So it is this time again - Ludum Dare 49.

If you feel not in the right mood and want some warmup i would suggest you watch some "Ludum Dare Post Mortem" from Pixel Phrophecy (See : https://www.youtube.com/c/PixelProphecy/videos). This is a task that i do everytime now in the week before.

It gives you the right mood to cry when the theme is announced ;).

Besides this i thought about this time "How to prepare right?". How do you prepare your code base or tools for Ludum Dare specially for the Compo ?

My setup: - Unity 2020.3 (Probably using Cinemachine, Tiles, Pixel Perfect and UWRP). - Aseprite - Photoshop maybe for some high res art - Bfxr for Sfx - Beebbox or Boscaceil for Music (also have some other tools here too)

This is my 11th time in a row i participate in Ludum Dare.

So here are some small advices (and to myself - i should REALLY follow some of them...this time).

• As Jupiter Hadley said in the keynote: "work on the fun mechanic first and then polish". Yeah i should really do this this time really. The reason is: if the game mechanic is not fun or sucks you will notice that too late when you first polish. Some of my Ludum Dare games (many of them) suffer that.
• Start with the minimalistic feature set that your game needs. Strip features or write them on the "nice2have" list
• Have a tasklist could be important. A txt or just trello is enough for it.
• Jam Tip: if you are not good in music, just use some Public Domain music in your game and opt-out the category. The reason is: when your music matches it has influence of the gameplay complete. It feels much better.
• Don't stress totally out. Take some pause sometimes.
• If you want to hit the compo but feel at sunday that your game needs more time - just don't submit it anyway. Take the extra time and submit to Jam. I made the mistake some times :)
• If the game is bad on monday evening but playable - why not submitting it? The feedback you get is really helpful.
• If you have things on the list you don't know how to make, just try to figure out first. Because you don't know how long this could take.
• Don't learn a new engine on the jam. Mostly this wouldnt work (ok sometimes it does but its extra stress).
• Build your project sometimes (even if you target WebGL - this has often problems).

These are my advices....hope it helps a bit. And i hope i really take care of gameplay first.

Have a nice time and i am so excited to see what games you all made.