Language: Java

IDE: Eclipse Luna

Library: My own game library. You can view and download it here

Graphics: Aseprite

This will be my third time doing ludum dare and my first time with a team. Our team consists of 4 programmers and an artist.

Hi everyone !

This is my first Ludum Dare and I’m so excited !!

So let’s get details about my tools :

Language : C++

Librairies : SFML, Thor, SFGUI, zlib and my own : https://github.com/Cmdu76/LudumDare31.git

IDE : CodeBlocks or maybe CLion

Graphics : KolourPaint

Audio : Audacity or BFXR

Okay, so this will be my first game jam I guess,

I’ll definitly be using construct2.
Otherwise, I’ll just do with what I have under my hands at the moment, my microphone and audacity, demo of FL studio, jfxr.. and maybe gimp or paint.net.. I dunno yet actually ;D
Hopefully I’ll be using my brain though.

Sooo.. See you guys for ludum dare I guess.

… in and hyped for my third ludum dare! My plan is to score better than last time in every single category and if that doesn’t work to score better in at least one category and if that doesn’t work to atleast somewhat finish the game and if that doesn’t work to at least have fun failing!

Tools similar to the last time as I have a pretty good workflow by now.

• Language Lua
• Framework Löve with Hump and Quickie helper libraries.
• IDE Zerobrane Studio

• Graphics Gimp/Inkscape combined with a newly acquired Drawing Tablet
• Audio Jfxr or my microphone for sound effects, Sunvox or Bosca Ceoil for music and Audacity for editing.

While preparing for this ludum dare, I stumbled over a youtube review of my ld29 submission which gave me an extra boost of motivation! Can’t wait for the weekend to arrive. Good luck everyone – don’t forget to take a few breaks!

So I realized that I haven’t spent the proper amount of time actually preparing for this LD compo, which means that I’m going to be doing a bit of coding right up until the compo itself starts.

Since I’m doing my entry in C++, like I tend to do, I have to write up all the utility code that I’m going to use during the compo itself. So I’ve set up a GitHub repo where I’m writing up this code, and I’m doing it properly this time. With test cases and the “engine” separate from the game code itself. (Not an engine per-se, more a large bunch of useful snippets and classes)

Though I guess that since I’m planning on doing as much of the game as possible through scripts the whole separation is a moot point.

Either way, you’re welcome to see the code skeleton as it fleshes out to something that can actually be used. Going to tag, branch, and try to keep the game code split from the rest. Maybe the framework will end up as something other people might be able to use after all.

Feel free to watch the progress at https://github.com/ace13/LD31 and I wouldn’t mind hearing any suggestions you might have for useful things to include into such a framework. And feel free to throw issues at me if you find things that are just plain wrong in the code, constructive criticism is always welcome.

Happy coding to you, and I hope you’re better prepared than me for what’s coming.

Tags: Angelscript, C++, compo, framework, github, sfml

Hello,

So my first experience with Ludum Dare was the October compo with SpeedBird. Now let’s try a real LD, hopefully I can get something fun together.

My tools:

Programming language: Javascript
Engine: Crafty js or Phaser
Graphics: GIMP, maybe Inkscape
Audio: sfxr, SunVox

I don’t know yet if I go for the Jam or the original LD.

We’re in for our second LD! As our first wasn’t very good (poor time management, lack of help, etc), we’ll try to take that as experience and finally build a good game!

HOWEVER, we’re concerned about the Unity license. We’re thinking of activating the Unity 30-day trial, then make our Ludum Dare game with the Pro trial version. Is it legal/possible for us to develop the game with the trial, then export it and upload it to out hosting site, for people to play (for free)? If any of you know it, please tell us.

Thanks!

Our team is consisted of  1 artists/musician, 1 programmer.

Game Engine: GameMaker Studio

Graphics: GIMP/INKSCAPE

Music: Real Instruments

OH MY GOD YOU MADE A DEJA VU JOKE.
PoV YOU ARE THE BEST.

For those few who don’t get it, watch this helpful video on the concept:

😀

     I’ve read the entire internet and I’m still haven’t figured this out. Can someone here help?

I want Santa to throw a snowball. So I create a snowball object and on each frame I update it’s position by adding the vector to the position to get the new position.
But vectors are always linear. I’m trying to think of some way to use the algebraic function for a parabola to get the ball to travel an arc path – but nothing I try works.

I *could* just do it with a bunch of if statements, like this:  (if snowball > starting positition + 10){ reverse y direction; }

But that gives me less of an arc and more of a sharp angle, plus – it’s not very elegant.

If angry birds and Bloons can do it, surely it’s not too hard, right?

UPDATE:

Thanks everyone for your help! I think I understand it a *little* better now. I had more control when I turned off the engine gravity and made gy myself. Here are two solutions that worked really well for me in case anyone has this same issue:

  In the second one, playing with the first three variables gives you different sizes and speeds of arc on your ball.

The dynamic duo of  @riv_roy  and  @Trurkowski  are entering again!

Same tools as last time.

• Unity3D
• GIMP
• ProTools
• Logic

  We wish everyone a good  time!

Hello all! I forgot the link to Yamanu, and because the “I’m In” floodgates have been opened, I shall re-post what I had before.

Today, I’m going to go over what I did wrong last time, and what I’m going to do to fix it…

Yamanu Game Engine

Yeah, I kinda failed last time with Yamanu. Everything I was hoping it would do, really failed hard. My own game engine- seriously??? Don’t worry though, this time, everything with Yamanu 2.0 has been tested hundreds of times. Also, Yamanu this time, has more useful stuff instead of not as useful game-breaking stuff, so check it out here.

Audio

I worried WAY too much about audio last time. Audio is honestly, in my opinion, one of the last things you need to worry about, and one of the last things I will judge. If you don’t have audio, I’ll obviously give you a zero, but I’m pretty generous otherwise. Most others care about gameplay and graphics, so programming and art is what you should focus on. People are much more harsh with bugs and graphics, as I have experienced firsthand.

Don’t Advance Too Early

I program in Java, so I jumped right in to making classes for every possible object in the game. Don’t do that. Obviously, you need to set up a good foundation early to make it easier to code later, but I created way too complex of a foundation before the bricks were even delivered. And the bricks didn’t like the foundation too much, which made it a nightmare to add more functionality later. I didn’t even know all of the mechanics of the game yet, so when I wanted to add something else, it wouldn’t be possible with the foundation I had.

PLAY GAMES

I totally didn’t play many of other’s games, so not many people knew about my game, and my game got a lower score. If I had only played more games… Lesson: PLAY GAMES. Stay home from work/school/asylums and play a whole bunch of games, and give feedback. It’ll help a lot, I promise ya.

Well, that’s all I have. Plan early, don’t use crappy engines, prioritize, and play the gamzsez.

Bye!

Will be my second Ludum Dare.

Didnt manage to finish anything last time, hopefully ive learnt some lessons from last time and ill get something completed this time around.

Using photoshop for the graphics and java, lwjgl from the my own stuff from my repo located below

https://github.com/Discobeard

Good luck!

For the third LD in a row, I’m double-booked for the weekend, and I don’t want to go through the stress of juggling life and LD again. Better luck next time I suppose…

If I manage to squeeze any time in, I will be using

Engine – Love2d

Graphics – GIMP

IDE – Notepad++

Sound – SFXR

Good luck to all the participants!

I never finished a game for LD but this time (3th time) I’m going to finish something…

I’ll be very short on time because I’ll be travelling but… lets see what happens…

Language: Java

Graphics: Paint.NET

Sound: Idk… I’ll figure it out…

Since my last time I failed because I took too long on small thing with LWJGL I’m going to try pure java this time…

Good Luck Everyone! Enjoy it!

This will be my first time participating and I’m super excited to give it a go.

Engine: Unity 3D

Graphics: GIMP

Sound: Looking into that now… probably some bfxr though

I’m mostly excited just to be participating.  Can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!

-Scott

Tags: ldjam

2’nd Ludum Dare, 1’st on my own.

Hopefully I can work my head around GameMaker before it starts and I will be doing the graphics in Gimp. I may add sound depending if i can work out how to do it, as I’m a coding newbie.

The theme for LD30 was Connected Worlds. I loved that theme. It was spcific, but at the same time left a lot of space for a personal touch.

And, somehow, I managed to fuck it up.

I remember having at least a couple ideas I could implement that I really liked. I worked hard for most of the two days to complete at least one idea.

But all I ended up with was nothing. Zero.

I was so frustrated with myself, I promised myself to not make the same mistake again (although it’s been 5 LDs now that I say this).

So, here is a quick run up of what I fucked up last time, to use as a reminder to not do it again this time.

Wasting time

First reason I want to punch myself in my right testicle is

This is a big one. Time waste comes in a lot of fashions. From the simple “watching youtube instead of working ont he game”, to something more design oriented.

48 hours is a microscopic amount of time to develop a game in, not wasting time, should be the n°1 priority.

The most important thing is, are you working on your game? If you aren’t, you should. Every hour is precious and should be dedicated to your game. You can watch fail vines on youtube when time isn’t such a critical factor. As in, not during the compo.

But where the biggest time waste lies to me is in game design decisions. So, if I can promise myself to focus on the game, we should move onto…

Bad idea

So when I get the mental strength to work on the game, I pick up an idea that I really liked. But it was as easy to implement as it is to teach a rock to swim.

It was just impossible to do in the timeframe I had, and that was because of some bad basic choices.

Basically, the game was a sort of  point and click game where you find an abandoned phone on the street and have to discover what happened to his owner by digging through it.

The concept was really cool. I still want to implement it in a game, sooner or later, just not in a jam. I wanted to have a full smartphone experience, where you can watch videos, read texts and make phone calls. Overambitious much?

The problem with such a design is that it requires multiple states, meaning that I had to program each state in a different way according to how the user could interact with it. Usually, the lower the amount of states, the easier the game is to program, because it cuts out a lot of  bugs that could happen at runtime.

I didn’t know that at the time, and jumped right in the development, finding myself in the mud up to my neck by the first 24 hours.

In the past LDs, I had to restart an idea almost every time because of a bad choice and overshooting. Throw it in the trash and start from zero with 8 hours already on the times. Man that sucked. Just choosing the right idea can save a LOT of time.

So yeah, it is really, really important to find an idea that can be developed efficiently, and even more so to adapt the idea during development to optimize the time for development.

So, we get it. Be smart. But unfortunately, the biggest problems come from another part of the game, which is…

The Aesthetics Pit

This is the biggest mutilator of LD games right after the two above. I lost at least a couple compos over this.

Graphics, music, story… We can all agree that they are what makes or breaks a game. And it is fine to work on the art of your game to make it look pretty and cute.

But this comes only AFTER the core gameplay is done.

I finally understood, probably a little late, that if you start working on your final aesthetic touches without having a playable core gameplay in place, you are driving all out into a pitfall (unless you REALLY know what you are doing).

Programming is a difficult and long process, and chances are that a lot of stuff will go wrong. If that is the case, it is better to sacrifice the time you would have given to graphics or music to fix the core mechanics.

Remember that you can submit a game with programmer’s art (and get good scores for it too), but you can’t submit a bunch of sprites without a game. This ain’t DeviantArt.

—————–

And that’s all folks. This isn’t exaustive, but I’m sure that if I can avoid this Holy Trinity of bullshit, I will weep out at least 90% of time wastes during the compo.

Hope this was useful for you, it certainly was for me.

If you want you can check out my past LD entries and postmortems here for more useful tips.

See you this weekend. And good luck!

Tags: mistakes, motivation, suggestions

So here we are once again.

This is the second time i participate in Ludum dare, but never have i finished something. But this time is going to be different i tell myself. Why? You might ask, well this time i ain´t alone.

This ld i am doing it together with my friend Mikey. This is the first time Mikey is using and programming for the Unity engine so i will be acting both artist and programmer + teacher. The workload is set up like following!

Me

• Art
• Sound
• Creation pipeline
• Dictator
• Some programming where its needed.

I will be using:

• 3D stuff: Blender
• 2D stuff: Gimp
• Sound stuff: FL Studio and my girlfriends piano
• IDE: Visual Studio 2013
• Language: C#
• Engine: Unity
• Brain?

Mikey

• Programming
• Programming
• And more programming

What Mikey will be using:

• IDE: Visual Studio
• Engine: Unity
• Language: C#
• Brain?