{"author_link":"\/users\/rodel77","author_name":"rodel77","author_uid":"rodel77","comments":[],"epoch":1545083248,"event":"LD43","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":137566,"likes":5,"metadata":{"p_key":"127218","p_author":"rodel77","p_authorkey":"1034288","p_urlkey":"343339","p_title":"Tips for a nice jammin' (and general gamedev)","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD43","p_time":"1545083248","p_likes":"5","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1034288","us_name":"rodel77","us_username":"rodel77","event_start":"1543536000","event_key":"71","event_name":"LD 43"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD43","removed_author":false},"_superparent":120415,"_trust":8,"author":34288,"body":"Hey! This is my 5th consecutive ldjam, first of all I want to thank @pov for continuing with this excellent jam, my first game \"Jave and the Neural Networks\" was horrible but with the help of people's feedback and time constraints (this really helps you to find solutions in less time and find alternative ways to create games more quickly) now I released a full game [Unpacking](https:\/\/unpackingame.com\/) and my last ld entry \"Pecto\" is getting tons of positive reviews. So I want to share some tips I learnt in order to make our games more professional and polished!\n\n# Release the tips:\n\n## Make games, not manuals:\nIn this play+rate I've found lot of games (less than 40%) that show you a manual larger than a rocket blueprint:\n\n![instructions.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb82.png)\n\nI made that in my first entry:\n\n![download.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb83.png)\n\nAnd I had a real bad time seeing JupiterHadley wasting more time reading all my junk text instead of enjoying the game\n\n### ^ Conclusion:\n\n+ I bet you one of those sun stones that **you don't need more than 3 buttons** (without counting wasd, mouse and space if needed)\n+ And also I bet you some diamonds that **you don't need so many mechanics to make a solid gameplay**\n+ Think about an ingenious way to develop a gameplay that explains it self (in buttons and mechanics), is what I've done with my last entry \"Pecto\", is just a dungeon-crawler card game where you move with wasd (or arrows if you prefer) pick cards\/attack with 'E', this is explained each time you want to do it:\n\n![1543887006.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb85.png)\n\nYou click on the card and see this menu:\n\n![1543890049.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb86.png)\n\nThere is not need to open up again the entry page, and the info displayed on screen is just probability that you can just skip.\n\n+ I dropped most of manual games because I am not native english speaker and I got tired of being all the day reading rules that I will forgot in 10 minutes in a language that makes me use more energy to understand\n+ And also, as the next point is called:\n\n## Keep it simple\n+ As I already said, make a simple mechanics that shows, not teach. Do not show lot of information on screen nor the page of the game.\n+ Also you should think that there are more than 2,000 games out there (just in this jam) therefore your game should be enjoyable in the first minutes, you can introduce \"arcade\" mechanics to hook the players more time or decrease the overall duration. And probably you can see JupiterHadley finish your game!\n\n## Make it attractive\n**We eat from out eyes** and making an attractive page\/cover image is the first step to hook a player.\n+ Put images\/gifs\/videos on your page and avoid *text* one more time. Again, I found some games with ton of info instead of showing their game and other ones not even adding a cover image.\n+ Now once you got a player, it wants to download the game...\n\n## Make your game accessible\n+ With incredible pages like itch.io, gamejolt, newgrounds (if you make HTML distribution) some people still host their games on mediafire, dropbox & stuff. Please, try to host it on itch.io if you can, it will give you **visibility**, **accessibility**, lot of people (me included) use itch.io desktop client to try the games quickly and **accessibility to you, the developer** to upload the multiple distributions more easily, in itch.io you have butler, a cmd tool that helps you to upload binary patches in your builds\n+ As Skyrim, you should port your game to all things you can, most importantly: **HTML5**, sometimes is just a waste of time waiting to load and having x10 worst graphics than desktop version, but also sometimes this can give you a huge players base, **Windows**, **MacOSX** and **Linux**, yes, there are ton of gamers in linux and they would thank you if you let them try your game natively instead of using wine.\n+ Ok, so now someone installed your game, probably it took a long time to find the \"Download\" button on dropbox or closed lot of ads in mediafire or just downloaded it from a decent game platform, now...\n\n## Make it attractive *in-game*\nYou've made it, someone got interested in your work and trust me, its an achievement! Now lets see some tips:\n\n### Feedback:\nAfter years of gamedev I've found that the most important thing of a game is the feedback, you know:\n+ **Screen Shake** (always in moderation)\n+ **Tween and Lerp**, search a tweening library for your engine\/language or whatever you are using (If you use Love2d rxi created [flux](https:\/\/github.com\/rxi\/flux\/), an awesome lib) and animate everything in your game, once I read an article called **How to make your game look alive**, I don't remember the article nor the writer but the name gave me lot of things to think about.\n+ **Sound** please, please, please, add sound to your game, it adds 60% of the feedback you need and is easy as creating some sound with [bfxr](https:\/\/www.bfxr.net\/), [freesounds](https:\/\/freesound.org\/), [zapsplat](https:\/\/www.zapsplat.com\/)\n+ Actions should be addictive, with a good sound, animations and screen shake when needed. You will convert simple buttons like \"Purchase Upgrade\" or \"Attack\" into addictive Casino Slot Machines. *I really enjoy pushing the upgrade purchase button. It forces me to push it more and therefore increase my playtime.*\n\nJust play 10 minutes of **Broforce** take note of everything that moves or make a sound, write in a notebook the effects you see when you jump\/shoot\/die\/kill etc. And if you think you don't have time to do it, **stop**, you can do that and even more (Broforce started in Ludum Dare 23 (Tiny World) as \"Rambros\"), just try [FTD: Fixin' to Die](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/ftd-fixin-to-die) the animations are excessively professional but try to visualize it with red boxes, its still awesome.\n\nAnd now...\n\n## Critics\n+ Take note about the critics of people, after all that is the main goal of game jams.\n+ Give feedback to other developer about details things you would in their games, I always write comments on games without visual\/audio feedback.\n\n## And most important\n+ Have fun making your games, and learning new stuff!\n\nThanks for reading this little guide. Now I don't have more tips on my notebook, but I will try to update this post as soon as I learn new things or idk, create something easier to consume like a video (if you have any, inquiries, tips, love or hate to give me feel free to send me a twitter dm [@therodel77](https:\/\/twitter.com\/therodel77))","comments":0,"created":"2018-12-17T19:29:06Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":137566,"love":5,"love-timestamp":"2018-12-18T21:06:59Z","meta":[],"modified":"2018-12-18T21:06:59Z","name":"Tips for a nice jammin' (and general gamedev)","node-timestamp":"2018-12-17T22:11:48Z","parent":121316,"parents":[1,5,9,120415,121316],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/pecto\/tips-for-a-nice-jammin","published":"2018-12-17T21:47:28Z","scope":"public","slug":"tips-for-a-nice-jammin","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":414340},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"137566","n_urlkey":"343339","n_parent":"121316","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/pecto\/tips-for-a-nice-jammin","n_slug":"tips-for-a-nice-jammin","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"34288","n_created":"1545074946","n_modified":"1545167219","n_version":"414340","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/pecto\/tips-for-a-nice-jammin","text":"Hey! This is my 5th consecutive ldjam, first of all I want to thank @pov for continuing with this excellent jam, my first game \"Jave and the Neural Networks\" was horrible but with the help of people's feedback and time constraints (this really helps you to find solutions in less time and find alternative ways to create games more quickly) now I released a full game [Unpacking](https:\/\/unpackingame.com\/) and my last ld entry \"Pecto\" is getting tons of positive reviews. So I want to share some tips I learnt in order to make our games more professional and polished!\n\n# Release the tips:\n\n## Make games, not manuals:\nIn this play+rate I've found lot of games (less than 40%) that show you a manual larger than a rocket blueprint:\n\n![instructions.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb82.png)\n\nI made that in my first entry:\n\n![download.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb83.png)\n\nAnd I had a real bad time seeing JupiterHadley wasting more time reading all my junk text instead of enjoying the game\n\n### ^ Conclusion:\n\n+ I bet you one of those sun stones that **you don't need more than 3 buttons** (without counting wasd, mouse and space if needed)\n+ And also I bet you some diamonds that **you don't need so many mechanics to make a solid gameplay**\n+ Think about an ingenious way to develop a gameplay that explains it self (in buttons and mechanics), is what I've done with my last entry \"Pecto\", is just a dungeon-crawler card game where you move with wasd (or arrows if you prefer) pick cards\/attack with 'E', this is explained each time you want to do it:\n\n![1543887006.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb85.png)\n\nYou click on the card and see this menu:\n\n![1543890049.png](\/\/\/raw\/0f5\/8\/z\/1fb86.png)\n\nThere is not need to open up again the entry page, and the info displayed on screen is just probability that you can just skip.\n\n+ I dropped most of manual games because I am not native english speaker and I got tired of being all the day reading rules that I will forgot in 10 minutes in a language that makes me use more energy to understand\n+ And also, as the next point is called:\n\n## Keep it simple\n+ As I already said, make a simple mechanics that shows, not teach. Do not show lot of information on screen nor the page of the game.\n+ Also you should think that there are more than 2,000 games out there (just in this jam) therefore your game should be enjoyable in the first minutes, you can introduce \"arcade\" mechanics to hook the players more time or decrease the overall duration. And probably you can see JupiterHadley finish your game!\n\n## Make it attractive\n**We eat from out eyes** and making an attractive page\/cover image is the first step to hook a player.\n+ Put images\/gifs\/videos on your page and avoid *text* one more time. Again, I found some games with ton of info instead of showing their game and other ones not even adding a cover image.\n+ Now once you got a player, it wants to download the game...\n\n## Make your game accessible\n+ With incredible pages like itch.io, gamejolt, newgrounds (if you make HTML distribution) some people still host their games on mediafire, dropbox & stuff. Please, try to host it on itch.io if you can, it will give you **visibility**, **accessibility**, lot of people (me included) use itch.io desktop client to try the games quickly and **accessibility to you, the developer** to upload the multiple distributions more easily, in itch.io you have butler, a cmd tool that helps you to upload binary patches in your builds\n+ As Skyrim, you should port your game to all things you can, most importantly: **HTML5**, sometimes is just a waste of time waiting to load and having x10 worst graphics than desktop version, but also sometimes this can give you a huge players base, **Windows**, **MacOSX** and **Linux**, yes, there are ton of gamers in linux and they would thank you if you let them try your game natively instead of using wine.\n+ Ok, so now someone installed your game, probably it took a long time to find the \"Download\" button on dropbox or closed lot of ads in mediafire or just downloaded it from a decent game platform, now...\n\n## Make it attractive *in-game*\nYou've made it, someone got interested in your work and trust me, its an achievement! Now lets see some tips:\n\n### Feedback:\nAfter years of gamedev I've found that the most important thing of a game is the feedback, you know:\n+ **Screen Shake** (always in moderation)\n+ **Tween and Lerp**, search a tweening library for your engine\/language or whatever you are using (If you use Love2d rxi created [flux](https:\/\/github.com\/rxi\/flux\/), an awesome lib) and animate everything in your game, once I read an article called **How to make your game look alive**, I don't remember the article nor the writer but the name gave me lot of things to think about.\n+ **Sound** please, please, please, add sound to your game, it adds 60% of the feedback you need and is easy as creating some sound with [bfxr](https:\/\/www.bfxr.net\/), [freesounds](https:\/\/freesound.org\/), [zapsplat](https:\/\/www.zapsplat.com\/)\n+ Actions should be addictive, with a good sound, animations and screen shake when needed. You will convert simple buttons like \"Purchase Upgrade\" or \"Attack\" into addictive Casino Slot Machines. *I really enjoy pushing the upgrade purchase button. It forces me to push it more and therefore increase my playtime.*\n\nJust play 10 minutes of **Broforce** take note of everything that moves or make a sound, write in a notebook the effects you see when you jump\/shoot\/die\/kill etc. And if you think you don't have time to do it, **stop**, you can do that and even more (Broforce started in Ludum Dare 23 (Tiny World) as \"Rambros\"), just try [FTD: Fixin' to Die](https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/43\/ftd-fixin-to-die) the animations are excessively professional but try to visualize it with red boxes, its still awesome.\n\nAnd now...\n\n## Critics\n+ Take note about the critics of people, after all that is the main goal of game jams.\n+ Give feedback to other developer about details things you would in their games, I always write comments on games without visual\/audio feedback.\n\n## And most important\n+ Have fun making your games, and learning new stuff!\n\nThanks for reading this little guide. Now I don't have more tips on my notebook, but I will try to update this post as soon as I learn new things or idk, create something easier to consume like a video (if you have any, inquiries, tips, love or hate to give me feel free to send me a twitter dm [@therodel77](https:\/\/twitter.com\/therodel77))","title":"Tips for a nice jammin' (and general gamedev)","wayback_source":[]}