more well known than others, there might be popular streamers, but leaders they are not. From time to time I'll find a profile of someone participating for a long time, who I never heard of before. You might have never heard of me even though I participated for so long. I wouldn't be surprised.

Ludum Dare is a big community, and someone who is seen as a leader by some, might be a nobody to others. Besides, the most popular person is not necessarily the best person to create a new Ludum Dare. There's also a good chance that multiple people will create a new website. Then what? Should the community split up?

A new Ludum Dare

I “DARE YOU” to make YOUR better LUDUM DARE in 3 years!

Because Mike gave us an assignment to make a better Ludum Dare. If it's the website they're talking about, this has already been done, and it's called Down2Jam. I've never participated, but from what I understand it's basically a copy of Ludum Dare's system, and a quick glance at their website shows that it's a lot better than Ludum Dare's current site. It's what ldjam.com should have been. I should point out that Down2Jam has made it clear it does not aim to be a successor of Ludum Dare. They have their own goals and ideas. But with their website they show the potential of what ldjam could be.

So when it comes to building a better Ludum Dare, the website is not the problem. If not Down2Jam, there exist a ton of other game jams for people to migrate to. But all those game jams, any "better Ludum Dare" that anyone might build, miss one important thing: they are not Ludum Dare.

To me, and many others, Ludum Dare is still the game jam, being one of the first big game jams, starting all the way in 2002. I don't believe any new game jam could take over that title, no matter how well they replicate the original. The continuation of legacy will be broken, and Ludum Dare will be no more.

The only way I can see the legacy properly continue is if Mike instructed us where to go to. That they, as the current leader of Ludum Dare, tells us what will be the official new game jam for us to participate in. Whether the community would follow is the big question.

What is the plan?

Okay, let's say that a "community leader" built a better Ludum Dare. Then what? Do they start hosting events? Well, no, not right away. First we still have 6 more Ludum Dare events to go, after which we get one more encore event in April (and maybe two?).

So after April (or the second encore event), is that when we're ready to launch our new and better Ludum Dare (with a different name)? Maybe, but Ludum Dare could return "as needed". Imagine the new jam plans an event, and then Mike decides to run a Ludum Dare event around the same time. Now you have a community split as to where they should participate in.

Do you see how messy this is? You might think "We'll figure that out as we go", but if your goal is for the community to create something new, and for the legacy to live on, you should be clear as to what they can expect from you. You tell the community: * This date is the last Ludum Dare event. * That date is when the new jam should start their first event.

And you promise to be gone after that. You can't break up with your partner and tell them to find someone else, but then call up to make love after they found someone.

If Mike's plan is to not host any more events after the better Ludum Dare has spawned, they should communicate this. A lot about their post is vague. For example, what if they manage to find a job? Will Ludum Dare continue as normal? We don't know. This is a problem. We're talking about the legacy of a 24 year old internet community. It should be handled with care.

Legacy

A lot of these problems would be solved if the new jam would use the name Ludum Dare, but Mike does not allow it.

I want our legacy go on, but this name (this era) should end.

And I want to eat ice cream without getting fat. You can't have it both ways. It could be possible for a legacy to continue with a different name, but you're making it extremely difficult if you don't intend to kill the website that holds the original name.

And what a legacy Ludum Dare has! It all started in 2002 on the Ludum Dare forum, created by Geoff Howland. He and Isaac Vanier got the idea for a 24-hour game programming competition. Note that in the forum thread nobody used the word 'jam'. While maybe not the first game jam, it must have been a rare concept at the time.

As Mike mentioned in their post, Ludum Dare "died" multiple times. The original site has a timeline, which I'll lay out here:

| # | Date | Host | Website | | ---- | ------------- | ------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 0 | April 2002 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 1 | July 2002 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 2 | November 2002 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 3 | April 2003 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 4 | April 2004 | Mike Hommel | hamumu.com | | 5 | October 2004 | Richard Jones | mechanicalcat.net | | 6 | April 2005 | Richard Jones | mechanicalcat.net | | 7 | December 2005 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 8 | April 2006 | Geoff Howland | ludumdare.com | | 9 | April 2007 | jinxd and Seth Robinson | thewavelength.net | | 10 | December 2007 | Phil Hassey and Mike Kasprzak | imitationpickles.com | | 11 | April 2008 | Phil Hassey and Mike Kasprzak | imitationpickles.com | | 12 | August 2008 | Mike Kasprzak and Phil Hassey | ludumdare.com | | ... | | At some point Phil Hassey quit | ludumdare.com | | 36 | August 2016 | Sorceress | ludumdare.com | | 37 | December 2016 | Mike Kasprzak | ldjam.com | | etc. | | | |

Here are a few things I learned as I was assembling this timeline and went through the archives: * Ludum Dare died in the sense that it was no longer hosted on the same site, but never did a year go by without a Ludum Dare event (the biggest gap being #3 to #4). This is not a Ship of Theseus question. It was the same thing all the way. * In all the old Ludum Dare sites I kept finding the same message: If things break, we use the IRC chat #ludumdare as a backup. In a sense, that channel seems to be the root of Ludum Dare, and it still exists. * If someone stops hosting Ludum Dare, there are other people willing to take over. In 2016, after Ludum Dare #36 was cancelled so that Mike could work on a new website (this website), after realizing the old one had problems with its rating system, Sorceress took over, and we got our event anyway, albeit without voting.

How cool is it that after those messy early years of swapping hosts, Ludum Dare still exists to this date? And I haven't even mentioned the many successful games that were spawned out of Ludum Dare entries, like Hollow Knight and Inscryption. This is the legacy that the name Ludum Dare holds. This is the game jam that I want to continue to participate in. This is what will die in a few years, because that is Mike's decision.

Ludum Dare is us

What makes Ludum Dare awesome is you! Not my PHP and JavaScript glue that keeps things going. It’s you.

I agree, it's us. We as a community are what makes Ludum Dare. So it feels weird that Mike decides for us that Ludum Dare will be no more. Imagine if Linus Torvalds, who Mike compared himself to, said that Linux would come to an end. Would anyone take him seriously? Perhaps he would respond with the question on whether we met Dennis Ritchie.

Have you even met Geoff?

They say they don't mean it arrogantly, but it's hard not to take this as arrogant. No, I have not met Geoff, the person who started Ludum Dare and hosted it last 20 years ago, but for the past 10 years or more, me and others have participated in pretty much every single event. Does that not count for something?

We as a community come together twice a year to make a game in a weekend, and that event is called Ludum Dare. Why must that come to an end?

And besides, who could I actually pass the event on to anyway?

Someone in the community who has shown that they deeply care about Ludum Dare, who has experience hosting big jams, who can be trusted that they will respect Mike's wishes, and has the time to host the events. Those people exist (and yes, that includes me). Is MckFunkyPants seriously the only person they could think of? Have they asked McFunkyPants if he was interested, or did they only assume he was not? Could they at the very least not have asked around to see what is possible?

I’ve done my best to keep up with the folks involved in the community, but past a certain point you just can’t. I want to and I do try, but there’s still just one me.

In what way though? They're not active on the (unofficial) Discord, and it's been ages since I saw them comment on anyone's post or game. I can understand if they're too busy, but if they believe there are community leaders, they should ask us to point them out to them, so that they have a starting point.

Leadership

I am grateful to Mike that they have hosted Ludum Dare for so long, despite all the hardships they have faced. They have made sure that the spirit of Ludum Dare has stayed the same after all these years. But at some point one must wonder if they would not be more grateful had they passed on the role of host to someone who would have done a better job.

No I’m not blind to the comments bellyaching how “meh” events have been and everyone who thinks they could do better job than me.

How could they not? It's no news to anyone that this website, ldjam.com, is a big mess. Even if you're a new user you will quickly encounter the bug where images take time to load (where you first see an earlier loaded, irrelevant image as a placeholder), and that many pages don't work. I'm used to it at this point, but I shouldn't be. This is not the website that such a big game jam deserves to have.

Earlier I said that d2jam.com is what Ludum Dare should have been, but I also think it's what it could have been. People have tried to contribute to this website. There are multiple pull requests open on the GitHub that after years have never received even a response from Mike, including an entire frontend rewrite.

The event page for LD59 still says "EDIT ME". Key moments like theme slaughter, theme voting and especially the results are often late. This made streamers and people in general no longer having result parties, as the time they go live is unreliable. Ludum Dare as a whole is at a decline the past five events. In the right hands, I can imagine it could have grown even bigger than what it was during covid, but right now it's rather a surprise how many people are willing to keep participating with all these flaws present. It doesn't help that you need a secret password to register.

You might think: "Yes, but Mike is busy." I know, and I don't blame them for not fixing all of these problems. What I do blame them for, is not figuring out a way forward so that Ludum Dare can improve. To delegate tasks to other people. Share the database schemas in a repository, and have the community build a new website. A lot of Mike's time is spent handling GDPR emails, because the website misses basic functionality, like changing your username or removing your account. Had Mike requested the community for help with this, to add these features to the website, I bet a pull request would be ready faster than a compo.

At some point Ludum Dare turned big, and it was unsustainable for Mike to keep it going as a hobby project. After the community granted him permission to make money off of Ludum Dare, they opened a Patreon. This never reached the desired goal ($3000), and because of this Ludum Dare could not become their full time job.

That's unfortunate, but alternative solutions, like asking community members for help, were never explored, as seen by the ignored pull requests. I think that's been a mistake. A good leader recognizes when they need help, and are not afraid to ask for that help. Mike has failed to do so, and now here we are, with a broken unfinished website after so many years, and with no reliable person to take over.

Conclusion

The current envisioned future for Ludum Dare is blurry. Personally, I'm not convinced I'll participate in an event that is not called Ludum Dare, but perhaps over the years I'll be able to get used to the idea. Regardless, Mike should communicate more clearly what we as a community, and what potential creators of a future Ludum Dare, can expect.

But far more preferable would be if Mike was convinced that they should in fact pass on the torch. That is no easy task. I myself host an annual game jam, and I can't imagine passing that onto someone else if I ever decide to quit. Will that person do as good as a job as you did? Maybe not at first. But they will learn, and grow, and maybe, eventually, turn it into something even better.

Instead of using these next three years to teach us how to make a better Ludum Dare, teach us how to run this Ludum Dare. Become more well known with the community, and find your new leader. Have them watch over your shoulder as you manage the event, and when it's time, they can take over, and Ludum Dare's legacy can live on.

I'll leave you with a quote from Mike from 2016:

Bottom line, I want to turn what we have here in to something that is sustainable. In the near term something that can support me, in time others, but eventually in to something I can step away from. Something that can actually out-live me. It shouldn’t be catastrophe if I go away.

I could just assume the community will pick things up, but that would be irresponsible of me. It should run itself. Both technically speaking, and as a sustainable self sufficient entity.

Ludum Dare should not have to rely on any one individual to run.

I figured I should post some progress, though it might get buried in this hour haha. It's not a huge game in concept, so it took me a while to get in a flow (didn't feel in a hurry). 24 hours left, should be plenty of time to make it work properly and add cool stuff. 24 hours minus my bed time that is.