Hey everyone, I'm Sam and I making a game with SDL2 and c++. Good Luck for this gamejam!

A card-based strategy game where you are the last human alive in your final stand against the zombie invasion.

Controlled by mouse

Cross-posted at my website: https://www.gbgames.com/2022/04/02/ld50-good-morning-yoga-breakfast-and-notes-ldjam-ld50/

Last night I created some concept art for what I am currently calling Disaster City:

When I went to bed, I thought of how the screen might look and what the player might do.

So this morning, despite wanting to exercise and get some breakfast first, I tried to write down some ideas, but Gizmo decided I shouldn't be too hasty getting into game development.

So I did some yoga and other light exercise, which is good because my back was bothering me earlier this week but seems fine now.

Then I made breakfast. I fried up some eggs, toasted some waffles, smeared them with peanut butter, sprinkled some cinnamon, put the eggs on top, and had a messy, drippy breakfast of game development champions.

I learned long ago that orange juice is basically full of sugar, so I no longer have a large glass and now make use of the juice glasses that I thought were ridiculously small when we got them shortly after getting married almost 10 years ago.

Finally, I pulled out my Ludum Dare t-shirt from 2011, when I went to an Ludum Dare gathering at GDC. It's fitting a little tighter around my midsection but otherwise seems to still fit.

I spent more time than I maybe should have reading through other people's posts. We're now past the first 12 hours of the compo, and my goal is to have something playable within the next 12 hours.

So, Disaster City. I think the "Delay the Inevitable" theme seems to push me to make the kinds of games I started out making, in which there is no victory condition, just a game in which you see how long you can last before you lose. I want to resist this tendency, so what's inevitable that isn't also an ending?

Or maybe it is fine for it to be an ending, and the focus is on what you do before then?

Originally, my thought was that Disaster City would constantly be hit with multiple disasters, and you have limited resources to repair and restore what's happening. Your efforts never make it 100% better, so it's more about reducing the impact rather than eliminating it. And eventually it all comes crumbling down.

But now I'm sad. What's the point?

Instead, what if there was a way to achieve victory?

I'm thinking that you are part of the city council. There is a meteor heading towards the planet, and you need to fund R&D and eventually a mission to divert it.

Unfortunately, Disaster City earned its name. You also need to deal with disasters such as monster attacks, floods, fires, etc. These disasters damage and eventually destroy homes, roads, utilities, commercial centers, entertainment options like stadiums, etc. As you lose those things, you lose people, income sources, and your capabilities to prevent and repair the damage.

So it's a balancing act. You have an ultimate big bad thing coming, but you also have the more immediate things to worry about. You need to decide when to let go of the immediate consequences to focus on the long-term without letting the short-term consequences prevent your long-term goal from being achieved. The game ends when you manage to prevent the meteor from hitting the planet, or when it hits the planet, or when your city's population disappears.

It feels overscoped at the moment.

I jotted down some notes and started trying to come up with a screen layout.

I think I still need to do some prototyping on paper to get a feel for how the game will actually work instead of hand-wavy vagueness,m but otherwise, I think this direction might work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xvsNJKt7sI

i have no idea what i am doing!

Hello! I hope its going well for everyone today :).

I have worked with this enemy guy all day ! He started as a consept this morning and have became a 3D model this afternoon, and I am now currently giving him some animations :D.

Good luck everyone! :)

I figured that this theme would attract tons of endless survival games, and decided that I wanted something different. So my game needs to have a clear end goal while still having something inevitable to delay. The inevitable thing can't be failure (since otherwise, winning would make it not inevitable) but still needs to be bad. I struggled to come up with an idea, but after finding these guidelines I got something.

My idea: you're fighting a boss. There's a curse meter that slowly fills up, and fills up faster when you're in the boss' aura of darkness. When the meter is full, it empties, and one of your special abilities is permanently weakened or disabled. If you get cursed too much, you die, but it's possible to beat the boss before that happens.

I already had a rough idea of the game I wanted to make. So although making an adventure game is typically very design first I wanted to stick with one of my traditions of getting the game playable as soon as possible. I don't feel like a game jam has really begun until I'm controlling my character walking around the screen.

So with a combination of an Art Deco asset pack and drawing over a template character, along with the countdown clock I built earlier I've got my first room up and running:

With that out of the way I needed to focus a bit on the structure and scope of the game. It needs to be simple enough to be buildable in a day (so I have another day for polish) but interesting enough for adventure game players to sink their teeth into. While I mulled that over I started my day with a very over indulgent lunch.

What I've settled on for game structure for now is a kind of escape room type setup. There's a vault door you need to open and there's three simple clues to open the door. However each of these clues is going to be obtained by solving a puzzle in another room. So that's four puzzles rooms and the inside of the vault to make.

Scope wise this is a little larger than I'm comfortable with, and depending how the day goes I may cut one of the puzzle rooms to keep this within a sensible LD scope. Let's see how the day goes.

This little earth will soon meet a terrible fate...

IT'S ON! Our little game jam hacker collective Dubious Potions is back for LD50. We're so excited. This year we split up into two groups. One VR and one 2d pixel team. We're the 2d pixel one 🎉

Meet the team: @ocwal, @failuer, @voxar, @milestone-games, @mascoll and me @javve

What are we building you may ask?

We're building a Mars rover game where the battery has a very central spot, YAY!

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dubious_potions/

...and Twitter https://twitter.com/dubious_potions

...and check out our sister team here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/catharsis

Here is a photo from the Dubious Potions meeting we're we decided which ideas to pick.

And here is a part of the Battery Low team :innocent:

@ocwal, @failuer, @voxar and @milestone-games

The eternal problem -do you build the sprite modular and allow for different weapons without creating a bunch of sprits, or just power on and stop procrastinating...

People last year asked for a bit more insight into my process.

Here's what I've done so far: 9pm looked at the theme. Let it cook a bit while watching some TV with my wife. Chilled for a bit, slept.

Woke up, lay in bed thinking over the theme and mechanics. Saturday morning seems to be my best thinking time for this kind of thing, and if I can come up with a kernel or two that I can run with, I can spend the afternoon tinkering with them and hope one of them coalesces into a workable game. (My LD49 entry came together after discarding at least 3 basic mechanics as entirely non-functional, but I knew I wanted to do some sort of dexterity game about things not falling with readily available components)

So here's my kernel I'll be working from: "Delay the inevitable" + "LD/50" + dice -- each round, something encourages/requires you to roll an increasing number of dice. If the combined roll is >50 you lose (or the game ends).

• Try to get "press your luck" feeling in.
• Probably a solo game, both because this kernel supports that and because they're easier for people to try
• LD/50 is 15
• This means 25-30 dice are probably adequate again (Liar's Dice/Perudo has 30)

Noodling will be around making something fun, how hard I want to lean into the medical theme vs leave it as quiet inspiration/an in-joke sort of thing as people might find it uncomfortable, whether I can tie the results of rolls into the next round usefully (so it matters what you get not just whether you hit 50), whether an additional randomizer [cards] is desired or will be crufty and a board is sufficient, what the actual game is -- why am I pulling dice, what makes me want to use more, where's the tension encouraging me to pull more than I "should", what is creating inevitability (is it inevitable that I'll eventually roll over 50 or is there some other end condition the dice are pushing back?)

I'll check in again later as I progress. I might do a desk stream at some point, but as I've recently done a major move I'm not sure I can make that work this jam.

A room, a room... what sort of things will go in here? (gif on twitter )

My day 1 progress! Let's have a great day 2 everyone! (ง •̀ w •́)ง

Hi everyone, Today we are glad to present you our beautiful cast of vilains : the mighty (and glowy) radioactive skeletons :skull: and our beloved enigmatic fighter !! :radioactive:

Are you ready to confront our bad boys ??

Because Gepetto, king of the undying loop :crown: (and also our second protagonist), is more ready than ever !!

(Oh don't worry, you can only delay the inevitable... They'll always get you in the end... :skull_crossbones:)

It looks great.

Is this 'lil guy scary, or adorable?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ouc1L0s2rQ

Why, another endless survival game? Yes!

...last jam was a mess, give me a break.

So basically, there are outlets on the left and homing weapons on the right. You connect the weapons to the outlets and they start firing. Each weapon fires toward a specific kind of enemy, but the more weapons are plugged in at the same time, the worse they all perform.

What the game designers draw:

What the 3D artists make:

Going a little slower than I would like. But the progress can start to really take off now that the camera and movement are done.

Been a few hours and I have this character controller to show for it. His goal is to catch falling sandwiches...

A character concept done by one of our talented 2d artist. GOOOOOOO

I am making a city builder set in a world with permanently rising sea levels.

This is probably not very unique, but I am having fun coding the game.

Day 1 over for me, time for me to get some well-deserved shuteye. I now have 95% of the graphical assets done, and I got the level drawing (mostly) working. I just need to add some bankswitching here so I can see the level's graphics and do a palette swap so the correct palettes are displayed.

nesdev.png

Also, for the first time, I managed to get MUSIC in the game! The track is likely going to be a bit shit, since I'm no composer at all, but it's there since a lot of people wanted it. Either way, I'm done for the night, and see you tomorrow for gameplay. Hopefully my great gameplay idea won't be completely broken, hehehe............

Our tower defence game keeps getting better! P.S. I think i should change the color of the guns

Our concept is "dodge-enemy" based. You'll have to dodge an enemy that WILL eventually kill you. Every deaths allow you to spend credit to buy obstacle to put on the arena. Those will help you with stay alive longer. But don't get kill quickly 3 times in a row or it game over !

ps : Discord is a really good tool (even if you're in the same room) to share your progress among the team !

Hope you're still doing fine !

altho no snacks i've made progress. i realised i haven't got any snacks so i went to the store and also bought dinner becasue its getting kinda late

also enjoin your meal to the europeans probably

No one:

Absolutely No One:

Unity: Aight, I'll hang

Since the team was ..mostly? asleep at the time of theme release, Im just going by the livestream uptime and say here's a minute clip showing off the progress almost 9 hours into the jam!

https://youtu.be/w56VC1QjEVM

We finally get a glimpse of Lars - the lab person you play as, working tirelessly to delay the inevitable take over of thick creepy vines while trying to save the last of humanity:

https://youtu.be/gqF6SpKs06s

Just look at them jiggle wiggle.

Ive also requested lizard on helmet, per my mockup below, I'm pretty sure the idea will grow on Spacey3D and we will be blessed with a cute blepperson that can sometimes obscure your view while doing tasks 🦎

Check out the progress of this game over at https://www.twitch.tv/honestdangames

Cat in the Bag - character work

As it was expected i spend too much time in blender building cool looking ships instead of focusing on the mechanics. Im now very happy with the four types i have and will finally do important gameplay work.

But i also want sounds and voicelines and shaders and animations and ... you know the problem (most of it will probably be neglected in the end)

Anyway here are the rendered results:

Stout

Blitz

Needle

Stinger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brDosAHk574

The Goblins are having fun with a little slice it seems :'D

Those little dudes know how to reach their goals

Just a screenshot of the event system planned for my game!

I decided to make all the menus and scene transitions a little early, so in case everything goes wrong I'll have a polish game with fewer levels than planned rather than a lot of stuff and unfinished interface. For now I have all basic levels. Still have to work on score and scene randomiser, but right now it's pretty much a complete game!

I had said that I was feeling better than before... well, I guess that was all thank to that fountain drink I got.

The first day is nearly over and I still have no game idea that fits the theme well. And that's rather demotivating to me.

Dos-Bot has got some serious moves.

Wow, did not expect to be making a WWE themed board game but here we are. The delay the inevitable theme made me want to do a push your luck game. I added a betting mechanic and new rules each round and when I tried to come up with a theme that fit the mechanics, well, it was wrestling. I don't even watch wrestling. I'm feeling really good about the game though.

The core gameplay is designed, I need to finish coming up with a few character powers, and then it's on to building a physical prototype and/or a tabletop simulator version for playtesting.

I'm making a game where you play a mushroom that have to grow to find organic matter and avoir predators. But my growth algoritm needs improvments. This kind of algoritms seemed easier in my memory. I hope I'll manage to finish it before the deadline.

I started the day without a good idea, so I decided to read various post for ideas.

After "shopping" around, one idea on a card game where you eventually run out of cards inspired me. I always wanted to make a card game, so I thought why not.

Turns out, there is a reason why not. For the first time in 2 years, I broke most of my rules.

1. Have a prototype by end of day 1 (Failed)
2. Plan to spend 20 hours (I can't. I am 12 hours in, and I am nowhere close to complete game loop)
3. Cut scope (I can't, there is nothing left to cut)
4. Identify MVP and beeline to it (I have change ideas about 2-3 times now, mostly in attempt to cut scope)

I hope I can finish. I don't intend to cut scope at this point. My guess is if I can't meet the Compo timeline, I will just go ahead and make it a Jam then, and if that fails... Extra category ?

got something resebling a solar system simulation going... now I just need to make it stable, at least at the start.

my very first post :D i have a lot of stuff already done! what wabout you guys? :o

A little WIP of our Buff Penguin to hype you a little ! (his tough muscles are so hot it'll melt your icecream~)

Team Battery Low has completed its first prototype!

A thing is moving! Items can be picked up! You can DIE! All in the name of science!

And this was just our first actual building session. Imagine what we can accomplish in the next one. We might even add art.

But first: pizza break. It is important to celebrate success.

It is almost 6pm where I am now and I feel I have mismanaged my time and have nothing to show for it.

I was up and awake when the theme was announced at 2am which wasn't ideal. But the theme was a really good fit for what I wanted to do so I was excited! Rather than go back to sleep I stayed up and started writing up plans for my game.

I had the rough idea for a city builder set in ancient Mesopotamia where you would try to rebuild a town after it was abandoned. With the theme of "Delay the Inevitable" I had all sorts of ideas for different disasters which would wreak havoc on your city until eventually they prove to be too much. I did research online and from textbooks in order to getting the setting and technology just right. There was going to be trade, water simulations, even realistic generation of fields and roads. I was most excited...

Ancient Sumerian Ziggurat :D

I wasn't able to start work on it properly though until later in the day due to other things I had to get done, at which point I was getting very tired. Getting up at 2am was, unwise. When I actually came to start writing code I just couldn't focus and had to go lie down. It felt overwhelming and just too much :(

I think I got ahead of myself in the planning phase and thought up a project massively over scoped. I do not think I could accomplish everything I wanted to do for the compo even if I had slept properly and hadn't had to take up a lot of time with other things. I'm going to take a step back and reassess the scope. Hopefully I can get some rest tonight and things will look better tomorrow.

Hello everybody,

I'm aware that nobody really says it, but we all want a giraffe game. Therefore I want to share with you this very timely update of Giraffe o'Clock (mechanics excluded to avoid spoilers).

Thank you for enjoying this update.

1-st day gone, and it's all of work that i done. yea, im lazy butt :3

Dammit, I underestimated the learning gap of switching to a new dev platform.

I absolutely love Godot so far and am not looking back to Game Maker in the slightest, but I realize that I am woefully unprepared and keep having to look stuff up.

So, about 5 hours until bedtime, and I kinda doubt that I can complete the full prototype until then.

At least I have the damage system nailed down, where you can either choose to pick off the branches bit by bit or take the more dangerous but slightly faster route of taking off a whole arm in one go...

I will probably have to cut out the evolving bosses where each new boss is the old boss but a bit larger, and instead go for completely random bosses that are controlled by the number of guns they have.

Alright, time for dinner and then I'll push the final stretch for today

Well, I'v certainly gotten more done than I expected I could. I've got a basic enemy type (who still don't kill but will run after the player), some basic effects, sounds, and art suited perfectly for my cheapskate and softwarephobic lifestyle, and even a title screen!

...Hey did I ever mention I am bad at art? I don't think I've ingrained that into your heads hard enough. (name is temp but it basically gets the point across)

Anyways, I've got some food, a Payday 2 anarchist build, and a need for a break before I burn out.

One more husbando right from Serious Game Manufacture 2d artist!

Who are they?

Well, in fact I don't really know... But they're coming! :scream:

OK, I scrapped several ideas and finally settled for one! I guess it was inevitable :sweat_smile: Now I must RUN!!!! island.png

(12 h 48 min)

This was my first stream ever, and it was really fun to communicate with chat and see reaction of people on your work Really excited and thankful to Ludum Dare for their work every half of the year! Hope that next day will be much more productive and fun! Good Luck everyone!

https://youtu.be/y-lmZ2f8o4I

It's not much, but it's a start.

Gonna have to start adding some mechanics soon!!

I swear, this has happened to me on every single LD jam to some degree, after investing a SUBSTANTIAL amount of time into my original idea I end up gettng inspired to make something else, scrapping the first idea and going with the new one...

Does anyone know of a way that I can get a free license for construct?

If you wanna watch us work on a game for a bit today, join us on https://www.twitch.tv/msmiachar

There may be a puppy at various points in the background :)

I spent the entire day tweaking the particle system for the character until I was somewhat happy with it. It's still not perfect but I really like the way it looks when standing still, especially the full health version is nice.

Here's a gif of going from full health to 75% and then back up by consuming a crumbled up paper.

Its almost a game whene you can kill the demons

The core thing I need to get figured out in the next couple of hours is the three main game puzzles. I've made progress on them but they're not figured out yet. So while I've been honing in on those I did a quick first pass draft on two more rooms.

All the rooms will need a lot more detail and iteration, especially once the puzzles are in place but getting the first draft helps move the game forwards.

So, the gameplay works, but it's still too early to show.. But hey, at least you can check out the main characters!

This is a vampire who tries to save the king's daughter and get her out of plague-ridden town.

I'm here, I didn't realize it started yesterday, but I'm always excited to take part. Y'all be makin' some great games. Let's have fun again and do great work.

Quite chaotic, and with very high chance of explosives.

Funny space guy

Might be a good time to write my first blog post for this LD.

You're a farming bunny deeply in the red, and you have to make as much money as possible until you go eventually bankrupt!

Most basics are done, I still have to actually implement crops, a way to sell them, add some challenges, generally things that will happen with the number of turns going rapidly up and obviously actually making the game fun!

See you again tomorrow! :)

Not much progress so far, but is better then nothing

The game mechanics are pretty much done with temporary sprites. Tomorrow: Lots of art, level design and polishing. Unfortunately I'm a bad artist :sweat_smile: but I probably have some more time to polish the game than usual, so will see how this turns out...

Keep on going everyone! :slight_smile:

I'm pretty sure that you don't remember that I said everything was going well a few hours ago. Well, now, it does'nt. What would be a Ludum Dare without any difficulties?

So, what happened? I'm not really happy with my drawing, it won't work well with the scaling we've chosen, but it's too late to re-draw everything. So I guess we're stuck with my bad choices? Here are some of the work I've done:

Meanwhile, Bouteille has been struggling with the code We're pretty far from a working prototype, but we'll both work on it tonight. Hope we'll find solutions to our problems?

Anyway, our brains now need a little break and some food.

Hope everything is going well for you all. And if like us you have issues with your project, I hope you'll find a way to make your game work! Have a nice end of the first day everybody!

grab my phone to take pictures of my sketches so i can start work in godot, youtube notification lets me know a youtuber's cat passed away, like i'm already over here grieving enough death in my life u gotta hit me with that during jam to remind me? universe, bro, this could have been one of the notifications u randomly dont send to my phone, why is this when it works properly lmao

Your beard keeps growing, but your girlfriend hates it.

Keep trimming, or else!

It still looks very much like a prototype, but i'm pretty surprised at what i've got done.

🔔 📹 Find other participants & channels – and let’s players too, once submission ends and people play your awesome games!

I’ll be building a complete coverage report in few months after LD50 is truly over. List building is essential stuff in your indie game PR efforts! Yes!

😊 I’d love to know what you think of this!

For me, for now, I gotta get this report viewable ordered by date!

🔗: https://impress.games/ludum-dare-50

⭐️ Good luck everyone! ⭐️

Slept for 10+ hours and then awoke with a headache, but I'm making solid progress!

It is inevitable! The CRAB shall rule the world! Try to stop it if you'd like, but there's only one possible outcome.

Basic player movement/firing is working. Need to get some enemies in, a damage system, an upgrade system... a textbox system... a lot left to do.

I´m not much of a #twitch person (I dont talk much ^^). But in this case it kinda makes sense to stream the whole thing, since I think its fun to watch how ideas and games come to live bit by bit! So here are some parts of my day if you are interested :) Have a great Ludum Dare 50 everyone and see you tomorrow!

https://www.twitch.tv/ilikescifigames

PS: I am working for the JAM with a tileset by the most epic Luis Zuno

SO pretty much all of us overslept LOL! I left around the 6 AM mark and crashed super hard. But We're here now (mostly) and ready to grind until the end!

Working on Monkey line art right now, like look at this lovable nerd <3

@evehkoko is working on the player character and the turnaround is just chef's kiss

Just gotta add one more move and then I think I can make a proper challenge out of this. Oh, plus adding plenty of obstacles. ;)

You'll start as a baby. Preview:

the issue is fixed and some feature added !

concept art from @yuki-albarn

and lighting test from me

Not doing this one ^

Doing this one instead ^

made by @a333

I make an airplane battle game where the enemy shoot you with a laser. The main gameplay is done, tomorrow I want to upgade the UI and create more type of enemies.

Time for another Shakespeare VS Monkeys update, this time from the Coding Team! We have finally have the infinite scroll implemented, along with the spawning of the mysterious-soon-to-be-replaced temp circles and squares. We also have player movement! Still got a lot of stuff needing to be implemented, but we're well on our way!

Scene has been set, now I need to finish the monologue and the fishing mechanism ! I hope your all doing well, if you're doing a chill game let me know :)

Worked on graphics for asteroids and this spaceship, which will be controlled by the player. Simple but functional. The body of the ship is a bit lowres, but that won't be a problem in the game, since its size will be much smaller

Got home from work way later than I hoped last night, and didn't even look at the theme until this morning. Have an idea and a primary "mechanic." Going to do a text adventure in Twine. If time allows, hopefully I can figure out how to add some art and music. I guess the next step is flowcharting out the story. :fingers_crossed:

It was a productive day. I only have some polishing to make tomorrow, perhaps adding a couple of levels. And now it's time to sleep!

End of Day One

Our project changed and mutated quite a bit, but we now have a precise idea of what we have to do tomorrow, such as testing a first animation of our antagonist:

Please meet Charly "the murderer" (not the sharpest murderer in the shed, mind you - seen as he's his own victim - and your job is to make sure that doesn't happen - good luck with that!)

If you want to know more about it, Stayed tuned!

The dog WIP :dog:

Programmers Art :sweat_smile:

Done by @zozol for our Slavic VN game!

I dont undestand how are you able to complete almost whole game on the first day.

I am glad I finished core mechanic somehow.

I used the theme as "He is being so needy that taking care of him only delah the inevitable - either he is going to leave or i will kill him."

Well, my head is there only as place holder. In reality you are in charge of shelter for monster. These monster have their needs and as you satisfy them they are getting more demanding and have more and more needs. One day you will have to decide if you will either sell them, kill them or watch them being unhappy as you cant meet their needs. :)

Look at this. You don't know what the game is about, but hell yeah you wanna play it !

https://youtu.be/q8Z0F2CPD74

Happy with this, more levels and mechanics to do in the remaining two days :sweat_smile:

so to give the current state of the game address:

yesterday I wrote out a bunch of ideas in microsoft word, then focused in on one of them to play around with in my notebook with thumbnailing

this was followed by layout design (thanks rapid prototyping wireframes) (also featuring "Kitten Shoe Umbrella" and me trying to draw a comic from memory because I couldn't find it on google to show my friend, who then remembered the comic and could find it lol)

then i drew out a sort of mockup slash spritesheet, featuring SEVERAL attempts to draw an anchor from memory, one of which just ended up as a stick figure??

anyway so that's where i'm at this time around. not as unique as some of my other games i think, but i think it'll be a lot more fun than whatever weird button mashing resource games i keep accidentally designing. i updated paint.net and made a new canvas to start converting my spritesheet into placeholder art lol, gonna get started on that