Finally, my post-mortem right before judging ends!

I hesitated to enter due to some obligations over the weekend. I ended up starting 2 hours late, and did indeed have a really short weekend. 25 hours in all, which isn’t much of course. So considering that, it’s not too bad. Judge for yourself: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-32/?action=preview&uid=42145

However…

What Went Wrong

Basically, I wasted a ton of time on the physics and the UI. And the UI still sucks, although I spent a serious amount of time generalizing things to be able to add more power ups, but wasn’t really able to use much of it. I haven’t really done any elaborate UI before with Unity, and so I was looking for good ways of doing things. So on the positive of that, I learned a few things.

For physics, I ran into all sorts of snags. The car’s acceleration tripped me up big time. I really wanted to car to move slower as it wound down. That effect is somewhat there, but not as clear as I had intended. I struggled with the acceleration a lot to find out I was doing it wrong (updating forces in the regular update method is baaaad… somehow I knew that, just never had to deal with it). The other issue, which actually isn’t fixed, is that a head-on collision between car and the walls dead-stops the car. I’m not sure if it’s something specific I did, or some typical physics/speed/update issue. Any sort of slight angle (which most people seem to do) avoids the issue, so I decided not to waste time on that.

I’m not happy with the music. Basically, the tracks aren’t entirely on beat with each other. Due to lack of time, I decided to not spend more time on it. I think most people don’t notice but it really does bother me

So all in all, wasted time on some things, which severely cut into the power ups and upgrades I had planned. The initial idea was also to unlock certain power ups as levels progressed. Oh, well.

What Went Right

Well, I did learn quite a few new things. And I also used quite a lot of lessons learned from the previous LD. Mainly, last time I thought I did a good job in making it easy to create new levels. In my after-jam updates I reworked some of that. This LD, I took those lessons learned and pretty much made an entire level editor with little effort.

I did come up with an interesting concept (again). Last LD I scored pretty good in innovation, but not so well in fun. At least this time I got several comments saying they had fun. That was definitely something I had in mind from the start, and I think it worked. I made sure the music also was lighter and more fun.

I also wanted to do a better job at the graphics. I’m not an arts guy so it’s a challenge. I did some more Gimp stuff and a few Blender things, but not quite as much as I wanted. Still, for my goal to be a bit more polished I can argue it’s better than last time, though not close to what I wanted to do. But I do feel I’m a bit more comfortable at least with the tools like Blender and Gimp than last time. Also, the rotating camera in the menu, although a silly feature, is one of those things I feel is a step in the right direction on going beyond the mechanics into better polish.

Overall

I’m not very happy with the entry for two reason. 1) It’s a good concept and I think I was able to prove the concept and show the potential. But the lack of upgrades and powerups is to the detriment of my idea. But it was a pure time issue. 2) I do like puzzle style games myself, but I’m somewhat annoyed I didn’t go an entirely different direction than last time. I think when I looked at the theme, I was thinking Angry Birds style stuff and ended up getting stuck in the physics puzzle space. So, it’s not intentional but I really need to try a non-physics puzzle game next time!

We’ll see where I end up. But personally, I wish myself better luck next time.

Help the cats and rate

Check out Steve and the Double Barrel Snotgun if you haven’t already:

Play as Steve in this epic office adventure. Inflict terror on your mortal co-workers through the use of your supreme weapon, the double barrel sNotgun.

Controls:
A and D to move left and right
Space to continue conversations
Combat explained in-game

This year’s Ludum Dare comprised of one long weekend with lots of caffeine and not enough sleep, but Team OrangeMoose was victorious! Check out our submission to the Jam and let us know what you think!

Terraforming

Genre: Metroidvania/Platformer
Platform: Windows
Engine: Game Maker Studio
Setting: Sci-fi/Dystopian Future

Postmortem

This was our second time entering the jam as a team, and I have to say that this time went a lot smoother! Our previous entry was a super basic platformer with heavy emphasis on art, no sound, and a major bug that prevented most players from finishing the game… So this time we made sure we had sound and did our best to test for bugs before the deadline! Heck, we even managed to get a start screen in there.

Still, our entry was far from perfect. Once again, I (Pralie) handled all of the design, writing, and programming, so I feel that the mechanics are nowhere near as smooth as I wanted. In order to get everything into the game, I didn’t spend much time tweaking the movement or projectile speeds, or testing collision issues. My focus is on design, and programming is not my strong suit, so I think that next year we will try to find a programmer to add to the team! I think I was also a little overambitious on the number of levels I wanted to include; the game probably could have worked just as well if I had cut a few levels and better incorporated the mechanics. On the plus side, I think the last couple of levels were pretty strong and did a good job incorporating the mechanics. The narrative elements were a lot of fun to write for me, and I hope everyone enjoyed the “ending”.

Alissa handled all of the art again, but this time around, she also did all of the animations/sprite sheets and found all of our sound effects and background music. She did a great job as usual with the art style, and actually having sound this time made a huge difference. Some of the animations aren’t the smoothest – and some things don’t have animations at all – but I think that just comes down to timing since we had so many assets to crank out.

All in all, I would say that this year’s entry for us was a much better success than our previous one. Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who played our game!

– Pralie (@praliedutzel) & Alissa (@etherealfox)

I’m wondering what could have happened, because we have lost one vote and one coolness when I reloaded the Ludum Dare page. Before we had 82 coolness and 51 votes, now we have 81 coolness and 50 votes. Wtf? 😛

Anyone else experienced this? Any idea? Anyone?

BTW you should play our game TOM-CATCH, here.

Hey,

Does anyone know how many ratings you need before you game is placed on the final rankings.

Also please play Legend of the Barber and leave a comment,if you do I’ll play your entry asap.

Greetings Lucas

It’s Self-Promo’s Day !

We added music and sound effects to our post-jam version. We are two coders and it’s our first attempt in music composition. It could have ended up much worse 😀

Hope you will enjoy the gloomy atmosphere and the nasty-naughty-dirty “Uh!?” of our “Final Boss” (I will let you find out about this) !

Follow me, young fearless child. This way to face your colorful nightmares :

Best served at night before going to sleep.
Enjoy

Still updating my pdf game “A Knight and A Line” (Game page here). Currently, I have done it for 5 hours. It is mostly focusing on concept of what I will add especially the events, choice, and little graphic for the implemented concept.

The previous version, there were 3 events. In the next update, there will be more than 10 events. Also, I added extra choice as well for the original events.

New area, evil dryland, dryland with thorns.

I will also add a new area. This one is evil dryland. It is a recolor of dryland but with some thorns, which indicates that it is close to the demon’s castle.

Tags: progress, update

Well… I almost finished re-making Ultimate Booter engine. My next project will be noir styled Megaman with game mechanics similar to ultimate booter. (if you don’t played yet, click here)

Here is little video

Hello there my fellow indie developers, today I want to announce that the game I’ve been working on for the past months has been released. This project started back in “Ludum Dare 30” (Connected Worlds). We saw potential on it so we decided to focus and develop a good game on that topic. Our entry BERTA was the starter point, then it went through many changes and almost 9 months later we finally finished!

(It’s not Berta but it is a ball).

This game is about a Spunky little ball that has the ability to switch between colors in order to interact with the environment of the level. Everything that matches the ball’s color becomes solid, therefore you have to choose wisely what color to use. For example, you’ll want to be the same color as the coins but not the same as the spikes! Or maybe you need that a certain platform matches your color in order to roll over it without falling.

So be prepared for a fun and innovative gameplay on your device… Also prepare to die a countless amount of times…

I hope you enjoy this game as much as I did when I created it! Also don’t forget to leave a review on the Store page if you actually had a great time playing it.

AppStore: https://appsto.re/us/ZtiR5.i

GooglePlayStore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Inspination.SpunkyBall 

Tags: android, ball, berta, game, iOS, LD30, mobile, postmortem, spunky, spunkyball, unity, unity3d, update

Hi everyone!

Ludum Dare 32 is about to finish, and I just want to show you some games

that made me enjoy like a child.

Nuclear Autumn by phi6 – Jam Entry

I´m in love with this game. A whole experience.

……………..

X-11 “Gust Gunner” by cowboycolor – Jam Entry

8 bit platformer like. Great music, great gameplay and really cool to use

the leaf-blower. One of my favourites!

………………

Underground Hangovers by Deconstructeam – Jam Entry

I think is one of the best video games song i’ve ever heard. The pixel art

AMAZING.

Fantastic game.

……………..

Avian Days by esayitch – Compo Entry

Man, this game is really hard, but you can’t stop playing it.

…………….

Mario and the Poetry by gruhn – Compo Entry

This game has something really special, a great mood. Play and be happy doing it.

……………

Hey! and don´t forget, if you have time after playing those great games, to play mine.

Scream(But not too much) by Embalaje – Jam Entry

A metroidvania like “game”, with screaming mechanics and nice pixel art.

Tags: 8bit, earthquake, Ludum Dare, metroid, metroidvania, pixel art, platform, platformer, scream, top, videogame

Ok, it’s been almost three weeks now that we made SNIFF and we decided to publish a fixed version of the game. Character controller is way better now so you can normally jump over rays. We also made the drugs easier to pick up and they are not ignoring enemies hitboxes anymore. Enjoy !

For an all new experience of the game, it’s HERE !!

Here we go…this type of question, please take it lightly. xD’

My question is about the games that appear at the “play and rate games”. They aren’t suppose to be kind random? o.0

I knew that rating games would make my game appear my often for other people, but my rate page didn’t change very much for each time I went… is it really suppose to be this way?

Tags: question

Right, so I tried to make a post compo version of NOPAEW with more levels and features and bosses and fun. But… I had too many ideas and too little time. So i’m not done. Also more games need rating. For the time being here’s a gameplay video for you to enjoy if you’re into that sort of thing (or you don’t like difficult games… (like me ;-))

Also, some things I learned:

• Minimalistic pixel art is well received.
• It helps to choose a genre that needs no explanation and play with its conventions, there is still a lot of innovation possible.
• Should not try to implement elevator-platforms… total waste of time.
• People are very particular about jumping mechanics being “right” (gravity vs constant speed, inertia vs instant response, overall movement speed, …). Still need to research that some more.
• Enemies/Creeps/Trash can be pretty standard and still be fun. There are a ton of simple ideas what make for fun combat.
• 1-hit deaths are easily frustrating, should always allow the player a second chance e.g. via double-tap death, companion swap, power-up loss, or some such thing (Mario had Yoshi and mushrooms, Samus had hitpoints (meh).
• Test all platforms and not release the ones that can’t be tested on faith.
• A smaller hit-box is always appreciated.
• Script execution order can be different on different platform builds, should always make sure dependencies are explicit.
• Others have better ideas.
• Jumping and Explosions are like bacon and gravy.
• Everything you put in your game can be misunderstood as either a bug, a feature, bad design or good design.
• If there is a clever way, there should also always be an obvious/brute-force way.

That much for now. More later. Maybe.

Play & Rate

Come and play, the playground is waiting^^

Hello, I am releasing an alpha version of my post-jam game. This is my third post since no one saw the first one. It has been ported to Android and has been developed from scratch. Please check it out by joining the testing group here or by download straight from here! Please leave some feedback on this post. Please tell me if you don’t like the music…

NOTE: JOINING TESTING GROUP CAN TAKE A FEW HOURS UNLESS YOU USE THE LINK ON THE PAGE.

Thanks!

we here at Tech Valley Game Space (TVGS) is live streaming right now! Let us know if you’re watching in the chat, and we will play your game first! We’ll also be streaming tomorrow (Friday) from 7:00 PM to 12:00 AM EST. We’ll also do our best to post the games we’ve played onto Youtube as well, as you can see below in our automatically-updated playlist:

Our Twitch.tv channel is at:
http://www.twitch.tv/techvalleygamespace

All the games we plan on playing are listed below:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RbvfWHMb-vWmYBagjjnfVAMKugG1vgQ41QFQ_Wa4YjE/edit?usp=sharing

Chaos Tomb is too hard. What makes it too hard? Short answer: I made the treasure too hard to reach, so players were poorly equipped to play the game. I should have made weapons and hearts easier to access, and hidden something else (gold coins, stars, collectible keychains) around the levels to challenge players. For the long answer, see the full article, complete with visualizations using D3.js.

Full article

Hello fellow entrants.  Here is a small retrospective of my Bubbles and Slugs submission.

Good things

• First completed arcade entry.
• Felt like I delivered a complete game and I am still playing it.
• Just kept moving (even if you don’t like the theme or things are going slowly).
• Stuck to core simple concepts, just get some bubbles and slugs up and about.
  Then gave them something to eat and something to eat them!
• The most relax Ludum I have had.

Things to work on

• Check for stability on machines that have never had any develop applications installed.
• Making something with more content next time (Only 8 levels).
• Would of nice to have the game playable earlier.

Skipped Best Practice
Even though it did not matter in the end I did not follow some of my standard advice,  such as…

• Push momentum early and get it playable asap. (not playable till the last 24 hours)
• General design on paper and have an overall plan. (two pages of sparse notes)
• Do / Code the game only.  Just keep pushing hard. (some leisure time in first 2 days).
• Work through most of that final night (slept as normal).

Unexpected things learned
Themes can be a pain and if they are just make fun of it! Joke and laugh at it.  Pretty soon you will have something to work with that amuses you.

Regardless of pace things worked out in the end.