If you are bored with gamedev or programming, game jams is a thing you need to try. In october 2016 I found my self bored with c++ madness. Suddenly, I found a blog post about great game jam, that will help you to re-think your skills.

Ludum dare is one of the worlds largest and longest running Game Jam events. Every 4 months, people make a game from scratch in a weekend.

Sounds neat right?

I though, I will have a try. My first LD (37), I wrote an RPG-kind of game:

It was my first experience of java game development, I was completely to game jams. Any way, I did a great job, and I was proud of my self, because I did compo first try. Things I noticed:

• Ascii art is great, but doen't fit game jams
• My java framework was buggy
• I did not have any clue, how to make music

But, what I enjoyed a lot, that I got new inspiration from the jam and the positive feedback from people. It was so lovely, to hear great words about your game!

Streaming

Till the LD, there is always a few streamers, that stream their development. When I saw that on LD 37, I thought, that it would be nice to try this. I wrote a small plugin, witch can be found here. Not the best code ever, and the idea is taken from Drunk Devs on twitch.

The plugin it self is a twitch chat bot, that displays all of the users, that had typed something in the chat, on the screen. And every 7-10 minutes happens a random event, that users can vote for.

The truth

My stream got 0 viewers :) Strange, isn't it? Also, my PC was not powerful enough. When the chat bot was active, my PC was lagging so much...

Another way to do this

Next LD (it will be in summer 2017), I will record a time lapse, and post it on youtube. Hope, that it will go better.

Wait, but what about LD 38?

Ah.. it was a complete fail.. First of all, in a few hours before jam, i found pico-8. I thought: "Well, I write a game-emulator, this can fit almost every theme..". I created a prototype console, and got to bed.

When the theme was announced (it was Small World), I though, that this theme is great for writing an emulator.

The first day went alright. But on the second day, I just did not know, what to do.. I mean, I run out of ideas. My game was not playable enough. There was not enough time to start another game.

I just failed.

By the way, game is here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/mf100-hack-the-jam

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Never start a brain storming before LD. Otherwise, you will fail.. Trust me. Next time, I will use lua + love2d for my game. And no ascii art!!