A mixed bag of thingies...

they would probably look something like this...

my three suggested suggestions of eminent suggestationism

It sucks that some people use the theme suggestions for their political statements. "Don't use Unity" or "$20ct per install" (and so on) - do you think these are good themes for a game jam?

Unity is a great engine - with a bad management. But for non-commercial games this doesn't matter. So what's the problem with using Unity? If you don't want to use it - fine. There are other great engines too. But no dev should be blamed for his personal choise!

About halfway through the slaughter, and as usual a good 50-60% of them are themes I will never vote for:

1. the theme is too limiting. These are themes that require a genre, art style, or specific style. For example, roguelike, one color, or narrative. I don't want to play 50 or so roguelikes or monochromatic games or "deep" narratives; don't confine everyone to doing the same #$%&ing thing!!! Note that this doesn't necessarily apply to specific mechanics, for example cards; these are usually open enough that you can cleverly use them in almost any scenario. another good example is "multiplayer." Don't force everyone to make a multiplayer game; plenty don't know how, and even more don't have the means to play them as intended.

2. the theme is too open. On the other end of the spectrum are themes that spark no idea whatsoever. These are usually lazy, one-word themes (not all one-word themes are bad, mind you) like "literally" (calling you out whoever suggested that!). The point of a theme is not just to have something that is included in the game, but also to be cleverly utilized into the game. Basically, the the theme should be inseparable from the game without limiting what the game can be as to point 1.

3. the theme is nonsense. This shouldn't need to be said, but themes like "rrrrrrrrrrrrrr" will always be downvoted (or flagged).

4. the theme is inevitable. Themes that naturally occur over a game's progression will always get downvoted. These are themes like "game gets harder as you go" NO #$%&ING $#!T SHERLOCK!!!!

5. the theme is impossible. The two best examples I always see in this category are "you are an NPC" and "you are the antagonist." By definition an NPC is NON PLAYABLE!!!! and also by definition, the antagonist is just the character/s that oppose the protagonist (a.k.a. the main playable character). If you meant to say "you are the villain" than just $#@&ing say "you are the villain"

6. the theme is oxymoronic. Finally if the theme is a two-word (generally) theme along the lines of "blank the un-blank-able," it will get downvoted. For example "prehistoric future"

7. Bonus, if the theme is a meme or NSFW, it will get flagged, no exceptions. Sorry snowman symbol and flying islands, enough is enough.

also, please at least try to spell your themes correctly

holy crap I almost made the character limit

Plan to jump aboard another ride of LD with the beautiful duo of Spacey and Brainoid.

We always joke about small scope, but this time we really are going to try. Some IRL stuff means that I can't prioritise the jam all day for 3 days straight like in the past.

Hope people are excited and enjoy the jam

Edit: I just refreshed the page and now it's burried. I have to find it again to say yes :laughing:

I wanted to share my code base for setting up simple 2D games using ahead of the jam. It includes a bunch of cool stuff, from menus, save system to post processing effects! You are free to fork it for you own games or simply grab whatever scripts and scenes you might need. Also code contributions are very welcome!

This uses the 4.1 release (and above), I'll also be adding new stuff before and after the jam :slight_smile:

Enjoy!

Hi guys,

As personal challenge I plan to try Godot during LD54. :) Which is a bit risky, I know. But as a handicap I'll use C# because I've got tons of experience with it and never really liked script languages anyway.

But I've just learnt that Godot 4 with .NET doesn't support web export!

While Godot 3 with Mono (C#) and Godot 4 with GDScript support it.

So my question is: Are web builds crucial to get a good amount of ratings?

When rating games, I always get the feeling that web build games get a ton more ratings on average. And I understand why could this be the case.

Is this real? I don't want to just barely make the 20 ratings requirement. I want more to get a clearer picture on my entry.

However I don't want to try both a new engine and a new language during a game jam! :smile: And I also don't really want to use Godot 3 because there is Godot 4 and soon 3 will be outdated.

Have you managed to get 40-50+ ratings without a web build?

Let me know and thanks for your comments in advance! :slight_smile:

I had such high hopes. There was only 182 left...

I slaughtered the first 100 suggestions so far and I liked most of them but I am definitely not voting on all 2000+. Which made me wonder (again): what if we allowed less suggestions. Probably 2 would be the sweet spot but I wouldn't even mind if everyone got only 1 suggestion.

The benefits would be: 1. Less time spent voting for everyone. In this case we'd have either 1,000 suggested themes or "only" 700. 2. People would think about their suggestions more. You'd really have to pick your best idea(s). 3. Each theme would get more votes, making it more representative of the community.

The downside would be that people wouldn't get to express themselves as much. But honestly, how many people have more than 2 really awesome ideas. What I've seen so far, a lot of the themes are fine but only a very few truly interest me. Good but not great. But of course "good" is subjective.

I know it's too late for this Ludum Dare but what do people think about fewer suggestions next time (and less themes to slaughter). Would you keep it the way it is or would you change it to 2 or 1 suggestion?

(I'm guessing this came up before so if someone has a link handy, please post it. I'd love to read the discussion there.)

First I want to say I feel for all the devs choosing to set aside Unity due to the recent events. If you are still looking for an alternative, I would highly recommend GDevelop. It's similar to Unity in that it allows you to make many types of games, but I always found it much easier to use. We'll you can use JavaScript, its default programming system is a series of "code free" events (basically if-then statements) and they have an asset store with a variety of free assets that are not exclusive to GDevelop (i.e. could still be used if you decided to change engines). If you're not sure how to start, there's a template for just about every game type and an active Discord and YouTube channel with tutorials.

Finally, it allows you to export to web, PC, Mac, Linux and mobile. Pasting a link and good luck to everyone no matter what engine you are using :)

https://gdevelop.io/

Anyway the theme always sucks :laughing:

This time slaughtering went fast ...

Not a complete redaction, but at least it's better:

https://blog.unity.com/news/open-letter-on-runtime-fee

tl;dr:

• Unity Personal will no longer require splash screen and can be used for up to $200k in revenue (up from $100k previously).
• Revenue share applies only after $1M in revenue over a year's time, and only on projects made with new version of Unity to be released in 2024; older versions will not be charged revenue share as long as it's still using the older version.

I basically just keep pressing "N" while staring at the "Recent Themes" section, and if I see a theme I like, I click on it and change it. I don't even look at the area where the current theme is displayed.

Am I the only one who does it this way?

Can we use Unreal Engine for Fortnite to create a game.
We could provide the island code for players to test and evelauate.

I remember previously signing up for a Ludum Dare and made a game years ago, but how to be added to another team?

There we so many repeats in this list! However, there were several times I had to stop and re-read the last few because I was inspired by one...

Well done to those that submitted my 75 keepers!