Back after 3 years 🎉

[Blender, Unity, Bosca Ceoil]

First time, I’ll be using Construct 3 and aseprite.

I'm a unity programmer looking for a team to join. 1 jam under my belt and I'm ready to start the grind! Contact me here or on discord: LaLoge#1344

My first Ludum Dare! 😤 Also going to be making my first game EVER, not technically but spiritually... if you know what I mean. Let's do this!

I found the themes harder to create ideas for today, and feel there is a fair bit of repetition here. The goal was the same as yesterday, to have at least one idea for each of the themes in the final round of voting. I really wanted to squeeze a top-down racing game in there somehow, but couldn't figure out where it would best fit.

Do you have any cool ideas which you feel fit particularly well to one of the themes? Let me know in the comments

2 is a coincidence, but 3 is a trend right? This will be my third compo in a row and hopefully that means big things! My last game was lacking in sound and music, so I'll focus on balancing work on all aspects of the game this time. I wanted to change up my tools a bit but never got around to it, so I'll be using my staples:

• Engine: Godot
• Graphics: Aesprite, GIMP
• Music: beepbox
• Audio: Audacity

Good luck everyone!

It's gonna be my 8th LD Jam. For once I am hoping the theme does not suck. There is also a theme I'm dreading as it's very similar to a project I am working on.

I hope everyone has a nice LD, and for the love of god, don't make games that the user has to compile to play.

Here is some tips that I usually follow:

• Do NOT switch engines half way through development. ahem
• Do NOT use an engine/framework you have never used before, always use what you are most comfortable with.
• Do NOT let others tell you what engine/framework is good for you, if you like Unity, GameMaker, Construct, Plain C or even scratch, use that one. No one engine is superior to any other engine.
• Do NOT have sleepless nights. Yes that one feature needs to be completed at this once, but it is not more important than your sleep schedule!
• Do NOT make a game that is too ambitious, Ludum Dare has always been about making a game in a short time, not about making the next big thing in a short time. You might want to make the next GTA, but keep in mind, you have 48/72 hours to do it!
• Talk to people about your progress. Trust me, no one will steal your idea when you talk about how your game is going.
• Actually work on your game. This is sadly something I've not done in the past, I have avoided working on the game in almost every LD. If you have free time, work on your game.
• Finally and most importantly, have fun! LD is all about having fun while making a game. Unnecessary stress and the urge to be competitive might ruin your entire experience!

Good luck and have fun everyone!

This will be my 23rd Ludum Dare. Started with LD26 in April 2013. So far I've created entries in Unity, GameMaker, and Stencyl.

I liked the "Reflections" theme, but it didn't make it to the final round. I think a "house of mirrors" game would be cool, and technically I'm curious how many reflective surfaces Unity can handle at once.

Below are my previous Ludum Dare entries from my website.

Alright everybody! In less than 10 hours the game jam will start! Most people are prepping their setup for a weekend full of designing, programming and (hopefully not) headaches.

Let me show you around my workplace for this weekend. It is made pure for comfort. I numbered the most important stuff:

1: a system loaded with Elementary OS (a Linux system), a simple code-editor, Trello for tracking progress and a music library FULL OF Bee Gees (to stay ~~alive~~ in focus)

2: a virtual machine with Windows XP and Paint.NET. It is the only (advanced?) image-editor that is simple enough for me to wrap my head around ^^"

3: The rubber duck for the desperate moments when a self-inflicted bug just won't die

4: a calculator for fast calculations

5: a note block, pen and markers for the idea's (as you can tell now, I'm pretty old-fashioned in some ways)

6: a laptop (and our cat "Nova"), so we can catch some sunlight while I do some small stuff for the game-programming

I wish everyone as much luck and fun in the world! I look forward for all the different creations after the weekend is over :smiley:

Always feeling nervous with these kinds of events. Anyway, I just wanted to make a post (more of a reminder to myself) of stuff I want to do differently for this jam.

1) Write up a blog post before heading off to bed. I completely forgot to do this for LD47. Since I'm only doing the jam rather than the comp, I should have enough to do a small write up. I've set up a folder as well as text files with some template text for game controls, descriptions, attributions etc. so I don't waste time on small busy-work stuff. The LD comp is too time restrictive, and coming up with a game loop is already hard enough.

2) Speaking of game loops, focus on doing one game loop regardless how simple it appears. Something I'd liked about LD47 was that I was relatively chill about it.

3) REMEMBER to play other people's entries. I'll admit I feel a bit bad not doing this for the past two Ludum Dares. I'd like to change that starting with this jam.

Here’s a small list of tips you don’t read everywhere that I wrote up some LDs back (in 2014):

1. Your game is probably too hard. As the maker of a game, you are much more skilled in your game as you know exactly how it works and have played it a whole lot. Have your game playtested, even in a jam, and scale the difficulty down.
2. Add story skip functionality. Consider adding skip functionality to intros and parts of the story (if your game has one).
3. Add level skip functionality (after X failed attempts). This allows players that are struggling or simply don’t have the time to try many times to see the story/ending of your game regardless. This is not that hard to add and in my eyes is a must in story-driven games.
4. Add sound. Any sound is always better than no sound, if you are not an audio pro, consider recording things around you with your microphone or generating sounds with bfxr. If you do it really well, it can make for a great experience all by itself. A mute button is something you may not want to forget :)
5. Do one thing well. I often end up over-scoping in jams, it’s not so much that I didn’t put in every feature I wanted, it’s that the game does not do one thing very well, but does a lot of things. I think this problem is especially present in the programmer-end of the game developer spectrum.
6. Don’t finish with programmer art. Making art is not impossible for programmers, plan to spend some time on at least reasonable art. Keep it simple and add particles.
7. Build for Linux too if your game engine allows it. I’m not a Linux user myself, but many of jammers (especially the veterans (who vote on a lot of games and give great criticism)) are.
8. Put instructions in the game when the player needs them the first time. This is so much better than putting a list on your submission page or at the very start of the game.
9. Watch a stream of someone playing your game (or an IRL person). This is how I compiled most of these tips. Post-jam there a bunch of people streaming games, it’s a great opportunity to see someone struggle with things that you thought were intuitive/easy.
10. Changing the pitch of your music to around 50% makes for pretty good game over music.
11. Using different instruments for different tracks but keeping the same melody is a nice way to save a lot of time and prevent repetitiveness.
12. Your game doesn’t need a menu if it means you won’t finish your game because of it.
13. It’s OK to change your game idea around if it doesn’t feel right or you risk not being done in time.

cringe

I just think its dumb that ever feels the need to span im in we know if your on the site your most likely doing ld. The im in post clog up real post asking for teams or interesting topics. I get its just for fun but still its really annoying most of them art ignored anyways.

?

PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS TOP SECRET. Don't tell ANYONE. OKAY? Okay.

Here it is:

You do the things you do well first, and then do the rest.

So for example, in preparation for the LD48 compo, I took the list of judging categories:

Innovation Fun Theme Graphics Audio Humor Mood Overall

...and I re-sorted them in order of what I can do best, to what I do worst.

• Theme - In Bennett Foddy's NYU game-a-week class (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O9Q8OVWrFA) he found that "good work answers at least one unanswered question". Turning the theme into that one question is Step 0 for me.
• Humor - I don't know if I'd call myself "ha-ha funny", but I have a lot of experience turning a passable bon mot quickly and I'm comfortable with my "voice". Plus, my last LD entry (43) landed 77th out of 1000 or so entries in the Humor category (hashtag humblebrag) so I'm confident that if nothing else I can get a chuckle out of most players. I'll start here.
• Audio - I'm also comfortable knocking out sound effects and a melody or three, so I'll probably tackle this sooner rather than later.
• Mood / Fun - Humor plus audio, with a sprinkling of weird graphics, will get me most of the way to mood. Ideally, it's a fun mood?
• Graphics - This is where I'll struggle the most, so I'll need to cut myself some slack here. Trash art in a funny game is better than one amazing walk cycle that goes nowhere.
• Innovation - Unfortunately for all of us, I won't be revolutionizing the games industry this weekend. I'll keep it simple and let the game's uniqueness shine through my own personal style or whatever.
• Overall - Can't really target this, since it's the most subjective category and a culmination of all the others.

And there it is! Now I have a foundation for building my game, before the final theme is even announced. Your sorting will probably look different, but hopefully it'll help reveal a path towards making the most you game you can make it 48-72 hours.

BUT ALSO PLEASE REMEMBER NOT TO TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS

Good luck!

LD is always fun, my last game was, let's just say not critically acclaimed, but it was still fun and I always learn something in the process as creating all the assets gives me the opportunity to learn art/modeling skills. Reminder, mostly for me: Tutorial is important, Test, Test, Test, also :notes:

I'm planning to join Compo
I will be using Unreal engine 4,
Visual Studio for C++,
Affinity Photo for :art: ,
Blender 2.6 for models,
Audacity for recording sound and music,
Sublime for checklist :heavycheckmark: .

Yes, I am in, second time in a row - it's starting to become a tradition!

I will be using Godot, GIMP, Krita, possibly Blender.

Good luck everyone!

The pressure builds, time to relax from the work week and watch the themes of the final round. I have no idea what I'm going to do when the final theme will reveal but I'm going to do it!