Glitched is my first Ludum Dare entry. The story goes more or less like this: you work as an IT specialist for a futuristic company specialising in managing virtual reality worlds. Your friend botches up a simple merge job, causing three worlds to mix together into a glitched mess. Your job is now to enter the world and destroy all of the sources of the glitch so that your friend won’t lose his job.

What I made was an action game, but I wanted to put a spin on the standard shoot and kill formula. Instead of killing enemies, your shots launch them away from you. If the launched enemies hit the glitch, they both cancel each other out, which is good for you. However, if the enemy hits a wall or obstacle, it explodes and launches projectiles that can hurt you. So you really need to aim or run like crazy.  The second mechanic connected (hah) to the theme by having the enemies change behaviour depending on which of the worlds they currently were in (Blue enemies chase you and launch a projectile when hit, Green enemies move fast and fly around you chaotically and Red enemies are slow but periodically shoot projectiles).

Anyways, if you want to play it (It’s pretty short), here’s a link: Glitched

What I Liked About It

-The graphics are pretty good for my skills and the time I had to make them and even though they aren’t anything amazing I still like them.

-I am glad I managed to get the game polished at least a bit: The crystals flashed when interacted with, the Mushrooms made little poofs, the glitch had a particle effect , SCREENSHAKE etc.

-I got the idea very quickly and had a lot of time to work on the game.

What I Did Not Like About It

-I feel like the mechanics aren’t that innovative as I imagined them in the beginning. I really want to make orignial gameplay and I feel this gameplay was still very similar to  a standard top down action shooter.

-The game feels like it’s still missing something, although I suspect I might be put off by how claustrophobic the game space becomes in some levels.

-I keep making action games, I need to finally make something else at some point (So I didn’t really challenge myself).

-I didn’t test the game with anyone, and the game ended up very hard (Remember, if the designer feels a level is just right difficulty-wise, it means it will be too hard for the players)

In the End

I feel like this Ludum Dare went too easily for me. I didn’t really challenge myself and didn’t have any major problems with the game. So for the next LD, I will challenge myself to not make an action game or at least to not make a game that feels like a generic action game.

Did I learn anything? Yeah, I think I did:

-Manage sleep well, it’s best to not lose a lot of sleep as it’s har dot get hings done when tired.

-Particle effects are great for making a game feel better.

-I should use the next Ludum Dare to challenge myself  more and expand my horizons even if it means failure instead of making a bland polished game.

– I need to test the game on someone

“Do not go, please, they never listen. Why do you think they will do different this time?“

PLAY THE GAME HERE (web win mac lin)

So, I’m about to start working on a web-based RPG engine that I hope to have finished in time for LD32. For anyone that might be interested in such a thing, what would you consider to be must-have features? I ask because if I’m going to release something like this to the community, it should be designed with what the community wants in mind.

There’s something I want to say before I forget to say it: I love this community. This LD and last (especially the former), I made under-featured, incomplete games riddled with problems, either due to time constraints, unfamiliarity with the tools I used, or just plain old bad decisions. Despite that, both times people have left comments telling me to keep going & develop my ideas further. Wow! It’s wonderful to see such a supportive community! And getting that kind of feedback really does make me want to continue. I aim to make the most of my last bit of time before school starts again to make something. I thank you all!

NOTE: First three images are gifs. I’m bad and don’t know how to embed them :(.

So in Links the connection between the worlds was by the pick ups. By picking up one of the Links/?,  enemies do something on the other world, upon their death. Could be:

Suddenly, lava. (GIF)

Could be something like:

Dat SHMUP classic. (GIF)

And there are a few more like that; bullet burst on the other world, instead of dying, enemies spawn at the respective position on the other world, etc.

But not only. I also added two Links that work upon pickup and stay until you pick up another Link. The best Link in the game is Great Minds, which basically does this:

Pretty nifty, no? Now you don’t have to multi-task. (GIF)

Development Process

This was my second LD and I wanted to give it time and really work on it. The last one I did, I felt went relatively well for a first time, but that it also could have gone better. I work on Sundays, so I took a day off work, but I still had a family event to attend on Saturday that killed 4 hours of development time. For the tools usage, I used things I am familiar with. I wanted to churn out a complete game that people could enjoy. So with flixel, paint.net, sfxr, and autotracker, I went ahead on my way.

I didn’t like the theme. But after about 30 minutes of brainstorming I came up with this thing. I can say I am happy about it, but not delighted about it. In hindsight I should have made a game about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, I feel.

Important Design Decisions

So if you give players a static game that doesn’t get more difficult, it becomes an exercise in tedium. Since the game is randomly-generated, I made it gain difficulty over time. The maximum difficulty is achieved after meeting 40 encounters in the game. But it is also impossibly hard. Like, maybe people with 250 APM could play it. I myself couldn’t (not for very long at least). So how do I reset the difficulty? I had thought to have a boss somewhere in there, but I didn’t have a clue how he’d fit into the design of the game since it is a highscore-based arcade shooter. This was the perfect place to use the boss: You can fight him by picking up a special drop, and when you do, it resets the difficulty. Check number one.

Another important design decision to consider was: how do I make the Links an integral part of the game? Powerups are cool but they are hardly the core of shmups. In order to do that, I made it so the Links ARE the score. The more you collect, the higher your score. In doing this, I took a cue from Vlambeer’s Super Crate Box. The immediate benefit in this was that I became able to include both positive and negative Links, as opposed to strictly positive or negative ones. Some links spawn harmful stuff on the other worlds, others are more useful to the player and make fighting foes easy. Check number two.

The last important decision was how the boss was gonna behave. This was the one I am least satisfied with, not in terms of behavior, but in terms of how I relay that behavior to the player. The boss has two attacks, and his eye changes to indicate what type of attack he is about to perform, allowing players ample time to prepare. Someone who is equipped with this knowledge can defeat the boss, someone who isn’t, can as well, but will have a much harder time. The eye animation is not that clear, so this was a failure on my part. Something else to note about the boss was that he could only be damaged by hitting his eye. Here the information was better relayed; the text next to his HP says “Go for the eye, Boo!”, and when you hit his body no sound is made. When you hit his eye, a hit sound is made. It still wasn’t clear enough.

Isn’t he pretty?

Things That Kicked Ass

1) The game feels complete. With 2-3 more days of polishing it and adding content, I could probably sell it.

2) The theme is an integral part of the game.

3) SHMUPS are nothing original, but a dual-screen one where what you do in one screen affects the other is.

4) Endgame messages to the player are rather insulting in a funny way.

5) 2 great design decisions in the scoring system and the difficulty curbing system.

Things That Got Their Ass Kicked

1) Graphics are pretty bad. They are consistent, which is good, but still pretty bad. On the upside, some people like bad graphics, so there’s that.

2) Soundtrack is great, sfx are on key.

3) Game is pretty difficult, and pretty hard to pick up. My instructions screen could have been clearer, and it’s not readily apparent that you can try the controls before you start the game.

Last Forever

I’m happy with this thing. For a second entry by an amateur who doesn’t get much time to work on games, I feel like it is a polished, complete package (sans the graphics). I don’t expect it to do very well in the compo, but it did well by me. In case you decide to try it, drop me a line!

PLAY LINKS NOW

It’s all fun and games until somebody crashes the Apollo Mail Rocket into a Tribal Giant on a cannabalistic rampage….. HUZZAH! It’s time for more showcasing and game reviewing with Cryptid Showcase Volume 2. Playing through another set of three delicious games. Gotta say I would not have guessed that little tribal creatures would taste like butterscotch, go figure =D.

Games Showcased:

Connecting Worlds by Damian Schloter:
http://goo.gl/v5UBly

Tribe of the Giant by MerlijnVH:
http://goo.gl/DpElcs

Binary System by RogueNoodle:
http://goo.gl/vrwvp3

Stay tuned for the first “Community Centric” episode in a couple of days! Showcasing a game dev community from Kentucky that had a boat load of their members all participate in the latest Jam!

Toodles till then.

–Hugs n Slubbery Chupacabra kisses, Larry

Tags: Cryptid Game Reviews, LD 30 Game Showcase

Hello Ludumdare friends,

what a bunch of good games are created in this LD!!! Because I’ve rated over 50 games so far I wanted to post a little best of tested 50. So here is my unsorted list:

One Ship Two Ship from 01010111

Heart Star from AdventureIslands

Schrodinghost from Carduus

Hello Worlds from Dustyroom

Trappy Tomb from jimmypaulin

1989 to 2014 from McFunkypants

The World Within from Oxeren

Flicker from PapaCheech

Continue from ratking

Crystalbots:       T-94 from rynti

So that was my unsorted top ten so far. I thank everyone of the devs for their games and hope you enjoyed deving as much as I enjoyed playing.

If there will be any big changes on that list, I will let you know.

ruerob (Nigel – Hero of the Universe).

As I’m working my way through the entries for LD 30 I’m noticing that fewer games are being made in a format which is playable on the web these days. As I’m often short on time and dip in and out of rating entries, taking the time to download, virus check and run an unknown executable file isn’t really viable for me. I also alternate between working on a Windows machine and a Mac, so it’s not always possible to play the majority of Windows-only games. I therefore tend to gravitate toward those entries that have a web version and ignore those that don’t.

What are other people’s opinions on this? Are you turned off by games in a particular format? What holds you back from creating web-based versions along with executables?

Having said this, I have personally started uploading Windows versions of my entries to go along with the web versions, as I know there are likely to be people who feel the opposite way. If you’re looking for a good 2D game framework which compiles to the full range of platforms (Flash, HTML5, Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and more) I’d recommend taking a look at HaxeFlixel, a popular port and improvement of the original Flixel for Flash written in Haxe and using the OpenFL framework. You can develop your games on Windows, Mac or Linux and usually create versions for other platforms with little to no changes.

It contains the same 6 levels but I changed all the graphics, aligned the phone with the screen, added better physics and made the game overall more playable. I haven’t changed the music because I didn’t found any songs that would fit the game, that is next, I guess.

Well, what are you waiting for? go play it nowWWWWWWW!!!

Play the post compo edition

I’ve made a timelapse of the making of my game “Orange!”

As for the post-mortem, there wern’t any real problems this time.

What went right?

• I had a clear vision of what I wanted to make very early on.
• I had a good idea  of what was most important, and what could be cut early on.
• I chose a graphical style that was simple enough so I could get all the assets done.
• Scripting went smoothly. No headaches.
• I slept a reasonable amount. (12 hours over two nights) So was able to keep focussed.

What went wrong.

• I Would have liked to have more time for music.
• Gameplay could have had more depth and variation, but my focus was on story, so that’s fine.
• Finding people to test your game in the last 12 hours of the competition is hard. I need to find some people to test my game before the competition starts next time.

You can play my game here: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=5496

Hey fellow gamedevs,

We are a team of four german students. We name ourselfs “Banana4Life” and have developed the game “Disconnect” for the second ludum dare we took part in. I (Jonas) made a quick LetsPlay of it here:

You can rate and play our game here: Disconnect

But now lets get to the post-mortem. We didn’t have huge problems this time, after we spend half of the time developing a game that we threw away and started over last time. But lets start with what went right.

What went right?

• The game was playable and apparently fun to play.
• We had a cool idea from the start up and didn’t change it later on.
• The graphics and music / sounds were developed steadily parallel to the code and thus weren’t a product of the last minute.
• We implemented our core gameplay first and after that improved upon it.
• We partly had a lot of features that we wanted to implement, but we cut the right features.
• We slept a reasonable amount of time and weren’t completely destroyed after the weekend.

As you see the most important parts went right and I think we did a pretty good job developing the game this time. But we had some small problems anyway.

What went wrong?

• We spent a lot of time working on collision detecting fixing it over and over but it never really worked.
• At the end time ran out and the one level we had is pretty short.
• One of our developers worked remote and wasn’t in one room with the other people which made communication harder.
• Not all of us could work on the game on the third day, because they had to go to work.
• The rendering of the walls could have been solved better.
• Again the collisions were really annoying. Especially with syncing the player positions.
• We didn’t play enough games

Most of the “What went wrong?” stuff could be solved with more time and maybe some more structured code on my side rendering the walls. (But it worked anyway)

What we want to do better?

• Meet up all in one location
• Maybe implement a little framework for the collisions or use an existing framework, because that would be a huge timesaver.
• Take a day off the next day so everybody can work on the game the whole time.
• Think a bit more before writing code. (maybe, maybe not)
• Play more games

So I think we have an action plan for the next time.

1. Prep a bit more by chosing a physics framework or something like this
2. Try long enough to come up with a good idea. (Like we did this time)
3. Make the game.
4. Play more games.
5. Enjoy the internet fame.

I hoped you liked our short writeup. Greetings,

Team Banana4Life

P.S.: Play and rate our game please.

This Ludum Dare was interesting, as it was my most ambitious game. And it failed. I should have known.

What went wrong? As always I tried to include an AI, random generation of something (this time a world), a dijkstra-algorithm (and removed it again, it always needed too much time calculating the paths) and fun.

And… it worked! Except for the dijkstra, which was at least bug free, but still not fast enough to calculate paths for 100+ animals every few seconds. And far from fast enough while running on a Pi. I had animals, the player could build rudimenarily, the villagers spawned, there were not exponentially many of them, things were fun (for me).

It was hard work, as I wanted to do a multiplayer game, using Python as a server language (since I love Python) and JavaScript as the client language (since Websites are the most accessible kind of game, and I like JS). That meant writing Python and JS simultaneously, now I can tell: That’s confusing, fun, challenging and confusing. Did I mention confusing? The way to design a program in those languages are close enough, but the syntax is different. Different enough to confuse.

So, what was the problem? For multiplayer in a website I used websockets, which are great for that stuff, it went better than expected. But then again, it was the first project I successfully used websockets for. I found a python library (ws4py) based on another python library (cherrypy) with which I never worked before, and used them. Bad decision. It was sunday evening, three hours before deadline, when I first tried moving from localhost (lo) to local/public IPs/Domains (wlan0, eth0). Didn’t work. The Python socket implementation has a small bug… crashing connections far too often. I changed some parts, sent smaller packets, added small time.sleeps, It made the connection more stable. Then at least one in ten survived and worked. For a game based on an active connection that’s bad. But at least you could reload and play on.

But then not only did the connections crash, but sometimes also the thread handling the sockets. From the library. The bug is in the python standard lib. Without a chance for me to fix the bug. So… It doesn’t work.

What did I learn? Don’t be ambitious. I should have known that. Multiplayer is a lot of work. Use libraries you have already worked with. Did I ever do that? I guess not, but this time that paid out badly. Don’t use two languages at the same time. Make fun games!

So far, see you in december. I’m sorry my game does not work. Neither did using different backends for the websockets work, nor using pypy for the server.

I’m sorry.

Tags: postmortem

It’s always pretty exciting to work on a game for  ludumdare. I’ve participated alone and in team and it’s always such a great experience!

I’ve seen a few discussions popping up here and there about the judging/review process. There are several instances where it’s not THAT easy to know how to rate a game!

While I’m not a veteran, during the time I’ve been here I’ve seen people agree on “best practices” that I’ll try to outline below or at least start a healthy open discussion about them! (if I’m wrong in any of them please let me know!)

Take into account  whether the game was submitted to the compo or the Jam!

This will let you rate the game better. I know bad graphics are bad graphics, but compo games can’t be judged with the same “harshness” you would use for Jam games because they were done in less time (48 hours instead of 72), by a single person (not a team) and -in theory- during the competition! (which is not necessarily true for Jam games, where using pre-existent assets is allowed). Same with music, or the level of polish. In fact, every aspect should be judged taking into account whether is a jam or a compo game!

Make sure you read the description!

The “description” is the first and main instance for developers to communicate with future players, so a lot of them will try to post information here that will help you play and rate their game.

I know sometimes there’s nothing relevant in the description, but you’ll find that in quite a lot of games reading the description first will definitely make a difference! Perhaps the developers didn’t have time for a tutorial and you’ll find the instructions there. Perhaps all the audio was taken from somewhere else and they are honest about it in the description (more on this later), perhaps you need to install something before playing the game.  Perhaps the web version has annoying bugs and glitches the other versions don’t have. All of this is relevant and will probably help you judge their game better!

The game doesn’t run? Don’t rate it!

If the game you are trying to play is not working for you, don’t give it a low score!. The most sensible thing to do is leave a comment saying that it didn’t run on your system. If you can provide relevant information (Operating System,  Processor, graphics card, Browser, A message that popped up before crashing, etc) all the better!

Remember that N/A means Not Applicable!

If the game lacks audio, for instance, the best thing to do is to NOT rate the game in that category.  Same with humor, for instance. If it’s an emotional game about a serious topic there’s no reason to give it a 1-star rating in humor when it’s not trying to be funny.

The audio or graphics are not their own? (Open to discussion)

For jam games where assets made before the competition or freely available on the internet can be used this is a really hard topic!. A lot of developers will tell you in the description if there’s something in their game they didn’t make themselves, while others simply won’t, which makes this issue all the more complicatedl! Not really sure what the “recommended course of action” is, but when the audio for a game wasn’t made by the team I usually don’t give the game a score in that category.

If they used a mix between things they made during the jam and things they borrowed from public sources then I try to “judge” the assets they did for the game and how they “blend” with everything else.  It’s a really complicated case (and hopefully uncommon) so I’d truly love  to know what other people do when this happens!

Leave a comment!

Leaving a comment after you’ve rated a game is not only a way to let the developer know you played their entry but also a way of helping them improve their game!  Bug reports, suggestions and feedback in general (e.g: “Loved your game!”) are always welcome by developers and will most likely help them continue working on the game beyond ludumdare. Plus, a lot of people (including myself) will return you the favor!

I think that’s all the advice I can give for rating games. If you know of other “best practices” please let me know and I’ll add them here!
Having said that, go and rate some games!

Tags: advice, judging, Ludumdare

I think I have livestreaming working.  If you’d like to watch me fumble through your game, join me here and let me know.  

http://www.twitch.tv/haymanmarc/

The game: Connected Worlds Training Facility

I wrote an article on my website about my Ludum Dare experience. It has GIFs to show my progress throughout the weekend (sorry, no timelapse!). It was my first time taking part and I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot.

Excerpt:

Last weekend, I took part in Ludum Dare for the first time. Ludum Dare is a game development competition in which you have to make a game in 48 hours. Before the competition, everybody votes on a theme, and this time around the most popular theme was “Connected Worlds.” By the end, I had successfully managed to make a little game called Connected Worlds Training Facility which you can play online.

Taking part had been on my mind for some years. I first learned to code with Game Maker, about 12 years ago, and have been interested in game development ever since. I read a lot of game development books, regularly browsed forums like /r/gamedev and the Stack Exchange site, learned a fair few libraries and tools, and started making some of the ideas that were dancing in the back of my head — but never got far.

I watched many Ludum Dares come and go and always told myself that I’d take part next time. I was also pretty scared that once I left university and started working, I’d never have the time for that kind of thing. Then I left university, got myself a job, and three weeks later took part in Ludum Dare. It’s funny how that happens.

I also give an overview of everything that happened during the competition and my thoughts on how it went and why.

Continue reading.

The first GIF:

The last GIF:

Hey guys!

Check out this game play video showcasing my Ludumdare project!

Savior: Saver of Souls video play through

Finished my second LD a week ago and just managed to get some time to add some post-jam fixes.
Added some enemy-ai bugfixes, all the random art that I didn’t get to in the 72 hours, and FULLSCREEN MODE (that last one’s a big one since you’re swinging the mouse everywhere in this game!).

If you haven’t yet tried my game, give it a shot! (It’s a lot of fun I promise :))
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-30/?action=preview&uid=35477

For the less video-game-playing inclined, I’d describe it as a top-down brawler with RPG (upgrade tree!) and Bullet-Hell (see picture) elements.
It’s got two parallel styles of play (sword or crossbow), 3 bosses, some semblance of story and LEL FUNNEH MEMES for all the humor points. (I’d say they’re relatively tasteful and fitting though…)

I’ll also take this as an opportunity to write a short post-mortem (since I do love reading others on the front page).

Real Life Stuff:

I met up with my old friend Josh for the Apportable meetup in San Francisco, we were planning on doing this event for a while (and he drove all the way from LA to get here – true sacrifice!).
The meetup itself was pretty dissapointing (I think we only say maybe 1-2 other serious teams there), but can’t complain about free food.
We did, however, meet up with our 3rd teammate there, Josephine.

I wish I took some photos of the meetup, but I’ll just have to settle with the dinner-after photo:

(bottom-right 3 of the photo).

We spent the rest of the weekend working at Intel HQ in San Jose (Thanks Josephine!).
I also remember being woken up at 2am by the earthquake that made national news while sleeping in a cubicle. Wasn’t too bad in the south bay.
Game Design:

I went in really wanting to do something involving RPG elements.
The main influence I had was a game I played during the last LD called Hanoka:

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/638425

(If you haven’t, you should totally play this game. It’s fucking glorious)

And this talk by Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U

(You should also watch this if you haven’t, I’d almost consider it required for anyone making any sort of action game).

We settled on the idea of a dream world pretty quick.
Here’s the general progression:
“Traveling between dream worlds” -> “Stories from multiple people dreaming” -> “Kid in school dreaming about different historical worlds” -> “minigame-based game with different dreams (dead end)” -> “kid sleeping in class dreaming he’s a superhero” -> “kid sleeping in class dreaming he’s a zelda-style knight” -> “the bosses are the other kids in the class” -> “his teacher is the princess”

Progress:

The original idea was 4 directions in the same vein as the 2d Zeldas.
Didn’t take too many in-progress caps, but check out this ridiculously fun looking prototype:

Sometime around midnight friday, one of us said “Wouldn’t it be a lot more fun if we just kept out the sword out the whole time?”
After that, it naturally progressed to a sword-follow-mouse and then a swing-mouse-to-swing-sword style of mechanic.
I usually like to have a fun prototype by the first night, so we were making decent progress. Sure, the game was just “green ball swinging grey stick at blue boxes”, but we could tell the “swing sword” mechanic would probably feel pretty great with some knockback, explosions, freeze frame and screen shake (watch the vlambeer video to know why!).

I do also remember spending a LOT of time working against the flixel hitboxes (specifically Flixel Powertools). I remember just being pretty annoyed the pixel-perfect collision not working properly (basically, any time you have an rotation, scale or offset).

The next day we met up at Intel HQ and worked on getting the game feel right, and I think we implemented one enemy (the small spider I think).
We were able to use just about everything the two artists made with little iteration, so kept on a good pace.

The day after (Sunday), I was feeling pretty behind so I made a goal of finishing all the enemies (small spider, big spider, jelly, boar) and 3 bosses (snake, spider and fireball). This was basically a day straight of coding/art.
Got all of those done around 2am monday, but was feeling pretty stressed out about the status of the game by then.
Stayed up and implemented most of the UI for the shop.

Woke up Monday 11-am (took the day off work!) ish feeling REALLY stressed. The game at that stage was just 3 untuned bosses, 4 enemies, and a couple of ideas on how to connect everything together.
Luckily, was saved by Josh. Since the art was mostly finished, I had him go on level design (enemy patterns, stats tuning) for the rest of the day. This involved some coding for Josh (first time ever I think?) but mainly a lot of playtesting and number-tuning. He did a really great job (you can tell just by the enemy placement and the balance with powerups!).

(Level code written by our artist!).

I managed to finish up the scene transitions, shop upgrades, bugfixes and everything else in the last 6 hours (that was the REAL crunch time!)
Did everything sound effect/music related in the last hour before submission. Luckily, I had a ton of general-purpose sound effects from my soon-to-be-released iOS game SpeedyPups, and some great chiptune music from Joshua Kaplan (from a previous game jam) that all fit really well.

With 10 minutes, added the last sound effects and submitted to the site. Was an intense and stressful 72 hours, but the final product is always worth it afterwards.

Looking back:

I was really happy with the final product, managed to get in those RPG mechanics that I wanted to play with (with quite a few elements more-than-inspired by Hanoka…).
I only had a couple of regrets:

-Swing mouse to swing sword felt like a little too wonky/unpredictable mechanic to base a game off of
-Story wasn’t really too clear (and ending could have been a little more clever)

and unrelated:

-Didn’t get too much time to talk to an Apportable Engineer (since I actually am using+have a problem with their SDK!)

Will probably try and get this game on FGL once all the Ludum Dare excitement dies down.

Thanks for reading, and see you next LD!

Soooo…. we’ve had so much fun working on this that we’ve wanted to keep working on it!

(Please remember to not vote based on this update, this is a post-submission update, but we would appreciate your thoughts!)

Link to Gimbal Fighter!

With added effects new enemies, sound effects and cleaned up game mechanics.

One of the things that I love about these events is that you learn so much, even more so from your failures than your successes.

Here are some notes from making my entry The Ghosts You Left Me.

What went well:

• I managed to achieve my goals of good mood, visuals and immersion
• No problems with deployment or submission
• When I was working on the game, none of the time was wasted. My work rate was fairly normal. It wasn’t too rushed, until the end, but it was solid production.
• I had a lot of fun making things from scratch – particularly the audio. You don’t really give much thought to this when you make something normally, using external sources. Grab a texture from CGTextures, grab some audio from Freesound, etc. Making it yourself is an entirely different process and it’s so much more exciting! I had to wander around my house, listening to noises, moving things and scraping things to see if they could produce the noises I was looking for. It was so much fun, and so much more real. Creating things from scratch makes you gain a new level of respect for things that you’d otherwise take for granted.
• I was incredibly happy to have created something, ANYTHING. It’s sometimes hard to push myself to work on personal projects, but when I do make something I’m usually quite proud of “levelling up” that small amount more.

What went badly:

• I should have gotten feedback earlier. The first person to play my game was my brother, who I showed it to just after I had submitted it. Watching someone play your game very quickly allows you to see its downfalls. He couldn’t understand the message audio clearly, and didn’t realise he had to click on Locker 3. To be fair though I didn’t have much gameplay to test until near the end, but I definitely need to get someone to play it BEFORE I submit, next time
• Computer crashed twice and lost a bit of progress… something might have got messed around when I installed a wireless adapter… not a huge issue
• Started to lose motivation after ~6 hours or so. There was a LAN party going on and I wanted to go, so after a bit of stalling I did go. I think it was more that I wanted some social interaction during that weekend, I felt like such a reclusive hermit staying at home. Because I didn’t really have much to show at that point besides some models, I didn’t feel like I had achieved much yet so it almost made it feel like if I continued that the entire weekend, it would be a waste of a weekend. I needed to get out.
• Didn’t give much thought to gameplay until about 10-12 hours in out of the 17 total, so it ended up being very simple (which I expected going in)

Playing the entries/ratings:

• I am absolutely inspired by the amount of talent here, and the quality and originality of some entries – makes me want to try a lot harder next time!
• It’s really exciting to get feedback on my entry. What I’ve received so far is generally very positive and there’s some constructive feedback as well which I agree with. I find myself checking my entry page numerous times a day to look for new comments (notifications system plis!).

Why I liked Ludum Dare:

• I needed the deadline that Ludum Dare imposed. I hate pressure, but I’m one of the people who need it in order to get anything done, otherwise I’m too “cruisey” with doing things.
• I also was motivated by the competition and the excitement of other people around the world doing it at the same time
• Getting feedback from fellow developers can be so different from getting feedback from others who have less or no experience in game development. They are both very capable of giving feedback regarding what they see, the content, what is bad and what could be better. They can both be impressed, or disappointed. But the difference is that one has a better understanding and appreciation what goes into making it, and how difficult it is to create something under such a short time frame. It’s much the same in different aspects of life really. I value feedback from both groups very much, but it’s very refreshing to get feedback from people who *know*.

Next Ludum Dare:

• I am DEFINITELY going to enter if I’m free that weekend
• Focus on more of a balance of nice aesthetics and gameplay, as the gameplay was lacking in my first entry
• I’d like to try and get more innovative gameplay rather than something that everyone’s already seen
• A bit more of a plan up-front, and maybe schedule my estimated time allocations
• Actually think more about the theme when it’s announced or in final voting stages, instead of thinking of an idea beforehand and then trying to fit in with the theme – the most innovative entries I’ve seen are ones which have a lot to do with the theme and creatively used it
• I’ll probably still do it solo, and alone, but I think taking a 1-2 hour break every 5 hours or so is important to keep my motivation levels up
• Get people to play it BEFORE I submit

Next steps for my entry?
I would ideally like to continue it. As I mentioned and many people agreed with, it was just an intro to a longer game, and wasn’t really a full game in itself. There’s so much more that could be done, and so much more that I want to do with it. I guess we’ll have to see how it goes with the motivation and setting aside time for it

And that’s all for now! Very excited for the next LD, and also excited to see the results of this one. Well done to everyone who put in a submission and best of luck.

Tags: postmortem

During Ludum-dare I created an average arcade game taking place between two creatures with the ability to switch places through their worlds.

What happened:
First I woke up and had a large break fast

turns out wordpress likes to flip images.

then got to my work station

it sure loves flipping images.

and began creating.

What went right:

• I got a basic, playable game in under 4 hours
• The graphics were amazing
• Beautiful music.
• Simple and addictive gameplay (I got addicted myself)
• Awesome particle effects

What went wrong :

• Two game stopping glitches
• 1. Impossible to pass through certain spike arrangements.
• 2. Random death
• DUMB non-perceptive people have no understanding the gameplay/core mechanics.
• Complaints of the music being too loud.
• The particle effects were not noticed, from their low transperency.

What will happen next time :

• I’ll prepare more time to work.
• Clear my weekend.
• Make the music quiet
• Make the particles POP
• Get a setup.

What will I do with the game :
I’ll probably make a post-game, I found my self to love it and others aswell, Plus with a little extra content, It’ll run itself and I won’t need to create as much content in the long run.

You promised a timelapse?
Oh, yes here it is.

orane you glad I didn’t misspell orange again?