tried to get all my weekend homework done on time before the jam, ended up working til noon and now i gotta crash to sleep soon since ive been up almost 24 hours lmao, on the bright side i have my game planned out & made a menu song for it, so there's that :v:

made me a fancy start menu sliding up code (also, figuring out view ports/cameras, which was the majority of those 3 hours)

time to take a break and maybe a nap before figuring out how to code the actual gameplay lmao

but you have an hour before leaving to get navigation working now literally all that's left is game play and attempts at polish

after procrastinating with pretty border pixels + making the simple asset for my good mechanic doggo

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/bow-wow-before-god

https://papabirb.itch.io/bow-wow-before-god

I had fun working on this game! I didn't realize it didn't automatically post it to feed, though... I guess there were a lot of blog posts that looked a lot like the game pages themselves. Oh well, better late advertising than never, especially now that I'm awake to play everyone's games.

Might upload a post-jam version later - forgot to add some sound effects in a couple places, and still wanna work on getting the exact values right for some variables in order for the game to actually be fun. Gotta have that game feel!

Good jam, everyone! Really glad I was finally able to participate in one. :v:

I've got a bit of time before I gotta get to class, now that the jam's over and it's back to finals season. So I thought I'd collect my thoughts on the jam experience and making Bow-wow Before God!

What went wrong: * I started with too small of an Actual Pixel size for my different game screens, and couldn't fit as much detail into the interaction screens as I wanted. * I knew from the start how everything connected, but not in nearly enough detail, and it made it hard to know where to start. * My mechanics ended up being difficult to balance, and might need some under-the-hood reworking when I remake the game properly in the future.

What went right: * While I may not have had the details down to as much of a fine print as I originally thought, I was still able to correctly judge that, while confusing on where to start, the actual programming would not be that hard for me. Complex, but doable with what I've learned over the past few years. * I managed to keep the scope narrow enough to get it done on time, even though I started a day late! (If I'd started a day early and hadn't used unedited sound effects, I could've submitted it to Compo, or got it even more polished for the Jam! That's exciting and confidence-boosting to think about.) * Once all is said and done, while it still needs better balancing, I had fun while I was playtesting and forgot that I was playtesting a couple times - it became just playing the game. So that's a confidence booster too - I've been insecure about whether or not my imagined mechanics for other games I've planned (but not yet made) would be fun or not.

What I learned (game design): * Prototypes that explicitly don't focus on aesthetics or how the user interaction is presented is important; now that my game's been made and I don't have to focus my brain on how exactly to code the core mechanics, it's really opened up my eyes that the game feel of how it's presented to the player can be a completely separate and changeable matter - my core mechanics don't limit me to just one aesthetic design. Data abstraction concepts aren't just for non-game programming! * That being said, make mock-ups of intended screen sizes in order to avoid the whole "oh no my art canvas is only 185x105 and now I can't render any font smaller than 8 without it being unreadable so I have no room to put all my data!" * For real, plan everything out to figure out as many of the predictable details as possible before getting into the code - it's hard, but makes it much easier to push past executive dysfunction.

What I learned (coding/GameMaker): * Parent/child relationships and variables for sprite/the details of what the function do/etc are really useful for making classes of objects in order to avoid the hierarchy being super cluttered by 50 identical buttons with only slightly different coding * (Basic) Camera and viewports! Otherwise I wouldn't have ended up with the 185x105 problem, or been able to have separate screens for everything without struggling to figure out persistent rooms and data, which might have been too much effort on the computer anyway than just having one room do it all. * Just general extra experience with making things in GMS2 and what practices works best for me.

Other: * I got extra experience with trying to compose music! The first song I made after I'd been up 24 hours clearing out homework wasn't very good, but I'm pretty proud of the one that made it in game, which I call Pawspel Choir since it got inspired by the gospel choir singing at a Christmas concert I went to on Sunday. * Overall, my outlook on life and my self confidence has improved greatly. This has been a really good experience for both me and my partner, whom I'm really grateful to for his unending support over the weekend - he made some pretty cool art and music stuff based on the theme too, so we both got a good boost out of the jam! * Hopefully when the next one rolls around, I'll have the motivation and same level of dedication I had this weekend to clear out any of next semester's homework that's standing in my way so I can compete properly instead of working with constant sleep deprivation and getting a late start. In the meantime, over the winter break I can participate in some of itch.io's jams if I'm not busy remaking Bow-wow Before God.

I guess that's it then, other than playing the bajillion dare games I opened since yesterday...

Great Jam, everyone!! Good luck and hopefully see you all next jam session too!

Turns out I'm not confident enough nor awake enough to spend all night streaming the 30 jam games I have open, and I'm probably not gonna get their ratings in. If the site lets me I'll still play them and comment on them over time though.

In the meantime, here's a last hurrah for my game, too! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/bow-wow-before-god

Happy New Year('s Eve)!

I can't see a way to delete it, so here's a not-needed post for y'all to see so I can get rid of it.

Last year, I participated in my very first game jam and it was life-changing for me. I learned so much and my confidence soared so high (until it backfired on me after semester and lead into a spiral of anxiety and not being able to code for fun for several months, but I think I'm finally over it and ready to code again for jam). I met my goals too - overall ranking was top 1k and humor was my highest ranking attribute, in the top 300! It was a big deal to me to meet my goals last time, and I'm hoping I can do the same for this jam.

My goals this time are to remain in the top 1k overall ranking at a minimum (top 500 or more would be great though!), and have humor/fun both be my highest scores instead of having a game that's funny but not fun.

I can't wait - I feel much better prepared this semester! Good luck everyone!

I like the theme and I've got ideas, but none of them sound fun to play/make and I just can't motivate myself to try. Been having rough depressive episode since before it started too, really sapped out the emotional energy and excitement I had. Not gonna count myself totally out because things might be different tomorrow, but I've been sleeping terrible for a few days and this semester has really taken it out of me emotionally even if it's helped boost my creativity idea-generating skills. Too bad there's never any summer Ludum Dares, always mid-semester. Oh well.

first one inspired by finding out about the unreleased game skateBIRD, which i REALLY wanna play lmao

second was just a general Hope Theme to combat the inevitable dark ones that'll pop up due to quarantine

third one was actually my bf's suggestion, i liked it better than my original third suggestion so I swapped 'em out

i'm really excited for this game jam! i think this time i'm ready for it emotionally, and I'm like, impatient for the theme slaughter round tbh!!

Scrolled down the front page, saw some mild discourse in posts/comments about flagging vs not flagging covid-19 themes as inappropriate.

My 2 cents: Down-vote it all you want, but flagging it is useless and wasting the time of whoever has to look at those flags. It might be socially inappropriate in that people are looking to escape the topic - though clearly many people want to deal with the topic this jam, hence suggesting it! - but it's not thematically inappropriate by any means worth flagging.

Consider it like YouTube. Someone makes a pornographic video of covid-19 topic? Flag it. Someone just makes a video venting about it or expressing information? Upvote, downvote, ignore it completely, unsubscribe, do whatever you wish. It's not an inappropriate topic.

Save your flagging for things like "The internet is for cats and porn, but don't let the two mix" and "Anime tiddies", etc. Funny themes, but I've seen parent-child teams in ldjam before. Covid-19 isn't an inappropriate topic for children, and being able to safely explore themes related to it might be helpful for those families - meanwhile, anime tiddies and implied cat porn are definitely inappropriate topics.

Also, some of the covid-adjacent themes are fun. I've been downvoting all the "stay at home" clones, but I saw one that was "home detention", which I thought was a more inspiring way to phrase it. Likewise, abstracting covid into post-apocalyptic/pandemic/epidemic/virus themes instead of specifically covid-19 allow more room to play. I've been ignoring "stop the spread", but I thought "flatten the curve" could be fun on its own - terraforming mountains into fields, for example, or a work exploring gender identity (anime tiddies vs smooth chest, etc). I've also been upvoting "kill the virus" clones because if we're gonna end up with a covid-19 theme, it sure would be fun to beat the hell out of the virus in like a fighting game or superhero sense or whatever. Fun ways of coping with troubling times.

Point is: covid-19 is a topic that could be covered by sesame street to help kids cope with the ongoing crisis, and therefore, it is not inappropriate as a game jam theme. Save your flags for literally porn and tiddies.

Logged me out in the middle of my slaughter earlier and now every time I go back the most recent themes voted list is reset to some point from yesterday, although based on numbers it seems my votes are remembered just fine :thinking:

At least I got to upvote my suggestions in the slaughter, really hoping to see Birds Doing Cool Things in round 2 or 3...

I see and appreciate what you did with that extra theme... still gets a -1, though.

I had a lot more black/white feelings on this one, no neutral 0s this round.

I'm literally half and half on the theme voting, lol. Looking forward to brainstorming concepts for all of these so I'm prepared for the winning theme!

Kinda nervous about this jam, I'm planning on using Godot for the first time (maybe I can squeeze in a quick practice game tomorrow) so it's accessible. Might go for a point and click style or point and click friendly for mobile versus PC? I'll also be doing the Compo, since I have school on Monday so I won't be able to finish stuff up on the Jam timeline. I'll make an official tools, plans, goals post in a bit to keep myself on track!

I was gonna grab a screenshot. I'll just have to try to grab it for the compo/jam timer!