The sprite sheets of Victoria are now finished. Her steam-chainsword is the perfect weapon!

Hi there! We’re back in the LD business (last time was #LD31). We’re making a game about school bullies. We’ll write more about it later but for now here is a screenshot of some WIP art crafting.

Late but not dead, we’re still working on BullyBully classroom. Almost all the gameplay features are implemented but we still have a long road before us before we can bully a lot of children.

Stay tuned!

Tags: 2D, javascript, pixel art

Heya!

I'm paulloz and I'm here with Kokonaught and Max getting ready for LDJam! Last time we entered was for Ludum Dare #37 (or #27 for Max) so it's a first on the new website.
It's also going to be the first time for us entering LDJam while we're not at all in the same time zone, who knows how it's going to end?!

Here are tools we're probably going to use: * Godot Engine * Krita * Ableton Live * itch.io

Good luck everybody and don't forget to have some sleep and a lot of fun! ❤❤❤

Hey folks! We lost a bunch of hours stuck on an idea we thought awesome and fun but we could not get to really work... So we decided to start again in a totally other direction.
Get ready to race in our version of the legendary Micro Machines where the track gets destroyed behind your wheels! Subsequent laps might get harder and harder :skull: :skull: :skull: :skull:

Good morning everyone! It is almost 10AM for me and around 4AM for my teammates, while they're asleep I'm sneaking a screenshot on here. Don't tell anybody :zipper_mouth:

Almost everything is set (what? we need to make a title screen?), so it's probably time to design racing tracks.
We're in the final stretch folks, hang tight!

And the theme is…

Saturday, 00:00 (12AM for you weirdos using this kind of time system).
While ldjam.com is offline because a gazillion people want to know the theme, I jump on Twitter and see it: “Running out of space”. Alone in my home, I'm on Discord with my teammates Kokonaught and Noojsan.

Quickly we have an idea we like: the story of a bodybuilder living in a tiny appartment whose life gets harder and harder while he gets bigger and bigger. Gameplaywise it would have been a game with fast paced minigames, kind of like WarioWare.
To keep things open we're still discussing other ideas, one of which is about people living on floating island and being forced to throw stuff overboard to prevent them from sinking.

After some discussions we decided to go with this second idea. The first one, heavily relying on a large number of minigames to be fun, seemed less jam-oriented.

It is now 02:00 (AM) and I go to sleep in order to get to work early in the morning.

The doubt

I get up around 07:00 (AM) and start building the foundations for our game: an isometric map with tiles disappearing, a character being able to move around and to grab and throw things around.
A little while after my lunch, my teammates are back at work with me (we're in two different time zones so our sleep cycles were offset). Once we're back together something terrible happens: the doubt comes in. It doesn't matter how long we think about it, we can't seem to find something fun and enjoyable to do with this game idea…

So we're back to square one (please do not pass go, do not collect $200). It's the middle of my saturday afternoon and we don't have anything really started. Everything's alright.

Come a couple of hours of despair and discouragement.

A revelation

Saturday, 16:00 (yes, it's 4PM).
A new game idea has appeared! Let's say we make a 2D racing game, kind of a tribute to Micro Machines, where the available space on the track reduces during the race. Wouldn't it be cool? Wouldn't it lead to something fun and enjoyable? Yes?

Let's do it then!

Starting up is not that complicated. I'm quickly programming the car movements, nothing too fancy. Every Godot Engine developer out there already know what I'm using as a placeholder for the car.

In the meantime my coworkers are doing their magic and crafting the first assets.
As a joke, we're saying the music should be some old school techno makina. All of whom have played the game know what is going to happen with that.

We decided that the track was being continuously destroyed by bombs every car is dropping while moving. During the evening we're setting up the autotiling system handling holes made in the ground by those bombs.
When I'm going to sleep, the basic mechanics and controls are setup. Two days to go.

Sunday is going to be chill

When I get up after a good night's sleep, I'm welcomed on Discord by a cool mockup of what the game is going to look like. I'm making a quick post with that before getting back to work.

Our Sunday isn't really that interesting. I'm setting up some more things: making the car fall off in holes, prepping some multiplayer controls and camera, etc.
Graphics and music are getting done quickly. Noojsan is experimenting with adding some middle eastern instruments to the music to give it somewhat of a desert vibe, and we make a list of sound effects we'll need.
I also take some time to explain how the animation are working in the engine thanks to a lot of screenshot looking like this:

During the evening, we also decided we needed to find a name. Unlike every other game we've made, we agreed on a name faster than ever. Here's a complete transcription of the discussion:

Kokonaught: Do you have any name ideas?
paulloz: Hum, for now it's called Micro Bombs
paulloz: but it sucks
Kokonaught: I don't know, it needs the word blast
Kokonaught: Like
paulloz: TRACKBLASTERS
Kokonaught: yeah
Kokonaught: sold

With that out of the way, I can work on other things like making our pause menu and some screen transitions. Those screen transitions are done with a simple shader reading a black to white gradient from a PNG file. It's really easy and quick to do and can add a lot of personality to a game.

It is the end of day two. Before I go to sleep I explain to Kokonaught how to use the tilemaps in the engine so he can create some tracks if he has time. Once again the explanation is backed with a lot of screenshots.

Dawn of the final day

My final LDJam day begins with a big package of OGG files: all of the audio files are here and it's time to plug them into the game.

I still have two big things to do: connecting the tracks to one another with a track end screen in between, and making a track selection menu. After that it's going to be polishing time and, if possible, we might add some more stuff.

The screen at the end of each track is pretty straightforward: we're using the same screen as the pause menu and just switching its content.

The selection menu is totally different but not that elaborated. I need to make a quick shader so the background texture scrolls indefinitely, a grid with all the tracks and connect some input events so we switch to the right scene. Done!

What haven't I done yet? Right! A title screen. It's easy as hell, I'll wait until the assets are done.
We need to display a timer during the race. Also, it might be a cool idea to add a Tut Tut Tuuuuuut at the beginning of the races like in any other racing games! Let's do both of those things.

Side note: that's probably the moment we should have thought of adding a visual marker for the finish line.

Wait!
We need to add a shadow to the car!
And the music is too loud in comparison to the sound effects, set it to -6dB!
We have some props to add to the tracks!
The title screen is done, we need to put the assets in the game!

It is the last stretch and I'm now juggling with two artists wanting to refine their work as long as they can.
I can do that. We can do that!
In the meantime we're adding props to the tracks so they don't look and feel boring, obviously.

It is done

M I D N I G H T !
We've gone through the last couple of hours like they were minutes, my heart is pounding at around 300bpm but it's over. And I think we've done a pretty good job. At least, I'm happy with what we did. That's far from always the case.

We're uploading the final build on itch.io, making screenshots and writing a game description while ldjam.com is now imploding and will soon turn into ashes.

First thing I notice once Trackblaster is submitted and the final stress has gone away: as usual I don't want to sleep right now, but at least this time it is not 03:00 yet. Thanks for this time change, I hope it'll stay like that.
What can I extract from LDJam this time? It might not be a good idea to really start your game once more than half a day already passed by. However I'm glad we did not stick with an idea we barely liked just because of the time. And however long or short the jam is, you always can size your game project so it fits the time you have.
I'm happy with what we've made, that's not something I say after each jam. And I'm probably going to work on it to release a true version in a near future.

If you've read this far, thank you very much. Please try out and rate TrackBlasters, it'll make us very happy.

Hey there!
If your game hasn't reached the 20 votes threshold yet, drop me a link in the comments and I'll play, rate and comment it.

:heart: :heart: :heart: :heart:

Heya!
I just translated the post mortem I wrote a couple of days ago in French. As there's somewhat of a French community here in Ludum Dare I thought maybe it would interest some people. If that's the case, you can read it on my blog.
And as always: if you want to play, rate or comment our game, it is called TrackBlasters and is about rc car racing and explosions!

Hey folks, hope you're all doing great during this LDJAM. Here our monkey is dealing with some reptilian and lava issues. He should be alright though, he's a tough fella.

Don't forget to drink some water and get some sleep. Cheers :v:

Hey everybody, hope you're all feeling well in this end of jam.
We're probably all way too tired to really play games right now but who cares!

After a couple of years without any Ludum Dare participation, we're back at it again. This time, Kokonaught, hyperspacejelly and me made a game about Bubbles, a small monkey on his quest to save his fellow simians from the horrendous reptilians.

Dig your way through their caves, acquire some hard-earned power-ups and free your friends from their oppressors! But beware, Bubbles isn't really a fighter.

Please tell us what you think!

Hey folks, we'll be streaming some Play & Rate tomorrow evening/night (Eastern European Time). If you want to submit your game to the queue, feel free to fill out this form.

I'll make another post here when we start streaming but just in case, it'll be on the following channel: https://www.twitch.tv/paulloz

Hey, our first Play & Rate stream of this Ludum Dare will start around 10pm CET.
Come hang out and chill with us while we play your game: https://www.twitch.tv/paulloz. Beware, we might have crazy thick French accents (and probably a bit of non-English here and there).

Oh and if you want to play and rate our entry, here it is: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/monkey-quest

Hey, going live in a bit, you can submit your games in the chat and we can talk about it while I try it: https://www.twitch.tv/paulloz

Hey everybody, just a quick message to tell you that you can now play Monkey Quest on desktop. At the moment, you can download it for Windows and Linux, we're experiencing some difficulties with the OSX export.
It is the exact same version as the HTML5 one, nothing more. If you were experiencing sound issues on the web, the desktop version shouldn't be affected.
An enhanced post-jam version is also on its way (and will be tagged as such on itch.io).

Hey, going live in a bit. You can submit your games in the chat, and we can talk about it while I try it: https://www.twitch.tv/paulloz