Challenge accepted
My first Ludum Dare. Challenging myself to finish something in such a short time.
Tools:
IDE: eclipse
Engine: Slick2D(lwjgl)
Grafix: gimp
Sound: bfxr
Good luck, everyone!
pusheax
LD28
Ludum Dare design goals
I like the idea behind ludum dare but this site needs work. The competition is more then 10 years old, it is the most recognized by media. Game designers are usually thoughtful people. This site needs to be designed from the ground up with aim for innovation and indie movement.
I feel strange when I have to rate at least 20 games(goal suggested by the system). It means that I have to skim through a lot of content and make a shallow comment. System is not designed to make you think and provide valid criticism of the game.
The site needs to be open platform with transparent rules and design goals. I even do not want to talk about it’s rating system. Right now it’s painful to use. I think it needs to go away.
When you make a comment, game creator should be able to mark your comment as useful. Sort of like stackoverflow. Then we can view games of people who provide the most valid criticism of games. If game creator thinks that criticism is fair then it must be good, person must be thoughtful and deserves recognition.
What do you guys think about the future of ludum dare?
Tags: Ludum Dare
Dungeon generation, mechanics postmortem
I made a game called Dungeon wish. It’s a 1-minute roguelike. I described it in detail in my notebook. Do not do that when you design for fun! Your intuition is enough. Just start with a basic idea, test it and continue designing from there.
Dungeon generation
I wrote it on the first day. It was unnecessarily complex:
- One level – 3×3 grid with blocks (4×4, 16 tiles).
- Algorithm for connecting 3 blocks
- Algorithm for connecting doors with adjacent blocks. Doors can have 2 orientations: vertical, horizontal.
Instead of this system I should have tested block destruction mechanic as early as possible.
Convoluted energy mechanic
Nobody understood my energy mechanic. I failed to communicate this mechanic clearly through gameplay. But it’s the core mechanic of DungeonWish. When you understand it the game becomes interesting. Only then you can appreciate wish system I implemented.
Basically, energy is the only resource in the game which is restored with fountains. When you loose all the energy, you die.
Magic mechanic
GIF with dungeon magic
Initially green platform was supposed to open doors and trap player. It proved to be too hard to implement with randomly generated levels. So I made green blocks perform some dungeon rebuilding magic. I figured this out through playtesting!
Roguelike with only two items
Hammer and rope. You can use rope to climb down a pit. I planned to use hammer for throwing but never got to that.
Conclusions
Notch is designing for fun. It means he has a playable prototype at initial stages of the game. I only had playable buggy version in the middle of the second day. And after I got it playing I understood that some of my design decisions were improper for the game feel.
Overall LD28(LD48?) was great! It helped me advance my design thinking.
LD29
I’m in
My second ludum dare. I’m going to use java, eclipse, gimp, bfxr or something similar for sound.
My previous game: dungeon wish