With our game, Melody’s Long Ladder Home (play it here!), complete, it’s time to look back a post mortem of our experience in Ludum Dare 30.

The Good:

• We – my friend Will and I – learned allot. We learned how to best use our tools (especially Stencyl) in the future, and we learned about the awesome game dev community out there.
• Our live stream was fun and fruitful. We got to interact with interesting people and had a blast doing it. We did over 12 hours of total streaming over three days (which is nothing compared to the 24 hour Extra Life marathon stream we do).
• Our game turned out well. We really like the result, and actually impressed ourselves with it – we weren’t sure what we were going to come up with, but this turned out well.

The Bad:

• Turns out Stencyl has some technical limits, and we kinda pushed beyond them. Namely, we overloaded it and started getting 3-5 FPS while testing. Fortunately the game exported fine and runs smoothly outside of Stencyl.
• Some idiot running our live stream’s video feeds (me) forgot to turn off the full screen webcam for several minutes on two separate occasions. Not really a big issue, but c’mon… that’s a rookie mistake.
• I personally didn’t sleep worth a darn the entire competition, so I’m looking forward to a long night’s rest tonight.

Long story short, we had fun and hopefully everyone else participating had fun as well. See you guys next time!

Tags: jam, postmortem, screenshot, stencyl

This is the aftermath of this Ludum Dare – my desk is full of all kinds of stuff. And it’s already cleaned up a little – looked even worse before!

The Preparation

I did two things in preparation for this Ludum Dare.
I improved my game engine a lot in the recent days, so that I had something good to work with. That went nicely, I added a whole lot of things that I actually made use of in the compo.
I also did something I didn’t do for the last Ludum Dare, I thought about the themes a lot. I looked at the 20 “finalists”, sat back, and wrote one or two sentences about all of them. Well, almost all of them – I didn’t have any ideas for some… unfortunately, the winner, “Connected Worlds”, was one of those.
Still, this was a good exercise; I got to use my fantasy and be creative (which is fun!). Also, it wasn’t too bad that I didn’t write down an idea for Connected Worlds – a very basic part started to grow soon after the theme was announced.

The Compo Itself

I will split this into different parts, so that it’s easier to read and also easier to write 😉

The theme is announced: getting a fundamental idea

This was a critical part. As I said it earlier, I got the base idea pretty fast – that is, two worlds in a splitscreen window, where you have to do things in both screen parts (worlds) to win the level.
But there was a problem arising: I had no plan how to push that further. Well, somehow I got to some jumping things, then I decided to make them slimes, and then they started to move to the right by themselves.
There was the game idea: move them in an intelligent way, so that they don’t get stuck. When one goes out-of-screen, the player has lost.
Still, this was a very slow process. It could have been faster. A LOT faster. You can’t really develop a game when you have no idea what you want to do, can you?

The first playable build, advancing from there

It took a lot of time until I had something playable. That was mainly caused by the missing ideas, I guess.
But after I had that, things were a lot quicker. I added more tiles, made the worlds’ backgrounds, and implemented power-ups (which I removed from the game later on, they were unnecessary).
Also, since I was livestreaming the whole thing (will talk about that later), I was able to gather a few useful ideas from my viewers. The most remarkable one is the eponymous rubber band between the slimes. This also added to the “connection” part of the theme. I am happy this was mentioned!

Graphics

I absolutely loved making the graphics for this game! Especially the lowres ones, for example the slimes. This was also quite a quick process, with a nice outcome.

Sounds and music (first music I ever made!)

Making the sounds was also relatively simple with the help of Bfxr. The rubber band sound comes from an actual rubber band, though.
Creating a piece of music was fun! It also was the first time I ever made any music in my whole life. Considering that, I think I can be proud of the soundtrack.

Level design & testing

Level design is a completely different topic. That went horrible! I’m never going to make a game similar to this in any game jam – simply because of this one experience.
It really was a pain to do: paint some pixels on the level sheet, start the game, play the level, find out it’s impossible to do, change a few pixels, need 7 tries to get to the specific location, works, screw up on the next part, another 15 tries, make it easier, back to the game, …
I think you got the point by now. This, by the way, went on for probably more than 6 hours without a break.
Nope, not doing that again. NEVER.

Eating and sleeping

I slept way too little, nobody can prove me wrong. That resulted in my being completely dead when the compo ended. It likely lowered my enthusiasm, too. Although, if I had slept more, then I wouldn’t have made it in time I suppose.
Opposed to my expectations, I ate and drank enough. Heck, I drank even more than I normally do! But that really was necessary, otherwise I would’ve gotten a bad headache.

Some thoughts about livestreaming

Livestreaming is a great thing in Ludum Dare, it is both fun for the viewers and support for the streamers. So, it is a win-win thing, isn’t it?
Yes, it is – for the popular streamers at least. For people like me, who are not popular and also maybe new to the overall streaming thing, this doesn’t apply unfortunately. I got 5 viewers at one or two occasions, but that was it. I wish there had been a bit more people coming to the smaller channels as well. I mean, it’s about watching people make games, isn’t it unimportant who the streamer is?

After submitting

After submitting my game, I still had about three hours left. I used these to watch a few livestreams. The people there have come up with absolutely nice ideas, I have to say! Well, then the compo was over, and the only thing I could think was “SLEEP!”.
Here I am now, after having slept way longer than I usually do. I am editing my timelapse footage and writing this ‘post mortem’, which literally feels like after death.
I am waiting for things to normalize again… it is a bit of a strange feeling now.
But more importantly, the overall experience during the compo, all that excitement and fun (I had a lot of fun! This post is just more focused on stuff I could improve, that’s why it sounds rather negative.) lead to the wish of repeating this.

I can’t wait for the next Ludum Dare! #LD31!

Tags: compo, deskphoto, postmortem, timelapse

I was pretty confident in the beginning, having this awesome idea in mind. It didn’t involve those ugly green slimes, that was just a placeholder. It was going to be a RTS on a gigantic map.

As things moved along, I lost momentum and begin realizing I might not have the ability to produce such game, and that my LD entry is gonna be real crap!

I spent most of the weekend complaining to myself and watching longplays  of Civilization 5 by BAStart Gaming (yes, I didn’t even have the energy to actually play the game!).

Eventually, all that Civ 5 got into my head, I finished my LD 30 entry as a Jam with my placeholder slime, and named it: SLIMILIZATION!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=20841

Hey all,

here is a little gameplay Video from my Game AtomicBomberCats

@Jam people wish you all the best for the last 4 hours If you need a break enjoy with a round of AtomicBomberCats

Tags: AtomicBomberCAts, multiplayer, multiplayer online

Levels are almost done, a few modifications will take place maybe, some minor bugs are fixed and the only thing I am still waiting for are many graphics still undone by my artist.
Hope he will do it in time.
And also help and options section of the main menu will be unavailable in jam release. I simply don’t have morale to bother with it now.

It’s my first Ludum Dare

Play&Rate:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=38779

Amazing Contest!

@graveyardpolice

It’s up now

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=40488

Actually, our game isn’t about shadows at all, but we put a lot of effort in them. Here are 3 different shadow maps. They look interesting, even though they are only black and white, don’t they?

If you like them, take a look at them when combined with the actual buildings in our game down under (no, not Australia!)

And we’re done!

Its been a lot of fun and all of us are amazed at what we’ve managed to accomplish over this relatively short timespan.

While the gameplay is a bit untested, we’re very proud of the visuals.

the only thing we just couldn’t get in due to time constraints is the Audio effects,

Ludum Dare Submission Page

Unity Webplayer

Main Theme

Menu Theme

I tried to think about space, E.T, weird things, and make a very special ambiance with that. Hope u’ll enjoy ! Feel free to like, comment and share !

Lykan

Phew, I sure have been busy during all that competition; now to play through some games with high coolness-to-ratings ratio….

Also, if someone is interesting how my star ratings map to the game, here is a reference:

1 star – poor/annoying (an element that spoils an otherwise nice game)
2 star – decent (nothing great, but serves its purpose well enough)
3 star – likeable
4 star – remarkable
5 star – excellent

That means that if you get 2-stars in some category, it doesn’t mean I consider it below average; I just prefer to leave more degrees for things I actually liked.

And in relation to themes:

1 star – not really following the theme
2 star – forced (expect in such games naming the theme directly so that people notice it at all)
3 star – background (it’s there and works, but the game wouldn’t lose much without it)
4 star – integrated (the use of theme affects the gameplay/experience significantly)
5 star – inseparable (the game breathes the theme; taking it away would pretty much destroy the game)

Hopefully I’ll get more time to play tomorrow…

It is getting late in the EU, so let’s submit the game!
After ups and downs and changes over changes in the gameplay here it is:

Entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=41148

Screenshots post before sleeping :

And a gif :

Ang a game :

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=11872

Looks like I might get a good 2 hours of polish on this. I just have to make an end screen and instructions. Then its down to polish!!! Hurray!

Anywho here’s a screen from the end of the game when you’re about to place the key in the gates and get out of this little valley.

Good luck to everyone who is quickly hurtling towards the deadline. Hope you can finish in time.

About an hour into the brainstorming someone said…

So what if an angel and a devil were connected by a rope?

So, we took a shot at a mechanic that could only be achieved on mobile. Tilt side to side to move a player (who’s chained to another character from below) and flip the device to gain control of the other character (and flip the gravity in-world.) It sounds more complicated than it is, or maybe it doesn’t.

It feels a little more like a prototype than a full game, but it would be interesting to see how it plays out in a bigger universe. The team ended up being four folks and we worked in total about 25 hours each within the 72 hour window.

Good compo, thanks to all.

twitch.tv/literalgames

We’re 3 hours away from the deadline and are bug testing like hell whilst trying to get a playable version!

Music and SFX are now in, and sounding good! The art is pretty much complete and the game mechanics are being tested rigorously!

Good luck to everyone who’s also still at it!

For those of you unaware, we at poemsaboutgames.tumblr.com write poems about free indie web games.

In lieu of Ludum Dare, we will being covering twice as many poems per day for two weeks starting today. So if you want us to compose a melodic stanza about and rate you game, please send it to us at poemsaboutgames@gmail.com or twitter.com/poemsaboutgames!

We posted something very similar to this Friday but it probably got lost in the shuffle.

We look forward to playing your games!

Since 50% of our programmers quit (one out of the two we had), we figured it’d be difficult to finish.  Last night, however, we saw that it was impossible so we played XCOM then went to sleep.  It’s too bad that we couldn’t finish the game (especially since this was my first LD) but two things came out of it.  We now have a bunch of vector art as well as a neat physics simulation that displays atmospheric pressure.