Hey everyone! Here’s a guide on how you can stream your game development process on Windows. Streaming is one of many ways you can participate in the community and share your development experiences.

You will need to install Open Broadcaster Software. This is a competitor to the popular XSplit, and in my opinion is easier to use. Also, it’s free!

When you start the application, you’ll see a window similar to this one:

You’ll see two boxes labeled Scenes and Sources, which are very important to composing your stream production:

• Sources are aptly named video sources which can be layered and positioned to create the final output. For most purposes, simply using a Monitor Capture is fine enough. You can right click here to add and manipulate sources.
• Scenes are configurations of sources that you can switch to using bound hotkeys or plugins that automatically switch scenes for you. I recommend setting up at least two scenes and binding them to hotkeys, one as your desktop and the other as a “I’ll be right back” or censor screen so you don’t have to show an idle screen or something private. A funny gif will suffice (yes, you can use pictures as sources).

Press Preview Stream and play around with your scene and source settings to get a feel for the application. Once you’re ready we can start working on the encoding and uploading to Twitch.tv… Press Settings, and you’ll get this window:

On the left side:

• General — change application language, switch and add streaming profiles, various settings
• Encoding — change which encoder is used. If you are using Intel’s integrated video on Sandy Bridge and up processors, you should use Quick Sync. I haven’t seen performance stats for Nvidia NVENC for those who use those graphics cards, but I have heard that it is actually very bandwidth heavy. So play around with these settings and observe your Preview bitrate and performance.
• Broadcast Settings — here you can choose to record directly to file or to a streaming service. We’re using Twitch here, so what you’re going to have to do is login to Twitch, go to your Dashboard, and click Stream Key on the toolbar, and copy your Stream Key from there. Select Twitch as your streaming service and a server near you, and paste your stream key into the box. Set some hotkeys for toggling the stream (I use Ctrl+Alt+Num7 and 8).
• Video — This controls the output size. You should choose your monitor resolution and then downscale it as you need to based on how much bandwidth you have. Since we’re not hosting full video game streams, it’s safe to set your FPS to 15 to dramatically reduce bandwidth usage and maximize your set bitrate from the Encoding panel.
• Audio — You probably won’t have to mess with anything here, but it’s worth mentioning. You can set mute toggle hotkeys, push-to-talk, etc.
• Advanced — Set the encoding profile to main and the keyframe interval to 2, or the Broadcast Settings panel will continue to whine at you.
• Microphone Noise Gate — this is a panel added by the Microphone Noise Gate plugin, this will automatically toggle your microphone so background noise doesn’t get into the stream when you’re not speaking. You’ll have to configure this based on your microphone setup.

Once you have reviewed all of the settings panels, you can start your stream by clicking “Start Streaming”!

Now that you’re streaming, you can go to your dashboard, hide the preview (so you don’t get a feedback loop from the sound of your stream) and change your playing status to Playing Ludum Dare, as follows:

By setting your Playing status to Ludum Dare, you’ll show up on the right panel on the Ludum Dare website as well as in the game category for the jam.

Hope this helps!

Hi everyone!

I’m really busy during the weekend but I couldn’t miss the Ludum Dare Event. This is going to be my forth time, but I’m as excited as the first time.

Ludum Dare made me take that step from planning big games that I never showed to anybody to actually making stuff and having fun doing it. It motivated me to try out new things, be part of the community and to publish my first games.

These events always lift my spirit, even if you can’t go to a real world gathering, browsing tweets, giving people feedback and showing what you are doing is simply awesome; it’s an experience nobody should miss.

I’ll see you around 😀

Happy jamming to all of you!

@Ludipe

Previous entries:

The Sidekicks

The Hero’s Journey

Exit

I’m currently developing “Missing translation“, on Saturday I have to attend another event to give away flyers and promote it.

Tools: Construct 2, Paint.Net

I’ve been told recently that game jam’s are a great practice, and since I’m as new to it as sausage is to salads I decided I’m going to give it a go! And my gf is working this weekend, so it’s only me and the screen.

FDevelop, Flashpunk, Gimpshop and GraphicsGale. Oh it’s on.

I’m mad down for my third LD!

My last two taught me a lot in 48 hours and I demand nothing less from my next attempt.  With my programming skills still not being all that up to hard coding, I hope just a wee bit that I can create something akin to a more complete game this weekend.   If not whatever: I love this shit!

My programmer friend is coming over Friday night to participate as well so I’ll be pestering him for code help 😀

Enjoy your wed/thurs/friday morning people!  Save your energy for gratuitous gaming making!

See ya’ll Friday night!

Yeah, it’s true. 😉
I’ll make a game within 48 hours this weekend.

I think I’ll make a game in Java with the new LibGdx gradle setup. Looks like cool stuff. 😀
Mhmm… what the theme will be this time? I’m curious about it. 😀

So, have a great weekend and make some great games! 😉

Cheers,
NightDreamer

PS:
OF COURSE I’ll have some time for my girlfriend! 😉 😀

I will try to make a game with this amazing framework. Lets hope I can come up with a good idea

http://www.openfl.org/

http://haxeflixel.com/

Hi,

I was just doodling when I thought of an idea for a picture. Seens as it is Ludum Dare 29 in a couple of days, I decided to make some pixel art for LD, and I came up with this!

Hope you like it

-Luke

Tags: pixel art, pixels

completely forgot, missed the theme voting

but better late than never!

probably going to take a stab at using SFML

renoise for music, maybe bfxr for sounds, winlame to encode them, and photoshop for graphics

Hey everyone.

I’m a bit late with my post, but I’m in too, as always since LD18. This time I’ll be on a run to Vienna, though. We’ll see how it turns out. Anyhow! Tools!

Language: Javascript or Python
Library: Phaser or PyGame or nothing.

Graphics: Krita.
Audio: Err.. We’ll see.

And that’s about it!

Catch you in IRC,
Folis

This will be my 3rd Ludum Dare and I’ll be using the same tools as the last times – which means ClojureScript and whatever else wields before my will. I really wish I’d done some preparation.

Tags: clojurescript

This will be my first ludum dare, and i will be streaming the whole thing here twitch.tv/thecoder15

Language: Java

IDE: Eclipse

Art: paint.net

SFX: not sure yet

Music: not sure yet

I am in, I am riled up too create a game 100x better than I did last time; What I created last time was a side-scrolling slime-em-up which after a while running you would just fall off the world. In the game I made my own physics engine which took too long, but this time I am using LibGdx and Box2d lights to hopefully just get down to the core of the game creation within half an hour (1:30 AM in the UK). That will hopefully allow for me to build upon some of the better features, such as the shop, coins and research. It also will allow for more time focused on art! I also now have made my own game tools which will help me accelerate the speed of this process even more, it is called C-GDT (Capitals’ Game Development Tools), you can get it here. If you would like to use it in your Ludum Dare game you may (but notify me so i can praise you to the old gods), I am putting tutorials on the wiki as I write this. You can also check me out on YouTube and see last years timelapse. Done.

TOOLS:

Language – Java

IDE – Eclipse

Framework – LibGdx w/Box2d, Box2dLights and Controllers. C-GDT (Capitals’ Game Development Tools).

Music Software – Unknown, but I will be using a keyboard. I will also be using SFXR & BFXR to get game sound.

Art Software – Pyxel Edit, and Photoshop

Misc – Notepad++ to create the Vertex XML file from C-GDT, and Physic Editor (To get the vertices of complex bodies).

School is wrapping up so I have a lot on my plate, but if I can get it all tied up before the compo starts, I will be in. So far, it looks like I should be fine.

I will use Haxe with OpenFL and possibly HaxeFlixel. GIMP for art, BFXR, for sound, LMMS for music (if I manage to make any), and I write all my code in Vim. It’s going to be a great weekend. Oh, and I have some code up on Github that can come in handy if you use Haxe. I might use some of it myself.

After having a lot of fun creating a game for Ludum Dare 27, OxySocks and me (unofficial teamname “SoulSocks”) are going to participate in the Ludum Dare 29 jam! Our previous entry was created with Unity using very basic 3D graphics, two things we did not really have extensive experience with. This time we wanted to use something we are more comfortable with, so we are going to build a game ‘from scratch’ using Java. The largest advantage is that we, both being programmers, can build a back-end that perfectly suits our style and needs, so we can spend more time writing the game and less time fighting an engine we do not fully understand.

The Tools

We are looking forward to reading your development blogs and playing the final game results!
Good luck everyone and most importantly: have fun!

Hey Guys, I Would just like yo wish all of you good luck in the up coming Ludum Dare Competition this weekend. Just remember to have fun :D.

-GameGrape Corporation www.codingrevolution.blogspot.com

I started a programming club at my school a while ago and planned to compete in the Ludum Dare. Unfortunately, I only managed to start it a few weeks ago, so most people aren’t great at programming. I was going to enter the Ludum Dare alone like I normally do, but a friend (who happens to be in the club) mentioned to me today that he still wants to compete. I mentioned it to another friend in the club and he also said he wanted to compete. I now have two people who want to compete. So here’s what we’ll be working with:

Language: C++
Libraries: SDL
OS: Windows and Linux

I’m definetly in!!

Will be using Unity, Maya & Photoshop. I hope this time we get a good theme, last 2 times I ended up resorting to time limit to make sense of the theme D: “You only get 1 minute” and “10 seconds” ><;

I’ll try again to complete something this time

Platform: html5 (Phaser)

Sound: lmms , bxfr

Graphics: gimp, paint.net

I’m in. I guess.

I participate in LD since LD27, that time, theme was “10 seconds”. That was fine. Though, LD28 was about “You get only one”. Thas was still OK.

However, now I’m already having enough of numbers. I guess I’m not the only one, so please, damnit, PLEASE, CHOOSE WISELY in the Final Round!!!

Thanks.

– K