In this video:
– Game of Roots by BubuIIC
– SURF ACE by mrhill
– Under Our Feet by NicoM
– Submersion by chase
– ECM by Tamik

Because this is a thing people do, right?

The Story Behind Undermined:

I wasn’t ready for “Under The Surface” to win as a theme. I had some comparatively creative and well-fleshed out ideas for other themes in the list (Time Does Not Exist had me particularly interested), but I had never considered Under The Surface as a real potential winner. For about an hour or two after the theme announcement, I had no idea what I was doing. I wouldn’t settle for any kind of generic mining game (I ended up using mining as a setting, but not as a gameplay mechanic) and I didn’t want to go with what felt like the equally obvious “underwater submarine” type of game. I wracked my brain frantically for ideas, and even listened to Wu-Tan Clan’s “Under The Surface” in hopes that it might randomly trigger a bolt of creativity. I don’t quite think I owe it to the hardcore rap (which, by the way, was far more enjoyable to listen to than I had anticipated), but I somehow settled on the idea of comforting trapped miners by dealing with the emotions that they have buried under the surface.

When I started actually working on Undermined, I was hit with an *extremely* discouraging couple of hours. Setting up a functional UI was my biggest problem, as I had initially wanted to show information on every miner simultaneously using columns, but had to switch over to a tab based system because it was just way too much data to present at once without feeling overwhelming. I was also really uncertain on how exactly the player was going to have to handle social interactions with their crew, since not many games handle this sort of thing and I had no real sources from which to draw inspiration for my mechanics. On top of all this, I was working with generally disheartening subject matter that forced me to spend most of my time looking at frowning character sprites and words like “lonely” and “depressed” whenever I edited my code. I stuck it out, though. I brainstormed with a couple of close friends over facebook to figure out how the mechanics should work, and I eventually figured out that breaking up all of the miner’s information into tabs is a really effective way of making things easy to navigate.

So, when everything is said and done, what about Undermined works well?

When I was initially brainstorming with a friend on how to go about the mechanics of the game, I had the following really important exchange:
Friend: if one guy is throwing chairs across the room and one guy is in a ball sobbing, it’s hard to figure out who to comfort first and what to do.

Me: yeah, that’s kind of the challenge I’m trying to capture here.

I’m happy to say that I think Undermined does a spectacular job of creating that particulat tension. On any given turn, you’ll never be able to help everybody, and it actually feels really stressful to decide who needs the most help. Having to make this choice every turn gets particularly intense near the end of the game, where you have to start making the difficult decision of declaring certain characters as being beyond help.

Something else that I’m really happy with is the way that you have to actually remember which members of your party prefer which methods of comfort. I was initially a little hesitant to include a challenge in my game that was based on just pure memory, but it ended up working really well. I like that they player actually needs to pay attention to what their miners tell them and familiarize themselves with the preferences of the crew if they want to get anywhere. It’s such a simple little mechanic, but it adds an extremely personal level to the game and I feel that it gets the player actually invested a little bit more in their crew.

Of course, there are some flaws in there, as well.

Ultimately, there are only really two big things that I’m not entirely happy with in Undermined. The first big flaw is that the game feels to heavily dependent on luck. You can be doing everything right, making the most strategically viable decisions, and you can still get screwed by a bad roll of the dice. I know there are a lot of popular rogue-like type games which are actually well liked for their occasionally rough dice rolls (Binding of Isaac and FTL come to mind), but those games are more about making the most of a bad situation, whereas Undermined is set up in such a way that a bad situation often means that you kind of just have to waste a turn and do nothing, which totally sucks. I’m thinking about doing a post-compo version of the game, and if I do, the number one thing that I’ll do is add a “reroll” system that allows players a finite number of rerolls if they get a set of actions they can’t do much with (i.e. most of your miners hate hugs, but you randomly received nothing but hugging time for the current round).

The second big problem with Undermined is that it’s generally a little bit vague as to how all the numbers update. I think that most people manage to pick up on a lot of the core systems and how to comfort miners, but very few people seem to realize some of the subtleties in the system, which means that they make a lot of really poor decisions strategically. The game is still totally playable AND winnable without knowing the little tricks that I do as a developer, but it feels painful to me watching people play the game and clearly have an incorrect assumption of how the systems work precisely.

My only other “complaint” with Undermined is that I didn’t really have a lot of flexibility with which to draw special effects and add tiny visual details. Instead of giving each of the five miners their own object in Game Maker, I stored all of their relevant information in a single object and had that object draw static sprites of the miners along the top of the screen. I think things ended up looking okay, but I would’ve loved to be able to do things like give each miner subtle little animations using squash and stretch, but locking them up in an array made that a much more convoluted process than I initially intended.

What a ride.

This was my first Ludum Dare, I did the 48 hour competition, and WOW did it feel challenging. I am so glad I finally finished something from start to finish with all my own assets. I can truely call this MY game.

So it seems people are posting post mortems, so how about I throw some thoughts in.

What went well:

1. Audio – This is something I normally don’t do when I’m prototyping games, but I really should because on the grand scheme of things its something I only spent about an hour on it, and I think it made a world of difference.
2. Gore/Particles – Although this might have been a cheap trick, I really like how the level of gore and splashing particles made a difference to the fun factor of the game.
3. Pixel Art – I suck at graphics, and resorted to pixel art. Strangely, I had no complaints about this, and I actually think its one of my favorite aspects of the game.

What didn’t go well:

1. Controls – I easily spent 9+ hours on the rotation of the shark. A lot of it was rewriting the system 3 times. First, I adjusted the position directly, then I translated the positions, finally I ended up applying forces to a rigid body. In the first two cases, I was rotating the entire game object instead of just the art, so all my controls were backwards if the shark was going right or left. Even after all that work, it still felt it could feel better. Also, I feel the shark should be able to go diagonal.
2. Difficulty – Gaining health from munching on enemies instead of when killing them resulting in an overly simple game once the player understands the controls. There are a lot of different ways I can fix this, and have the hooks in place, but I simply ran out of time.

Closing thoughts:

Ludum Dare was a challenging blast and I am going to try to start to try to attend all of them. Thanks to all the people who have already commented on my game. I’m having a blast playing everyone’s entries. What a talented community!

If you want to play my game its over here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=35743

Also here is a time lapse of me making (including my music);

It has been over a week since submission, so I have had time to watch people play and see where I stumbled. I certainly goofed in a lot of areas. This is my first completed game, and I believe it was successful if I consider it a prototype. I am very satisfied with the primary mechanics and goal of this game.  I am going to start work on the post-compo version. I will add requested features such as a restart button, UI, and animation. But I will also make sweeping changes to the underlying game design, so it might end up feeling like a new game.

Check out the original

Successes:

• Camera control – Moving the sphere feels pretty good and might feel great on a touch screen.
• Rings – Forming a ring can require thinking a few moves ahead. And although I am getting better at it, I still flub. This says to me that this goal might have some depth.
• Audio – Hey, I picked a pleasant song! I will do my best to pick another for the post-compo version.
• Mood – The difficulty is outrageous, but still feels really chill. Many games of this genre give the player a sense of urgency, but you are not rushed in my game. There is no time limit of any kind, so you can plan your moves at your own pace. You are challenged to think carefully,  but not to think quickly.

Observed Problems

• Technical – Players must refresh the page after GAME OVER because no restart button is offered. This was a double-edged failure because it helped to alleviate the MASSIVE memory leak (nearly 2GB used during my last run).
• Mechanics – Few players were aware of both sliding and twisting, although most knew of one. At least one player did not know that the entire sphere could be rotated. Tiles instantly moved or were destroyed, so players were not always fully aware of how they were modifying the sphere.
• Goal – I used the term “rings” to describe a situation in which a tile was surrounded by tiles of a single color. But this was interpreted as great circles around the sphere (e.g. equator).
• Antigoal – Nearly every player was confused by the end game. Every time a player moved tiles, a black layer was added to one of twelve pentagons. GAME OVER was triggered if all pentagons were full (had 4 layers). Few knew that the game could be extended by surrounding full pentagons, which removed its layers from play.
• Late game – If you make it past 2000 points, the game starts to creep to a halt. Few options are available because no new layers are introduced and black layers are everywhere. No move can be wasted.

Possible Solutions:

• Tutorial – My list of rules was hard to decipher. An integrated tutorial of some sort might go a long way to communicate the goal and mechanics.
• Visuals – A lot of important information is obfuscated, such as moves left until GAME OVER. Simple UI elements could express this information.
• Animations – This game needs tile movement and destruction animations. The player will feel more agency when moving tiles if the transformation occurs slowly enough to be perceivable.

So, for a refreshing change: this time most of the complaints are about audio

Most requested feature by commenters was music during the game!

I agree with this, it would have been better

So why didn’t I include it? Well, honestly, I don’t think my tunes are that great. I used music generated with jcgMusic and, don’t get me wrong, I think the result is fabulous considering the effort and time I needed to put into it. But I don’t think they are good enough to for backgound music during play; I feared they would get annoying quickly, so I only used them while waiting for game start, and on the congratulations screen after beating the game.

Vanishing audio!

This is really, really annoying! Some player said that audio stopped working after “Game Over”, or, at least, after some time. I also noticed some quircks while testing but, most of the time it worked just fine on Linux Firefox and Chrome.

This is a major problem. I need my games to have working sound effects. I used ImpactJS as a framework, and I was actually warned before the weekend by someone who also had audio troubles with the same framework. In the past I also had some issues with CraftyJS.

Is it possible to have decent HTML5 audio on games? Is the framework the guilty part, or am I using it wrong? If it is, what’s the least problematic solution JS/HTML5 games?

The good news

Judging by the comments, people seem to have fun playing Underground. I especially enjoyed knowing that someone hacked the JS code to get more lives and finish the game!

Anyway, here’s a video playthrough just to show it’s not that difficult (well, I do get killed two or three times 😉

Don’t forget to play and rate Underground.

Tags: html5, impactjs, playthrough, postmortem

This the 3D game we did for LD29 Jam. Find your way to the Ogre’s gold in 4 different levels.

PLAY HERE 

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE – Alexis

Had a blast on my first LD ever. Somehow we all agree to make a game at the last minute before the jam started. What makes me the most proud is that we are able to make a 3D game in such a short time and 100% remotely. Right now I am living in Florida, US; while the rest of the team is living in Lima, Peru (where I am from). We are conscious that this game has a lot of flaws, especially in what comes to the mechanics (we didn’t had enough time to make the illumination work as we wanted); however, this projects gives us the confidence that we can make 3d games in a short period of time.

INFINITE MODE

Have unlimited fun playing autogenerated maps.

MULTIPLATFORM

Web (Kongregate), Windows, Mac, Linux. Web version recommended.

DEVELOPMENT 

-Made with Unity3D

-3Ds Max

CREDITS

Alexis Sotelo

Alvaro Barua

Alonso Caballero

Edwin Cornejo

SHOW SOME LOVE

Tags: 3D, 3dsmax, goblin, gold, jam, ld29, ogre, ogresgold, unity3d

So turns out I had a complete brain fail during the Ludum Dare weekend and totally failed to make the speed of my game’s player character independent of the FPS, which I only discovered when I accidentally destroyed Chrome a bit and suddenly it started chugging horribly, simulating playing In The Blood on a tired old  computer.

I’d used the delta for computing velocity… but then multiplied it by 0.000005 for no reason I can actually remember now and the result is that the delta had virtually no effect whatsoever. So.. I fixed it. I REALLY hope this is okay, dear people in charge of such matters. It’s still the same game, no new features, but hopefully everyone playing it will have the same frustrating, tormenting and short-lived experience it was designed to provide. I wanted the game to be a difficult, challenging and hopefully addictive little action arcade game but when you’re moving ten times slower than you should? Oops.

I’ve also added a Post Compo version now! It’s the same game but I managed to add a bit of the visual Woo that I didn’t have time to do during the 48hours. It destroys the mood entirely but things are a lot clearer and hopefully a bit less motion sickness inducing. Again, sorry about that too.

You can play both frustratingly difficult versions on its compo page!

Incidentally, if you like Super Hexagon style ridiculously difficult action arcade games you might enjoy other competition entries Underneath Our Faces and Diver X … and would love to hear about any other games in the compo like this!

Tags: #LD48 #LD29, bugfix, post-compo

Alright, I think it’s a good time for writing a post-mortem for my game, Princess Fart!

The Story behind the making:

For the longest time, my friend Sophie was interested in game I was making, so she wanted to join in a bit. We decided to make a game about her, and what can I say about Sophie? She’s a princess, and she farts! There, we have our theme 😉
Then came the LD29 theme: Beneath the surface.

Erghh…. I don’t really want to send my princess underground! Ok, beneath the surface is gonna mean beneath the surface of the skin, there’s an alien! Not the best interpretation of the theme but that will do.

I started with the look of the princess. She had to look princessy, but not too beautiful. Just a bit cute. I was going for the Princess Peach look, but then I changed the hair to black, to match Sophie ;-D

Next, the first thing I worked on was the music. It might seem strange to make the music before the game, but it turns out it’s helpful to repeat your theme song over and over in a loop while you’re working. It helps you get into the mood. So I was done with practically all the songs before I wrote a single line of code.

Then I spent the next 2 days producing the intro for the game. I got a kick out of using Google Translate (yeah all the voice acting come from there!). At the end of the compo, I didn’t even have a game, but only a lovely intro. The good part though, was that I had a good scripting mechanism, which allowed me to separate code related to the game engine, and code related to the game’s scenario (like cutscenes, scripting events ect…). The last day was the third day of the Jam, and it’s when the gameplay and the rest of the graphics were finished.

I finally released the game, and BIG mistake. I really should have gone through a lot more testing before releasing it on Newgrounds. The game got tanked because everyone got stuck right after the intro: See earliest comments on http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/638437

Oh well, I need to take a deep breath and relax. When you make a game especially for ONE person, you’re already a winner if that one person enjoys it. She didn’t even play the game, but watched as I played it in front of her (so she didn’t even have to go through the frustration of playing!) and she was happy. At the end, that’s all that counts.

That said, I really hope you all enjoy it too. A game about Sophie, my Princess Fart

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=20841

So I told everyone this was my first Ludum Dare, but it turns out it was my second. I had completely forgotten my last entry. Anyway, here’s the game:

The Guy Who Fights Underground Monsters

What went well:

Tools- I used Love2D and TileStudio and it worked out great. I pulled a Lua exporter for TileStudio and the collision detection code from a previous open source project (https://github.com/rpjohnst/argo). Although it wasn’t the fastest setup I’ve ever had (Game Maker is usually faster) I was able to jump right into spriting and gameplay.

Graphics- I’ve never been all that good at pixel art, but I really liked the results I got this time, at least for the character and monsters (the tiles are pretty rough). I focused on having animations for everything the character and monsters did, so they’d look more continuous and relatable.

Combat Mechanics- This is the other thing I spent the most time on. I knew it would be essentially the only thing contributing to the fun in a game at this scale so I tried to make it feel good and respond predictably. I still have a bug where the character shoots across the level when he gets hit, but otherwise I think I succeeded.

What went not-so-well:

Story- I didn’t have the full 48 hours to work on this game (pff real life why do I want that), so I didn’t really get to tie it into the theme very well. The character was originally a detective who would solve a mystery involving the charming underground monsters (see that? two surfaces to go beneath), or at least be in that kind of 20s, film noire kind of environment. Maybe later.

Content- My usual goal in short game competitions is to get the gameplay down and then cram in as much content as possible- levels, weapons, powerups, etc. But, I spent so much time on what I have now that I literally threw together a level in the last hour or so before I submitted. I feel like better level design and some extras could have made this feel like a real game rather than just the demo that it is now.

So, now I think it’s my turn, to write a post mortem for trufflehunt.

First, I want to tell you, that this was my first ludum dare and that it was a big surprise to me, that I take part. It was just 5 hours before the final voting round was over, when I bumped into this thread on Gamejolt.com and read about the compo:

http://gamejolt.com/community/forums/topics/ludum-dare-29/3239/

There was little time to think about the pro’s and con’s of taking part and so, after talking with my better half, I decided to do it.

I have taken the right decision. Because it was really fun and a very important experience to me.

So lets talk about what went well:

– The Idea

The idea evolved very fast, just after one hour of brainstorming, the gameidea was ready.

– Prototyping

After a little nap, because LD starts 3 a.m. in the morning in germany, I started my work on Trufflehunt and all went very well. First I drawed the field and made the piles, then I added the mechanics and the prototype was done.

– Graphics
Now it was time to improve the graphics. I added the piglet and it was bedtime again. After a not so long sleep, I added the last pictures and animations from the piglet and the level start and was going to the next step.

– Sound recording and creation
The sounds and music are all created with milkytracker and edited with audacity, except from the *nufnufnuf* of the piglet which was my own voice recorded in audacity and pitched higher.

And now, what went not so well:

– Sound in Unity

Then it was time to include the sounds and music into Unity. But because it was my first time with Unity and sound, I have had some little problems, which could also be a result of not so much sleep. But all get fixed in time. But it was close.

– Score descriptions
The only thing I have forgotten is, that I have not explained how to get much points in the game. There is no feedback when you dig for truffles, that you become more points when you dig longer without releasing the mousebutton. That is because first I had a little strange idea of getting points at the beginning of a level which decrease by 100 for each eaten truffle. After I had changed the points system to what it is now, I just have forgotten to include a little animation for how much points the player gets for each truffle.

After all, I must say, ludum dare has made a lot of fun and I want to be part of it the next time, too.

I have learned that it is posible to make a game in that short time and that it is a very free kind of programming without that thoughts, that bother one when sitting weeks on a project.

Thank you for reading,

ruerob.

P.S.: Here is the link to:  Trufflehunt

I’ve made a few adjustments and re-tuned the game for a mobile experience.  I think it makes for an addictive little package!

This post-comp version is available on the play store here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ricefrog.SplashEuropaLD29

This is my first android game, and so far I’m pretty pleased!

The image says it all, doesn’t it?

Hey everyone! We are the Button Masher Bros!

After a week of shooting/editing we are proud to present the first in our series: Ludum Dare to Believe!

With 2497 submissions, there was no way we could play them all.

Luckily Reddit, twitter, and youtubers all stepped up to give us suggestions – and for that we thank you immensely!

If you like the games you see, be sure to check them out of Ludumdare.com and let the developers know what you think!

Today we will be highlighting:

Title: Surf Camp: The Legend of the Surf Ace
Category: Jam Entry
Creator: Gertjohnny
Link:http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=22774

Title: Deepeon
Category: Compo Entry (48 hr)
Creator: Hacksaw Unit
Link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=17731

Title: Senilescape
Category: Compo Entry (48 hr)
Creator: Xaychru04
Link: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=16472

Finally, we’d love to hear what you think!
You can comment on the episode linked above, comment in this thread, or tweet your favorite submissions to us at: @ButtonMasherBro – Show, @MathBlasterRitz – Chris, or @jwowBMB – Josh.

Only the voting remains, and if you haven’t had a chance too, go check out my game Curse in the Depths. It was a lot of fun to make and I’m loving all the feedback i’m getting.

The Good

Time Management – Time is always one of the hardest things to deal with. It’s the main challenge. My time management was much better then my previous LDs I was organized and knew what I was doing the moment I had an idea.

Work Habits – This LD I prepared better for the long work hours by making sure I had plenty of water and soda handy so I didn’t need to take so many breaks and it made focusing easier

Breaks – This one was HUGE because the problem is what kind of breaks I would take, this time I took slightly longer breaks then previous LDs but I also did activities that were very stress free and didn’t require thought. Video game breaks, TV, and Movies, or YouTube were replaced with Walks, Showers, and Naps, overall I felt more refreshed when I came back to working on the code.

The Bad

Library Choice – Slick2D I have used multiple times, and I am very familiar with the inner workings. My Problem was that I made the Decision early to not use JBox2D making my collision and combat much harder to program later in the development cycle. This was mostly due to not fully understanding JBox2D, but hindsight is 20/20 and I realize now that I might have been better off using it.

Sleeping – I overslept on Sunday due to overworking on saturday(Sat@4AM to Sun@3AM with an hour long nap in between) and missed around 4 or 5 hours that I had planned a lot of time for artwork. This lead me to only be able to finish the background, the sprite and the HUD in the 2 hours I had left. This meant less content then I had originally anticipated, another enemy and 2 more attacks were in the works but they were left unfinished as I realized I had more pressing features to figure out.

The Ugly

Rewriting – I have spent the last week or so going over most of the engine and figuring out how to use JBox2D. We are currently deciding exactly where to go(Continue with Java, port to C++ for better cross compatability, what libraries to use, etc.)

Overall my 3rd Experience with LD has gone pretty smooth, and I am so happy with the outcome of the game that I am going to continue work on it, and the way it is going, it will see the light of day as a fully fledged indie game!

Tags: post-mortem, postmortem

I’ve noticed that some developers don’t have pages. As in, you click the ‘view all entries’ button in their entry, and it says ‘not found’. I also noticed that Pov was talking about authors. He said that there were certain criteria to become an author. I couldn’t find anything about this in the rules. Can someone please shed some light on the subject?

Day Two Summary

Day 2: Morning
Taking stock of things the next morning: what I’d made so far didn’t do much of anything. I had about 18 hours left to change that. Day two of LD is when you feel the pressure, and where you realise you need to cut corners!

Day two began by writing the combat system, and making sure I kept it super simple: Projectiles, Attack Cooldown, Hitpoints, Damage, Death. Units could now attack, and follow their attack orders. This felt like a monumental bit of progress!

I decided against drawing projectiles. Having to make those projectile sprites, and render them, including rotating the rangers’ arrows to fly in the right direction — it just felt like it would be unnecessary work, when projectiles could be represented by particles instead. I was planning to add a particle system anyway, to represent units’ bloody deaths, smoke from the cannons, and the sorceress’ fireballs. All projectiles could be done with the particle system to keep things simpler. But that was a task for later in the day…

Day 2: Afternoon
Before doing particles I wanted to get something more urgent out of the way: to make the buildings functional. I needed to be being able to purchase units and upgrades.

Normally in RTS games, it takes time to “train” units. But if I did it this way, it would have meant attaching timers to buildings; keeping track of cost and food usage during training; being able to cancel training and recoup costs; having a progress bar in the HUD; and what happens if a building is destroyed while something is being trained? and how will units in the process of being trained be seen by the CPU AI? etc etc… Too much to implement! So to simplify things I decided that all purchases would be instant. Another corner cut.

The particle system came after this, adding blood and smoke and fire effects. Then adding sound effects to the combat.

Throughout the day I had been expanding the stats of the different character classes too. Giving them each unique values for hitpoints, damage, attack cooldown, movement speed, etc.

Day 2: Evening
Writing the CPU AI was a big task that both excited me and terrified me! For if I failed at this, then the game would not be a challenge. Having thought about RTS AIs previously, I had a fair idea how I was going to do this.
I was actually surprised how quick the AI was to code, and how effective it was! The computer played me at my own game, and it won! 😮

Day 2: Night
As it came into the last few hours, my game was coming together nicely. It had a lot of rough corners, a few bits that didn’t work right, and there were features that I knew I wouldn’t have time to add, but the basic game was there, and it had an AI that beat me once!

I knew there was no time left to add any more big features. No time to add base construction, sadly. I spent much of the remaining time making the game presentable, and fixing some annoying bugs:

• There were random units that wouldn’t die. — Wrong limits in clean-up function.
• There were idle units that suddenly decided to go for a walk to the top of the screen — An Auto-attack sometimes failed to expire, despite the targeted unit having died.
• Getting command buttons when selecting enemy units — Required an ownership check.
• The command buttons sometimes going wrong if a selected unit died — Need to rebuild the command buttons when a selected unit dies.
• Other stuff like this

I did have time to add a handful of small things however, including:

• HP bars, toggled with the caps-lock key.
• Casting orders for the sorceress and cleric, although only two of the six spells were added.
• Began adding keyboard shortcuts for orders, although only time to do the main attack/move orders.
• Made a little title screen using the (otherwise unused) harvesting animation for the worker pigs.
• Tweaked the costs+stats of the character classes, to make the game better balanced, and rearranged the buildings more logically.

And that was my Ludum Dare 29 weekend!

Link to Game

 Link to postmortem part 1

[reblog] A bit more than a week ago, I participated in the Ludum Dare 29 compo. It’s a themed 48h game jam on the internet. This time around, the theme was “Beneath the surface”.

It was my second time participating in a Ludum Dare, and this time around I made a game called Baum about a bone-eating tree with hands for roots being afraid of spiders. You can check it out (and rate it) right here, if you haven’t already.

The Good:
Here’s some of the things that worked really well.

- Not working alone. I actually met up with a friend and we both worked on our LD entries in the same room at the same time (check out his game cell.erity), brainstorming together, exchanging ideas, playtesting each others games and giving each other feedback. It was an amazing experience and far more fun than going at it alone.

- Not giving up. I actually started out working on a completely different game for the first ~24h before realizing that it was far too complex a concept to be fully realized in time for the compo. I really didn’t want to submit an unfinished experience, so I stopped working on it. I was really demotivated. I slept a couple of hours and played some games. At that point, had I been alone, I would have probably given up on this LD and called it a weekend. But I was feeling some sort of responsibility towards my friend. I was the one who talked him into participating – I couldn’t be the one who wouldn’t have a game to show for it. So I just started over with something completely new.

- Not giving a shit. Really, when I started working on Baum, I was in a different state of mind than I usually am when working on games. I didn’t care if this game was going to be the best I could do. I just needed to get something playable done, and quick. So I went with the first most simple gameplay idea that came to mind, and just did it.
Playing as a tree collecting things with its roots? Sounds like a game. Let’s do it.
It was a somewhat scary, yet refreshing experience for me personally, and I while I think Baum is definitely one of my weaker works, I got great feedback so far and at least some people seem to really dig it. And in the end, that’s what making games is all about for me.

- Incorporating player feedback into the design. Now, at first I had no idea where to go aesthetically with Baum. I usually do very abstract graphics in my games, because I hate (and am very bad at) doing art. This time though, I was actually working from an idea based on setting, not on gameplay, so I didn’t want to go abstract with it. So I just did some really crappy placeholder graphics and worked with those. Then, a playtester (we had some visitors throughout the jam) remarked that those slowly moving root-hands really creeped him out. So I went with it and developed the whole style around the idea of a disturbingly bizarre mood, which fit in perfectly with the concept. I never would have come up with the game’s look as it is now, if it weren’t for that one player who was creeped out by my shabby placeholder graphics.

The Bad:
Here’s some of the things that didn’t work all that well.

- Not making sounds. Again. This has been the source of complaints in my last LD entry, and it was again this time. I totally understand it, as sound can be a very important tool to give gameplay feedback as well as creating atmosphere. Now, the problem is, I still don’t know how to do good sounds, and that’s why I never bothered to put any in my games (unless someone else had made them). I am planning, however, to finally get around to learning some audio basics at some point. If everything works as planned, my next LD entry will have at least some sort of noise in it. Promise!

- Not documenting my progress. I’d love to show some screenshots of earlier versions of the game and how it changed over time. I’d also love to show some stats on how much time I spent with what part of the development, how many hours I worked in total, ect. Problem is, I didn’t bother to keep track. In retrospect, I do regret it myself, as I’d be quite interested in analysing my workflow.

The Feedback:
Here’s some of the response I got from comments on the game, as well as talking to people who played it.

- People loved the mood. Most comments I got were not about the gameplay, but the atmosphere of the game. It was a simmilar thing with my last LD game, where people also seemed to enjoy the tense atmosphere. I find this very interesting, considering I never really start making a game with the intent of creating a certain mood. I always start with gameplay, and usually find a tone while experimenting with the mechanics. I’m wondering how a game would turn out where I actually build it around a certain tone I want to set instead. I might try that in the future.

- Confusing visual feedback. Basically, I used the same particle effects when the tree is eating a bone (positive) and when a spider is crawling up its roots (negative). In retrospect, that was a pretty stupid idea, and happened mostly due to my own laziness.

- No sense of urgency. Some people didn’t like the slow pace of the game. They missed some timer, or depleting resource to make the game more tense. Also, someone managed to exploit the fact that there is no urgency to essentially break the game and get real high scores without much effort. This one really bugs me, because I think it’s a fundamental flaw in the game’s design, and one I could have easily fixed.

- The spiders are very unpredictable. Some players didn’t like that and said they would prefer it if they would move in more of a pattern, as to enable more strategic planning. On this one, I heartily disagree. I think, most of what makes up the tension of the game, is never being quite sure, how the spiders will behave. Predictable spiders would make the game a lot less interesting in my eyes.

- Some people hate waiting. Some don’t. I got both positive and negative feedback on the ‘spiders crawling up the roots’-part before the game is over. Some people didn’t like waiting until the spider reached the tree each and every time, while others really enjoyed getting a bit of the creeps whenever it happened. Easy solution would have been to make it skippable. Oh well.

- Most people hate spiders.

The conclusion:
LD29 was a blast, I learned a lot, and I made a game about a tree with hands. Lovely!

So it’s about time I started making one of these postmortem posts and talk about what was good in my game and what wasn’t good. I’m not sure where to go with this but we’ll see how I get on.

If you haven’t played my game you can do so by clicking on the image below:

(Warning: this post-mortem goes into spoilers for the game)

Part the First: The Theme

The hardest part of any jam I think is coming up with an idea that fits the theme. The theme this time was “Beneath The Surface”. I’m not sure what to think of the theme to be honest. I mean I could have carried on the tradition of Ludum Dare and complained about the theme for ages but that wouldn’t have been productive at all. I decided that I needed to give a crack at this, regardless of what i thought of the theme.

The first thing that came to my mind was “Minecraft Clone”. I really didn’t like this to be honest, and I hope that when it came to the game rating round that I didn’t have to dig (ugh) through various Minecraft clones (fortunately I haven’t seen that many.. although there are over a thousand entries that I haven’t rated yet… assuming I’ll get round to rating them). I needed something else

I’m going to take a diversion right here and say if there’s one tool that is infinitely useful for any hobbyist gamedev out there, it’s to get a whiteboard. If you can’t get a whiteboard, get stacks of scrap paper that you can scribble all over. You need something that you can put down an idea on. Why? Well there’s a few reasons:

1. An idea can turn into another idea and that’s how you make ideas and how creativity works according to Edward de Bono or something. I think that’s what he said… I’m not even sure if I got his name right. Anyway creativity is a good thing and you need lots of creativity for Ludum Dare and game development in general.
2. You get a physical idea on something so you don’t forget it. I always forget something 30 seconds after I thought of it. This is really annoying when I’m playing some kind of memory game or doctors appointments or something. Having a whiteboard means I can put down things so I don’t have to remember them later.
3. You can draw diagrams to help you visualise how things work. Diagrams are good. I’m not good at art but by gum I will draw a representation of what I want to convey on something so I can see how it would work easier. Maths? Draw some triangles and graphs and stuff to show you are using your brainclevers to work out stuff
4. You can draw willies on the whiteboard and that’s very funny. Willies are like the funniest genitals you can draw. Drawing them on a whiteboard is even funnier. Drawing willies on a whiteboard you own isn’t as funny as drawing on a whiteboard you do not own but at least you won’t get in trouble from your teacher for doing so. Dang it’s been years since I’ve been at school. I’ve been not drawing willies on whiteboards for too long

I’m no expert on thinking ideas but here’s what I did. I started by writing down the theme on the board:

This is where I got stuck. I couldn’t think of a good idea to fit the theme. I had to be clever. I started looking if there was a way I could break the theme name down to smaller words. At last I found the following:

Beneath the Surf Ace! Of course! Now from there I could think of further ideas. Are you a shark trying to eat a surfing ace? Are you a Surfing Ace but you have to do a task that’s beneath you? I thought long and hard about this…

Part 2: Art

I am not the best at art. I’m actually very bad at it. Pixel art? I can’t do it, everything I make looks rubbish. I however tried to draw the surf ace and ended up making this hunk:

I use gimp for art. Gimp is supposed to be an image editor not a tool for creating art but there I was, drawing my hunk really crudely with a trackpad. Yep I was on a laptop and didn’t use a mouse. This is the best art.

At this point I really needed an idea. I did have an idea that it would be some form of Adventure Game, but I still couldn’t think of any task that would be beneath this hunk to do.

To which point it then hit me.

Ben Eath

What if the name of the hunk was called Ben Eath? Brilliant! I’m a genius!

At this point it was nearly the end of day 1 and I needed to work fast if I was going to make something with this idea.

Section 3: Puzzles

Puzzles are things you put in games. People solve the puzzles and they can progress in the game. Good puzzles make the player feel smart.

I’m not good at thinking of smart puzzles

At this point I needed to make a simple puzzle. One that’s not too easy to solve but doesn’t have some bad logic to it either. This is kind of hard when you’ve only got a limited amount of time to do so.

Originally the puzzle was going to work out like this. You need fake tan but you can’t seem to find any. There’s a bully squirting a bottle of brown stuff on people which you think would be useful. However they won’t give you the bottle. You’d need to distract them somehow and steal the bottle off them.

This is where the kid with a broken sandcastle fits in. They had their sandcastle smashed by the bully and they couldn’t make another one because the bully smashed their bucket as well. You needed a new bucket. If they got a new bucket the bully would get distracted and you could take their bottle

The bucket is with the guy at the restaurant. Originally this was going to be a new section which wasn’t at a beach with art for the restaurant and everything but… well you know. The bucket was meant to contain an empty bottle of wine. Naturally the man won’t let you take the bucket unless you look like a waiter.

This is where the suit hire came in. Again, this was meant to be a shop, but ended up being a stall in the middle of the beach. You need money to hire a suit. Obviously.

Now here the money is found in the middle of nowhere in a lost wallet. There was supposed to be some puzzle where you stole Hunk Hogan’s wallet. Unfortunately… blah blah not enough time. You know how this story goes.

The rest of the game worked in the same way that it did (other than I had an idea for a surfing minigame where you competed against Hunk Hogan but.. I don’t even need to say it at this point). The only thing from the description I mentioned is that there was no bully.

Well.. I left them out.

Obviously this meant that the kid with the sandcastle had the fake tan all along. The joke about “Adventure Game Logic” not only was a clever way to convey humour in the game, but it was also a way to cover up the fact that part of the puzzle got removed because I needed to finish this game on time.

4th thing: Babes

At this point I realised I made a big mistake. I had no babes on the beach. Our character kept talking about babes on the beach but there were no babes to be seen! This was an awful oversight I made when making the characters. I needed some babes STAT.

Obviously I couldn’t have them doing nothing, so I gave them some dialogue. Some self-aware and cheeky dialogue that makes me look like a really awful person, but dialogue nonetheless.

Oh while I’m at it

Subheading V: Dialogue

I lost hours doing this, which wasn’t helped by the fact that I decided to do dev diaries of what I was doing rather than actually trying to code stuff. I mention some pedal thing in on of these I think. That was a huge waste of time. Never do that. I just read up on Vim Clutch and thought “Wow this is going to make me super productive. Like heck it did.

Number 6: Music

I do not play an instrument. I do not know how to use any music making software. All I have is my voice. I was going to do this live.

For my previous games I’ve done humming to songs which are vaguely recognisable. I had to do this a lot with my previous Ludum Dare game “You Only Get One Shot: Eminem Rapping Simulator“.

I have no idea how music is made, or what makes music good. However the response I’ve had back from everyone about the “He’s a hunk, he’s a- he’s a- he’s a hunk” that plays in the background have been largely positive. I have no idea why is that. The game was already ridiculous so I thought “Yeah, why not. Let’s add some ridiculous music to go with it”.

I’ve had thoughts of putting a link to the audacity project somewhere so someone could pick it up and make remixes of the song. I’m not sure if anyone is interested in that kind of thing. I’d be surprised that anyone would want to make a dubstep remix of something I cobbled together in 10 minutes.

Finally: releasing it

Well I’ve had some problems with my host (I’ve since put an alternative link on itch.io) and… wow, the response I’ve had to this is overwhelming. This is probably my most popular game I’ve made for Ludum Dare so far. I don’t know if this is because I’m getting better at making games or if I just lucked this one.

I’m going to go with luck. My game can’t be that good…

ESince Ethe Etitle Ealready Econtains Emore Einformation Ethat Eyou Ecan Ehold Ein Eyour Etiny Ehead, EI’ll Ekeep Ethis Epost Eto-the-point.

http://www.twitch.tv/121jigs http://www.twithttp://www.twitch.tv/121jigsch.tv/121jigs http://www.twitch.tv/12http://www.twitch.tv/121jigs1ji

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Tags: e

Alright, so after the feedback on the previous post it’s clear that people enjoyed our old Fat McFatterson than the new “more humanoid” one. So I went back to it and recreated the old character with updated/better topology, and this time with fingers. I’m now painting some texture on it. So far what do you guys think? Better? Did I manage to improve upon the Jam version? Or does the Jam version still looks more charming? Maybe I should add the big silly smile back? Or could be situational and I could change the texture to reflect his mood (Smile, Sad, Neutral)

Btw If you haven’t already, please check out Infection \o http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=37445