{"author_link":"\/users\/pov","author_name":"PoV","author_uid":"pov","comments":[],"epoch":1587444172,"event":"LD46","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":204258,"likes":277,"metadata":{"p_key":"85379","p_author":"PoV","p_authorkey":"1000011","p_urlkey":"296167","p_title":"And that was Ludum Dare 46! Time to Play+Rate games!","p_cat":"LDJam news","p_event":"LD46","p_time":"1587444172","p_likes":"277","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1000011","us_name":"PoV","us_username":"pov","event_start":"1587081600","event_key":"77","event_name":"Ludum Dare 46"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD46","removed_author":false},"author":11,"body":"Amazing! We've set all kinds of records this weekend. Thank you so much for coming out and taking part!\n\nIf you're new to Ludum Dare, after an event, we spend the next 3 weeks Playing and Rating each others games. This is limited to just those that published (finished) a game, so those with large followings can't abuse the system. This is just you and your peers.\n\nFor everyone else, leaving comments and feedback always welcome, but we do understand if you choose not to. In the future we want to be able to involve those that couldn't finish or couldn't take part, but at this time you can only leave comments and feedback on entries. Got ideas on how we can involve you? Let us know!\n\nWe'll be back again in October for **Ludum Dare 47**. Date will be announced alongside the results in 3 weeks.\n\n\n# How do I get noticed?\n\nWe have a system in place that prioritizes your game for every game you rate, and every piece of good feedback you leave on a game. For many people, receiving good feedback is what makes Ludum Dare worthwhile. Yes it is easier to just rate a lot of games and move on, but being an active community member makes the event better for everyone.\n\nIf you see that someone working hard and giving good feedback, give them a :heart:! \n\nNo joke! Likes matter. Leave a like!\n\n\n# How was your weekend Mike?\n\nThis was an unprecedented event. My time this weekend was spent in a bit of a panic trying to figure out how to handle the influx of traffic. I spun-up the largest servers I've ever spun, a **16** core frontend server and a **32** core database server. I'll find a moment to downgrade the servers in the next couple days 'cause yeah, that many CPU cores [aren't cheap](https:\/\/www.linode.com\/pricing\/). :sweat_smile:\n\n(See the \"Support Us\" section of the sidebar if you want to help... over there :arrow_right:)\n\nI've had various unfinished website improvements sitting in branches in my [personal GitHub repo](https:\/\/github.com\/mikekasprzak\/ludumdare) for quite some time now. So my weekend was spent diving headfirst in to those unfinished improvements, and any other changes that would help the event run smoother.\n\nWebsite performance was my primary focus this weekend. Batching a bunch of data together (eliminating round-trips), parallelizing some requests (user, event, current page), and in general caching more things on the frontend server and some on the client (i.e. the browser). That bought us some time, but some 6 hours before Submission we were back at 100% utilization.\n\nHere's where I facepalm. :face_palm: \n\nI stumbled across a database query that was hogging a disgusting amount of CPU. And embarrassingly, it wasn't even a feature that most people had even noticed. I disabled it and poof, down to like 2% server CPU usage. :face_palm: \n\nI needed a break, so I definitely welcomed a simple fix for everything. Gave me time to cook up some dinner in anticipation of Submission Hour.\n\n\n# What's next?\n\nAfter fixing a few bugs with it, the other thing I merged this weekend was the almost-working new game filtering code. It's disabled on the live website, but it is close to being live.\n\n![Screenshot from 2020-04-20 19-52-46.png](\/\/\/raw\/b\/z\/31086.png)\n\nNotably this will (finally) let you filter game lists by platform (and eventually tags, but one thing at a time). As is I need to write and run a serious query on all the platform data to make it compatible with the platforms\/tags system. I'm hoping to have this live by Wednesday.\n\nMy apologies this took so long. My former day-job made it extremely difficult to find time to work on Ludum Dare. Best I was able to do was book time off to run events and do emergency maintenance. :sweat: \n\nAnyway, if you want to know what else I'm up to, lately I'm forcing myself to do [YouTube](https:\/\/youtube.com\/mikekasprzak) videos. Once I wrap up the mentioned LD improvements, I'll be talking more about the business I'm starting both on [YouTube](https:\/\/youtube.com\/mikekasprzak) and on [Twitter](https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikekasprzak). \n\n\n# Statistics! How did we do?\n\nBy the end of the Jam Submission Hour, we had crushed every previous events numbers. Over **13000** people started **10000** projects, and submitted **4900** entries!\n\n![Screenshot from 2020-04-20 22-31-46.png](\/\/\/raw\/b\/z\/310c1.png)\n\n(NOTE: Ludum Dare 39 we had a bug with Team support, hence why it seems like teams dropped).\n\nThese numbers will fluctuate a bit overnight as we resolve any Submission problems people had.\n\nBut wow! **So close** to 5000 entries. I guess that's the new bar. :sweat_smile: \n\n\nHere is a history Jam vs Compo breakdown as well.\n\n![Screenshot from 2020-04-20 22-31-37.png](\/\/\/raw\/b\/z\/310d1.png)\n\nWow.\n\n\n# Wrapup\n\n`*phew*`. I think that's it for now. \n\nThanks again for coming out and taking part in Ludum Dare 46. We'll see you again in just a few weeks!","created":"2020-04-21T03:05:54Z","id":204258,"love":277,"love-timestamp":"2020-05-06T03:25:21Z","meta":[],"modified":"2020-04-21T04:50:46Z","name":"And that was Ludum Dare 46! Time to Play+Rate games!","notes":45,"notes-timestamp":"2020-05-04T05:58:51Z","parent":177153,"parents":[1,5,9,176557,177153],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/46\/$177153\/and-that-was-ludum-dare-46-time-to-playrate-games","published":"2020-04-21T04:42:52Z","slug":"and-that-was-ludum-dare-46-time-to-playrate-games","subsubtype":"","subtype":"news","superparent":176557,"type":"post","version":611633},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"204258","n_urlkey":"296167","n_parent":"177153","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/46\/$177153\/and-that-was-ludum-dare-46-time-to-playrate-games","n_slug":"and-that-was-ludum-dare-46-time-","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"news","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"11","n_created":"1587438354","n_modified":"1587444646","n_version":"611633","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/46\/$177153\/and-that-was-ludum-dare-46-time-to-playrate-games","text":"Amazing! We've set all kinds of records this weekend. Thank you so much for coming out and taking part!\n\nIf you're new to Ludum Dare, after an event, we spend the next 3 weeks Playing and Rating each others games. This is limited to just those that published (finished) a game, so those with large followings can't abuse the system. This is just you and your peers.\n\nFor everyone else, leaving comments and feedback always welcome, but we do understand if you choose not to. In the future we want to be able to involve those that couldn't finish or couldn't take part, but at this time you can only leave comments and feedback on entries. Got ideas on how we can involve you? Let us know!\n\nWe'll be back again in October for **Ludum Dare 47**. Date will be announced alongside the results in 3 weeks.\n\n\n# How do I get noticed?\n\nWe have a system in place that prioritizes your game for every game you rate, and every piece of good feedback you leave on a game. For many people, receiving good feedback is what makes Ludum Dare worthwhile. Yes it is easier to just rate a lot of games and move on, but being an active community member makes the event better for everyone.\n\nIf you see that someone working hard and giving good feedback, give them a :heart:! \n\nNo joke! Likes matter. Leave a like!\n\n\n# How was your weekend Mike?\n\nThis was an unprecedented event. My time this weekend was spent in a bit of a panic trying to figure out how to handle the influx of traffic. I spun-up the largest servers I've ever spun, a **16** core frontend server and a **32** core database server. I'll find a moment to downgrade the servers in the next couple days 'cause yeah, that many CPU cores [aren't cheap](https:\/\/www.linode.com\/pricing\/). :sweat_smile:\n\n(See the \"Support Us\" section of the sidebar if you want to help... over there :arrow_right:)\n\nI've had various unfinished website improvements sitting in branches in my [personal GitHub repo](https:\/\/github.com\/mikekasprzak\/ludumdare) for quite some time now. So my weekend was spent diving headfirst in to those unfinished improvements, and any other changes that would help the event run smoother.\n\nWebsite performance was my primary focus this weekend. Batching a bunch of data together (eliminating round-trips), parallelizing some requests (user, event, current page), and in general caching more things on the frontend server and some on the client (i.e. the browser). That bought us some time, but some 6 hours before Submission we were back at 100% utilization.\n\nHere's where I facepalm. :face_palm: \n\nI stumbled across a database query that was hogging a disgusting amount of CPU. And embarrassingly, it wasn't even a feature that most people had even noticed. I disabled it and poof, down to like 2% server CPU usage. :face_palm: \n\nI needed a break, so I definitely welcomed a simple fix for everything. Gave me time to cook up some dinner in anticipation of Submission Hour.\n\n\n# What's next?\n\nAfter fixing a few bugs with it, the other thing I merged this weekend was the almost-working new game filtering code. It's disabled on the live website, but it is close to being live.\n\n![Screenshot from 2020-04-20 19-52-46.png](\/\/\/raw\/b\/z\/31086.png)\n\nNotably this will (finally) let you filter game lists by platform (and eventually tags, but one thing at a time). As is I need to write and run a serious query on all the platform data to make it compatible with the platforms\/tags system. I'm hoping to have this live by Wednesday.\n\nMy apologies this took so long. My former day-job made it extremely difficult to find time to work on Ludum Dare. Best I was able to do was book time off to run events and do emergency maintenance. :sweat: \n\nAnyway, if you want to know what else I'm up to, lately I'm forcing myself to do [YouTube](https:\/\/youtube.com\/mikekasprzak) videos. Once I wrap up the mentioned LD improvements, I'll be talking more about the business I'm starting both on [YouTube](https:\/\/youtube.com\/mikekasprzak) and on [Twitter](https:\/\/twitter.com\/mikekasprzak). \n\n\n# Statistics! How did we do?\n\nBy the end of the Jam Submission Hour, we had crushed every previous events numbers. Over **13000** people started **10000** projects, and submitted **4900** entries!\n\n![Screenshot from 2020-04-20 22-31-46.png](\/\/\/raw\/b\/z\/310c1.png)\n\n(NOTE: Ludum Dare 39 we had a bug with Team support, hence why it seems like teams dropped).\n\nThese numbers will fluctuate a bit overnight as we resolve any Submission problems people had.\n\nBut wow! **So close** to 5000 entries. I guess that's the new bar. :sweat_smile: \n\n\nHere is a history Jam vs Compo breakdown as well.\n\n![Screenshot from 2020-04-20 22-31-37.png](\/\/\/raw\/b\/z\/310d1.png)\n\nWow.\n\n\n# Wrapup\n\n`*phew*`. I think that's it for now. \n\nThanks again for coming out and taking part in Ludum Dare 46. We'll see you again in just a few weeks!","title":"And that was Ludum Dare 46! Time to Play+Rate games!","wayback_source":[]}