Im in for LD44!

Ive spent some time the past few days getting prepared for the challenge and Im feeling ready! (almost)

I'll be using the following:

• Unity (Game Engine)
• Blender (3D)
• Gimp/Photoshop (2D)
• C# (Programming)
• Audacity (Audio)
• VCV Rack (Music - but will likely do the JAM and see if someone else can help with the music side of things!)

So thats LD 44 ready to go, now a look back at what happened last JAM back in December:

What happened with Ludum Dare 43?

I didnt get around to doing a post-mortem after the last Ludum Dare but I wanted to at least go over what went wrong! It was meant to be a scifi shooter, where you ship drops down to the planet and fights its way through some baddies and checkpoints and then takes out an enemy base. But it fell way short and I didnt managed to complete anything worth submitting!

In the lead up to LD44 Ive done some reflection on that challenge and Ive come up with the following issues (and the improvements on my approach Ill be trying/reinforcing this jam):

• 1) Didnt focus on core feature/mechanic. The flight system took way too long to setup and was far too complicated (which caused a lot of delays). Looking back on my most recent successful gamejam (LD 42) I see how important it is to focus on that core feature as early as possible. Get it established asap and then work on content after.

• 2) Pivot when needed and EARLY! Following on from the issues I got stuck on, identifying these issues and pivoting away from them (or finding compromises for features/mechanics/bugs that are troublesome and taking too much time) is crucial and something I really need to get better at. Its definitely something Ive improved on a bit lately, but tripped up with last jam.

• 3) Aim for minimal features (MVP) - this is really something I continuously mess up. Its one thing to be ambitious, its another to have the entire game rely on a bunch of features and then only end up with half of them implemented (and therefore no real game). Feature-creep and unrealistic scope are the worst!

• 4) Get the gameplay sorted in the first 24 hours! - One of my #1 gamejam philosophy rules (see below) but one I always struggle with. In generally I think its best to have the win/lose case and basic gameplay within the first 24 hours. Then the rest of the jam is just building upon that. But... easier said than done of course.

Finally Ive restructured my desktop layout again. I generally timelapse the entire gamejam, so the screen setup I use has evolved over the years. Ive kept the clock in the bottom right, added a proper countdown timer (so I dont need to manually change the countdown every hour like I used to) and Ive added a task timer as well which will let me be more aware of how long Im spending on a given feature, so things dont slip away from me as they sometimes do!

I'll be posting most updates on twitter as per usual!

https://twitter.com/Alex_ADEdge

And as per usual, heres my game jam philosophy which I wrote it a while ago with the intent of helping others with gamejams! I'll have to re-write this up again in the near future when I get my website properly running but for now its basically what I follow:

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/$55374/my-gamejam-philosophy

Best of luck to everyone in the battle ahead :smile: