Okay, so here we go! This is my first real LD, though I’ve done one Mini LD before, and I couldn’t be more pumped!
My goal? Finish. And if possible, retain some small scrap of my sanity. Priority is finish though.
What I’ll be using:
Engine/Coding: Unity
Art: Inkscape (probably)
Sound: bfxr
Music: if I get that far, I might try my hand at Bosca Ceoil. It seems easy to use enough.
Can’t wait!!!
I am planning on participating during the Jam this go-round. I will be teamed up with my friend, KevinEvans. We are both programmers, so that should be fun!
IDE: Atom
Frameworks: My Ludum Dare Frameowrk (Gamework)
Languages: JavaScript, NodeJS (maybe), Gulp/Uglify/Concat
Art: Paint.NET
Music: Audacity
The framework I am providing was created from scratch during the last Ludum Dare and it is very simple. I may add a readme before the compo in case anyone is interested in using it. I look forward to the event though, good luck everyone and happy holidays!
excited for my second LD!
Made 3rd place in innovation last time, hope to improve my other ratings this time around.
Tools (will probably vary depending on theme):
Unity
Krita or Pyxel Edit
Paint.Net
Audacity
my banjo >:)
Hey guys! Just some tips for streaming on Twitch or Hitbox or wherever you stream. I’m not the most experienced streamer, but I was able to quickly gain somewhat of a following on Twitch (How about you help out a bit?), so I would say I know enough to say this.
Talk
Don’t leave your viewers hanging. If you don’t talk, at least have music on. Just straight up silence will drive your viewers away from you, and over to Quill. Nothing annoys me more, than sitting down to a development stream, and absolutely nothing is happening. Not even music. I will tolerate streams with just music, but my personal preference is that you talk, because it’s more engaging. Getting your name said in a stream is way better than a “Hi” in chat. It also helps, because you can directly tell them what you’re making, instead of pausing to type the explanation for the millionth time. I’ve been told by actual viewers that they were watching me instead of ScepticalGamer69 because I was actually talking.
Quality
I’m not a huge stickler for quality, but it still matters, and I’m one of the generous people. I really don’t care about audio bitrate, as long as it doesn’t sound like you’re an alien from Venus. I usually have my audio bitrate at 128 kbps. I do have a pretty good mic though, which is another thing. I understand if you can’t afford a good mic, or even if you don’t want to get one because you don’t do this very often, but if I can hear you breathing and swallowing your saliva, it’s either too good, or it really sucks. Try to find that middle ground, where it sounds sharp, but it’s not too loud. As for video quality, I request that I can see what you’re typing clearly. If I can’t read your code, I will leave and go watch Quill.
Facecam?
This is really just up to you. I don’t have a webcam, so I can’t even if I wanted to, but I prefer to keep my face hidden. A facecam can make or break a stream, in my opinion. If you really sell it and make it good, it brings the viewer closer to the streamer. The conversations become more real. The viewer wants to stay, because you’re establishing more contact with them. It’s almost like you know them personally. If you really suck it up, your facecam becomes the annoying blur in the corner, and eventually becomes so irritating, people leave to watch Quill. Do you need to have a transparent background? I personally think not for a few reasons. 1) You have to be careful what color shirt you wear, because your torso may not exist on stream. 2) I’m always distracted trying to find the actually edge of the facecam. 3) It’s probably not worth the trouble. I’ve never tried. I know it’s easy, but that’s dependent on your streaming tool. When I was on Windows, I used XSplit, which made it very easy. I hear OBS makes it easy as well.
Music
I really don’t care, honestly. I can watch you with or without music, and it wouldn’t make a difference to me as a viewer. Others may think differently, but really, if it’s just playing in the background versus not at all, there’s very little difference. Not enough difference to make or break a stream. I believe I had more viewers when I had music in the background, so it obviously attracts more people, but I really don’t think not having music will drive viewers away. Really, it’s just a personal preference.
Interlude
You’ve got to take a break at some point, right? You’re probably going to get some sleep, eat something, say hi to any family/pets/monsters. Most people have a catchy, “Back in a sec!” wallpapers using a Ludum Dare wallpaper. That’s what I did last year, but I might experiment a little bit this year, and here’s my idea. Twitch is the only service I know of that allows “hosting” which basically lets you take someone’s stream and stream it to your channel, putting your viewers with their viewers. Once you unhost, viewers are once again separated, and it’s back to normal. Here’s the idea: Just because you need a break, doesn’t mean your viewers are going to take a break, or take as long of a break as you. So I think I might host a random channel streaming Ludum Dare, so people can see some more games being made, and have them right back when I want. Works as advertising, some people might do the same, and it’s better than a boring wallpaper.
So guys, there you have it! Wow, that’s a long post. Hope it was worth it. Check me out at my Twitch channel, which I mentioned at the start. And all of the Quill jokes were not attacking him at all, he’s just the guy who always steals viewers every compo. I do not expect you to have his setup if you want to stream. And again, those are all just tips, not rules. Just speaking from experience.
Good luck everyone! Hope this helped, and vote ☃! (Don’t actually, it’s too vague. Last time it was potato :P)
Looks like I am solo for now. I’m in for either the compo or jam depending on how quickly I can work something up.
Engine: Stencyl
Art: Poser and/or Pencyl
Music: Garageband and Audacity
I have mixed feelings about the themes. I have 3 ideas for games that I might be able to do during the jam. It all depends on what gets voted in. 
So, turns out I’m human. I will also be taking part in LD 31!
I have released zero games and have only made a few practice projects, but it’ll be fun to try and make something nice.
As for tools;
Game Engine: Unity with JavaScript (wrote in Notepad++ because Monodevelop seems only to run C# for some reason) or GameMaker Studio or even Construct 2 as they’re quicker/ don’t use code.
Graphics: Piq, and Paint.NET for editing.
Animation: Spriter, most likely.
Audio: Bfxr/garageband/creative commons stuff
This is my first jam since I decided my new career as a game developer. I still have a lot to learn and I need to test my base skills.
I will be using:
Base engine: XNA
Graphics: Gimp
Audio: Garageband (I play the piano)
I considered also using rpg maker for 2D games, but I dunno if it can be used in the compo challenge.
Good luck to everybody!
This will be my first Ludum Dare and I’m really looking forward to it :D!
Excited to see all the submissions!
Tools
Sublime Text
Lua
LÖVE
Aseprite
Tiled
bfxr.net
I’m looking to have some fun this weekend in the game jam! Leave a short description of you or your team and I’ll get back to you ASAP. Cheers!
My email is 13tannerhowell@gmail.com
soundcloud.com/Tanner_Howell
First LD I’ll be participating in. I have been meaning to do so for quite a while, but only now do I think I know enough to, at the very least, try. I don’t believe I’ll manage to get something done in 48 hours, but I’ll try it nonetheless. The main objective is to learn, and to have fun, after all.
I’ll be using Code::Blocks, as the IDE; C++, as the language; SDL, as the library; Audacity, as the sfx-maker; Paint.net, as the gfx-maker and, whatever other free tool I might need will be decided in the coming days before the competition.
Regardless, fun times should ensue 😀
Hello everybody! I’m back once again for the 5th time, hopefully. As always I’m going to give you a brief rundown of tools I’m going to use.
-Engine: Either my sloppy coded framework available at https://github.com/Techblogogy/GameEngine with C++ and SDL or I’m going to use pure HTML5 and JS. I’ll see. I’m not using Unity this time, cause I want more programming challenge.
-Art: Photoshop CC 2014 and nothing else.
-Sound: Logic Pro X and http://www.bfxr.net
-Computer: Good old MacBook Air
-Yogscast Jingle Jam – go support the charities
Also I have some excellent news, it’s second day of winter and it’s snowing like a mother outside plus I got a bit of cold, so if you find this post weird don’t be afraid.
Here’s a little LD31 art I’ve made. A bit primitive, but I’m very exited + did I mention the cold?
Finally it’s time for another LD! This will be my second time participating. My last game got into #394 overall (out of 1500 entries), and that’s something I have to beat. My goal is getting in the top 200 this time. I’m not as prepared as I’d prefer to be, but like many others, I’m doing last minute preparations.
Engine: Unity3D 4.6 in 2D mode
I feel fairly comfortable using the Unity3D engine at this point, since I’ve used it off and on since Unity 3 version. Programming in C# is something I do via work I’m not worried.
I have a small library of extension methods n stuff I import into all projects I start, available here: https://bitbucket.org/taviandir/unityextensions/src
Graphics: Paint.NET, Photoshop
Audio: Yeah, about those last minute preparations, ehhe…
I’m browsing through what others are using and taking notes. I’ve used the SFXR previously, but never put any real effort into sounds and music.
Audio software that looks promising and relatively easy that I’m gonna look into are:
Bosca Coil
SunVox
LMMS
http://jfxr.frozenfractal.com/
Audacity
and more…
I’m hoping one of them will turn out decent.
Soooo excited for this LD!!! Good luck everyone, and I’ll see you among the top entries 😉
Tavi out.
Hello, everyone. We here at Tech Valley Game Space have one more presentation before Ludum Dare rolls in: How to survive Ludum Dare! I’ll be presenting about my strategy on approaching game jams on Twitch.tv on December 4th, 7:00 PM EST. This includes how to remain healthy during the event, how to come up with game ideas very quickly, and how to scope your game. Check it out!
Tags: live streaming, presentation, Twitch.tv
I’m in for the compo. It’s been a while since I’ve completed one of these things, but let’s give it another go, shall we?
Editor: Sublime Text 2
Language: Haxe 3/OpenFL
Frameworks: Flaxen (HaxePunk and Ash-Haxe)
Base Code: GitHub
Version Control: GitHub
Visuals: Photoshop, FilterForge
Audio: Audacity, Bfxr, Renoise and some plugins
I do enjoy working with an entity component system like Ash, even though the Haxe port hasn’t been updated much this year. I haven’t done much work on Flaxen lately, so I really should spend a little time this week to take it for a spin and make sure everything works rather than wasting my weekend fixing my tools. Good luck, everyone!
Sadly, due to an overwhelming amount of exams I am thoroughly unprepared for, I am unable to participate 
However I will still be following peoples streams and playing everyones games so christmas isn’t completely ruined 😛
Hi all!
I skipped Ludum Dare 28 due to job interviews in Seattle… and now I’m here! It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like to start a jam at 6pm (PST) instead of 2am (BST) for a change (: (I missed LD29 and 30 due to other commitments)
Who else is joining in from the Seattle area? Just curious!
Anyway, game-wise, I’ll probably go for something web-based this time. I haven’t had enough spare time to look into APIs much, but these seem likely:
Dev platform: Visual Studio on Windows
Language: TypeScript most likely
Potential libraries: Babylon.js, Cannon.js, maybe Three.js; whatever works
Programmer art: Inkscape, GIMP
Audio: Autotracker, BFXR
Looking forward to getting back into it! (:
My first time in a LD!
No, wait, correction: My first time in a game jam! Exciting stuff.
Because I’m boring and have no friends, I’ll be working solo, likely using Unity and GIMP.
I’ve only been learning C# and game dev for about a year now, so I’m still a bit of a nooblet. I’m taking part because I want to challenge myself and see how far I’ve come.
It should be a fun experience, even if I fail in epic fashion. Though, I really hope I do good…
Good luck, everyone! I look forward to seeing all the wonderful creations that get put forward.
– cOOp.
Due to the fact that I have to sing at Massey Hall on Dec 7th and 8th, I cannot do this one.
Hopefully I can next time!
Here’s a reminder I’m doing a presentation called Make it Juicy: Easy Ways To Make Your Game More Engaging on 7:00 PM EST via Twitch.tv. I’ll be discussing about techniques I use to improve the game feel.
Hey everyone, I’m in for my first ever Ludum Dare from the Troy, MI area. I’ve drafted a few of my friends who will be working on their own games as well.
I’m a C# developer professionally but am hoping to switch to the indie game dev scene over the coming years. This challenge marks the start of that journey.
For the LD 31 jam I’ll be using the following:
Editor: Webstorm
Language: Typescript
Frameworks: CreateJS
Base Code: Yeoman webapp-rjs generator to scaffold out the application
Visuals: Photoshop
Audio: Audacity, Bfxr, Abundant Music
Live Stream: My code and our all-weekend LD Party at http://www.twitch.tv/itssoun
Code: https://github.com/ondrejbalas/LD31 (will be pushing commits throughout the weekend)
I’m really excited about this. Good luck to everyone participating!