I finally published my game made for the Jam. I have been trying to make some games earlier, but never finished or published any of them 
But here it is:) And I am pretty happy about the result, at least since I am just 14. So if you like paintball or first person shooters, please try my game and tell me what you think.
Game is Here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25985
So, the game is complete, im getting some great feedback and reccomendations for future dev, but as it stands im happy with what i submitted, just wish Unity and my plugins hadnt crashed so often, and maybe id have got more done!
Really enjoying browsing the games on here too, a good majority are really creative and different so I know what I’ve got planned for the rest of my day 😀
anyway, the post mortem essay, of which im condensing to bullet point format:
STUFF THAT WENT REAL GOOD:
STUFF GONE DUN BAD:
THE FUTURE….and beyond!:
So yh, i had fun, im on a high, time to play and rate some more awesome games, first LD…Greaaaaat Succeeeesss!
You are a fan of platformers and/or puzzles? Then you should not miss this entry.
In this game you have to remember a ten seconds long level and make the right moves to reach the chest. The problem is, you have to move while not seeing the real world. The cool thing, you aren’t doing it in a boring click planning phase, no, you will play it in real time like any other jump an run.
Watch out for burning and rolling barrels and use the elevators, platforms and trampolines to succeed.
Have fun in 30 levels in 2 worlds
Good luck
<<< http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25952 >>>
Now the Day after, I still have yet to fully recover from the lack of sleep with work commitments. The upside is that I have the opportunity to show a few colleagues the game and gather some friendly feedback. It was quite refreshing to have a break from coding and discuss some of the experiences while working on the project and having a moment to laugh at the things that went wrong and seeing how the things that went right have been able to come across in their feed back.
So today I’m looking at promoting the game and putting out some feelers to gather as much feedback as possible. Afterwards I plan to go back to the team for post huddle and share that feed back with the other members. I’m hopeful of producing a comprehensive post mortem on the project so stay tuned for that.
Link to game
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=22368
Several folks have tried the game and have not figured out how to survive, so I updated the summary with more hints. This is what happens when you don’t have testers 
Those that were frustrated, please try again. I’m sure you’ll like the survival technique. See my entry here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=27425
Hints for survival
Hint 1: Pay Attention and don’t be rude
Hint 2: If you talk to your buddy, check your surroundings
Hint 3: Don’t Text and Skydive
Hint 4: There are other 10 second driven elements in the game, like timed events (even when it seems like nothing is going on)
So, my second LD resulted in my first entry. Not bad.
What went right
Personally, I liked the theme. I’m always one to take it more as a game mechanic, so this one was pretty clear while offering a fair number of choices.
I had the game done after the first day. This gave me the second 24 hours to polish, draw, compose and add new features. I spent several hours obsessively tweaking numbers until I could win about 50% of the time, which seemed fair.
What went wrong
After tweaking for hours the girlfriend and I cooked dinner, watched a movie, and killed a bottle of wine. That in itself is not wrong, not at all. I thoroughly recommend it. However, it sort of put the idea of “The game’s done, I could add some graphics and music but would I be really happy with them and there’s another bottle of wine in the fridge oh stuff it let’s just relax” into my head. I need to be more committed. ^__^
Also, despite basing my entry on the engine code for my previous attempt, there was still a fair chunk of tech to write. I mean, if I knew I was going to do a shooter no matter what the theme, I should have written a weapon class ready, right?
I picked a stupid size for the screen (1280×720). Next time, I check it on my laptop before submitting.
Lastly, the browser variance got me. I developed in Chrome, one of the more forgiving browsers, but when my first comment was “It freezes in Safari 6 on a Mac” I thought I’d better check it out. Horrifyingly it ran in NO other browsers (except Opera, which uses the same V8 JS engine as Chrome). Hurriedly researching and fixing a combination of transform, keyboard and audio problems got it running reasonably in all browsers except Safari, in which it still runs at 3-4 FPS instead of the 60 FPS of everything else. Post-compo (and therefore not in the entry version) I’ve played around with different methods but nothing has helped Safari. I also don’t have a Mac, so I’m limited to version 5.1.7 (the latest version on Windows) which doesn’t implement requestAnimationFrame, which is the recommended fix for buffered frames – although that’s not the whole problem. >__<
Still, I'm pretty happy all told. Javascript seems to have stayed in my head despite neglecting it for eight months, and the game itself is pretty fun. If you like bullet hell shooters, you can play it on the web right here, please let me know what you think!
Aaand see you all in four months. 😉
Tags: advice, javascript, Mortem, Post, post-mortem, postmortem
This was my first LD.
So,I had finished things just on time two days ago, and submitted…
Yesterday,I played everyone’s games and really enjoyed it.
Today I realised I had made a mistake around half way of the game preventing it to continue,totally dissapointed I thought like:
“I’ll double check next LD…”
Until I accidently read:”MY GAME CRASHES, IS UNBEATABLE, OR I MADE A TYPO: We allow you to fix crash or win condition bugs after the deadline (in a sense, like “porting” to support more players). We also allow “typo” bugs. I.e. A true that should have been a false, a word that should have been a different word, very tiny changes that you would have caught if you had more sleep. We leave this open to interpretation, but generally speaking your game should be identical to the game you submitted. No new features, just things you messed up last minute. Typos.”
So I corrected the mistake and reuploaded the .jar!
I felt relived.
But then I learned about the D=R-5*C^0.5, C topping at 100;
So I could deduce every game gets about 50 ratings for a 100 coolness,which means, since 27 people played my game ,23 are left.
That’s less than half.
Thats why I posted this here, to get more feedback on what I really did.
Game link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25208
PS: improbable question : What is L = loser?
Tags: Typo
Race through the grass! Experience the brushfires!! Get the crystals!!!
Over ten million blades of meticulously simulated grass! Fresh grass, cool on your skin! Dry grass, quick to burn! Embrace the mystery…OF THE GRASSFIRES OF VELDSTAR
MY ENTIRE FUCKING HEAD IS AN EYEBALL
I’M A SEXY CRYSTAL WITH A HOT VOICE
Think. Cooperate. Survive.
So, this is my first entry into Ludum Dare, and I must say I think it turned out pretty well! After three days of grueling work, with a very bad cold, I think the key to a successful game is lots and lots of Nyquil. I’m fairly certain the continuous sleepy haze I was in had a strong impact on the games style. I don’t know much about getting people to view your game, so I’ll have to check around and various places I can get some visibility. Now it’s time to sit back and review all the entries out there!
All in all, I would say LD27 was a fantastic, if not completely exhausting, experience. I’ll probably do it again.
The Lost Robos Teaser
Years after the extinction of mankind all life on earth has ended, and the planet has grown cool and still.
But somewhere deep within the earth something is stirring! Help Mankind’s creations, the little orphaned Robos, to navigate their way to the surface where the sun can breathe new life into their drained power cells! Each Robo only has TEN SECONDS to act on each level before their power cells run dry. Find a way to overcome the limitations of each individual by working together.
Controls
My jam game is a murder mystery about a professor’s mysterious death during a 10-second blackout. It was a bit too ambitious for 72 hours, but I’m pretty happy with what we got done.
Here’s what the game looked like on Saturday:
And here’s the final look:
I’ll post a longer post-mortem later. For now, you can play my game here!
Cut together the timelapse of the development of Cogri Is Missing. Turned out pretty good!
Cogri Is Missing Ludum Dare Timelapse from David McDonough on Vimeo.
Linux support added to our game! We compiled it so Mono shouldn’t be needed, it works on our machines, but we would love if some Linux users could test it for us.
We are also working on an OS/X version, but since only one of us has a Mac, it will take more time, sorry 
You can see the game HERE
With the weekend behind us there’s finally enough time to write about our dev journey. Before hand we had chosen our technology stack: libgdx and Scala. Both were relatively new to us so, with a hard lesson learned during LD#24, decided to keep the game simple. We started the first morning brainstorming some ideas, such as a factory-simulator with 10s cycles and various running games. We settled on recreating an old classic with a new twist: gauntlet with a timer.
The pure basics were already laid out, but it still took an entire day to get familiar enough with the tools to get a solid foundation up. Some place holder graphics were scribbled into place. At this point there was nothing except a map and the player movement, with collision detection almost working :). No complete images survived this stage, the earliest screenshot I had stored already has final floor texture.
Crude wall assets, early weapon and player character
Day 2 continued with more of the basics getting set up: level transitions, loading, enemy logic, item pickups. We kept experimenting with the game play the entire time, tweaking variables and assets pretty ad hoc. The code quality also took a slight nose dive with “getting it done” taking priority. Before turning in for the night I had taken a stab at implementing the enemy movement, with poor results:
Experimenting with the UI
We quickly wrapped up major missing functions during the third day. We hadn’t yet decided if the game would feature random levels and never end, but decided against it. We implemented some auxiliary features such as the red potion to boost weapon damage, and spent the last hours before submission on level design and packaging the product. The video below is from early Monday, testing video capture.
It would definitely been nice to document the development process more to see the evolution of the game and our process. We did generate a video of the code changes in the git repository using gource. Documenting the dev process is something for us to work on when entering more competitions.
The finished product feels like a game, an aspect we especially wanted to concentrate on, with good controls and a clear progression. The goal of the game should maybe be more evident, and the lack of music and quality sound effects are something we should see to in future endeavors . All in all we are pleased with how it turned out, and how much we learned while making it.
remote… remote control.
Well, that’s 9 for 9 in a row for LD compos. Happy, exhausted, all the usual emotions plus a handful more. Congrats to all successful entries. The following is reprinted from the official project page:
1. Continued Apolicy
Once more total radio silence on the theme proved a good strategy. I wonder what would happen if no one voted? But then again I think about that every time there’s any kind of democracy.
2. New Environment
The new Dark Acre office in Nanaimo is game development heaven compared to the apartments in the West End of Vancouver. I felt more relaxed, focused, & at ease throughout the compo, despite complications (see 1 below).
3. Outside Time
Went for walks, something I hadn’t purposely done in previous compos. Also smoked a bit of pipe tobacco, a dirty habit I hadn’t really touched much for the past 5 years. Not advocating, do what you want. Did it help me think clearly? I believe so, health concerns aside.
4. Riding a Wave of Successful Ludum Dare Compos
I’ve done this so many times now it’s become routine. It’s a major advantage but also something of a drawback (see 2 below).
1. That Damn Cat
The Dark Acre cat, Pon Pon, escaped a few days before the compo began. We recovered her with a dislocated jaw and chip in her spine. This was stressful in itself, but we were glad to get her back in relative safety.
Then on the Saturday of the compo I was carrying her to the vet for a progress check up & she broke out of the carrier. She holed up in an inaccessible crawlspace under our apartment for 10 hours, causing stress & distraction. We once again recovered her, & were forced to re-schedule the check up for the Sunday of the compo. More lost time.
I’m never one to make excuses, but accidents do happen. Due to the lost production time I was unable to process audio & expand the level design. This was the first time 9 compos that such a thing happened, so I count myself lucky in that regard.
2. Familiarity Breeds Contempt
I love the compo. It’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like there’s actual value in hardcore production. The sweat, the tears, the neglected health & family members. But in the last year it’s come with ever-diminishing returns on educational value, & only reinforced my belief that long-term projects are where it’s at.
3. Overall Lack of Practice/New Tools
I think I executed well, given the circumstances, but it could have been better not only with the full amount of time but with a little more time spent in the new tools. I’d recently upgraded to the ’14 versions of my Autodesk stuff, 3.6 of Substance Designer, & I hadn’t even opened Unity3D since the last compo. There were a few minor hiccups, like losing all my keysets for Max, or completely forgetting how to assemble a Substance, but overall I was pleased with how the coding went & the discovery of the improvements Unity’s made to its engine.
Tags: cat, KINGINDIE, post-mortem
Damn, we spend around two days jaming with you guys, and that was such a great experience. The ammount of great games in the final is surpassing the boundaries! 💡
I already had checked a few dozen of games by now(and only empty cup of tea managed to stop me), and they are simply perfect!! Every single game have its strong and weak sides, but mostly all of you could balance them properly, and that is so nice..
There was some realy polished ideas, and some realy crazy ones and some offtopic(but still cool by the way)…graphics, mostly in pixelart is stunning(I can’t help myself, when i see pixelart i give 5/5 because it rulez) we must definetly meet on the next jam!
As for us, everybody talked not to use new engine, sleep well, don’t drink to much cofee….well, it was our first jam with you guys, here at Ludum, and now we know why people are keep saying that
But, we managed somehow (no, we didn’t sell our souls to devil…well, at least not all of us :twisted:) to finish the game.
Here’s the screens from early stages of the game:
If You haven’t play it, please do, we would love to hear your opinion about it!
PLAY THE GAME
So our first Ludum Dare is over.
Firstly I would like to share the timelapse I’ve recorded with you all (There’s a bit of gameplay at the end of it).
The game can be found here:
www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=25133
Now onto the pros and cons.
The pros:
– I learned a few new things along the way.
– I have a much better understanding of developing with XNA now.
– We ended up with a game that could turn into something fun with alittle more work.
– It was a blast!
– Posting these blogs and talking to new people doing the weekend was fun.
– Playing other peoples games and seeing new interesting concepts.
– Getting feedback on our own game of course.
The cons:
– I should probably have prepared some of the basic and core code before the contest started as I spend way too much time doing that once the theme was announced.
– Partly because of the previous I didn’t get to implement all the stuff we had planned.
– I ran into a few problems along the way (Some easy to fix, others were just bizarre).
I now know what to do and what to avoid for next time and I’m definitely going to participate in the next Ludum Dare!
I will not continue to play all the awesome games that’s been submitted!
Thank you!
Around 3 months ago I visited ludumdare.com for the first time, I was immediately hooked and decided that I must enter in LD27. In July I entered in my first game making competition, 7dRTS. Somehow I managed to write a game in PHP (a language that I barely knew) which placed 4th in Humor, even though it wasn’t even that funny!
My 7dRTS game, which is called SyncMind was a great learning experience for me and also a lot of fun for me to code.
Anyway a few weeks later I discovered 7dFPS which I proceded to enter in a game called Challenger 34502 which was a puzzle FPS with platformer elements in it. I made the game in Unity, wrote it in UnityScript, made the art in Paint.Net and models in Blender.
Challenger 34502 can be played here
Wrath Of The Decem:
After the theme (10 seconds) was announced I went to bed and slept for 8 hours, then in the morning when I got up I took the dog for a hour long walk. For the rest of the day I worked on my game, finishing levels 1 through 4. I slept for about 9 hours, then realized LD27 was still on and jumped out of bed and finished the game.
What Went Well:
Windows 7: My computer held up fine, no crashes or lost data.
Kitten: My kitten model actually looks like a kitten
Almost Everything Else: Everything was fine, no bugs that took more than 15 minutes to fix or (severe) file loss.
What Didn’t go Well:
Timer: The giant timer in the corner of the screen had a Unity crashing bug that took 15 minutes to fix.
Windows 7: WHY U USE SO MUCH RAM!
Time Lapse: The order of images got messed up so the timelapse is rather weird.
Gameplay Video: Camstudio Recorder lagged like heck during the recording of my gameplay video.
Time Lapse:
The timelapse video can be found at this URL because WordPress doesn’t let me embed videos: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6XSI0zltIQUNUJ0R1diWGlzQ1E/preview
Gameplay Video:
The gameplay video can be found at this URL because WordPress doesn’t let me embed videos: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6XSI0zltIQUWTg3ODB5NGNUTlE/preview
Anyway, if you haven’t played Wrath Of The Decem yet you can at: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=24589
Tags: LD27, postmortem, unity, unity3d
DMC:QFTTSC is a game about stealing parts from cars. It is also about many things besides, but I want to focus on that because it’s the part that is kind of borked. Everything else (the writing, the sound, the programming) came out more or less awesome sans a few minor errors which were quickly patched up.
The crux of it is this: I had 4 hours at the end of development in which I could EITHER balance the game or do the sound. I chose to do the sound, which paid big dividends, but I wound up with a game that is absurdly easy.
It is apparently possible to finish the game without adding a new engine or nitrous. These are how you give the car more power, so plainly that is an issue. I also gave the player too much time to get parts in most cases, so the tension which makes up a lot of the gameplay is frequently absent.
As I was designing the various available parts, I focused on using real world numbers. This meant looking up how much a typical exhaust weighs, or engines of various capacities, and then using those numbers as a guide. This gave me a realistic spread (to some degree) which is what I wanted. Where it all broke down was in the testing area.
The testing algorithm calculates the car’s distance and speed in real time, but keeps it out of frame until the very end so that I didn’t have to spend time making it look realistic. Because of this, I could use a relatively simple formula to calculate the car’s speed at any given time. I balanced this formula by taking the stock car and testing it until it took about 40 seconds to do the standing quarter mile. I then put in a much more powerful engine and tweaked until that took about 12 seconds. I figured that if the player got a couple more improvements for their car and one good enigne, they would be set. I tweaked the time to get an engine accordingly, and job done.
You gather correctly. The problem is that I adjusted the formula to make weight more important, and reduced the base weight of the car to compensate. This means that swapping out the brakes or exhaust for lighter ones makes a huge difference. Remember, the car with stock parts was still about 40 seconds! Since the weight reduction was factored in over time, a tiny reduction would continuously affect the car over the whole lap. The end result is that James May’s Phat Pand can do the standing quarter miel in 10 seconds…with a 90 horsepower engine. If I had spent my last few hours testing various configurations I would have written a more complex algorithm and weight would have been a more reasonably balanced factor. But I didn’t.
Don’t just test numerical extremes, and always test tweaks to ALL of your factors. I don’t know if I made the wrong call (the sound may be more valuable than a balanced game), but I definitely regret not spending even 15 minutes more on balance. Next LD I will be including balance time in my schedule.
Oh yeah, when making an LD game you should always have a schedule. Always. Have. A. Schedule.
PEACE
