LD22 was my first go at Ludum Dare, and I had an indescribable amount of fun doing it (play my game, read the post mortem).  A big part of why it was so amazing was because I livestreamed the whole thing, and a significant number of my YouTube subscribers turned out to watch (I believe I averaged 200-300 viewers the whole time). Many of the ideas for the story and gameplay came as a result of discussions with the viewers in real time.

It also felt stupendously good to finish a game, which I know a lot of other programmers can relate to. It gives me hope that maybe one day I’ll quit my job and turn to game development full-time.  In the meantime, I have LD23 to look forward to!

Last time around, I made a game in Unity 3d.  I’m a huge fan of this framework, though because it’s only a part-time hobby my actual expertise with this (or any game framework) is relatively limited.  This limits my ability to perform as efficiently as possible and prevents me from dabbling with the more advanced features, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for a 48-hour compo.  I may use it again, depending on the theme.

However, I’m wondering about doing something that is far more inline with my day-to-day expertise. It would be different from the “standard” submission, which carries both good and bad baggage. It’s also possible that I’ll be spending more time than I’d like with “low-level” functionality.  Namely, I’m thinking of developing a game as a web app that would include considerable server-side functionality (as opposed to doing a JS/HTML5-canvas thing — though such features may make an appearance).  Programming in Ruby on Rails is what I do every day — could this translate to making a game?  There’s considerably latency implications, though this can be minimized depending on the type of game and through AJAX techniques (or web sockets, though this WOULD be new/unknown territory for me).  Dungeon Crawl Web Tiles is a really impressive example of what’s possible.  It also opens up certain multiplayer possibilities WITHOUT needing to muck around with the more complex issues involved in typical multiplayer games.

I may make a test/practice/warmup game to experiment with these techniques, though April is looking VERY busy right now and I’m not sure when I’ll find time.

— quill18

This will be my first jam.  Hopefully, it won’t end in complete failure.

Code: I’m leaning towards using LÖVE with Geany.  I still might say “screw it” and use C++ & SFML with Codeblocks.

Graphics: Gimp!

Sound: sfxr, probably.

Music: Probably Ardour & Hydrogen

I’m in, for reals this time.  Last ludum dare I had a wedding to attend so I could not compete, but I have nothing planned this time!

Language: C#
Framework: Unity3d
Graphics: Inkscape and Gimp
Sound: sfxr, audacity maybe some OpenMPT if I have extra time

Good luck and have fun everyone!

Well, I’m in!

Gonna use Pygame, plus gimp and probably some template code I work up ahead of time.  Gonna be fun because I also turn 21 during the compo.

-CD

Language: Still haven’t decided, but probably QB64 so I can learn something new.
Sound Editor: Audacity and sfxr
Graphic Editor: The GIMP

This is my first LD, but my fifth Game Jam overall (sixth if you count the Zero-Hour game jam earlier this year). My participation may be affected by the amount of work I have, but the way things have been going thus far, but conflicts seem unlikely.

Language: Good ‘ol Actionscript 3
Graphics: Adobe Flash Professional, and maybe Fireworks if I decide to get advanced for some reason. Can’t draw to save my life, but I’ll give it my all.
Sound: FL Studio 10 and sfxr.

My plan is to do the Competition.

Also…

I am the president of the Game Creation Club at the Ohio State University (that would be Columbus, Ohio). We have reserved space in the Ohio Union for a Ludum Dare meetup during the daytime hours of most or all of the Competition. We originally reserved it for our own little game jam, but that was before we knew of this. But hey, less work for me now   Full details here: http://gamedev.osu.edu/community/events/gcc-ludum-dare-23/

One question though… the countdown counts down to 9:00 PM as the start time. The tooltip produced by holding the mouse over the countdown says 6:00 PM. So… which is it? Poking my head in the IRC twice produced no definitive answers. I’ve assumed 9:00 PM for the time being.

Yeah I’m in! My first LD. I hope by the end I’ll have either my sanity or a finished game, preferably both

Tools:

• Engine: Unity
• Language: C#
• Gfx: Photoshop
• Sfx: Cfxr
• Music: Logic

Looking forward to the madness!

This will be my first “official” Ludum Dare entry. I kind of took part unofficially in #22 & had a blast! Learnt a lot too. One of the things I learnt was that packaging issues can suck up a lot of your time if you write your game in C++, so this time I’m gonna use JavaScript and WebGL. Hopefully that’ll mean someone besides me gets to play it. So yeah, can’t wait!

A Challenger, or more likely 3 challengers, has risen to the challenge of the Ludum dare game jam(since the jam allows 3 people :3)

Our members include:

-Jellonator(the person typing this) as programmer, weapon of choice: Flashpunk

-AlucardX60 as artsist, weapon of choice: PAINT.NET and maybe GIMP

-MKSTAR26 as music sequencer, weapon of choice: PXTone

hopefully we have a great time making this game, which I know I will, like I did last year making that abomination called Alone On An Alien Planet. Hopefully we don’t procrastinate this like we do with our recent projects.

~Jellonator~

Tags: im in

This will be my second LD. Last time I used C++, but people usually do not want to download stuff (I am guilty myself), so this time I will be using LWJGL (java) and posting it as an applet.

I will use a basic framework that I have created for other games in the past.

For the artwork, I will use Flash/Photoshop/Sketchbook.

If I get to doing sound, I will probably use Wolfram Tones and sfxr.

Wow! 10 years old already?

My first Ludum Dare was #16 (Exploration). I’ve participated in a few LDs and MiniLDs since then, but my first attempt was the only one that I finished. I’ll be using Trello to try and keep things organized this time around. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll livestream, but if I do it will be on Twitch.TV. My basecode will will be posted on Dropbox before the competition starts.

Tools:

• Language: Lua
• Framework: LÖVE
• Graphics: Allegro Sprite Editor, ArtRage, Paint.NET, Pixen
• Audio: FruityLoops, GarageBand, SFXR
• Text Editor: PSPad, TextMate
• Map Editor: Tiled
• Timelapse: Chronolapse

Hey ludum dare community, I need a program(preferably with a link to it) for windows which you can make music in, a bit like Garage band.

Thanks in advance,

Odrega

I am in! Last time i failed, but this time i actually have a vague idea, of what i am doing!

I will be using java for code, paint.net for pixels, sfxr for sounds and iNudge for the music (if i get the time).

Looking forward to making/playing some games!

EDIT: I may switch to unity, due to me discovering how awesome it is! In that case i will be using sculptris or blender for 3d stuff.

Hello World, I am Khayet and want to participate in Ludum Dare 23. It’ll be my first Game Compo

Tools:

-Game Maker

-GIMP

-beepbox.co + sfxr?^^ I never made sounds or music myself, that’s going to be funny. ;D

I wish you all the very best.

thx,

Khayet

Team- Tom(Coding), Murphy(everything else), and Gamel(helps with everthing else)

Programs- GameMaker, Gimp, and Garageband(ipod)

Our First Competition

This is gonna be fun

Murphy

As title said, I’m in for my second time. Since LD22, i got a pen tablet and a MacBook Pro. Too bad I didn’t have much free time for programming or learning other new tools, I will stick with the tools i used for LD#22:

• Language: C# (with Unity3d)
• Graphics: Paint.net
• Sound: sfxr or bfxr
• Timelapse: chronolapse on windows, i need to find a timelapse software for mac and a video editor to merge both videos.

And this is my new updated desk with tablet and Mac:

I hope to have same fun i had last time, both making my game and playing a lot of good ones. I really enjoyed it.

Muu?

Tags: C++, deskphoto, ld23

This will be my first ever Ludum Dare I’m entering. Hopefully I have a finished game at the end.

Tools:

• Engine: Unity3d
• Language: C# or Javascript
• Graphics: Photoshop and Cinema 4D
• Sound: Don’t know
• Timelapse: Chronolapse

Good luck everyone!

Andrew here. I just discovered the Ludum Dare. By accident, no less. It’s been a long time since I seriously attempted to create a working game from start to finish. It’s kinda funny. My game building binges in high school using QuickBASIC largely resembled what I imagine a LD weekend looks like. Anyway, the timing fits. Things are coming full circle and I’m already in the process of returning to several old projects anyway, so I may as well take the plunge.

My weapon of choice is FreeBASIC. It basically claims to be the spiritual successor to the language I have the most experience in, so it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to pick it back up and rediscover the art of game building in BASIC. Go ahead and laugh if you want, but assuming the compiler isn’t broken (and it looks pretty solid so far), BASIC is a powerful general purpose language that lends itself to gaming as well as most languages, and probably a great deal more easily than some. Then again, maybe I’m just biased. Ah, nostalgia. I am a sucker for the retro games, come to think of it…

I hope to be up to speed for the next Ludum Dare. Even if I’m not, I plan to try, assuming I don’t find the theme objectionable somehow. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, including the need to rebuild some of the old tools that used to make my game programming life easier. But that’s okay. I have a plan.

A few of us from the ACM club at the University of Minnesota Duluth are going to be gathering to participate in the next Ludum Dare.  If you are in the area and would like to join us, contact me at Laremere@gmail.com or post a comment below with a way to contact you.

A couple of friends, along with myself, have decided to take the plunge and enter the Jam competition. Were going to keep it fairly simple for our first try but were still going to put in our best effort.

Our Tools

• Language: Java
• IDE: Eclipse
• Graphics: Paint.net or Photoshop & Illustrator
• Sound: Reason 5 & Bfxr
• Timelapse: Chronolapse

I’m in! Or better said, we are in :).

Last time I joined the competition. This time we are joining the jam (2 man team so far). Last time I finished, but the final product was only a small part of what I was planning to build, and thus the game fell a bit short.
This time, we are planning to do things a bit smarter :).

Oh, we will be building the game in unity3d (pro), with C#.

– Vic

Hello!
I’ll be attempting Ludum Dare #23, with any luck I won’t drop out like last time. I’m going to try somehow incorporate an online aspect to it, probably using Twitter or Omegle or something like that. I’m gonna make a timelapse, and I’m considering doing a LiveStream. First time for a livestream.

I’ll be using the following:

Langue: C#

Libraries: XNA, RestSharp

Graphics: Paint.NET, Photoshop CS5

Music: Have no idea.

Sound: I’ll probably record some sounds with my mic and modify them in Audacity

Timelapse: Chronolapse

Other Stuff: Steam for communication so I don’t get depressed from lack of social interaction, and to occasionally play some games when I get burnt out. Songbird for music (on that note, you can see what music I’m listening to during the LD at my Last.FM page). My dog to keep me company. Idk what to write here 😛

I mentioned before that I’m quite rusty in the games programming department. To have a chance at producing something worthwhile in a 48 hour weekend cram, I’m going to have to practice. In the spirit of stretching my mental muscles, relearning old stuff I’ve forgotten, and learning the new stuff that QBASIC couldn’t do back in my high school days, here comes… Andrew’s Eight Days of Game Design!

Yeah, it needs a catchier title. And possibly a different number of days. The choice of eight was completely arbitrary. Each day will feature a focused effort to learn and develop the tools necessary to address a different game design issue. Most of these are interchangeable:

• The Graphics — most of my games were text based, but that’s not going to get me very far these days.
• The User Interface — explains itself, really. Heck, even Progress Quest had to include an interface!
• The Network — most any game I design will want to be a multiplayer game. It’s a pain, but it has to happen.
• The Audio — should be straightforward, but I haven’t messed with audio in my programming in many many years.
• The Engine — will depend largely on the particular game design but without a good idea of how to control, blend, and regulate all the other elements, I won’t have a game.

I’ve got about two weeks to get ready for my first Ludum Dare. Will it be enough? We’ll see.

Greetings Programs!

This will be my first ludum dare attempt. I found out about ludum dare only days before LD20. Since then I’ve been very intrigue by the whole concept of creating a game from start to finish in only 48 hours. Seems impossible, but previous entries point to the contrary. Now that I’m out of college and have some experience working with some tools, I figured I’d finally give this a shot.

At the very least I plan to use the time to jumpstart a project that has been swimming in my head for ages (provided it ends up fitting in with the theme). However, I may try and come into this compo cold, with no expectation for what I want to make and just focus as much as I can on the theme (instead of trying to make a pre-existing idea fit the theme). Anyway, the following is a list of tools I plan on using for the compo:

• libGDX (a java game development framework targeted toward Windows, OSX, Linux, & Android)
• GIMP (the poor man’s photoshop…I’m a programmer, not an artist, but it should be fun regardless)
• BFXR (sound effects)
• not sure about music; I might use Audacity or LMMS…not sure though. I might even try using AudioTool or AudioSauna (a couple of chrome apps).
• TexturePacker (the essential version…just got out of college….I’m broke).
• Tiled (map editor…if it is needed 😉 )
• my handy dandy notebook (for sketching out ideas)

I also plan on doing some progress blogs on here and maybe on my own personal blog (not sure yet…depends on how “in the zone” I get). I’ll also try and do a timelapse to show the whole process, but that is also a maybe. I think that is everything. I’ll be sure to post something if any of my tools change.

Release Targets:

• Windows, OSX, & Linux via executable jar (.jar), Java webstart (.jlpn), and as a Java Applet (…maybe…probably)
• Android (maybe 1.5+) – I’ll attach a .apk file that people can download and install on their phones manually (if I can’t get it into the Play store) I have more experience with Android so that will be my main target platform, but I’ll be working on the desktop versions right along side it.

Good luck to everyone! Let’s make some games! Have fun!

Jack

Hello! Once again, I’m in for the Jam 😀

I’ve participated in a couple of compos and jams before this one:

1.- Last time I tried to make a HTML5 Game (Phares), with really poor results on the coding and design side of things (it did pretty well on the Art and Sound department).

2.- I tried to make something for Mini-LD 29, but it was sooo boring that I did not bother to send it :-p ( here it is in case you feel like doing something boring, I still think the idea has potential, will look into it later )

3.- For LD 21 I did “Escaparazzi“, it did not get high scores on the compo, but this little piece of game, has taken me far (basically: I polished it a little, sent it to another compo, won, landed my dream job), currently I’m working on a extended version of the extended version.

So, my tools:

– Even tho I f*ckng hate Javascript with passion, HTML5 is the “way of the future”, so once again I’ll be using ImpactJs. (Seriously, we need a open source framework on par with Flixel or Flashpunk, I love ImpactJs… but it makes me feel dirty to use a closed source framework here, sadly i’m not “coder enough” to build my own)

–  Notepad++ I love it. period.

– Aria Maestosa, GXSCC, SFXR, Audacity, el-cheapo microphone, a sock. The most convoluted audio workflow EVAR. Somehow works for me: Compose in Aria Maestosa (or blatantly make cut-outs of sheet music I like), take each instrument to GXSCC, make it sound like I want, mix it all in Audacity, with all the effects and samples I want to add.

– Photoshop CS 5.5 too powerful compared to the open source options. I just can’t get used to any of the paid, free or open source alternative. (might try CS 6 Beta)

And that’s about it. Good Luck Everyone!

This is my second attempt!
I will probably use WebGL and prepare some simple 2D-tile engine that can read Tiled (map editor) output. I also plan to use Graphics Gale but I might decide to stick with Gimp.

Some other stuff that I’ll use:
* soundmanager2
* OpenMPT or Musagi
* Netbeans (mostly for Javascript but also for Ant)
* A simple starting utility library for vector math, simple geometry etc. (same as for LD22 but with some additions for WebGL stuff that I’ll post a link to later)

This is my second LD! The last time was a failure because I was preparing for Kittens to win, but Kittens didn’t win… I had already come up with an awesome idea, so I basically said “FUCK IT” and made the game anyway. Not for LD but just because I liked the idea. Download link It’s my first game, so don’t kill me…

Anyway! This time I am determined to finish my game! Hopefully, I will. Here’s the stuff I will use to make this masterpiece:

• Language and Library: Either Java & Slick2D or C++ & SFML (Most probably Java)
• IDE: Eclipse in both cases.
• Graphics: GIMP (Cuz’ I’m a Linux guy, and GIMP’s probably the best out there for Linux) BTW: I suck at art, so it will probably be some simple, SIMPLE art.
• Sound: BFXR
• OS: Linux Mint 12

Yup.

Unless my computer continues to freeze im in for LD 23!

And this will be my very first Ludum Dare, with only one year of programming experience.

Lets see how this goes

Language: C#

Libraries: XNA

Sound: Freesound.org

Fonts: Fontstruct (if i need a font)

Art: Paint and GIMP

Tags: im in, LD #23

Ludum Dare 23 is getting closer! I’ve improved some of my applications since last time, and I have a lot more experience with the ones I’m keeping!

For the game engine….

• Unity 3d Free – I’ve had almost 2 years experience and created several games that (in my opinion) look better than the majority of Unity free games. (No offense, its just that the best Unity games are made with Pro, which makes sense)

For 3D Modeling…..

• Blender – I’ve had about 2 years experience and I learned mostly through tutorials. I’m not that bad at this either.

For texturing…..

• www.pixlr.com – free alternative to Photoshop, though buggier and harder to work with.

For sound……

• Garageband – yes it’s not Logic or Ableton or anything but it comes with iLife and it gets the job done if you know what you’re doing. I’ve been using this for a while and more recently I’ve been influenced by dubstep so be prepared if any songs I make for LD23 have dubstep elements…
• BFXR – Last time I used CFXR, but I found there were a lot more options in BFXR, so I stuck with it.

Once again I’ll be using Unity’s Standard Assets Package and maybe some from the FPS Tutorial. I’ll try to write as much scripts as possible during the LD, but if I’ve already written something in another game, and it means saving time, I might borrow it. Of course, it’ll be written be me, just before the LD.

Oh, and for timelapsing I use a terminal script that takes a screenshot every 6 seconds or so.

Also, be prepared for a special game surprise by Rob Productions in a short while! (Hint: turning my UnSuccessStory upside down!)

Hopefully, my game won’t suck so bad this time! 😉

Gonna be playing with my Slick 2D skills and having a fun time in Java.

Language:

-Java

IDE:

-Eclipse

Framework:

-LWJGL/Slick2D

Sounds:

-Sfxr

Music:

-Guess I’ll make it in Garageband?

Yeah, so, I don’t really know how to use sound in LWJGL. Guess I’ll be get to figuring that out!

Finally after having time to relax while being a second semester high school senior, I will be making my first attempt at this competition.  I’m not expecting to fully finish or anything but I’ll do my best!!

My tools:

XNA Game Studio in Visual Studio

Paint .NET

SFXR

Good luck to everyone!

Ten year anniversary? Count me in

I think this’ll be like the 7th time of me participating, so let’s all have fun!

Weapons of choice:

Flash, flixel, cfxr, paint.net and a tablet to draw ^^

Wow, my last LD was a disaster of almost apocalyptic proportions  – it forced me to rethink priorities: no more working on the menus, gui items – these are basic mistakes, which I made two times! Anyway, the next experiment (or if I’m lucky maybe a game) will be more barebones than my last “successful” project.

I will be using Unity3d (no more AS3 for my private projects), maybe a more visual tool will help me concentrate on what’s important.

If you’re thinking on what tool to use, maybe after this lecture things will become clearer, they were  for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII

This is my second LD and I’M IN! But this time I’m not going to use the same tools of the last time…

Tools:

IDE: Eclipse

Language: Java

Library: LWJGL

Graphics: paint.net – Photoshop

Audio/Music: sfxr or maybe audacity

Bye!

Hey all!

I’m the developer of a little mobile game called “Lawnmower Challenge”. Buddy of mine suggested I sign up for the next LD. I insisted that I’m complete trash when it comes to coding fast but he whined and moaned so much, so here I am!

Lawnmower Challenge is my first published game and was selected for PAX Boston Indie Showcase this year! I’m so excited about it and will be showcasing my game to thousands of awesome gamers the entire weekend. If any of you are at PAX, please stop by and say hi and grab a free LMC button! You can also get the game for iOS and Android.

Although I’m not too great at coding, I wanted to try my hand at LD. I hope to learn a lot from this experience and meet some new people.

I’ve decided to get my second LD rolling with a little donation. I hope to do better than last time and hopefully I’ll get enough time this time round to actually test and iron out the bugs.

Language: BASIC (Visual Basic 6)

Graphics: Paint

Sound: SFXR

Bring It On!

LD22 was about the most fun I’ve had in a long time, so you better believe I’m in again assuming no pressing events come up.

But…

What tools will I use this time? I’m really torn.
I could do as I did last time with Hugmonster (-o^_^)-o and choose:

Unity3D
Photoshop CS3
MonoDevelop with C#
2DToolKit (Unity asset library)

But at the same time I’m really curious to know whether I can pull off using

Java
Android SDK
The AIDE ide for Android tablets
Photoshop CS3

To write an Android game on my Asus Transformer Android tablet running ICS.. It might depend on the theme whether I use AIDE plus my tablet, or whether I use Eclipse and my laptop.

ARGH! Decisions!!!!!!

What say you? Is this a dev environment fit for a king?!

Hiya, everybody, how’s it going? I’m not only here to issue you a friendly greeting, but also to say that I am planning to enter the Ludum Dare for my first time! I’ve watched previous events on this site before, but I’ve finally gained the courage enough to join in for my piece of the fun.

Now, I could make this my “I’M IN!” post, but A.: I feel like putting it off until I’m sure of my tools and B.: my psyche rejects the impulse to do what everyone else has. I’ll just introduce myself a bit and see where it goes.

Okay, so, first off, I’ve never actually made a real game before. I’ve been learning all sorts of programming languages for the past couple of years, though, just to try and meet this end. For most of that time, my tool of choice was Flash, but I never really accomplished anything with it, other than endlessly buggy collision systems. I even once put this one dumb question on stackoverflow… nevermind, let’s not talk about that. I mostly blame it all on a lack of enough time with school and everything to really get anything done.

Well, I had been planning to use Flash in the upcoming LD23 for a while, until a couple weeks ago when I discovered LÖVE. It appeals much more to me, as Lua’s errors are far simpler to decipher, and the language is so easy for me to pick up. In short, I’ll probably end up throwing my experience to the wind and developing my entry in LÖVE.

I also have a personal goal for myself: to make friends here. I like discussing games and concepts with others, and so I love the opportunity to do it with all of you. I’ll make my I’m in post soon. Until then!

This will be my first Ludum Dare entry. I will be using the framework I am most comfortable in, which is XNA. Wish me luck!

Utility belt:

Development: Visual Studio, XNA, C#

Graphics: paint.net

Audio: sfxr

I still consider myself a junior level programmer, so I know I’ll have some difficulty. I will promise that if I shouldn’t finish my game by the deadline, I’ll finish it afterwords anyway so that at the very least it’s complete and people can play it.

At the moment I’m hemming and hawing between using Lua with Love2d or using Stencyl. With Stencyl I can focus on graphics and game design longer. However, I can still write a template in Love2d where I can have menus set up and from my experience with a project that I’m working on in Corona, I can even put in a tile map and level editor function (so that players can edit their own levels.. if the game should contain a elements on a grid like a tile map). I’m sure that should be ok to code before the compo starts. The template would be similar to this one: http://www.mikeziray.com/2010/06/27/corona-game-template-in-lua/

Language: Actionscript or Lua (will have one picked in a week)

Libraries: Love2d or Stencyl (will have one picked in a week)

Graphics: MyPaint, Pencil, Paint.NET, and or Photoshop CS4

Sound: SFXR

Timelapse: Chronolapse

Hopefully I will have the next ludum dare off if I do not that is okay I will participate next time in the mean time I will be working on my new game that I will be publishing 3 months from now. If you want to check it out visit my blog here simbstudio.tumblr.com or directly play the demo here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/70771337/WebPlayer.html This blog is to help me feel motivated to keep programming and having fun if you have any suggestions or useful tips or programs to use drop me a message or comment here or follow my on tumblr. I am posting this here because I know this is a great supportive community. I wish everyone luck in the next compo have fun guys

Tags: blog, development, new game, tumblr, unity3d

This will be the first time ive done the compo ive done the jam 2 times.

Tools:

IDE: Eclipse

Language: Java

Graphics: paint.net

Audio/Music: sfxr

I decided to finally finish start the doodle/mini-LD project from a few weeks ago as sort of a warmup round, and, unlike every other jam/speed-coding/short-dev-cycle attempt I’ve ever made, I actually feel like I’m not a miserable failure this time! Go me!

I’m eighteen hours in, and I’ve managed to go from some really crappy initialization code and an empty directory to a really crappy level editor and previewer, and even a crappily-animated heroine to go with. (I’m slacking off at the moment because I’m waiting for Imagemagick to finish downsampling the contents of my timelapse directory, and I really don’t feel like looking at the project at the moment, so I’m avoiding burnout.)

Things I’ve learned from this little exercise:

1. starting out with a lightweight vegan meal: definitely a huge win (I love cheeseburgers, but let’s face it, they cause torpor like nobody’s business).
2. using workrave to remind me to split my work up into 45-minute chunks so I don’t get burned out or demoralised too quickly: definitely a huge win.
3. while making tools and ‘middleware’ in situ is kind of fun, it is definitely a timewaster.
4. I need to be better at (temporarily) turning a blind eye to things that are inelegant or unpolished during ‘crunch time’.
5. Boning a catgirl: not as much fun as it sounds (see below). That took waaaay too long to make, and it still has a crappy silhouette and z-fights all over the place. A shame…

I think I’m probably going to goof off for the evening at this point, then pick up bright and early tomorrow; 12 hours would be just enough to actually make it into a real game…

I’m in…for the forth time or so i believe
I can’t wait. xD
Can anyone wait? Cause i can’t…..
AHHHHHHH….LUDUM DARE xD :0 :0

Hello everyone! 😀

This will be my third LD and I’m stoked! I’ve never submitted but I’ve always tried my best. Now, I wanna do ten times better.

• Programming Language: Java
• Libraries: LWJGL, Slick2D, and JBullet (if needed)
• IDE: Eclipse
• Sound/Music: Bfxr/WolframTones
• Graphics: GIMP, Inkscape, and Pickle
• Foodstuffs: LOTS of water, microwavable bacon cheese burgers, hot pockets, and energy drink mix

I wanna wish everyone the best of luck and I hope we make it over the 1000 game list! 😀

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Okay, so I’m in for this one as well. Same plan as before. Entering the Jam, hopefully next time I’ll enter the comp.

What tools I’ll be using:

Programming: Microsoft Visual C++ Express/Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Dev Preview (Depends on which one I open when the comp starts xD)

Graphics: For the most part, MS Paint or Paint.NET

Sound: Not sure yet

Other tools: Steam for social interaction, music for motivation, and a fork to eat 😀

In the past week I’ve totally fall in love with Paper by FiftyThree. A drawing application on iPad. It’s simple, nice, get the work done and have a really awesome feeling. So as I wanted to make my game in 2D and use my Bamboo to make all the art. Then I was thinking… why not use this application to make all the art ?

And that the challenge within the challenge that is Ludum Dare (as it’s my first time). So, here’s my useless announcment : I will make all art with Paper by FiftyThree.

Well… not exactly… As I don’t yet have every in-app tool yet I can’t do some things in it (don’t have Outline and Write), and will export the line in Photoshop to colorize. They are taking ideas in consideration so it would also be great to have feature like copy/past sheet (would be great to decompose the character or other for animation) and have at least a second layer before LudumDare. If not, I guess I’ll have to work on photoshop.

As for the animation of all that. I’m considerating using Spriter. If you don’t knoow what is Spriter here’s their KickStarter page. It’s now on beta phase so I must not count on it that much, but it’s really a great software to become. I didn’t yet give anything to them but hope I can (at least $25) before the end of Kickstarter’s founding. You must check it out… now!

Anyway, I’ll say what software I use at the right moment, but that is my plan at the moment.

< Previous post: Here comes a new challenger !

Next post > LD is coming…

Tags: animation, fiftythree, paper, plans, spriter

Day One of Andrew’ s Eight Days of Game Design has ended in success! I thought about focusing on graphics today, but for the sake of other projects the first thing I need to figure out in FreeBASIC is networking. So, it made more sense to start with sockets.

I had to work off and on in between other tasks, and a lot of that time was spent reading and generally feeling like I wouldn’t get anywhere at all with it today. Most of the remainder was spent scratching my head wondering why the example worked but my modification wouldn’t compile and run… but after a bit of code voodoo and a lot of head scratching, I wound up with a bare bones (but working) TCP/IP socket server that will accept and snark at communicate with multiple clients. Yep. Typical day in the life for a programmer.

I’m not sure how useful this will be for the Ludum Dare, but it’s a huge step toward making that MUD codebase I’ve been wanting to build. I’ll have to add a lot to the mix in order to make it useful, but it’s a good start. I’m calling that a win for today.

Cheers!

I’m in, this will be the 2nd LD i’ll actually be able to take part in at all, and the first one where I’ll actually be able to be here coding for more than half the compo! (last one was more of a LD16 for me…)

• Programming Language(s): C++ / Angelscript
• Development Platform: Gentoo Linux Kernel 3.2.11 AMD64 build
• Target Platform(s): Linux x86, Linux x86_64, Win32, also OSX if i can figure out how to cross compile to it in time.
• Engine/Basecode: Aether Engine (still finalizing, documentation and download will be up within a few days, just trying to get physics fully implemented…..I procrastinated too much 😛 ) Which is built on SDL, SDL_image, SDL_mixer, OpenGL, tinyxml, zlib, angelscript, and Box2D
• Code Tools: Code::blocks, gedit, gnu make, gcc, gdb
• Sound/Music:SFXR, LMMS
• Graphics: GIMP for high res graphics/backdrops, My aptly named “Sprite Editor” for pixel art
• Food: More than likely stuffed shells w/ arabiatta sauce and a side of asparagus
• Drink: Water, rockstar recovery, newcastle, or I’ll mix a martini…all depends on the situation

Earlier I presented a list that represents the internet’s idea of the Atari 2600’s 15 best games. This is a hard list make, because there were dozens of great games made for this system. Let’s see if we can figure out what made these games so good:

1. River Raid — The premise was simple: fly a plane through a canyon while shooting down targets, avoiding collisions, and keeping fueled up. But there were some terrific complications thrown into the mix as well. A small element of strategy was introduced with the fuel gauge: not only were you flying around shooting at things and avoiding getting shot, you had to think about how badly you needed that next fuel depot. Some of the enemies could shoot back, and a few of them would shoot at you from a safe distance outside of the canyon.

This game, like many others at the time, was big on innovation. It’s a scrolling shooter played from the top down. It featured a variety of enemy types plus the additional complication of managing your fuel level. The object of the game was basically “don’t crash”, and there were a lot of things in the game that could crash you.

2. Pitfall! — The legendary Pitfall Harry was an explorer and treasure hunter. He couldn’t fight worth anything, but he could do a decent Tarzan imitation. We could possibly describe this game as an early platform explorer, and it featured one of the scariest of all game bosses (no, not the giant scorpions, although those were scary too): a time limit! I hate time limits. Maybe that’s why I never managed to find all the treasures.

A very simple design based on beating the clock and avoiding obstacles. Look this one up; there’s some interesting reading on wikipedia.

3. Space Invaders — One of the icons of the early video game era, this space shooter features a fixed screen (no scrolling) and introduces barriers to provide cover for a small strategic element. It’s also a sort of a “goal defense” type of game, because if one of your enemies touches the ground you’re done. And all of this was played to the increasingly rapid sound of your enemy’s boot steps marching toward you…

4. Combat — This is where things got a little complicated. Players patrol a battleground (represented as a maze or sky field) and shoot each other into oblivion. Highest score wins.

The innovation here is the sheer number of variations you could set for this game. Need a more complicated maze? You could get that. Want bouncing bullets? No problem. Invisible tanks? Check. With 27 variations, it was a little crazy. And infinitely replayable.

How’d they solve problems like pathfinding A.I. back then? They didn’t. This was a two player game only, which was probably necessary considering hardware limitations, and is possibly the game’s only real drawback. Not really that big a deal, considering this game made #4 on the list. People remember it quite fondly.

5. Asteroids — Another fixed field space shooter fills out The Internet’s top five Atari 2600 console games. Notice a pattern here? These games are starting simple, and mixing two or three simple elements together to make the game interesting, grab the viewer’s attention, and then put it in a headlock. Maybe that’s why we look at the clock suddenly and wonder where all the time goes when we play games like this.

In the interest of brevity, I will shut up and save the rest of the list for later. I notice a few things looking at what we’ve got so far. Four out of these five games are shooters. But mindless shooting isn’t enough. Notice the elements included that make the player think: Fuel management. Strategic cover. Rebound angle. Force field and hyperspace options with their own inherent drawbacks. Players like to shoot, but not always mindlessly. They need variations on their field of play and their objectives. They want choices, and perhaps most importantly, consequences for those choices.

What else can we glean from this list of the five most popular games? What were your favorite Atari games?

Update, April 15: Awesome! I just scored a 40% off discount code for Ludum Dare participants (it won’t last forever!): “gjttsgeb” at http://link.packtpub.com/31Eodu

Update, April 12: Apple just approved the book for the iTunes iBookstore! http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-game-jam-survival-guide/id516248330

WOO HOO! I’m excited to announce that my new book, The Game Jam Survival Guide has just been published! This book is essentially a love letter to the Ludum Dare community.

It includes interviews and advice from LD48 superstars such as PoV (Mike Kasprzak), Fydo (Chris Hopp), Phil Hassey, Pekuja (Pekka Kujansuu), and Chevy Ray Johnston (two time winner of LD48), as well as other game jam experts such as the people who run the Global Game Jam.

I also include the infographics from the surveys we all did last Ludum Dare, and packed the book full of the Haiku poetry and funny anecdotes that you all sent to me a few months ago. Finally, I went hardcore into the ways to achieve game jam success, including tons of “what NOT to do” as well as specific advice about tools, time management, design, how to deal with the theme, how to finish on time, and more. Right now the best price is on Kindle, and it is available in hardcover paper edition as well.

I can’t wait to join everybody later this month at LD23. Good luck and KEEP IT SIMPLE! =)

The book is available in paper hardcopy, .PDF, .mobi, and .epub formats.

You can pick up a copy right now from the publisher, as well as
Amazon,
Amazon UK,
Kindle,
Kobo,
Safari Books,
Barnes and Noble, and
iBooks on your iPad.

Here, just for fun, is all sorts of information about what I packed into the book, copy-n-pasted from the publisher’s press kit:

Overview

Enthusiastic and light-hearted, glimpse the excitement and frantic creativity of game jams.

Motivating, encouraging and infectious, it is sure to help you reach the finish line.

Follow this handbook from brainstorming an idea, over bitter obstacles and on to the sweet finish line: a complete, playable, fun game.

Each stage of game jams is described with task lists and anecdotes relating common experiences, the trials and the tribulations of past game jam champions and losers.

Packed with interviews, tips, tricks and wise words from Ludum Dare and Global Game Jam organisers among other well-known game jammers.

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1: Before the Jam: Prepare Yourself for Success!
Chapter 2: Hours 1-12: Your Quest Begins!
Chapter 3: Hours 13-24: Deeper into the Jungle!
Chapter 4: Hours 25-36: Breaking Through The Wall!
Chapter 5: Hours 37-48: Getting to the Finish Line!
Chapter 6: After the Jam: Fame and Fortune!
Appendix A: Game Jams
Appendix B: Game Engines
Appendix C: Helpful Tools
Appendix D: The Community
Afterword
Index
Preface

What you will learn from this book:

• Preparing for the jam: conquer the theme, pick design aids, prototype quickly, choose the right tools for the job, and cut the right corners.
• Bombastic brainstorming: power up your idea generator and run with a theme, gain more votes and please the masses.
• Building a game jam entry: pick your weapons, follow your plan, cut the bells-n-whistles, scramble over “the wall”, submit a game on time, and with a little luck, attain fame and fortune.
• Why Mike “PoV” Kasprzak (Ludum Dare administrator) thinks game jams are a good introduction to the realities of the game industry.
• The reasons why Dr. Mike Reddy (organizer of the Global Game Jam) thinks designing on paper is essential.
• The best ways to find creative inspiration and develop an idea to fit a theme according to Eric McQuiggan (founding member of The Dirty Rectangles) and Chevy Ray Johnston (author of the FlashPunk engine).
• What Foaad Khosmood (director of the Global Game Jam) suggests you do to ensure you finish before the deadline.
• The worst way to prepare according to Pekka “pekuja” Kujansuu and the best way according to Phil Hassey (Ludum Dare administrators)
• What one piece of advice Jason P. Kaplan (founder of the Game Prototype Challenge) would give to newcomers.

I want to send a massive and grateful THANK YOU to everyone in the Ludum Dare community. This book was written for you.

Tags: Book, McFunkypants, motivation, postmortem, SuccessStory, tips

Although exam season is dawning, I can’t miss upon a chance to enter Ludum Dare. Since I’m going to be revising a lot, I’m going to focus a lot less on graphics (unlike last time) and focus more on innovation and gameplay.

•  Graphics: Photoshop CS4
• Programming: Actionscript 3
• Sound: Bfxr

I’m not sure if I’ll be entering the competition or jam – it depends if my friends are available for that weekend. Happy to be part of the 10th year anniversary!

I guess this is what we’re supposed to do. It’s the first time I’ll be participating; I have no idea how this will go, but I’m going to give it a try!

• Language: JavaScript
• Library: kilo (a JS canvas game library I’ve been working on, usable but still limited)
• Sound: bfxr (maybe others)
• Graphics: GIMP
• IDE: Eclipse (with Aptana and MercurialEclipse)
• Source Control: Mercurial, at my Ludum Dare bitbucket repo)

I’ll be developing on Linux, but JavaScript means my game should work on any OS with a decent modern browser. I’m really looking forward to this – wish me luck!

Let’s see… this will be my 4th LD… 😀

As always, because I know nothing, I’m going to be using GameMaker 8.1 for programming. I will be using SFXR and Schism Tracker for sound and music. I will be using Paint Tool SAI and Paint.NET for graphics, and the game will likely be 2D because that’s just easier to program, especially with GameMaker.

I hope that this time my game is actually fun…

Hey, all! If you’ve read my last post, you’ll know that I’ve been holding out on the I’m In thing for a while because I wasn’t sure what I’m working with. Well, I’ve decided I’m just going to go ahead and choose the tools my gut tells me to.

PROGRAMMING– Love2D. I feel like I’m comfortable enough with it to scrap something together in two days. It also turns out that the official 0.8.0 version rolled out today, which could not have been better timing.

GRAPHICS– I’ll mainly be working in Paint.net, but I might call in some help from Pickle and maybe even Aseprite.

SOUND– I’m confident with Sfxr for sound effects generation, and Audacity if I decide to record something, though I doubt it. I’ve also gone with Musagi for music with Aria Maestosa as a fallback in case I have some troubles with it.

TIMELAPSE– This whole thing just wouldn’t feel complete without a timelapse, now would it? Chronolapse is my choice here, simply because I’m not aware of anything better.

Well, glad that’s out of the way. I’ve been trying to exercise myself each day in a different area of design so that I’m completely ready for my epic showdown with destiny. I’ll be trying to update my feed more on that. Until my return.

Made a simple script for Autotracker. Can generate x amount of songs, specified by user. I’ll make it more fancy as needed. Enjoy.

Instructions

1. Download and extract
2. run frontend.py
3. Success

Updated Download Links

Download link(Rar format)

Download link(Zip format)

Hello!  First time here for me. I have some experience in video games, but almost none in what I’ll use.

For LD23, I’ll use Unity, C#, sfxr, Paint.Net, SketchUp (or mabye Blender).

For the music, I’m not sure yet. I’m not sure what is legal and what is not.
“Fonts, drum loops, drum samples, and sampled instruments are allowed IF you have the legal right to use them.”

If a friend make some 30sec. basic 8bit loop only for my game, it’s “legal”?
If it’s not ok, I’ll maybe try Musagi or just don’t have music.

Death in the family, no LD23 for me

I’ll be streaming my game at http://www.twitch.tv/pixeltoadstudios. bye

If you’d like to keep your upcoming LD entry a bit more organized, I’ve written a quick game design document template for the purpose.

If you don’t know what a game design document is, you can check out the Wikipedia entry. Although this one doesn’t fit that bill exactly, it’s designed for use either by a small independent team or the infamous one-man army. With the text blurbs, it also serves as a bit of a game design tutorial.

Anyway, you’re more than welcome to use it as well if you think it’ll help you. It never hurts to be a bit more organized, eh? ;D

This entry was posted on Monday, April 9th, 2012 at 4:45 am and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Same toolchain as always, this time around. Next time though I’ll hopefully be running a custom SDL-based engine. 😛

IDE : FlashDevelop
Libraries : FlashPunk
Graphics : Although I’ve been meaning to migrate to a slightly more open (but equally intuitive) graphics editor… Probably Photoshop again.
Sounds : BFXR
Music : Renoise [with a bunch of tools for sound synthesis – Resynth, Custom Waveform Generator, etc.]
Encoding : WinLAME

I’ve been waiting for this since December. Good luck, everybody – and happy 10 years LD!

LD23 is gonna be my 6th Ludum Dare, but I’m overly excited as always

• HaxeNME – an extremely cool multiplatform framework ( HaXe -> Flash / Android / iOS / desktop … )
• GIMP – graphics
• sfxr – chiptune sound effects
• autotrk-c – automated chiptune music generator
• vim, git

As a personal sidequest, I’ll try to integrate a dog in boots to my LD entry. As I’ve found just recently, dogs in boots look extremely badass and should wear them all the time.

I did that last MiniLD, but I haven’t done an actual Ludum Dare yet, so this will be my first one.  I’m trying to learn a programming language, but for now, I’m just using Stencyl.

Here are the tools I’m using:

Game: Stencyl

Graphics: GraphicsGale/Paint

Music: Pxtone

Hey all,

I’ve been putting together a website devoted to helping out indie Java and Processing game developers, and one of my motivations is to make it easy to deploy a game for competitions like Ludum Dare. Just upload a jar and a thumbnail image, and you’ll have a decent-looking website to showcase your game as an applet, webstart, or downloadable jar without ever worrying about web development. This will especially come in handy for competitions, when you might not have time to create a website as well as a game.

I’m also working on adding tutorials and ad revenue sharing so that people can hopefully make some money off their games, but for now the basic functionality is there and might prove useful to somebody. I’m still working everything out, so I’d love to hear any feedback you have!

So, check it out if you feel like it: Static Void Games

See you all during the competition!

Going to be my first year! I am a inexperience game developer and have been testing around and learning C# for about 5 months. Im in school so i dont have much time to do much, but i still want to try this!

List of what i’ll be using:

– Unity 3D**

– C#

-Photoshop Elements** Came with my Wacom Tablet!

– SFXR&BFXR

I’m ready!

Hi all, I’m Midgard, I’m learning to develope indie games, so I’m trying to do my best on this event, that’s very impressive for me, because a lot of developers participate in that.

For my first year, I will go with:

– Blender 2.6x.
–  NotePad++ & Geany.
– Photoshop for making the textures.
– Sunvox, for in-game sounds and bso.

So, thanks for let me participate in this great event, I’m waiting so hard to start the 48h non-stop!

-Midgard.

• Programming Language(s): AS3
• Target Platform: Web
• Library: Either Flixel or flashpunk, might just code from scratch too.
• IDE: Flashdevelop
• Sound/Music: Audacity and maybe my iPod microphone
• Graphics: Paint.net
• Food: cinnamon rolls, mac and cheese, chocolate chip muffins
• Drink: Coffee, tea, espresso

I’ll be making things up as I go along. Nothing is set in stone except that I’ll have fun.

This will be my first Ludum Dare

Tools I will be using:-

Graphics: GraphicsGale

Programming: C++ with SDL

Sound: Audacity and/or Mixcraft

Goal: To finish a game in 48 hours

Which means I’m in!

I’ll either be using FlashPunk, or my own personal library that I’ve been building up for a while, which I will declare closer to the time if I do intend to use it.

Either way, I’ll be using GIMP for graphics, FlashDevelop as my IDE and I’ll be drinking so much coffee.

As I couldn’t enter the last LD due to illness ( ), I will be attempting the sidequest I proposed last time.

Good luck to all, and may kittens finally be chosen.

After reading the book “33 strategies of war” I decided to change my previously declared tools of mass construction.
I will screw the old, well known JS and Canvas and just code everything in AS3 using Wonderfl instead.

Primitive, completely new for me and against all advice 😉

So, I didn’t manage to finish Ludum Dare 22 as I had to travel home from Uni halfway through and ran out of time.

My aim was to create a procedurally generated universe and allow the player to travel around finding out if they are alone as sentient life in the given universe. Given the time issues I really didn’t get much done, but I did focus on a particular problem, I wanted to name planets so players could remember where they had been. How do you create words that are pronounceable without just having planets called ‘Fork’ and ‘Television’. Words like these:

• fanglas
• jubbensetrier
• amenet
• moquiets
• mystilaxation
• consutey
• untive
• curchers
• anchottollon
• symborse
• prasting
• weeloats
• dupliquding
• autobency
• proscolicends

Well, the answer came in the form of Markov chains, a cool little trick that allows you to do this quite simply. Afterwards this still intrigued me, and I finally had some time to finish up my script,  wordgenerator.

It’s a Python library and command line application, so it’s usable by pretty much anyone. If you have trouble thinking up names for things in general, it can be a great help, and as a library it goes hand-in-hand with any procedurally generated content. It’s GPLv3ed, so feel free to use it in any way that fits the license. The above is actual output from my script. You can change the output via a variety of options (explained in the above link) and by changing the input dictionary of words to generate from, for example, using an Italian one:

• impiate
• aliersi
• inaudartererai
• ottardiscrerei
• addoluccio
• deredicassella
• coibinarei
• impresto
• accreste
• storano

While nothing revolutionary (Markov chains are pretty well known), the script performs pretty well and saves a bit of work. I think it’s pretty cool, and surprisingly funny to see the output you get, so if you find yourself needing names in your next Ludum Dare game, feel free to use it.

This will be my first time entering LD and hope I can finish my game 😀

Tools:

C++ and SFML
gimp for graphics
sfxr or something for sound, sound isn’t my strong suit
vim or eclipse CDT for editing

I can without a doubt supply linux binaries, but I will try my hardest to get a windows binary 😀

Hello, fellow jammers / Fala aí, rapaziada!

We’ll be hosting a meet up at the incredible garage-office of Pixel Cows, in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. We’ll gather on Friday night and will remain open until the end of Sunday. Free pizzas on us!

If you intend to join us, please send me an email at gabrielchaves2000@yahoo.com.br. We’ll announce details here and on the Pixel Cows blog. Do join us if you’re brave enough!

Gabriel

To clarify the hard to understand title I would like start with  saying that we are four guys that love games aswell as making them!

We joined the last Jam competition last LD and we really enjoyed it! It’s alot of fun

So down to the title,

Depending on my teammates schedule  this account will reperesent either the team (DalsGames) in the jam or me alone (Dals) in the compo!

If  we decide to join in as a team we will use the following tools :

Programming:
GameMaker (Only GML)

Graphics/Art:

Photoshop,Gamemaker editor,paint.net,paint

Sound:

Sfxr,audacity, and probably something else, (I’m not the sound guy!)

Software:

Skype to stay in touch!

Google docs to structure the work and for planing!

If I join by myself it will probably look something like this:

Programming language: C++
Library: CDX
IDE: Code::Blocks or  Visual c++ express

Graphics: Paint.net,Gimp,pen,paper

Sound: sfxr for sure…Maybe sing something for background music 😛

We are really looking forward to this and we are hoping that everyone will be able to join in! We are here to learn and have fun!

Whatever the outcome, the final product will be, we know it will be worth it 😀

Good evening. (Do me a favor and pretend that was said like Count Dracula would. It just does it a comedic justice.)

So, the idea for this post stemmed from a conversation Gurglor, Jeremias and I have been having on this thread. We’ve all been discussing what aspects of games and gameplay that are really important, both in psychological contexts and, um, normal ones. I thought it would be interesting to bump up the conversation to it’s own post so that we could start a larger discussion on the subject.

So, what layer of playing games is most important to you? What do you want to explore? Why do we play?

Language: Java w/ Eclipse

Graphics: Paint.net

Audio: sfxr

Motivation: Chocolate!

Viewers, look below. Participants, post a comment with a link to your live video stream.

Just under 10 days left, I’m overly excited! This will be my third time participating, not including miniLD 33.

I plan to use:

• Flash and FlashPunk (for the code)
• GraphicsGale (for the graphics)
• Maybe sfxr (for the bleep bloops)
• Coffee (for the sanity)

I’m not sure what kind of game I’ll be making. I do know that it won’t be another shooter! :p

I’ll be joining, using C#/XNA, Paint.Net, Gimp, and probably gratuitous amounts of loud music and coffee or tea.

This’ll be my second entry, and I’m rusty.

Hey Guys,

Been coding for the last couple of years and this year I decided I am going to do a LudumDare, never done it before so I cant wait! Will be using XNA and c# so hope all goes well.

Will be using:

• Visual C# Express 2010
• XNA
• Paint.net
• Pen and paper
• Whiteboard

Goodluck!

So, I’m in again.

Don’t have much words other than, “I’m spending every free hour on practicing” and “I’m going to submit something this time”

Code: Java with Netbeans
Graphics: GIMP
Sound: ??sfxr??
Capture: Chronolapse
Prototype/Idea’s/Misc: Pen, Paper, Camera, Dice, Miniatures

I will be taking part with GameSalad, Photoshop and I have no idea what to use for sound also i may possibly have me first drink of the substance known as COFFEE

I previously took place in the 8 hour Dublin GameCraft and completed this game with my friend Niall http://arcade.gamesalad.com/g/72302

We were working on a game called Spiderman and The Temple of Dinosaurs but Java broke down 3 hours in

I may call off my entry but  for now there you go

Hi everyone I’m in for my second LD and I’m really hyped!

I’ll be using;

• FlashDevelop as an IDE
• Paint.Net + Gimp for graphics
• box2d + flixel + my own stuff
• audiotool for music
• Sfxr + Audacity for sound

Cheers!

Manchester, checking in!

We’re having a proper all-night session for the Ludum Dare, at the very awesome Madlab in Manchester, UK.

The event is SOLD OUT, but there’s a waiting list for tickets in case anyone can’t make it. Go here to get on the list and we’ll let people know if any come up. If this event turns out well (and we think it will!), we’ll do this for every LD48 in the future. We have all sorts of fun stuff happening (pervasive gaming specialists, board game people, and some short crazy jams for people who can’t do the whole weekend) so it should be a whole bunch of fun. We’ll also be livestreaming if we can. We even persuaded Red Bull to send us a massive stack of energy drinks, yay!

Good luck everyone, can’t wait to jam. 😀

The MCRgamejam

Hey guys,

I will take part at the ludum dare as well. My name is Chris and I’m the creator of the lycheeJS HTML5 Game framework.

My experience as an artist is equally null – but I wrote already some lil’ games in the past (C, ASM, ATMega hacking ) and now in JavaScript.

LycheeJS is a framework that targets real crossplatform delivery. I’m currently developing the compiler for it in my spare time – that is / will be able to translate the crappy JavaScript language into C++ source code using something like sourcemaps. Why is that required? For example, rendering on Android is crappy – so you’ll use a shim (native app) for it, that offers the same Renderer API as the HTML5 Canvas or WebGL Renderer would offer inside the Browser – so you can use the same code there. Well, surely that’s a lot of work – and there are different concepts for shims. Currently, I’m only able to compile to a native Android App using that concept – the iOS one will be developed if I change my mind to use crappy OSX as my development environment -.-

The compiler for lycheeJS is not yet ready to be open sourced, but I think the concept of lycheeJS is straight forward. Feel free to gimme a shout if you have any suggestions or ideas for it

TL; DR:

Well, enough said. I’ll use the following tools and/or frameworks for the competition:

– my vim IDE ( <3 )

– Inkscape and GIMP for creating graphics

– Milkytracker for creating sounds / music

– lycheeJS for the HTML5 / Javascript environment

If I will need physics stuff I’ll use either my own one or Box2D JS – as I plan to prototype in JavaScript.

Feel free to take a look at an example game that is using lycheeJS – coded within about 6 hours (and spent 4 additional hours on music and sound tracking, fonts and art -.-):

http://martens.ms/lycheeJS/game/jewelz

The link to the lycheeJS website is:

http://martens.ms/lycheeJS

Cheers from Germany,

Christoph (martensms)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 at 8:19 am and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Hello,

I am joining Ludum Dare 23.

I will be using Flash Develop and Flym. If networking is involved I will also be using some base-code I have dubbed ‘quick-link’ available at http://danmckinnon.net/quicklink/

Cheers.

First dare entry, should be fun;

Code: java with eclipse and standard libraries

Graphics: paint.net/inkscape

Ideas: alot of paper!

Vamos!

This time around I’ll be working with html/css/javascript once again. Haven’t decided which libraries (if any) I’ll use this time around though.

This is my second ludum dare. Last time I didn’t finish because I chose a design that was far too ambitious. I also ran into issues trying to distro XNA builds to playtesters throughout the process. I ended up giving up on Sunday morning. This time I am choosing tools with a little more portability:

Language: Java/Slick/LWJGL

Graphics: Photoshop

Sound: SFXR

Ideas: Whiteboard

Fuel: Coffee and Espresso. Don’t make the mistake I did last time and try energy drinks. It caused me to crash hard both days!

This time, I will finish…

Decided to enter LD23 to help motivate me to finish a game for the first time in 10 years. The last game dev I did was in C for the Game Boy Advance, so my skills are a little rusty. Going to stick to what I know from my day job which is HTML5 canvas and javascript.

I’ve been warming up by making a little base code library at https://github.com/wibblymat/html5-game-library but its going to require a lot of work before the day! I also started some base code at https://github.com/wibblymat/ld23 that I might use as well. Not sure!

Nervous, excited, can’t wait!

This is our second Ludum Dare. Last time we didnt complete it but this time we will! (hopefully). We are entering the Jam competition.

We are using:
Engine: Unity3D
Graphicgs: Blender and Paint.NET
Music and Audio: Audacity and Incompetech

Looking for an HTML5 game engine… Any suggestions? I can’t shell out any money right now, so I would like it to be free.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2012 at 1:25 pm and is filed under LD #23. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This will mark my second Ludum Dare to date, last time I used GameMaker. Though in the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to learn C#, but I doubt I’ll use that… Mainly because I’ll be moving on the weekend of the 21st. So now I need to figure out how to code and move at the same time.
So…
Considering what I said above, I wont have a lot of time to work on a game so I’ll probably use GameMaker again since I’m so familiar with it that I can whip up a really nice game in no time, but next Ludum Dare I’ll be using C# for sure.

In short –
Tools:
Game Maker 8.0
SFXR
XSplit (for livestreaming!)
I’ll be streaming at twitch.tv/xblinkedx
—
So happy 10 year anniversary to Ludum Dare,
and lets try to get 1000 games this time!

I’m in. This will be my 5th LD. As an additional challenge I plan to submit to the iOS and Android app stores within the time limit, as well as providing a PC version for judgement purposes. It will probably take 2 days just to set up my development system.

Here’s my reasoning: I have two 2-day games that have turned into complete games that I’ve sold for dollars (Fuck Oregon made for LD16, and Realistic Summer Sports made for OrcaJam).   Both games took 2 days to find the fun, but 2 months to polish off and ship. And I think a lot of the charm and crazyness was lost during the polishing process. So for this LD I’m throwing caution to the wind and no matter how horrific a game I make, it’s getting tossed into the 99 cent bin.

For Queen and Country!

Hey everyone, I’m in for my second LD Last time I used FlashPunk, but for this Ludum Dare I am making an HTML5 game with Impact.

Good luck!

Hi guys,

So I’m joining the Ludum Dare for the first time this year, and decided to announce what I’m using. First of all is to shake off some guilt for using my personal code libraries, and the rest is for a (hopelessly poor) shot at that community award.

So I’m going to be using Eclipse (ie. Java) this year (I recently weened myself off Xcode) and, as I said, my code libraries (although libraries may be a wrong term).They are derived from a book by Andrew Davidson called ‘Killer Game Programming in Java’, but don’t worry, he gives permission for anyone to use his code in the book. I’m also going to use Cfxr – the Mac version of Sfxr, Sibelius (or maybe not), and probably something like GarageBand, along with the trusty Internet (it is allowed, isn’t it…). Oh, and Gimp for Graphics.

I’m probably going to Chronolapse this as well, but not livestream it, as much as I would love too. Still, it’s set up to be a great weekend. I’ll post a link to my code tomorrow, but until then, good luck and happy programming!

Polar

EDIT: Here’s a Mediafire link to my pitiful (but useful) barebones 2D Engine: http://www.mediafire.com/?cnf9s5x96g9rdl9

I’m in for the second time!

I’m very excited to do this freaking Ludum Dare thingie for my second time and these are my weapons:

• FlashDevelop (IDE)
• Flixel (Engine)
• Paint, Inkscape, GraphicsGale (Kinda Art)
• BFXR (Sounds)
• Aviray’s Myna (BG Music)
• XSplit (Live Streaming)
• Alot of chocolate (For the soul)

Good luck everyone!

I will be live streaming here

For a little pre-warmup warmup, I decided to work on my LD #22 game a little.

Changes:

• A new, devious enemy!
• Scrolling background!
• Improved instruction screen!
• Fixed muting!
• Enemies start appearing faster and things don’t get quite so crazy after awhile (balancing)!
• Other fixes/improvements!

I would appreciate any bug sightings and feedback.

You can play it here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27464471/EpiCat/EpiCat-1.2.0.swf

Tags: postcompo

I posted a while ago about doing a GBA game and im still going with it even after I found out I couldn’t take the 21st off work so -8 hours for me.

Tools I will be using:

DevKitPro – for the core library files

Paint.Net – for all the graphics

BFXR – sound effects

Milkytracker – If I have time to make some awful music

Then a few of my own tools to create sprite and tiles sets.

Looking forward to this to see what I can actually achieve in 40 hours.

Hello everyone!

I am officially announcing my entry in to the Ludum Dare compo! This is my first rodeo, so hopefully I end up with something finished!

My tools will be:

• Unity3D
• Cinema4D
• AdobePhotoshop

I don’t know what I’m going to do for music yet as I really have no experience making music or sound effects. So that should be interesting…

I plan on Live streaming the whole thing, haven’t decided yet which portal I will be using though so that will come later.

To get started I purchased MCfunkyPants new book The Game Jam Survival Guide as a primer to hopefully getting through this.

Also, seeing as I’m using Unity3D, I am wondering if anyone else taking part in the compo can point me to any good Unity3D libraries to use to speed up the initial set up process. I’ve been using Unity3D for about a year now but I am interested to see if there is a quality framework set that is already out there.

Thanks and Good Luck to everyone!

I missed LD22 due to being out of state for an interview for an awesome job

Well, I got the awesome job and I’m happily situated now. Just got my rig rebuilt a couple of days ago so nothing but freshly installed software and shiny new hardware.

Same song and dance mostly:

• Language: C# (XNA + .NET 4)
• Engine: FlatRedBall
• “Graphics”: GIMP, GraphicsGale
• Music: Burnstudio Audio Tool (Probably)
• SFX: BFXR

I’ve got to sit down over the next few days and spend some quality time relearning FRB since a ton of awesome features and tools have been added.