It's that time again to reserve a weekend to my passion of game development!

This time I got a 5-person team of online friends-

-RainbowKappa (Me) -LLAMAZ -Mau -Ripshins -ScottNoLastName

Should be a good time, aiming to make something and learn from it in all fairness.

Planned Engine: Godot Planned Roles for LD51:

Programming: RainbowKappa, ScottNoLastName Graphics / Art: LLAMAZ (Pixel Art) Audio Lead: Ripshins (Music, SFX), RainbowKappa (Midi, SFX) Design: Mau (Overall Game Design), RainbowKappa (Writing/Story/Connecting Game Together), ScottNoLastName

This weekend will be happening with friends at Punkcake Delicieux house! <3

My tools: - Haxe language (https://haxe.org) - Heaps engine (https://heaps.io) - LDtk level editor (https://ldtk.io) - Aseprite (https://aseprite.org) - VScode (https://code.visualstudio.com) - Chronolapse

On the music side, I will try to use either 1BitDragon (https://1bitdragon.com/) or FamiStudio (https://famistudio.org/).

Good luck everyone, love you all!

Welcome to Ludum Dare 51!

I would like to call this our "autumn", "fall", or "summer is over and it's cold now" Ludum Dare event, but that only makes sense if you're in the northern hemisphere like me. :sweatsmile: :earthasia:

Final Round Theme Voting has begun

Cast your vote here: :ballot_box: /events/ludum-dare/51/theme

For rules and other info, visit the event page here: :trophy: /events/ludum-dare/51

If you don't want to figure out timezones, the theme announcement is when the clock (top-right) reaches zero.

TIP: The ldjam.com website gets really busy before the Theme Announcement. We recommend you follow the official Twitter account, or sign-up for the E-mail Newsletter

SIDE NOTE: We should be moving the mailing list off Revue before the end of this year. Sign up or stay tuned for details.

NEW: Uploading and Embedding games on Ludum Dare!

I've been working closely with our sponsor Akamai the past few months, and I'm extremely excited to announce that Ludum Dare now supports game uploading and embedding!

If you'd like to embed your game on Ludum Dare, I HIGHLY recommend you familiarize yourself with how it works, and try it out! Our sandbox might be more strict than you're used to (no storage, no cookies, no external requests), but it was built with WebAssembly and SharedArrayBuffer support in mind.

We're nearly ready to let folks try it out, but between everything I've been working on, I still need to document it. :sweat_smile:

This thread is way too long, so uploading instructions and discussion will be over here: uploading-and-embedding-games-on-ludum-dare

I have a busy Thursday morning and afternoon ahead of me, but after that (roughly 24 hours before LD), I'll be inviting folks to beta-test and provide feedback on the upload experience. See the comments in the post above, and my personal Twitter for details.

Extra is back! The new casual Ludum Dare

In case you missed it, back in April we launched Ludum Dare's brand new format: Extra.

When submitting your game, you can now choose between the Jam, Compo, or the new Extra format. Extra is Ludum Dare's casual format. There are no winners in the Extra format, but you get to choose your own schedule. Create and submit your Extra games anytime between Friday September 30th and Friday October 21st--that's 3 whole weeks!! Submit early, and be a part of Ludum Dare's feedback process: Give feedback, and get feedback.

Learn more about Extra here: /events/extra-the-new-casual-ludum-dare

The results ceremony will be the next day on Saturday October 22nd (to give me a bit more time to prepare).

Rules updates: Extra format, optional Theme, Unfinished games

We'll be publishing a brand new version of Ludum Dare's rules soon (deja vu). The key difference is the inclusion of the new Extra format detailed above, but there are few other changes I'd like to highlight:

• You can now optionally opt-out of the Theme category. This is not required.
• Please only submit finished games using the Jam, Compo, and Extra formats.
• If your game isn't finished, choose Unfinished instead.

AI content generators in Ludum Dare? (DALL-E, Midjourney, etc)

Since April's event, the world of AI assisted tools has exploded. This "AI thing" isn't exactly new though, as technologies like deep-fakes have been in the news for years, photo editing software (and phones) have been shipping with AI assisted object removal, and graphics cards from Intel and NVidia feature AI enhanced up-scaling with some pretty stunning results. What's new is that it's even easier to use now. Just describe what you want, such as an a classy Ludum Dare inspired fruit jam.

Or a tragic-backstory hero enjoying a bowl of cereal.

It's rough, but the results are really impressive. I can't be sure where "Luud Lourid" came from, but bonus points for "Jam Dum". It's pretty amazing what can be done today, maybe a little terrifying.

There's a great community discussion over here about whether AI art generators should be allowed in the Compo. @caeonosphere ran a poll, and the results were far more split than I would have expected.

It's tricky because we've allowed and encouraged the use of content generators like SFXr since its inception, while also having no qualms with procedural generation tools like Houdini. The difference is that the "one click" results are more skillfully done now, versus mashing a randomize button until you're happy.

Again, this happened way too fast. I don't know about you, but I wasn't ready for this. :sweat_smile:

AI in the Compo might be an inevitability, but lets not jump the gun. Let's start slow.

• For Ludum Dare 51, lets not to use AI content generators in the Compo. Choose the Jam or Extra instead.
• We haven't reviewed any license agreement for any generators. It's up to you to figure that out.

As for Jam/Extra entries:

• We recommend that you opt-out of asset categories your team didn't create the majority of during the event.
  • Per the rules, we allow exceptions for things like fonts, samples, instruments, and team splash screens.
• ~~Use your best judgement, but if a tools input is a completely different asset class than the output (i.e. text to speech, text to art), it may not be fair to claim it the asset as yours.~~ Nevermind! I've been foiled by tools like Stable Diffusion's "Img2Img". :sweat_smile:
• Derivative works rules still apply, so any significant transformation an output make sensibly result in something you can take credit for. Use your best judgement.

It does pose an interesting question, whether an AI generator should be considered a co-collaborator or virtual team member. Not because we want to score them, but for curiosity, to be able to look back and see how many games benefited from the assistance of an AI. Similarly, it would be nice if we could lookup games made with assets by prominent open-art artists like Kenney.

Lots of interesting things to think about and explore here.

Sorry! No Ludum Dare 51 keynote. :cryingcatface:

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, we don't have keynote for Ludum Dare 51.

That said, Ludum Dare 50's keynote released late due to technical problems. If you missed out on our big Ludum Dare reunion special, I highly recommend giving it a watch. This was easily the most complicated video projects I've been involved in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC2KGu__2Ws

Thank you everyone that contributed. :wink:

Surprise 2023 schedule! New January event!

We have three events scheduled for next year, and one is sooner than you may think.

January 6th, 2023 weekend will be Ludum Dare 52. Ludum Dare 53 will be the April scheduled event on April 23rd, and Ludum Dare 54 will be this time next year on September 29th. That puts roughly 3 months between each event, with a break in July. The full schedule can be found in the sidebar.

January 6th was the earliest we could realistically hold an event. It's impossible to avoid all conflicts, but this date does avoid Christmas and New Years. It conflict with CES, and we slightly overlap with AGDQ. If you don't want to miss the AGDQ kickoff, you could create a Compo or Extra game. :wink:

Even More Mike

In case you're not sick of me yet (I would be), here's even more Mike.

• The Game of Jamming -- An article I was asked to write about my journey with Ludum Dare, some reflections of things we've done and seen past 20 years, and some of the work we've been doing with Akamai.
• Get Ready for Ludum Dare 51! What's new? -- An update where we first introduced uploading, some small process changes, upgrades, and the spam plan

I recently did an interview for The Developer's Edge on Akamai's YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENstyiK5Jwc

Ludum Deals!

If you'd like to try out GameMaker this weekend, we have a promo code that unlocks additional exporters. The promotion is good until October 6th. Just create a free GameMaker account, login, then click the link below.

https://gamemaker.io/account/promo/ld51 - NOTE: Click this link AFTER logging in

If you get an error telling you the code is already on your account, that's okay! That means you've used one of our previous codes.

Wrap-up

Gosh, I'm sure I've forgotten something, but that's enough from me. We'll see you Friday for Ludum Dare 51!

been visiting ludum dare almost daily for the past month (not recommended, it makes time way slower), I can't believe it's finally about to start!

as usual I'll go solo ('cries in having no friends')

also I'll be using:

-Godot Engine

-Aseprite for pixel art

-Audacity for sfx (mostly to tweak publicly available sfx, and make some of my own)

-Fl Studio for music

Hope this jam goes as smoothly as the last two (minus the sleep deprivation). good luck everyone! and remember to have fun

Hi everyone, I'm new to Ludum Dare and only participated in other jams on itch.io - I'm confused on how to join the jam actually. Do I need to do something else than creating an account and publish a game within the timeframe?

Thanks for any help - really excited to join this one :)

With no official LD51 keynote this year, perhaps as a community we can work together to help motivate, advise and hype-up the community ahead of the impending Ludum Dare 51!

We only have 24 hours, but if you want to get involved, please do one (or all!) of the following:

• Give me ONE thing you love about taking part in Ludum Dare.
• Send me ONE bit of advice / motivation you'd give to other game jammers ahead of this years jam!
• Tell me ONE thing you hope to achieve by taking part in Ludum Dare 51.

Ideally, send me a video or an audio clip to honestdangames@gmail.com and include your LD username in your email. Each response should be less than 20 seconds in length. Alternatively, you can just leave a text-based comment on this thread, but it'd work a lot better if we can get faces / voices of the community (and would be quicker for me to stitch together some videos!!). Please keep it family friendly.

I'll collate everything I receive before 13:00 BST (08:00 EST) tomorrow (30th) and I'll make a post before the theme reveal! GO GO GO!

(Please note: by sharing your video/voice clip, you're giving me permission to use it in a video that'll be posted to my YouTube and shared on this site)

Personally, I enjoy the concepting phase. "You know the theme, now what?" That thing. Those first few hours. I love them, a lot of people seem to struggle, only to find out during the ratings phase that there where many more ways they could've interpreted the theme.

I saw that happen so often, that one and a half year ago, I decided to write 'Seven Lenses: Ways to look at a Theme'. I'm proud of that one, and if you decide to read it, don't skip the comments, there's some good ones in there as well. (As maybe there will be for this iteration as well? You decide!)

Not to be outdone (much) by my past self, here are five more ways to help you make the most of a theme. Enough introduction; here are items eight through twelve of a growing list:

• Research: You may think the theme is simple. Everybody knows what 'fire' is right (to name but one example)? Even so, it may help a lot to look up even the basics once again. To come back to the example, what could you do with the fact that fire can be put out in three different ways: take away fuel, take away oxygen, or reduce temperature (and that some ways may be less effective for some types of fire). Who where the gods of fire in classical times? Are there any customs or famous stories related to (parts of) the theme?
• Aesthetic: What if you didn't have to make a game, but instead a drawing, story or screensaver? What would 'adhering to the theme' look like then? Maybe even write part of that story, or draw that drawing. Maybe you'll get some ideas while doing that. If not, just imagine it then, what would it be like to play in your story, drawing or music piece or ...?
• Transplant: You where hoping for that one theme weren't you? Turns out it was the other one. But what if you went with that idea anyway -- could it tie back to the theme that was chosen in some heretofore unexpected way? Imagine if you had to combine your old idea and this 'new' theme -- what does it look like? Is that the only way you can relate that one concept to the other? What parts of the concept that you dreamt up appealed to you, and what was just part of that other theme you hoped for? What can you drop, keep, and/or add?
• Self Discovery: What do you associate with the theme? Has (something like it) been personally meaningful to you? If so, can yo use that? If not, fall back to the old 'draw a big circle on a whiteboard or a piece of paper, make associations, connect them with arrows, and then repeat for each association'. Do any of the associations mean anything to you? This can in general be extended to the other lenses as well. 'Research' coming up empty? Work with some associations of the theme instead, see what comes up then. (You can even loop this back to what one commenter said last time: What items are around you in the physical world right now that tie back to the theme?)
• Mechanical: This method is the easiest for themes dealing with physical objects or phenomenon acting on such, but it might come in useful for more esoteric or otherwise seemingly non-applicable themes. Simply put: What does it do when placed into the world, or to the world (not necessarily in a physical sense -- take 'corruption' for example). How do you translate that into a game-mechanic? (Keep in mind: Are there multiple things the theme does to an environment? What does it do to itself? To people?)

Hope you enjoyed that, and more importantly, found it useful? If so, please let me know in the comments, or even better, perhaps you have some of your own to share! (Don't forget to check the previous installment already linked above as well, maybe I, or one of the commenters already said something similar already!)

Cheers, and if I don't post before that time again, have a great jam! :slight_smile:

This is my 5th LD Game Jam and despite I've gotten used to staying up late working on a project, this jam is gonna be different. For my 4 previous jams I used Unity, for the past 2 years I've been using Unity and C# as that is the only logical way to code games :sweat_smile:. In the past 4 months though, I tried Unreal and after learning blueprints, I'm definitely gonna use Unreal for the game jam, graphically it's a lot less work right off the bat and coding mechanics for me personally is a lot faster. The only thing I'm worried about is that I've never actually released a game in unreal yet... and I'm also starting a new job Monday so hopefully I'm not too tired after the compo.

Was worried when doing slaughter round that I went a bit too brutal on the themes... I think the final round had some really great themes though, I really Mutation, Corruption, and Split. Have a great jam guys!

Honestly one of the better sets of final themes we've had in a while, I'll be interested to see how this goes. With any luck it'll be one of the worst ones on this list though :(

Don't forget to stay hydrated

It's always good to think creatively about the themes... even if you only have two braincells and they've never met each other. So, as is tradition by now, I hereby present to you the dumbest set of game ideas based on our final round of themes!

Every 10 seconds - Something HAPPENS every ten seconds... wait. That's not creative. Well, what if 10 was BINARY? Now something happens every 2 seconds. Uh... Damn, I really thought I was on to something there.

Use it or lose it - A game where you have to find as many uses as possible for Cousin It from the Addams Family or child protective services will take him away. I mean, he's short and who's to say how old he is under all that hair? He could be a kid. And if he's never had a hair cut then maybe child protective services should be concerned. Seems kind of negligent. You should be ashamed of yourself!

Parasite - Picture this - South Korea. You play as Ki-woo, a poor student struggling to get by when you get the opportunity to earn some cash by tutoring the daughter of a wealthy family.... waaaait a second. This is just the Academy Award winning film Parasite.

Split - A game about deciding how to split the bill at a group dinner. I mean, Dave's been ordering whisky neat all night while you only had a salad. Meanwhile, Martha thinks everyone should just pay an equal share. EQUAL SHARE, MARTHA?! YOU ATE TWO LOBSTERS! TWO!! WHO EATS TWO WHOLE-ASS LOBSTERS, MARTHA?! Okay, this is just making me angry IRL.

Mutations - The aliens are coming and they're going to eradicate the most advanced species on the planet!!! OH NO! There's only one reasonable course of action - start mutating the human race until they are the bottom of the food chain. I'm talking Human Sea-Cucumber hybrids, people! Don't stop until human beings literally vomit up their entire intestinal system when slightly started. Let the aliens take the dolphins, the survival of the human race depends on it! It's like Spore... but on ketamine.

Corruption - You know what's worse than one volcanic eruption? You guessed it... TWO volcanic eruptions. Us geologists call that a Co-ruption. Seriously. Well... not really. But it's a video game so... seriously! What's that? How do you play it? Hey, I'm just the ideas guy.

Keep it moving - In Ludum Dare 46, you kept it alive. Now, unleash the full force of your paramilitary police and make it move on. Seriously, it can't just sleep on park benches. What will the well-to-do, lah-di-da's say? That's right, buddy, keep moving and don't let me see you around here again. Is that even a game idea or just a critique of social welfare policy?

Harvest - Play as famed comedian, Johnny Two-shoes, whose career is thrown into disarray when he loses an item of clothing which always guarantees him a laugh. It's a point and click adventure where you solve just thousands of tricky (and really, really funny) puzzles to help Johnny find his missing clothing - his Har-Har-Vest. (Incidentally, Harvest is actually my own theme suggestion... GO YOU GOOD THING!)

Side effect - A game about disrupting people when they start sighing so that they make weird noises. After all, what's a broken sigh if it's not a sigh defect?

Nothing is permanent - Make nothing. Absolutely nothing. And if anyone asks you to make something just say "No. Nothing is permanent." It's video-games-meets-performance-art-meets-stupid-idea-meets-great-idea?! No. It's definitely a stupid idea.

Overgrown - You have a problem. You grow hair. A lot of hair. Really fast. This is a game about sneakily shaving while doing day to day tasks without being noticed. Shaving on the bus. Shaving while leading a team meeting at work. Shaving while making out with your girlfriend. Shaving while shaving when you're supposed to be shaving. Shaving while raving about cost-saving paving, AMAZING!

Ascend - Most of the time when people make first person shooters, the camera is positioned at the front of the player's face. But what if it was positioned at the ass end?

Duplication - Two words. Duplo. Licking.

Shelter - (S)ometimes (H)eroes (E)at (L)iving (T)hings (E)specially (R)abbits. A game about a superhero who derives their power from consuming cute widdle bunny wabbits. They also eat guinea pigs and hamsters but they only fill up a little bit of his SPECIAL bar so... it's all about that cuniculus diet, baby! Also, it turns out the scientific name for rabbits sounds a lot more sus than I expected.

Making connections - Your character is lonely. They join Tinder. This is their journey. In hard-mode, your character is a man under 6 feet tall.

You shouldn't mix those - DJ Greg is tone-deaf, has no sense of rhythm and doesn't know how to use a turntable. His only hope is you, dear player. You can be the angel on his shoulder gently whispering "Greg, Greg... you shouldn't mix those..." Or maybe you're a devil, soothingly assuring Greg that, yes, people will love a nuanced shift from Whitney Houstons "I Will Always Love You" into a mashup of Cannibal Corpse's "Edible Autopsy" and John Denver's "Take Me Home Country Road". Greg has absolutely no musical taste so he'll believe you. Poor old Greg.

I'm really looking forward to this Game Jam, the themes look very promising. This will be my 4th time participating, I hope I can finish my game in time.

Good luck to everyone!

Love Every 10 Seconds and You Shouldn't Mix Those.

The protests outside the Ludum Dare offices are getting pretty heated, hopefully they'll get bored before it turns to violence.

From the pulse-check here on the blogs it's looking like "Every 10 Seconds" is a front runner. Though that's not necessarily indicative of the final voting. Maybe the silent majority will drop a surprise on us all.

I was originally a bit dubious of this theme because I personally prefer themes that guide the tone and content of the game more than the mechanics. However I thought of a fun idea to use with it so I've changed my tune to TEAM 10 SECONDS!

Which themes are you voting for?

* Currently, "Every 10 Seconds" is in the lead with 56 votes, followed by "Harvest" at 49, and "Keep it Moving" at 41. *

The poll has been live for 15 hours and over 130 people have particpated -- thanks to all who have voted so far. If you want to vote for your favorite themes and see the live results, click the link and cast your votes! (This has nothing to do with the actual results but it's fun to see what people are voting for).

Take the Poll!

Aside from me not liking it, isn't it quite similar to LD27's theme?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g