Hey guys. Just wanna share my thoughts on this.

I learnt quite a lot to be honest, as I wasn’t a programmer until recently. I’ve been trained as an artist first in school.

Bad programming practices in progress.

Really glad the game turned out well! All the team members were really excited to see our game come to life!

Wished we had more experience with Phaser so that the game would have more features…

That being said, I learnt a lot as a programmer.

Dimension Express!

I think I’m more ready to join the next compo!

Ivan

 I didn’t have time at the weekend, so I made my entry in the last 7 hours of the JAM

4 connected worlds. One color x world. 

PLAY CMYK

4 endless runners in one.

It’s an early prototype. TODO list:

• Better hole generation to make the mouse useful
• Add sounds
• Add music
• HiScore table
• Unique backgrounds

Well that was intense. I finished my jam, submitted, took a shower and then got a car to the airport for a week in Greece! Got to our hotel, swam and ate, then slept…. And it is now Tuesday! I am rested and ready to play all the fantastic entries you have all made.

My game entry “Ormington Chomost Calling”  was probably the most challenging game I have attempted to make. Mainly down to this guy –

I needed to calculate the angle to spit out the number and then create a listener to take in each number entry and decide if it was valid. It was a complex mess of logic that I am surprised I got working BUT the whole game is based around it so I am happy it did.

the aim of the game is to land old rotary phones on alien planets, and then dial thier numbers to see if anyone picks up

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=21374

Have a go if you are intrigued, leave a comment and I will check out your game too.

Thanks!

G

So… First LD for us and how we’ve learned:

We had a team of two people, one mostly did coding and the other one all the art. We didn’t submit our game because we didn’t finish it in time. However we have learned quite a few valuable lessons in game dev and in participating LD, so here they are:

Framework and Library: It has been said like a thousand times over and over: Make a framework with the core parts of your engine before you start LD. Really, I thought I would be able to actually pull it off without, and I’m quite a good programmer, but it took me more time than expected AND all the time I put in the framework was – now that I look back at it – actually needed for adding gameplay (top priority) and features (such as music and sounds). Also: if you’re going to use a library make sure you know how to use multiple features. For example: We used slick2d with java, because slick2d is based on opengl and it makes rendering a great deal easier. But slick2d has so many awesome features (like: particles, entities, animations etc.) that I didn’t use and programmed all by myself (which equals loss of time) that now, looking back at it, makes me feel stupid not using.

Graphics and Sound: To be honest: we didn’t even start on music and sounds. We planned this for the final day, but because of certain reasons partially explained uptop we used the final day to add more levels and other gameplay mechanics. The graphics however were done nicely (in my opinion). However if we look at graphics other participants made, we do understand that our level of detail and skill isn’t as high, but that’s ok right? Everyone needs to learn, and that is what this was all about for us. But for the graphics I will say the same as for our library and framework: Practice it beforehand, make some standard assets or at least a scheme with colors and techniques or something that you can use to remind you how you should be making art in a way it fits you.

Working together: Working together was really ok actually. My teammate and I we’re actually able to help each other (mostly) and because we split the work mostly into art and programming we weren’t interfering with each others work. One thing to keep in mind though: When one has been programming almost everything and the other one needs to program something, make sure you understand a certain train of thought in the projects code. We had a small problem where my teammate had to do almost extensive research (yeah I like to exeggerate a little :3) to find out how to render particles or a newly added entity. And really: it wasn’t really a big problem for me to explain it to him, but again: this is a way to lose valuable time.

Game and Gameplay: Just a little bit more about the game itself. We had an idea right away to give the player a teleportation device of some sort in the first level. This device would grant the player acces to several layers of time of that level (environment). This way the player needs to solve puzzles and get to the portal at the end of the level. We eventually made three levels: The ‘now’ layer, in which the player starts, the ‘medieval’ layer and the ‘dinosaur’ or prehistoric layer. Every layer had it’s own level design and has buttons and (movable) walls etc. which made it one big puzzle. There are enemies shooting at you, and you’re able to defend yourself etc.

Eventually we finished two complete levels and one level was still in development at the end. Again, if we look back at the features we’ve added, I can say we we’re having the, how do you call it, feature disease? Anyway, again a valuable lesson for the next time: Focus on primary gameplay, not awesome little details that are less important. In our case that is: First some playable levels, not nice little particles for everything that happens in the game.

I hope our experience will help you guys as much as it helped us. I’m quite sure we’ve all been at this point, if not we will get to this point.

TLDR;

+ Make sure you have a frame ready before you start LD;

+ Make sure you understand the library you’re using;

+ Practice the making of assets before you start LD and perhaps make scheme’s or dummies of some sort;

+ Make sure you understand each others train oof thought (not only for the jammers, this is a good advice from a person learning software engineering)

+ Focus on primary gameplay FIRST, nice little details can be done later when you have spare time.

OS/X | Windows | LD30 | Source | Timelapse

For a while I’ve wanted to enter in a Ludum Dare with cgame, my rapid game development engine/tool I’ve been working on since December. It’d be a great way to see if it actually worked for rapid game development. And Ludum Dare needs rapid — code, art and music in 48 hours! Few weeks ago I thought cgame was finally at the point that I could use it for one. So I did Ludum Dare 30 this past weekend.

Development went alright — better than I expected, but not quite the best. I wanted to make some music and more levels, and was running out of time. Eventually I hit a point where I thought, “Hey, I think I can make it end here and have it make sense.” So I just stopped there, cleaned up a bit, and it seemed to work out!

Also while working on this I added some little cgame features and fixes. It’s also given me some things to think about to fix/add in cgame. In all, a great experience. I learned a lot about games, about making them, good talks with the community on IRC. I think one of cgame’s top priorities next is documentation. I’ll make some tutorials and stuff hopefully soon. Till then, play my Ludum Dare 30 game and leave comments!

If you figure out how to get to the end WITHOUT dying, btw, let me know!

Have you played Heart Star yet? Give it a go and leave a rating and I’ll check out your game too! I’m working on Post-Compo version of the game with more polished tutorial levels plus heaps of completely new stages. I’m planning to finish at least 30 levels total for the post-compo. Hopefully I’ll have the game done sometime this weekend, or maybe earlier.

Click to play Heart Star!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=42414

Two students, 72 hours and a ton coffein actually produced something that we  can be very proud of.

It’s a game about destroying various alien races, capturing planets and A TON OF ROCKETS.

@amethyst_v did all the stunning artwork, the story and most of the level design. While I (@Zelosfan) crafted the code of the game in Java with LibGDX.

Huge thanks to a third person (@official_Haruki) who made the awesome music tracks which really add to the mood and round up the game nicely!

What went right: 

• We achieved pretty much everything we planned. That is just awesome and doesn’t happen that often in gamejams.
• It was the first time that we worked together on a game (other than a Dota game). And it worked out really well
• The game is actually fun xD
• We managed to polish most of the animations. Aren’t resizing crosshairs and swarming rockets awesome ^_^.
• Actually there is a kind of a step-by-step tutorial.

What went wrong:

•  Time pressure at the end. REAL BIG TIME. Because our game is pretty complicated we had to make a good tutorial and I started to do it 2h before the deadline ._.
• We had a game breaking bug(endlessssss scrolling yay) which we had to patch out after the submission deadline. Probably because we had no time for playtesting.
• Minor bugs persisted (the usual).

So yeah check it out and I hope you love it aswell. If you leave feedback we will come back to you <3.

This Ludum Dare went very well and the theme was really fun to work with. As many other I would like to write down some of my experiences so that other may benefit from it. If you are curious on what I made you can visit this link: Tangled Mini Worlds

1. Make sure you have set aside enough time to work on your game. I was busy this weekend but I managed to squeeze inn 6 hours on Saturday and 6 hours on Sunday. 12 hours is not much when making a game and I am lucky to even finishing it. When I was not working on my game, I used some of my capacity to plan on what to implement and what to throw away. This help me a lot because when I finally sat down to work I knew exactly what to do.
2. One of my goals was too only work whit tings I knew. My best skills are programming and 3D art. Therefore, I chose not to do any 2D stuff and audio. I did not want to use unnecessary time figuring out how stuff work when I was on such a tight time schedule. This turned out to be just what I needed to finish the game.
3. Do not try to reinvent everything. Take inspiration from something familiar. With my game, the game mechanics come from wooden chines puzzle games and the visual is something similar to Monument Valley by Ustwogames.
4. Every time I make a game, I like to start working on game mechanics. As I am working on how the game plays, I think about the visuals. This seems works for me but you might have a different way of doing things. The important part is, be aware of what suits you the most and use that to your advantage.

Thanks for this awesome weekend of making games. It feels really good to be a part of a community that loves making games, playing them and commenting on improvements.

Hello, everyone! I would like to share my thoughts and impressions on Ludum Dare 30!

This was the first Ludum Dare I participated in and I’m extremely happy that so many people got to play my game, and eventually enjoyed it :3

You can view my entry and play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=35110

Firstly, I wanted to write a simple blog post as a story of my development, but then I decided it would be pretty boring to read.

So I invented a simple questionnaire to do that! I hope it will be appropriate and convenient form

Developer’s questionnaire

1.  How many Ludum Dares you participated in so far? 

Zero! This is my first one, yay! ^^

2. How did you choose the name for your game? 

I’ve actually came up both with idea and name right away. Salvation is straight away, one word, and sounds pleasant.

3. What was the inspiration?

Solarmax, Nano War

4. What was the hardest to make?

Art. I really struggled with making anything somewhat visually pleasing.

Although, I’ve made void/planet SFX and background procedurally generated, I still wasted too much time for minor visual changes and choosing colors.

5. What was the easiest to make?

Game mechanics. I generally try to write all of my games from scratch without using any frameworks/engines at all, so now I’m pretty familiar with setting up basic physics & game mechanics fast.

6. What was the greatest decision you made?

Firstly, you could channel population through the planet chain (1 -> 2 -> 3), resulting in first planet transferring population straight to third. And that pretty much negated the meaning of max population.

So 3 hours (!!!) before submission end, I decided to forbid planets to receive and send population simultaneously. That tweak improved gameplay drastically, however I needed to redesign all the levels!

7. What was the dumbest decision you made?

I’ve tried to make some art the first day, without actually having working prototype. That resulted in a huge lack of time. I had only one hour to make sound effects, and got no time to make music.

8. What was the craziest decision you made?

See 6. above 😀

9. What is your impression?

I extremely enjoyed participating in Ludum Dare, and looking forward to next one

I am also happy with my result and totally overwhelmed with the warm reception of my game and the fact hundreds of people get to play my game!

10. Lessons to learn?

• Get friends to test your game  –  that would have definitely helped me with poor GUI.
• Make prototype first  –  it will save you a lot of time
• Get some rest  –  going full try-hard isn’t both healthy and efficient
• Test on different platforms/browsers  –  my game is currently only working on Win/Chrome & Unix/Chrome

11. Plans for future?

• Make a post-compo – fixed bugs, more game mechanics, more levels!
• Mobile version? – I got many requests to make a mobile version. I’ve never tried mobile, but I will definitely do that <3
• LD31 – Looking forward to Ludum Dare 31, and hyped already. I probably gonna try Unity next time!

Thanks for reading everyone!

P.S. If you want to use this questionnaire for your entry, go on – I will be extremely happy ^^

Hello World!

We had the holiday on this weekend – an Independence Day of Ukraine (hence blue and yellow colors were used the most). Nevertheless we both decided to “waste” our possible free time with family and to take part in Ludum Dare 30 contest instead.

The game mechanics is to cover all sharp edges on the terrain to make it smooth. Three block types are available: a ramp up, a cube and a ramp down.

Track created for the game:

So our Ludum Holiday weekend looked like this:

Day 1 – Concept and prototyping
Day 2 – Coding and art,
Day 3 – Coding, art, sound, debugging and polishing

WHAT WENT RIGHT:

1. We’re quite happy with game concept
2. Time management

WHAT WENT WRONG:

1. We chose bad controls which led to people being frustrated while playing.
2. Levels are too difficult straight away. Seems like hardly anybody can go past the second level.

TAKE AWAYS:

1. Always playtest your game on somebody who is not taking part in development! Without that it’s very hard to adequately set difficulty.
2. The easier controls are the better.
3. No hardcore needed, though it is very hard to reach the balance between too hard and interesting.
4. It was fun, and it values the most.

Happy world connecting!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=33150

After this first Ludum Dare, it’s time for the Postmortem thing.

Lucy’s journey is a classic platformer where the player needs to reach the end of the level without dying (too much).

Lucy can teleport from a a dimension to another, making platforms appear and disappear. That makes her a link between worlds.

But she dies if she teleports inside one of these platforms.

What went good ?

• The simple concept : straightforward, easy to understand, yet full of possibilities
• The fast prototype : thanks to the Construct 2 engine, I have been able to build a running prototype quite fast and test the concept
• The engine : Construct 2 is a great tool for 2D game.
• Working game : there is a beginning, a middle and an end.
• Amazing LD community : I could have looked at the Twitter posts of the community all day long. Refreshing,  motivating, funny, beautiful…

 What went wrong ?

• Playtesting. Early feedbacks claims the difficulty rises to high to fast.
• Sound/music : hum.. no comment.
• Replayability : no leaderboard, best scores, timer, items to collect
• Only one level : even if the concept came fast, I only managed to create one short level. Why ? Because I tried to add new features, like enemies, puzzle… Bad idea.
• Polishing : Instead trying to add more features, I should have focused on the basic concept, improving the level design.

Conclusion

Amazing experience. I will definitely come back for more. I will polish this one as best as I can.

Now, 1600 games to test… and waiting for your enlightening feedbacks, guys.

The game is here : http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=40976

See you…

And you haven’t even seen the turrets yet, check out our game here:

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=23493

I would feel more embarrassed about my entry, but everyone else only had 48 hours too so that takes the sting away a little bit. Pleasantly surprised that people went for humor – I enjoyed those games the most.

Updated Screenshots.

In the far future,Earth’s resources have been depleted and the only chance for humanity to survive is to find new planets to colonize. Lead Earth’s survivors across the vastness of the universe as they try to find a new home. You must manage your resources well and upgrade your ship if you are to survive. 

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=41091

After about 60 hours, we finished up this little plat-former from scratch!

Had a great time on my first Ludum Dare! And I’ll be sure to continue doing jams in the future!

Have fun playing! After a while we noticed most people like to use the UP arrow key to jump, but space can also be used!

Thanks for playing!

check it out here

Dan, Peter and Andrew!

Here is a very short timelapse of my LD30 game:

Have fun,
Simon

This was different kind of jam for me. For starters I didn’t work alone. Which made the jam that more awesome.

My partner was Rastko (rastko96), 18 year old high-school student from small rural township. We met at local game dev meeting I organized. He complained that he can’t get together a consistent team, that most of his projects ends up half-done as his friends lose interest due to protracted timelines connected to game development. So I was very happy to be in position to help him finish this one and though the game needs more work, we did it! We managed to complete the game. 

“You deal with gameplay, and I’ll do the rest!” shouted my young Jedi-developer and jumped into the fray.

What went good

We didn’t spend too much time on brainstorming. Rastko and I were already discussing a similar project and this jam’s topic fit our idea like a glove. So basically, we decided to create a prototype for our next ‘real’ game using this jam as training grounds. Also, while we talked about many possible game projects, this was our first opportunity to actually collaborate.

Working with someone skilled is also a big boon for the project. We didn’t lose time trying to find solutions. Yea the game is hacked, but it was done few hrs before deadline…

I loved the cartoony shader Rastko implemented, as well as his models, and he loved my crazy voice-acting for Alien… I think it’s important that you care about skills and work of your partner. It makes jamming more pleasant with thrill of doing things right amplified by your team’s glorious effort…

Otherwise, things went rather smooth, we more or less implemented what we desired. Game is quirky so requires from player to be alert, perceptive and clever. There is game within a game, sort of meta-message, so we added WTF section to help fellow jammers and judges to get into the groove of our piece. I believe that games can be powerful tool in learning about the world, powerful way to send a message. Yea, sometimes my game design suffers from such ambitious plan, but this time I think I pushed the envelope closer than in any previous jam…

What went wrong

Aside of quite obvious, the polish and some sort of tutorial, our game didn’t suffer from any serious setbacks. Yes, there were things we meant to implement like more complex eco-system with visible creatures living an dying in the World of Floating Islands, also we wanted to implement AI aliens that would be greedy so player would need to defend his ‘roid fields from attackers, but you can’t have it all…

Not much else went wrong… just little bits that add up… like spending too much time animating and modeling alien and his ship… being too lazy to change bits and pieces that would make the whole look better… losing internet connection 1 hr before deadline… you know the usual crap…

Bonus Like

I always adore that moment when you spot a game very similar to your own, yet very different in the same time, so shout-out to JetL33t for their piece!!!

Stay cool

R&R (Rastko & Ranko)

Tags: post-mortem, rastko96, tigerrenko

If anyone actually reads this feel free to comment! I’m writing mostly for my own personal train of thought. It’s really cool to have taken part in what is now the BIGGEST LD ever, in terms of number of games submitted.

Feedback

I find it really interesting to get such immediate feedback on a game I produced. At first I felt I’d let my first LD game stand as is and never try too hard for a “post competition” release,”  but I think I’m going to be making some changes to it because I like trying to make things more fun. I will try to spend at LEAST as much time playing and rating your games as I do fixing mine up. I really love reading the comments, especially the ones with constructive criticism! I think it’s important to embrace that kind of stuff. Nothing should be taken personally about a game that was thrown together in 48 hours.

Here are some of the things I’ve gotten from LD feedback:

Jumping is not responsive enough – ESPECIALLY wall jumping 

I currently have a boolean for canWalljump set to true when you raycast hit a very short distance from the wall. This is very problematic because the player’s visual graphic is not 100% like the actual collision box of the player (which I should probably make a capsule) and even if it was, the window is still too small. I like the precision turning this allows, but I will be implementing a separate longer raycast which allows you to walljump slightly earlier.  There are also some physics glitches that occur. I wanted to let the player walljump even a second or two after hitting the wall, but for some reason if they do this the jump is much less powerful.

Color Changing

I am having mixed feedback on the color changing mechanic, and I’m not surprised given the current poor level design. I will try to think of a way to make it more unique/fun. I knew the idea of overlapping objects in different dimensions would be used pretty heavily, and this lack of innovation is showing up as a critique in numerous comments. I think using colors as portals and keeping it more simplistic (simply 2 or 3 color dimensions as opposed to 6) could be better for level design and gameplay, while still allowing for the cool “Whoa the world’s a different color” effect. Combining colors with complex puzzles might be too tedious for effective gameplay, especially in my game where I want the player to be MOVING. With an autorun mechanic, it really makes more sense for my game to be fast and twitchy than it does to have slower paced puzzles. I want color changing to stay, I just don’t like how it’s implemented at all right now.

Autorunning – Mixed reactions

While the comments have been unified in the lack of responsive of jumping, they are divided on the autorun mechanic. Some people praised it’s originality whereas others felt it resulted in unnecessary penalties for failing your jumps. While I do enjoy the semi-original feel to it, I have no interest in PUNISHING people for playing my game. I will be testing out simple A/D and arrow key controls to allow users to switch their direction at will, while leaving the auto-movement mechanic in place. I think this will satisfy both groups and allow for some interesting gameplay/design mechanics to come into play as well.

The level design will definitely need to account for the possibility that the player can just spam both buttons and stay relatively stationary, as I don’t think I’d want to introduce any timer mechanic to limit switching. I’ll have to make sure that really isn’t beneficial. I like the idea of a level where you have to change rapidly and dodge things that can kill you as you move downward between platforms. I think it could be interesting both with and without the ability to change direction midair.

Graphics

The majority of people complimented or were somewhat positive about the graphics, with a few critiques. They can definitely be improved upon, and I dislike how sometimes it is difficult to see the bottoms and sides of platforms. Of course they are nowhere near final (just look at the menu LOL). I think going with 2.5d was the right idea for this type of game.

Music

A lot of people like the music, I personally hate it and will make it better. Also, it won’t reset when you die (someone commented on this, and I agree it shouldn’t happen).

More stuff

– The level design is not ideal. I was fully aware of this, I think all of them were made in the final 4 or so hours of the contest.
– The player shouldn’t be able to break out of levels without automatically respawning.  Again, I knew about this but my computer BSOD’d and I ran out of time. Also, if the player does die it shouldn’t be such an abrupt and ugly restart.

– I want to fix the color glitch where you can see the lights at the start. I actually implemented this on purpose due to coding troubles. I won’t bore you with the details. But I’ve already thought of a fix.

Hopefully I can a lot of these implementations done within a week or two so some people play the post-competition version before this LD ends and no one sees my game again.

Play it here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=26056

We’d love your comments and criticism! We had a real blast making this game and we hope you have fun playing it. Full post mortem coming soon.

I’m very tired but I’m proud of having achieved my game in time… first time in solo from scratch. Ludum Dare is always an inspiring and rewarding challenge. Now, it’s time to rest and play!

Discover my game:
‘GET CONNECTED‘

I’ll write a post-mortem later. In the meantime, thanks for playing and let’s rate for my entry!

Sephy.