Used: - Unity - Visual Studio - Inkscape - Audacity - freesound.org

Plan: 1. Open Unity 2. Tinker 3. ??? 3. PROFIT!!!

I was a bit worried at first as this is my first non-tutorial project in Unity, but no more. It's like in my game: persistance pays off.

You can vote for Toothless Speed Dating at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/toothless-speed-dating. With that out of the way, here is how it came about.

Theme

Since for me Ludum Dare started at 3AM, the first thing I did in the morning was check the theme : Sacrifices must be made, and I liked it right away, thinking of such games as Lemmings, Life Goes On and Rude Bear Resurrection. I decided to try and make a little 2D platformer where you have to sacrifice yourself in order to get to your goal.

First day

First day didn't really go well, I was struggling a lot with Unity and its video tutorials and only had a character and a platform and a deadly platform and some basic movement scripts. I was almost ready to give it all up and learn more Unity and try again at #44.

Second day

On the second day things got a lot better. Unity got under control with the help of DuckDuckGo. I found some cool sound effects, added a nice photo that I took a couple of days earlier for the background. At the end of the second day, the last stage of the level was complete and it looked like I was going to make it after all. The most important thing still missing was a name for the game. Already in bed, I thought of a way to make the level longer without making you have to repeat your steps too much - respawn points, in the shape of the lovely tooth girls, that run away when you reach them.

Third day

On the third day I started expanding the level and made a force-based follow-camera that I had to scrape because it was making me dizzy. While testing, one of the respawn tooth girls jumped away from me and knocked the goal tooth girl of her platform, so I couldn't finish the game, so I reversed the direction of her jumping, which solved the problem, but can now actually get you killed, which is actually much funnier (and more realistic 😈 ) . So level expansion could begin. I found some cool sound effects on freesound.org and made some music with BoscaCeoil, which unfortunately turned out to be rather annoying afterwards. I decided to publish the game with some hours to spare, so I wouldn't break it by trying to implement some other more or less crazy ideas going through my head.

The name

The name of the game became rather obvious after it was made. The characters looked like teeth (which wasn't actually my intention), the girls even more so, and you had to lose a couple to win. The goal was always to get a date. The encounters with respawn girls were also rather short so you could call them speed dates.

Possible future improvements

If I ever decide to make a full-fledged game out of this fun little project, it should include * date counter * bigger level * more levels * special tooth girls giving you extra powers like higher jumping and temporary immunity to hazards * better soundtrack or at least the ability to switch it on/off * more tooth babes

And just in case you don't want to scroll back up: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/toothless-speed-dating.

Can you beat my score at Toothless Speed Dating ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpX_KDsmpE4

I just hope my cold will be better tomorrow so I can finish this game properly.

I'll be entering for the third time in a row. I just hope we don't end up with some lame theme like last time.

Start with nothing? You always start with nothing. This theme is not really a theme, we can make almost anything we want now. Whether that is a good thing or not remains to be seen.

Physicist have been asking themselves that question for a long long time. Could the answer lie in something influencing the matter-antimatter particle pair production in the moments just after the big bang started?

Play my game Baryon Asymmetry [https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/baryon-asymmetry] and find out.

I had real problems with this theme. At first I was glad, as it allowed us to create almost anything at all. In almost any game genre you can already start with nothing, like: - no money - no clothes - no inventory items - no weapons - zero amount of anything - no environment.

This liberty proved to be too much for me. I really didn't know what kind of game to make. Half of first day was gone and I still got nothing. I almost gave up. Besides, all these implementations didn't sit well with me, they were incomplete, in all of them you actually start with something, you always have at least yourself, who is technically not nothing.

Then I got to thinking: what if I take the theme totally literally and actually start with absolutely nothing. So I searched high and low and finally an idea struck me out of nowhere: spontaneous creation of matter and antimatter particles in vacuum, which physicists call pair production. So the first mechanics of the game were born: - click to create both matter and antimatter that fly off in opposite directions - if matter hits antimatter, they annihilate each other with a bang - if matter hits other matter, they join forces (same goes for antimatter).

This was all fine and dandy and could be easily programmed and could be made look good, but where was the actual game in that? You would start with nothing and also end up with nothing, which admittedly would be a really funny ending, but there wouldn't be much point in playing something like that, now would it? I needed something more. Since time was short I went with it anyway and finally started making something.

After doing some experimenting it finally hit me: I needed to create an imbalance. And what better way was there to create an imbalance than to make the annihilations asymmetrical? Particles and antiparticles would destroy each other regardless of their actual size. So a tiny particle could annihilate a huge antiparticle (and vice versa). This allowed me to make a game about one of the biggest unexplained mysteries of physics: why is the universe apparently made mostly of matter and almost no antimatter, the so called Baryon Asymmetry, which logically became the name of my Ludum Dare submission. The game would start a few moments after big bang and the result would be determined after a certain amount of time passed.

Because playing god with the universe is unpredictable, my game has five different endings, which are counted in the end screen. Can you find them all in Baryon Asymmetry?

In my game Baryon asymmetry you start with absolutely nothing, and you can create the universe, the antiuniverse, the explodiverse, a boring universe or even absolutely nothing.

In real life I started my Ludum Dare #45 game with nothing and ended up 44th on theme.

This sure was fun. Until next time, so long and thanks for all the games, the ratings and especially all the kind and useful comments!

The Ludum Dare 46 is finally over and the votes are counted. Let's see how I did:

Overall: 899th (3.622 average from 43 ratings)

Fun: 749th (3.561 average from 43 ratings)

Innovation: 877th (3.451 average from 43 ratings)

Theme: 319th (4.11 average from 43 ratings)

Graphics: 1458th (3.451 average from 43 ratings)

Audio: 391st (3.768 average from 43 ratings)

Humor: 581st (3.423 average from 41 ratings)

Mood: 915th (3.553 average from 40 ratings)

Let's put that in perspective of past Ludum Dares. Since there were about 2 times as many participants this time around (mostly thanks to COVID-19), comparing places between events has become meaningless, so I'll be looking at a relative place in an event instead (calculated by simply dividing the place by the number of participants, lower number is of course better):

Looking at number of stars is another valid comparison between events:

Unsurprisingly the charts look like upside-down copies of each other.

Overall, graphics, audio, humor and mood are constantly improving. These categories are IMHO indicative of the raw game making skills, which of course improve with experience, so are completely expected to improve with each event.

Theme and innovation are going up and down like crazy and are more indicative of the inspiration that comes in the first hours of each event - when deciding what to create and how. It's also harder to guess what people will consider proper use of the theme and what they will think of as an innovation. Harder to judge too.

Humor is the most fickle of the categories being the most subjective one. This depends heavily on what kind of game you decide to actually make, but can rise with inspiration throughout the event. Some of the humor can even be a result of inexperience, like making art that is so ugly that it's funny and creating game mechanics that fail in a more or less spectacular way.

I won't speculate on what will happen if this trends continue, but I think I can be optimistic. Patience is the key here.

One more thing: since the number of participants varies heavily between events the actual place isn't as important as the stars you get, it would IMHO be better for most people to put the average star rating in bold and not the place, unless of course you're in the top 100 somewhere.

RIP childhood heroes :cry:

Groundhog day, here we come.

Has there ever been a more appropriate highscore for this event?

Phase 0: Bitch about the really bad theme

This is obligatory whether you like the theme or not. This time I really didn't like it at first, because all I could think of was the Groundhog Day movie.

Phase 1: Brainstorm

In phase two I actually discovered the theme was good. In fact, it was almost too good. The whiteboard was totally filled with ideas. For some inexplicable reason there was still place for Bender on it.

Phase 2: Select an idea and refine it

First I had to get rid of all the superfluous ideas. Some hard decisions where made and the whiteboard eraser got its share. The list got shortened to only a few of the best ideas, but then I got stuck. I decided to search the internet for inspiration. I came across this poor turtle meme: I decided immediately that that was going to be my main characters, a turtle bend on revenge upon the cruel world. The idea was soon refined to a couple of points. For some inexplicable reason there was still place for Bender.

Phase 3: ???

All that remained was the coding and the drawing and the sound generating and all the other boring stuff involved with actually making the game. ...

Phase 4: PROFIT!!!

So the board was filled again. For some inexplicable reason there was still place for Bender on it. And the game of Revenge of Loopy the Turtle was made and submitted to the Ludum Dare site with some time to spare.

I finally got around to making a gameplay video of my game, Revenge of the Loopy the Turtle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1EpPhAFLHw

Can anyone get a higher score on my game, Revenge of Loopy the Turtle ?

Bird? :bird: Cat? :cat: Elephant? :elephant: Fox? :fox: Mouse? :mouse: Pig? :pig: Rabbit? :rabbit: And which one does Loopy the Turtle hate the most? Find out in my game, Revenge of Loopy the Turtle!

Am I evil for making a game about this poor turtle: But putting an evil twist on it in which it wants to spread its misery to all other animals? Mind you, no animal actually gets killed in my game, just incapacitated for a little while.

I can't wait for my sixth jam in a row. The whiteboard is already filled with some ideas for most of the themes, I wonder If I'll actually use any of them. And no, you can't see it yet :zipper_mouth:

https://youtu.be/sJV29ZQIUhs