stream is back up bright and early - https://www.twitch.tv/thechief10 :D raising money for ExtraLife! Doing donation jukebox - if you donate more than $2 you get to choose which song plays next. If we raise more than $100, I'll have eggs thrown at me and film it in slo-mo! If we raise more than $1000, I'll do the rest of the jam blindfolded with someone on voice chat to guide me to the buttons :sweat_smile:
I think all of the main mechanics are in now, I've just got to spend the next 30+ hours polishing it :grin: and by that I mean doing level design, art, music, and menus... 
It's almost a game now, just needs a win condition! And some UI. And some sound effects. And a soundtrack. And a decently designed level. sigh
With 10 whole minutes to spare :wink: now it's time to sleeeeeeeep.
If you want to have a go...
So this is my second LD Compo entry! Since last time, I've taken part in a huge amount of other jams, including a few that lasted just 30 minutes (oh boy is that stressful). My last LD entry, PixelWorld, was a fun little game but the controls were a bit odd. I'm happy to say I'm much more pleased with Slime Escape :grin:
Lots, actually. I managed to start testing early enough, and thanks to the wonderful Game Dev Underground community I caught a few issues that I'd have missed otherwise! I tested throughout, and the results are obvious - without it the game would be a nightmare to play. As a side note, having my own website and just being able to throw test builds on there is incredibly useful for testing. Throwing a build onto there required no effort, and was pretty much immediately uploaded.
I genuinely think it's a lot of fun, and the leaderboard in particular has led people try to optimise their runs. I'm very happy to say I've been beaten, completely and utterly trashed at my own game by both @fmproductions and @thesomeonexd - they both beat my best time by a good amount! I had so much fun designing the level, it makes me really happy to see that other people appreciate that. I'll probably refine the controls and add more levels in the future.
In fact, I'm going to dedicate a whole little section to the leaderboard. I had to write PHP for the first time in about 3 years, but a few online tutorials later I managed to cobble something together. I thought I was wasting my time while doing it, but honestly it has worked so well. When you get to the end and see that someone has just beaten your last high score, it makes you want to do it all over again. The increase in replayablity from that alone has been massive, so if you make a similar game in the future I'd highly recommend it! There are easier ways to do it than hosting it all yourself, though...
I had my first go at actually creating music, and it didn't turn out awfully. It could be much better, but there's a neat little melody there. The sfx generated by sfxr always work well, too.
I'm so happy with how the art turned out. I think the animations are nice and fluid, and the particle effects add a lot. Everything was greatly improved by a bit of bloom and a vignette, though I'm totally biased because I love bloom :grin: a few people have commented saying they love the art style, which is amazing, and I've even taught someone how to do the lava animation! Considering I'm a programmer first and foremost, I'm pleased with that. Unity's pixel perfect camera works really nicely, too - without it it takes a lot of work to get pixel art looking good!
Oh man, too much. For starters, the game is way too hard for most people, it's only been 12 hours and I've already had comments saying people gave up - which for a 30 second game isn't great! That's one of the issues that was raised from GDU, so I added a few extra platforms and take them away in challenge mode. I really didn't think the game was too hard, but obviously I've played it way more than most! It really goes to show that you need to test with real people and watch how they play it.
There are a few issues with input and collisions. Unity's tilemap system doesn't do too well with fast paced platformers, unfortunately, and I had to do a few hacky things to overcome a couple of those problems. I think, were I to make a platformer like this in the future, I'd build my own tile system. Unity's just isn't quite there yet, unfortunately. It would be great for a top down RPG, but in this case all it did was cause frustration!
WebGL. WebGL is the bane of my life at the minute - it has caused a few issues like screwing with the physics, which is a pain. There's also this irritating audio bug when you jump, in hindsight I should've just turned off the jump sound for WebGL! Oh well. If you play it, play the Windows/macOS builds!
The stream was a massive failure. I tried to raise money for charity, but honestly the only people who tuned in were other game devs, and nobody wants to take time out of their own game to go to another website, put in card details, etc etc etc. It also wasn't a very well known charity, which will put people off. The charity page is still active, so if you want to go and donate you can do so here! It was my first time streaming, and I can imagine I'm not particularly interesting. Plus my mic picked up the keyboard so I had to talk louder, which I forgot to do most of the time... I don't think anything really went right with the stream and it only served as a distraction. Next LD I'll just do a timelapse like last time :sweat_smile:
I wasn't too happy with the theme to be honest, but that's just standard Ludum Dare!
All things considered, I'm very happy with it. I'll be continuing development, adding things like controller support and probably building for my Xbox just because I can. I had a load of fun with level design, and all in all it was another great experience. Next up is a local jam, then the GMTK jam at the end of the month!
I'm looking forward to playing all of your games, if you post them in the comments I'll prioritise yours :grin: think of it as a little bonus for reading this far :wink:
See you next time.
I'm putting together a big list of games to play, comment them on here and I'll prioritise yours! :grin: also if you've got the time, check out my post mortem :slight_smile: I do love a good write-up :wink:
So I checked the leaderboard this morning and it seems like my game can be beaten in 11.64 seconds?! My fastest time is 19s :grin: it makes me very, very happy to see that people like it enough to speedrun it. The leaderboard was an excellent addition. The lovely @fmproductions has uploaded video evidence, too!
Has anyone written up a post mortem for their game? Post it here, I'd love to have a read :grin: mine is here :slight_smile:
So I've been browsing the leaderboard, and here's what I've got so far :grin:
15 individual people made it to the leaderboard and didn't skip giving their score!
7 made it through without dying
6 did it in under 20s
4 did it faster than my best time
102 total leaderboard submissions (that haven't been deleted because spam/bugged entries)
over 2 hours total play time from leaderboard entries only - again, some deleted and some didn't make it that far. I reckon the actual number will be closer to 3 hours
325 deaths from the leaderboard - same as above, I'd wager that the actual number is around 400ish
I really should've added analytics, would've been super interesting to see :stuckouttongueclosedeyes:
Play it here!
I want to know the stupidest mistakes you made :sweat_smile: for me, it's the fact that I put the whole jumping code in Update rather than Fixed Update, basically breaking movement completely. Update is entirely dependant on the player's framerate! I've fixed it now, and it's MUCH better, but I reckon my score has dropped significantly because of it :sob:
Also, post your game link below for me to check out when I've got the chance! I've got a pretty big backlog at the minute, but I'm always looking for more :grin:
You can play mine here!
My game has almost 60 ratings 😍 many thanks to everyone who's rated and given me feedback 😁 I'm slowly working my way through all your games but I don't have much time for it 😅
Took part in JimJam #2 this weekend, ended up with something I'm really pleased with :grin: Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!
https://thechief-665869.itch.io/death-arena-sigma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seJCzCGKSDo
Hey look a bandwagon for me to jump on!
I much prefer shorter themes that leave a lot open to interpretation. I don't want to play a million similar games when it comes to voting :joy:
It's jam time again, hooray. In a dramatic break from tradition, I'm teaming up this time and only entering the jam, which is a little strange but gives me loads more freedom 😁 I'm actually really happy with the themes, which has come as a major surprise! Risky Powerups in particular is the best suggestion I've ever seen - so thank you whoever came up with that!
Not long now! Though I'll be asleep when the jam starts, 2am UK time is not a pleasant time :joy:
Since people seem to be interested in what tools are being used: it's mostly going to be Unity 2019.1 using the lightweight render pipeline (which I haven't tried yet, so this could be fun), with some blender for the models I guess, and whatever the musician will use for music. I don't know, I just code stuff :wink: I use JetBrains Rider as my code editor, I highly recommend it - it's awesome :grin:
We're making decent progress but I may have gotten a little side tracked... 
Had a lot of fun making this old school FPS, and my team were amazing! ❤️
Link your game and I'll add it to my list to play 😁
So I was playtesting a minor bugfix update that addresses some of the more immediate issues and...
Apparently you can fall out of the world :sob:
Play our campy old school FPS here! :grin:
I'm almost certainly going to have to give this one a miss, so here's my idea dump if you're struggling to think of anything!
Collect things, maybe body parts for a robot or an evolution game? You've got really low health and can't attack, but can build yourself up and fight back. Maybe even just a really basic top down shooter with an open level (+1 for proc gen, my code for random walker level gen in Unity is here), body parts do things like different attacks, more health, movement abilities - whatever you've got time for! No need for a save state, it's more fitting for the theme if you have to start again every time. This is actually really low scope, with the option of adding extra bits in based on how much time you've got left.
Pressing forward moves you backwards & vice versa? I don't know, really don't like this theme lol. It's boring and is too close to the usual "make a bad game" themes.
"Powerups that hurt you" is going to be SO overdone, maybe a story-based text RPG? You have to make meaningful decisions, each one of which has a lasting effect. Maybe you choose to save someone, but at the cost of someone else's life. Or you go down one corridor, only to have the other one permanently blocked off.
Shadow of the colossus, anyone? :joy: a few big boss battles, where each one has a really specific weak point. I think that could be really fun! I'd make it as a side-scrolling shooter because that would be the easiest for me personally to implement. No need for additional weapon types or anything like that, the challenge is in learning the boss attack patterns and avoiding them. You could also do it as a bullet hell game!
You're a factory worker working in QA - you've got to decide what's good and bad. Fast paced tinder - you could do it as a mobile game, maybe even do it to a beat so it becomes a little like a rhythm game? Bonus points for accepting/rejecting things to the beat. IDK, I don't like this theme and think it's just going to be a load of construction themed games, which I'm not a fan of. I guess you could do an FPS set in an industrial factory, that might be fun :joy: all I can think of is dark and grunge-y aesthetic, though, and I don't like that.
A radiation-stricken world, you have to venture out of your shelter to collect food/resources etc - but stay out too long and you get radiation sickness, impacting your stats in some meaningful way. Too many rads and you die. Run out of food and you die.
Wow, I actually don't have any reasonably scoped ideas for this. Sure I can think of something cool, but it would require a fully featured game which just isn't feasible in a weekend :joy:
See the shelter game, but swap out radiation for darkness and radiation sickness for insanity, and you're good to go :joy:
Puzzle game like Bioshock's "hacking" minigame! Make connections between wires to fix things - maybe set it in an apple "genius" bar :joy:
A typical top-down RPG, but when you get close to NPCs they move away. You can't buy or sell anything, you don't get given anything and you have to do everything alone. Because everyone hates you. Maybe throw in a plot twist where the main character snaps and slaughters the village :wink:
Duplicate/destroy to reach new heights! Some sort of platformer along the lines of "thomas was alone", but instead of switching between colours, you duplicate yourself and destroy the duplicate to solve puzzles. Your duplicate moves with you.
Make any game you want, but do it in a fantasy setting. Seriously, what's the point of this theme?
See Start with nothing / Mutation / Evolve to survive, but make it level-based and at the end of every level you get to choose between a few body parts. That sort of thing is going to be overdone, but bleh that's what happens when the theme is incredibly mechanically limiting like this.
That's all from me! Feel free to add more :grin: