Finally we finished our game, but as always at a gamejam, we didn’t reached all our goals.
We are very happy about how far we have reached and as always it was fun.
The game is about a robot, trying to escape from the acid underneath him. You have to run to escape from the acid…there is only one problem, its endless…
You can try it here : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=27420
Hope everyone had fun 😉
– Headless Hobo
So I’ve decided to write a post mortem for my first ever ludum dare entry Turn Fighter Foo. I’m really proud of what I had achieved in such a short amount of time and I just wanted the opportunity to share the story and the thought processes behind it.
The first day
When the theme “10 seconds “was revealed on the ludum site at 10:30 am local time, the first thing I did was to brainstorm and write down every idea I could come up with related to the theme. Ideas for mechanics like 10 second power ups, 10 second lives and 10 second timers floated around mixed in with game ideas like escaping from a monster with only 10 second of stare time (yeah I ripped it off amnesia), a 10 second hundred meter dash and even a …ahem “reproductive” game with the control system of dance dance revolution to try and get a 10 second climax result.
My initial attempt was to build the monster game with a flashlight with a 10 second battery life that you could use to scare away the monster using Construct 2. Eventually, I got bored with the idea and ditched the monster game and was back at square one. I had a look at my list of brainstorms again and fell upon number 10 on the list which read “10 second to decide what to do in a situation – Each turn is a second”. I then started to think about creating a turn based game where you had a limited amount of time (10 seconds) to make a decision like timed chess. I remembered a previous game that I had stumbled on from a previous ludum dare called RockPaperRPG which was a game where players took simultaneous turns to select from melee, block and magic to defeat an opponent. I was going to extend upon that idea but with timed limited turns. This meant that I needed a greater range of actions to choose from so that time became a precious resource for the player. It so happened that I had just bought Mortal Kombat on steam that morning too and I thought about whether anyone has built a turn based fighting game before. And so the basic idea behind what would become Turn Fighter Foo was born. I tried to create the initial prototype in Construct 2. Below is a picture of that early prototype.
By late Saturday afternoon I was beginning to become frustrated with Construct 2 and I was ready to throw away this prototype too. However, I really liked the concept, I just didn’t like the way I had to manipulate arrays in the editor. I made the hard decision to give up on Construct 2 and fall back to coding the game on flash via the flixel library. The other problem was I had agreed to go to my friend’s birthday gathering and so I was going to lose my whole Saturday evening. I decided to make a quick appearance and get back home in time to do more development. The quick appearance saw me coming home at 12:00 am and slightly intoxicated. I started quickly banging away on the keyboard and within a couple of hours I had a white square moving within a grid which was more progress than I had made with my first prototype.
The second day
After six hours of sleep, I got up at eight and proceeded to start hammering away code. Most of what you can see was made on Sunday. Progress was slow but steady. By around lunch time I had the basic input and battle replay system up with a white square moving around. By late afternoon, I had two squares duking it out on a grid. I spent most of Sunday night actually programming the structure of the game, I had a battle engine but I still needed a game structure to handle the flow of the game from beginning to end plus reset conditions. I also needed all the other UI stuff that showed status (like healthbars). I also spent a bit of time doing the sprite graphics on Sunday night.
Most of the early morning of the Monday was spent fixing up issues and making sure that there wasn’t any major problems with the code flow. I also took some time to create sounds using bfxr and that Sakura tree in the background. By about 4 or 5 am on a Monday morning I probably had the final build and spent the next hour working out hosting on google drive, writing the readme and going through the process of submission. The title “Turn Fighter Foo” was selected when I had to fill in the name box in the submission process. I wanted something that was a parody of Street Fighter 2. Originally, it was going to be “Turn Fighter Too” but I took a play on the term Foo Fighter (I originally had in mind the band Foo Fighters) and with the word “Foo” in a programming context.
Positives
Negatives
Lessons learnt
Going to go play and rate some of the other games now. Hope you enjoyed reading what I went through. You may find my ludum entry here
Tags: beat-em-up, Ludum Dare 27, postmortem, turn-based
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=7905
I made this in 72 hours, with the help of a musician and artist.
All code is me. I also did some really minor changes to the art.
Honestly, i’m super proud of this. It’s available for Android as well as desktop, and that’s where it really shines. It’s a perfect game to be playing on the toilet or w/e.
The multiplayer was a little rushed (though I coded it with multiplayer in mind from the beginning). So I’m amazed it turned out as nice as it did. It sort of relies on the player not cheating. But it still works well. Gives a spaceteam vibe (which is what I was going for).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeHZP7NUgaQ
I did a sort of let’s play of it, showing off the single player video.
As far as a post-mortem goes. I honestly couldn’t be happier given the circumstances. Having an artist was touch-and-go for a while, which delayed implementing things (But did give me time to focus on design + backend code), and the musician basically didn’t turn up until the last minute. But this all comes with the territory of being a person. Everyone is busy at times.
My only regret is that I didn’t have anything to show at the game jam meetup I went to. And as much as I love it (and will always go), the 4 hours round-trip of travel does take out of potential dev time.
Lastly, I put the game on the play store. You can grab it from the Ludum Dare page, but if you want future updates, it’s gonna cost ya! A grand total of £0.50 ($0.80). I probably won’t update the free version from here on, but either way, I’ve found more than that behind the back of a couch. Go get it 
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.omnomcom.joat
I might port/push to iOS too, if I get the chance.
It’s the last day for the jam. I have until 3am to publish my entry. I have still a lot of things to do but I think I will have the time. I have to do sounds, another music and created the map, quests and all the dialogs. As my game is open-world it’s very big and very important part.
10am : I created some extra sprites and add sounds. I manage to do one sound for the fight, one for the death of the hero and one when the hero pick an object. It’ not a lot of sounds but it’s ok for my game. I’m quite glad about their quality.
12pm : It’s lunch time. I haven’t yet the time to cook so it will be a ready-prepared dish.
1pm : It’s time to create the map. It’s not really big but for a 72h-game it’s ok. I begin by recover all the map by tiles and it’s a very long and very dull task.
3pm : Now, i put all the objects like buildings, trees, npcs.
4pm : I think about the plot and begin to write all the dialogs.
6pm : A quick dinner and it’s time to go to work until 11pm.
11pm : I’m tired and a bit hungry so I take little break.
Midnight : Still 3 hours. I plan to use two hours to finish the map and one to create an extra music. I finish to write all the dialogs and I add them in the game. I’m very glad about quests and dialogs. In only several hours, I think I manage to do something good.
1.30 : The map is finished and I have to test the game. The main problem is the difficulty and the balance of the game. It should be not too hard but not too easy and this sort of task take a lot time. You have to try the game, make some modifications, try the game again, etc… and there’s only 90 minutes left. The tension begins to increase.
2.30 : Do you know that feeling when there’s still only 30 minutes and you have just discovered a damn bug who can wreck your game if you don’t fix it ?
2.35 : I think I will throw my computer by the window in a minute…
2.45 : The bug is fixed. The map is finished. I have to publish the game.
2.50 : Oh, damn ! I need screenshots. I’m about to explode at this moment.
2.57 : Done. I published my entry !
3.01 : I have just remarked that I had still one hour to publish it…
It was a really long day. I will write a post mortem later. Here’s a last screenshot :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zpku70s6zy0b9v6/timelapse_2013-08-27_11-04-00.mpeg
I forgot to keep the timelapse going after I came back from a break towards the end of day two. In my defense I’d just eaten my birthday cake and got drunk. The only tasks completed were some explosion fine tuning, and singing. But the less said about that the better.
Richard Was Afraid of the Dark
This was my first attempt at completing a game, and I’m pretty happy with the results. I came into the challenge with a very limited skill set, but found myself learning a lot over the course of the weekend and finding creative ways to implement the things I learned. “Richard Was Afraid of the Dark” is definitely something I’m proud of being able to create, and that I’m planning on developing further over time.
What went well:
Graphics – I am definitely not the most artistic person, visually, so I was dreading coming up with graphics for the game. For all of the world elements I kept the design simple, mostly black with simple bump-maps to enhance the lighting, and very little color (green for the door, red for fire). Allowing the light/dark contrast to be the primary focus really seemed to work out well. The game ended up looking way more polished than someone with my artistic ability should have the ability to create.
Level Creator – I spent time early on making a way to instantiate objects based off of a bitmap file. I wasn’t sure how necessary it would be, but as I neared the deadline, it was my saving grace. As I got within an hour of the deadline I realized that I only had a couple playable levels. In spite of the time constraint, I was able to pull together the rest (i.e. most) of the levels within that final hour. I was able to do basic playtesting and iteration fairly quickly, although a few bugs did rise to the surface in the later levels.
Music – I am definitely more experienced with music creation than game creation, so this was far more comfortable territory for me. I came up with the core music idea and then split up the layers so that the music could progress alongside the player. I had several ideas that I didn’t have time to implement, but I think the basic result was pretty effective.
Story integration – I’m really happy with the mechanic I implemented for storytelling (not necessarily the story itself). I wanted to make the story feel present and relevant but never force a player to pay attention. I think I found a decent balance between giving the player freedom to stop and read the text or to just run straight through. As I was developing the game, this was the element that really made me feel like I could add something unique to the compo.
What went poorly:
Time Management/Theme – I had come up with the idea for this game in response to the 10 second theme. I had gameplay ideas in mind as I started the process, but I got bogged down by all of the other stages of development. I ended up not having time to develop any of the theme-relevant elements and was unable to do anything other than a brief allusion to the theme in the story text. That’s a pretty significant failure.
Gameplay – The core ideas for the gameplay worked (running, jumping, getting to the exit) but all of the larger gameplay ideas (obstacles, the ten-second gameplay mechanic, control refinement, etc) went completely unrealized. I had created the fire blocks with the intent to use them as obstacles, but ended up only using them for aesthetic purposes. In the future, I’ll definitely need to prioritize the necessary gameplay elements earlier on.
Animation – As with the graphics, I dreaded the animation process. Unlike the graphics, this didn’t work out quite so well. I spent quite a while working on getting the animation together, but eventually decided to scrap most of the ideas I had worked on. As the visuals developed, it seemed most suitable to allow the character to only be a silhouette, which glossed over how bad the animation really is (although if you stop right before a door, it still looks like the character is doing Gangnam Style). This is my least favorite part of the game.
What’s next:
Overall, this was a great experience for me. I learned a lot and gained have a much better idea of my strengths and weaknesses as a game designer. I’m definitely planning on continuing work on this game, add the elements that I didn’t have time for, and see if I can release it during the October Challenge.
Thanks everyone for all your feedback and for making so many awesome games.
-John
I just added ports for my game for Windows and Linux (not tested) in addition to the web player version.
Will be writing a post-mortem later. You can play it here.
For those with lower spec machines or people who are just curious to see the game, I have captured a short playthrough of Tensecwep
Link below! Enjoy!
So, I started learning Unity recently and did the Ludum Dare as a learning experience. I definitely learned so much, and I’m really happy that I participated. However, my game isn’t that great, I guess, but I don’t think it’s too bad for a first game. I’m probably not going to keep working on this for too much longer, I’m kind of discouraged after being ridiculed so many times. The only thing to do is fix the game, and don’t make the same mistakes twice. I think the other problem is that I didn’t really like the theme, and didn’t think of anything for it.
Anyways, without a further a-do, my game..
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=20531
Please leave feedback! Thanks.
Fantastic!
I really should have known better! This is my third Ludum Dare, but I’m still unable to manage my time correctly. I spent almost all of the first 36 hours on asset creation, and I really failed to get my programming going until way too late. 
What went right:
– My core mechanic is intact. Time rewinds every ten seconds, just like I set out to do
– A decent soundtrack made by me. This is a first!
– A full compliment of pixel art for the game
– relatively bug free platforming physics with moving objects
– A decent auto-tiling system
What went horribly wrong:
– Ran out of time
– Had to nix a ton of features, corpses of which remain in the assets bundled with the game
– Wasn’t able to design any provocative levels
– No menu and no win screen
– Game breaking bugs that could only be fixed half an hour after the submission deadline
My takeaway: Next time, start programming the second you hammer out the basic idea. A game with placeholder graphics and generated music, but lots of gameplay, is way better than one with pretty assets and little game. Here’s to hoping for a better tomorrow!
Well I’ve charged through a few games in quick succession! If there’s a pattern, its that most games use the “10 seconds” theme to limit the gameplay to, eh, 10 seconds. There aren’t many platformers this time, and I think the theme has really limited people; there’s not much innovative slants on it all from my quick sampling.
Its difficult for me as I’m not a Windows user. I can run Unity Web these days, which is a saving. I wish more people made web-playable games; I really don’t like downloading your untrustworthy binaries and neither should you!
This is not all a bad thing; there are buckets of really good games that I’ve found already:
↑ 10 sec. Fast Beef is as addictive as Angry-Birds! You’ve been warned! Definitely no just playing for 10 seconds to be had here!
↑ Notiempo is a multi-player FPS that looks gorgeous. I’m dead keen to know how the multi-player bit works, since I’ve had no luck with it myself in pass LD contests.
↑ The Value of Time is a pleasing little puzzler where you help yourself out in a weird and wonderful way.
↑ 10 Seconds Before the World Ends is a nice use of a physics engine.
With over 2200 games, I’ve obviously only scraped the surface and not found the truly great games! In most LDs, I haven’t even played the winning games and am completely surprised – in a good way – when the results are announced and there’s a whole bunch more recommendations to work through!
My own entry was a bit of a miss this time, because the beauty is in the code and not the gameplay:
↑ The NSA’s Where’s Snowden? Game. Please appreciate the Windows-ME-style interface and full SQL parser written in Javascript! 😀
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go play lots more games!
That’s it! I consider it to be one of my best Ludum Dare games ever 😀
As always, I managed to somehow wake up naturally at 3:58 AM (2 minutes before the theme announcement) , saw the theme and then returned to sleep. I streamed the whole gamedev process and it was actually really fun, almost always there was someone on the stream chat and it was nice talking with you guys, thanks! When I first woke up in the morning I started writing down ideas and later I decided to continue with the first (and quite simple) game idea, actually, it turned out to be a good decision!
My main goal was to make the game as polished as I can and I think that I accomplished that goal very well. All in all, I had a lot of fun making this game, I had a lot of encouragement from my friends (which really helped me 😀 ) and I even had time to take a few naps during the jam!
Join our little friend on his journey into the depths of The Cave of Lights.
Wisely spend your 10 seconds of light each level to find your way through the cave…
What will you find at the end?
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=5971
I saw everyone doing it, seemed fun to do the same.
First of all, I am a Game designer with some code skills and very poor skills in other areas, aka sound and art.
This is my third LD, the second I managed to deliver something. My first was the “You are the villain”. I was going to finish the game using GameSalad but the program stopped working and I had to start over in Unity with a huge learning curve ahead.
The second one, Minimalism, was made using Unity, I already had developed some skills. The problem was that I chose a genre that I am not very good at: Puzzle.
For this one I decided two things:
1. It would be a shmup or a platformer
2. I was going to use pictures (of me or my kid)
When the theme came up I was lost. 10 seconds… hummm hard choice. At that time I recall an article I read regarding alcohol and creativity. I went for it. Grab a couple of beers and went to bed to watch cartoons with my kid. And suddenly the idea came to me! A shmup with increasing difficulty every 10 seconds. At that moment, when the 2 beers hit me (yes, alcohol is super effective against me) I made a 3rd decision: No decisions made under the effect of alcohol could be changed, as insane it could sound.
At the peak of my “alcohol” rush I took some pictures of me and cleaned them in PS.
Then it was easy. I made several experimental shmups and it was kinda easy to develop it.
One thing that I HAD to do, my doom at game jams, was keeping the game working and not focusing on stupid features. So, after finishing cleaning my pictures, I went to the game and made it almost to the end and then came back to the “funny” part of the game. That part could be left out if there wasn’t time to finish it. This is called, if I am not mistake, the 80/20 error, where you spend 80% of your time in the 20% least important features. This worked out.
As always, I would have several things fixed, but the time was short. One small fix that I made was add a mouse support (only joystick available for the compo). The High Score logic was wrong, first because I made a very noob mistake when comparing the scores, and second because I forgot to comment the line that erased the scores when the game loaded. Besides those, take the stupid label that I placed in the game to trace the mouse 😛
One thing that I wanted was to make the game have an end. The game ends after 240 seconds (24 cicles) with a drunk message from me 😛
Instead of making a what went wrong/right, I made this text, everything is inside id
Thank you for reading these lines and if you can, here is the link to the game, I would love if you play the game and leave a comment.
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=4736
… also now with a more detailed description and a few small fixes.
So you can now explore the derelict space lab on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Curious? Check it out!
Hello everybody. I would like to join to the last Ludum Dare, but I’m very worried about the situation on Syria and a possible intervention of EE.UU and his allies that can lead us to a third world war with high risk to be nuclear. I wish be wrong.
Just that. I really like Ludum and make games and play games from other entries.
My best wishes.
5This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 27th, 2013 at 10:26 am and is filed under LD #27. 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.
I always wanted to create video games, I did some tests, but aside from one game, 2 years ago, (http://www.kongregate.com/games/tet2brick/lost-colony/ if you want to test it) none was finished or published.
LD was a good opportunity to have a deadline … and it worked!
I’m pretty happy with the end result, it could be improved, but for a developed 48 I think it’s pretty cool.
What I’m happy about
– The design in general and in particular that of the character … I’ve never done pixel art before a few weeks ago, so it’s not too bad.
– The gameplay is functional, I think the difficulty is well balanced and evolutive.
– The game is fun (I enjoyed playing it myself… :p )
– The music is ok and was done in less than two minutes, that was a last minute addition.
What I intend to improve in the next version
– A prettier start screen
– More levels
– More ambient sound
– More scenery
– More graphic details (tree, plants, rocks, tombstones, etc..)
– More different traps?
– Enemies?
– More levels
– Mooooore levels
– A better title.
Well, that was a really interesting experience that helped me realize that I could develop full games more often.
Feel free to test and give me feedback!
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25030
Tags: as3, finished, postmortem
… or “Why I ended up doing the 72-hour Jam” 😉
After a weekend ride on the rollercoaster of emotions (consisting of mostly rage and frustration…) I finally finished my entry last night. You can check it out here:
My original goal was the 48-hr compo, but after the initial 16 hours on Saturday, I was ready to call it quits. Weird bugs started popping up everywhere, and I hadn’t even really decided on much more than the genre (platformer). I woke up Sunday with a few ideas – never underestimate the power of sleep 😉 – but not much time to complete them. Another 10 hours in, and only 5 left in the compo, I threw in the towel (again).
By that point, I had mostly working controls, and one basic level. The visual style was pretty much set and I even had the basic music laid out. I figured I’d just work on it as a 1GAM entry and leave it at that.
I decided last minute to take the day off work on Monday – just felt burnt out I guess, and not in the mood to lay out business cards and flyers 😛 Didn’t really plan on working on the game any further, but it just kind of happened. It started to feel like I’d actually have time to get at least a basic entry in for the jam, and so another 12 hours later I submitted my game.
What went right
Not much 😉 At least, none of it came easy. I’m happy with the end result overall though – of course there are a million things I’d like to fix, but I feel much better having submitted something.
What went wrong
The biggest thing was not knowing the tools nearly as well as I thought I did. I can fight my way through Unity & C# pretty well when I have the time, but the pressure of a deadline lead to some dirty code and nasty bugs.
I also, for some reason, felt way more compelled to give up early this time. That didn’t happen to me in LD26, so I’m not sure where that attitude came from. It’s definitely something I need to keep in check.
Final Thoughts
Oddly enough, my biggest drive for completing the entry was to be a part of everything that takes place afterwards. I enjoy the voting process, I like getting feedback (good and bad) and I crave the high of a completed project. I guess it’s important to keep these things in mind early on, step back and breathe when necessary, and to not give up so easy.
Congratulations to everyone – to those who tried and those who succeeded. Looking forward to the next one