While we’re porting for other platforms (we’ve got just Linux and Windows binaries there so far, but there will be WebGL version before Wednesday) feel free to jump to LDJAM and play our game, it has been finished.

It is here, on LDJAM website.

I hope you will enjoy it and you’ll definitely hear more from us more!

Thanks!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$19386

Dear lord I finished my game at 8:59 and now, NOW my computer decides to lag and Unity has problems exporting. sigh

We would like to present our game to you. This is a psychological drama with elements of surrealism. The room of the protagonist became a trap for him. Leaving it, he always returns to it. Only the tasks change. The fate of the protagonist and his internal conflicts are embodied in reality. He will have to find answers to questions that have long tormented him or forever lost his way in the phantasmagoric world.

http://u92313dg.bget.ru

https://geeky-penguin.itch.io/small-world-gems

Hey Guys its my second ludem dare and i have had lots of fun im still learning so my game is not that good but i still hope you enjoy!

After three hard days we present to you our first Ludum Dare Jam Entry.

It was sometimes a real struggle but also a lot of fun. :grin:

https://samurai-spark.itch.io/dailyroutine

We are very proud of what we were able to accomplish within this time period. The Project was created by the two of us in 60 hours.

We will propably fix some bugs afterwards, so feel free to report any bugs you may encounter. We had a blast but for today we need some sleep. :sleeping:

Here is a little preview of our work.

Help a kitten absorbed into the orb toy return home to the mistress! :3

download & play

ldjam.com page

So, this year's theme is "A Small World". Space constraint isn't exactly my favorite constraint to have but it will help me focus on a feel important things I'm usually guilty of: Large Scale am Ambitious Mechanics.

For this LD I'll try to make an exploration platformer with focus on simple mechanics and level geometry.

I hope to set the game in an valley or island with a castle-like/fort strucuture on the center and one or two more interesting things locations to explore around.

I decided to make the game in "GameBoy Terms", which means I'm using a tiny resolution upscaled to make it easier to play and a 4 color pallete to speed the art asset creation (I'm nitpicky, even with my own stuff).

With this I hope to create the game with little to no problems since my focus will be entirely on art assets and scenario, even though these aren't my strenghs. This will be a nice challenge.

After hundreds of liters of coffee, energy drinks and few bottles of beer, I've managed to put Ark Initiative into somewhat playable state. I think my biggest mistake was not to make a working, playable prototype first, but scope of the project was too big and I couldn't lose any time. ( it was done in two days as we couldn't work on Sunday :cry:.

Links

Site

Game

I'm happy to say that I've officially completed and uploaded my first Ludum Dare game! It was a ton of fun creating it over the weekend, and I can't wait for the next one. I've learned a lot about game design, and I'm going to create a way better game next time.

Here's some screenshots:

You can play it here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/bitverse

Help a kitten absorbed into the orb toy return home to the mistress! :3

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2puyhojqflwqxoc/AADTJB7u4f6FdqIY7k0hgc90a?dl=0

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/catsorbed

The game is submitted, despite a million little things I wished I could have done differently. I think that is the point, though. If you waited until your creations were perfect, they never would see the light of day.

If you like interactive fiction, or ghosts, take a look at it!

Hi everyone! I'm excited to finally have something to show for my first full Ludum Dare experience ever. I've always been interested in the past but never able to follow through, which is discouraging but NOW I'VE DONE IT!! I have a game that starts and (has multiple) ends!

I wrote and programmed in Ren'Py, while @colm-eccles did the beautiful artwork.

This is a game about feeling trapped in a tiny nest with a family that doesn't want you. What you do, whether you cooperate or fight back, and who you side with is up to you!

Multiple branching, multiple endings (5 of them), and all that jazz.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$27723

I definitely had to rush to complete near the end, so I apologize for the rough patches especially near the end. I'll still be doing a lot of polishing, but will be keeping version 1.0 up as well.

Thank you for stopping by!

Well my Mac decided to throw in the towel during export, so that's that... just wanted to present the idea despite the being highly dissapointed i'm missing out on this year's Jam.

The idea of the game was to move a sound particle from one side of the map to the other by using audio levels and volume which the player would control.

I was inspired by my 4th graders to make this game after we taught them about soundwaves and how to use soundtrap to create their own music. I even used a couple of my student's tracks as audio for this project.

Anyways...good luck to everyone else. I'll still be playing your games!

The game was just a prototype and some 3D testing. We had some fun but we only had one day to do stuff. Even though we had lots of progress!

https://kogyblack.itch.io/ludum-dare-38-prototype

Controls: Arrows to move, C to destroy trees, Z to begin planting tree, Z again to plant and Space to jump

I can't sleep anymore. Come check the game out here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/restless

It's at the very last day that I finally knew what I was going to do with the theme.

Uptil then I had no real good idea for the gameplay, and I was just making a part of the map and characters without having much of a clue what it would be for.

Thankfully I finally found some inspiration, and I had but one day to finalize it. I wish I had more time to do more thing with it, but don't we all?

All in all I'm feeling pretty good about Restless. It was nice that I finally was able to jam again after a very long hiatus.

It's a good coming back and a good test to my mastery of Unity. It's sometimes important to recall myself that I can ship a game, and I might need to redo it more often.

So, hopefully, see you next LD!

From the bottom of a den, a beast has been released.

Den is an exploration and ambiance game. You control an "half-fox-half cat-half wolf-half lemur-half many things" beast that crept out from its lair. Crawling through a network of tunnels and coming across some smaller and noisy things, it's seeking to reach the outside world.

-LINKS- - WebGL : http://kilosaur.us/8ZKWsr - PC : http://kilosaur.us/rxe299 - Android : http://kilosaur.us/71MAgm

-CONTROLS- - move : clic & drag - scream : clic - hit : long press - quit : alt f4 :)

-ABOUT-

Art, code, original soundtrack and sound effects made from scratch in Paris (in a tiny room) by
La Mécanique du plastique & Kilosaurus / http://lamecaniqueduplastique.fr - http://kilosaurus.com

We're so happy to have been through our first LDJAM ! There would have been a lot to improve, and there is a lot of things that we weren't able to add. The majority of the team coming from a different field than video games, it was an amazing experience to make this thing anyway and we're eager to have some feedbacks.

|||| |:--:|:--:| | | |

-EDIT : BUG FIXES-

• Fixed critical bug : WebGl release css drag issue blocking the character movements.
• Fixed critical bug : final room men dying/no repop.
• Fixed Major bug : two holes in the level colliders breaking the game progress
• Fixed Minor bugs : one not triggered particle system & one SFX was disabled

And thankfully submitted alright, from the looks of things. Thanks for workin' hard on the site to all involved, it can't be easy to keep up with this load on a new site.

If anyone wants to try it:

Itch.io: https://nvrskipgameday.itch.io/last-bloom

LD Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/last-bloom

Cheers all. Time for some celebratory wine. :)

ludum dare page https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$19963 gamejolt page http://gamejolt.com/games/MITOA/252087

Get the game here!

Game Page

Phew, that was closer than last time! After another 3 days of stress and sleep deprivation, we only just managed to finish. Honestly, I think this game is much better than the last one we did (LD37, our first ever game jam), despite being far too ambitious yet again.

After making a rather serious, polished game that unfortunately lacked a lot of content last time, this time we made something... a little more light-hearted:

Imperative Righteousness Planetoid Domination Plan (IRPDP) is the name of the game. It's so long that I've resorted to copy-pasting it every time I've typed it in the last few hours. It's really quite descriptive: a turn-based strategy game for 2-8 local players. Your unit's abilities and names are randomised, as is the planetoid the game takes place on. David and I went into the idea knowing it would be hard, but oh my God.

Tiles are easy...

..if you get some help (which I'm not 100% comfortable using, but sometimes it gets the job done). To generate the planet, we used an existing asset: Procedural Voronoi Planets by Cleon Mocika. I saw this posted on Reddit a while back and bookmarked it, knowing it would come in use some day. It was a really great asset to work with and made the planet generation just about seamless. With some minor modifications, we had the ability to place objects on tiles in just a few hours.

About here is where the easy stops.

Tiles are hard.

Yes heading, you are correct. Making a tile-based game is hard enough at the best of times - crazy searching algorithms and unusual code structures are hard to avoid. Those challenges are just for a flat grid... and we had randomly shaped tiles that formed a sphere, making everything much harder. I originally wrote a range searching algorithm to determine how far away a unit was from any tile, but it was so slow (literally froze the game for 3 seconds) that David rewrote it and made it work in about a full day.

Then there were other problems with irregular tiles. How do you know what tiles are next to each other? When it came to writing a boundary for unit attacks, our initial attempt ended badly:

You can sometimes still see this happening in the final game. We never managed to fully fix it. Well this serves as a nice segue into...

Bugs

There's a fair few, more so than last time. Already seen above, the outline doesn't always work. Sometimes a planet is just blank. Also this:

The capital buildings consistently spawn right next to each other as well. We were never able to fix that.

What went well

Overall, we are pretty happy with the game. It's definitely not polished, but is pretty fun and has definite potential. The random name generation is probably the part I'm the happiest with, as it gives some genuinely funny results.

David's models are also particularly great. They capture the low-poly style and the offbeat humour perfectly.

In Conclusion

This Ludum Dare definitely went better than last time. We went in with a more solid plan, and ended up with something pretty close to our original vision. We just managed to pull off the insanity of tracking a non-uniform grid in time. We would have liked to have more sounds and particles for attacks and the like, but what exists now is still very playable.

Well, that's it for now. Time to head outside and take a break (wait, what does the sun look like again?)

Andrew

Come inside your body ;3

Come play our game on: https://lapizoriental.itch.io/bodynout-100

Team members: https://www.facebook.com/andres.chinchillafernandez https://www.facebook.com/fabian.balmacedarescia https://www.facebook.com/CamiChaconR https://www.facebook.com/sebastian.brenes.9 / https://www.facebook.com/SebastianBrenesArt/

This was a really fun experience. I think I had more self-doubt in past 3 days than what I usually get in a month.

But I finally managed to somewhat "complete" my game (i.e. no missing pieces. The game won't crash and tell you "not implemented" when you push some buttons.), so I'm happy.

I guess.

Check it out! Available on Windows, Mac, and web!

<< Previous update

So tired.

But it’s done! I think it might even be properly submitted over at ldjam.com, check it out: Microspace!

Overall it was a brilliant jam, lots went well, a few things took longer than I’d liked. I celebrated turning 34 yesterday and a games jam was a great way to do it! Anyway, enough incoherence for now. Sleep beckons.

Discover the small worlds in the skies. Fly between islands and unravel the mystery of Icarus Isolation.

I wanted to submit this for the compo, but my RAM was mysteriously filled so I had to restart, update and force quit till I got it to work on the last day of the jam. So it’s a game jam game now.

This is my first entry to LD, nice to be in :)

link: *windows/mac/linux: https://yriclium.itch.io/icarusisolation LD page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/icarus-isolation

source: contact me for a zip of the unity project, I didn’t have the time to figure out how to put it online :(

Since we started we knew we scoped a little far, and that's all, we did what we can, we tried to do our best but we couldn't make it on time. At least we will release the game when finished, probably tomorrow or past. Here you have a picture:

Suddenly caught a terrible cold right before the LD. Started to code but wasn't able, so laid in the bed for the whole weekend and didn't do anything except the layout of the level. Very sad, but hope will do the next LD!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$20794

All the ports and comments and posts tomorrow. It's 5:25AM and I can't stand this site sooooo down. %-)

feed it and it will say stupid stuff

Links

• Game: https://drunkbearzz.itch.io/a-small-world-jam
• SourceCode: https://github.com/Matej69/ASmallWorld

Farmageddon Entry Page

or most of it hahaha

really fun experience and I didn't scope too large this time :|

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/a-small-word

help our hero learn to spell and meet new words while fighting ala an earth bender. \m/

note: ideally try out the windows build, the html export from unity has some framerate issues.(fluctuates)

Last minute submission... Point and click your way through this humorous tale of mystery and coincidence. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/murder-38/

If you want to spend some time searching treasures in a beetle small world: "Beetle Archaeologist"

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15683

Extraction is a point & click game set in a virtual reality. You must find "the cube" and get out.

Game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/extraction

I've recorded a timelapse of development, and I'm starting to make a video out of it. It'll probably be going up tomorrow, so stay tuned for that! :grin:

L00k at my beautiful video gam with so much polish and love and care /s

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/mr-pepper-collects-gmos

I have done it! My first LD experience was much, MUCH more than what I expected. Last 3 hours was one of most intense moments of my life. And I created amazing game - exceeded my pre-LD expectations by far despite really missing few extra hours for finishing touches. Check it out - https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15400

uP-8 is game where you write real assembly to control a rover! It even comes with a 20 page reference manual!

Game Page

I almost didn't do anything this time, after just thinking some ideas at the start I ended up not doing anything for over a day and when I once again remembered LD exists and was like I guess I didn't do anything this time but then I saw that there was 18 hours left and thought that it might be just enough time to do something relatively simple and so I did!

I was kind of inspired by the way gases work in Oxygen Not Included when I made the system for how the mana moves around the locations but didn't really figure out a way to make anything that interesting with it.

I'm so tired ... and so happy! Due to unforeseen circumstances I haven't been able to use 72h but it is finally finished. I hope you enjoy it.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/limited-space

Hey our little wittle game is complete! Come check it out. It should be easy to swallow (cough).

Game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$17423

The world in a plate. Make your civilization grow. Accomplish missions. Win!

The SeaDads have once again banded together to bring you a delightful tale of a lost girl, a terrifying witch and a foul-mouthed badger named Colin!

Download

You tilt the globe to move the character and what started out as attempting to do a sort of physics puzzler ended up as more of an adventure game. It was quite a challenging shift in direction to navigate but I think we managed fairly well!

As always it was a lot of fun to make and we love taking part in LD! Looking forward to playing everyones games and voting soon!

We didn't manage to get everything done in time, but the team decided we were going to continue working on it and post it up elsewhere, this is easily the best project I have personally ever worked on, the other folks agreed with me that the Artist Mizh was the real MVP here. Her artwork really stepped the project up for us.

Give it a play and let me know what you think!

Windows EXE https://miotis.itch.io/slot-racer

We finished our game in time! It was really hard to submit it because of the overload of the site, but everything went well! @PoV I’d like to thank you for all your effort to keep the site online!

Try our game, it's really fun to play! CLICK HERE

Cheers all. Time for some celebrate! Thank y'all :)

Dungeon in a bottle is live! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$16972

Well I did a thing, not a great thing but a thing I did :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$27853

Well for giggles I decided to make a small MMO style game for Ludum.

After 72 hours it is buggy as hell, but it kinda works!

Look forward to you guys commin in and sayin hi!

https://ilseroth.itch.io/cardboard-cats-online

We made it in time and, now that I've had a minute to breathe, we're ready to share! Say hello to your friendly neighborhood Taco Giant.

Taco Giant - Jam Page

Our little first-time team was very inexperienced with Phaser.js before this weekend, but I think we're perfectly seasoned by now. Those first few stressful hours gave way to a great rhythm. We felt that the theme wasn't very evocative, but after some debate we found a fun idea that our whole team could latch on to.

We hope you'll enjoy our game!

Just Submitted my First Ludum Dare Game "Shrinking Space"! Had a Blast can't wait for next time!!! https://itch.io/embed-upload/457535?color=333333

Cubic explorer is our entry for the #LDJam #LDJam38 !

We used a personal framework based on the Machinations and Mission/Space frameworks (by Joris Dormans), created inside Unity for my master's thesis called MaruGen!

You can check our entry here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$17333

Description

You are a space explorer. Looking into strange, cubicle worlds! Cubic Explorer is a procedural game about a Magical space dude! Travel through different cubic worlds, and full-fill different objectives!. Enemies and item will react differently, according to random parameters. Random planets, keys, mystery boxes, conditions and objectives await you!

How we made this game

One of the central ideas of this game was to use a framework I developed for my master's thesis. Right now its called it MaruGen, which means MAchinations RUleset GENerator.

I took ideas from the concepts of Micro-Machinations and Mission/Space frameworks by Joris Dormans, an created a tool that can be used to "generate" Worlds, mechanics and objectives, given a series of user defined rules and a series of packaded rulesets executed in a certain order to create procedural spaces and mechanichs.

The idea is to find a way to explore the concept of "emergence in games", mainly described by Dormans in his frameworks, and by other game designer such as Keith Burgun and Raph Koster. And in the end this is an attempt to codify those frameworks and ideas in a possibly useful tool.

I will upload the source code of this game and MaruGen soon. I may just want to rest a little before... :)

Screenshots

A Possible world space that can be generated with this system.

A Machinations diagram for the main player. This can be extended with rulesets.

We managed to keep our streak going, Star Traveller is our latest LD submission! It's a short audio/visual experience, it has some light puzzle elements but is designed to be very relaxed. It's Coming up to 4am UK time, so we're going to try and get some sleep.

You can play Star Traveller here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/star-traveller

Hey everyone! Seems like everyone's been keeping just as busy in these final hours. :)

I thought I'd be able to make it before the time limit, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen. I got a little cocky in the middle of it and spent a total of ~24 hours on art and the final 6-8 hours coding with 3 of those hours putting in tedious dialogue work (despite me usually doing 50/50 in the past). As a result, there's some bugs that, if I wasn't so tired, I would've planned around earlier. Not smart!

As much fun as this jam was, I'm sort of glad it won't be up in time. I mentioned it briefly in the previous post, but this project was sort of an emotional release for me. Lots of things have been going on lately, and I ended up making a game that's entirely against the friendly style of game that I usually make. At the very least, even by cutting the cord on this project, I got what I wanted from it.

It was also a good way to gauge how much my skills have grown thus far. I never thought I'd use a pixel art style like this, and I managed to pull it off for the most part. And while I messed up on the programming side of things, there's no doubt that I'm improving albeit slowly.

As for the GIF, well... you're looking at everything that works. Things start to break after that point. So there ya go!

Hope everyone does well on their project! If anyone has any questions/comments, either posting on here or on Twitter (@flying_meta) is fair game. Deuces. :grin:

Yeah! It’s a very, very simple game, but that's OK for me. This jam helped me gain some experience, so maybe next time I may make something more advanced :smile:

Link to my LDJam game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/tiny-been

Trek across a gridded landscape and discover its ancient secrets

LINK : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/gridtrek

Happy anniversary, Ludum Darers! :D

My friend Bruno came to visit on Saturday and ended up staying over for the duration of the jam. We hadn't seen each other in a while, so we spent the weekend catching up, sharing war stories and banana cake, playing Isaac and messing around with Construct 2.

This is the result of our encounter, a perpetual distortion machine meant as a cognitive stim-pack for cryo-sleepers and mechanical brains. It's not really interactive at the moment, more of a demo tape, but every image is unique and there is definitely potential here to develop a more fully-fledged generator of some sort.

For now just sit back, relax, and enjoy the mind-melt!

Play it here: https://keenmustdie.itch.io/cryodream

LDjam entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/cryodream-2

We released our first ever ludum dare game! Hopefully you'll enjoy it, check it out at our game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$17525

Thankfully I got in before the bonus hour (thanks LD admins) ... I almost didn't submit anything... I just had to keep trying to post ... didn't give up... Finally got the web version up and it not working correctly so I quickly build a stand alone version for windows.

I crammed a lot of work in today. There were so many bugs on Sunday and I really didn't have much of a direction. I had to give up a few things that I wanted to implement. Not looking to get amazing ratings from judging ... the prize is the product, the game.

So ... my advice ... keep trying! \m/, ROCK!

Hi, 3 hours ago I uploaded my Ludumdare entry.

ABOUT THE GAME

The game is called "Little Wild Invasion". You are a little creature living in a small planet with peace until aliens invaded your planet and attacks you.

This 3D game is basically some type of survival style game mixed with the walk planet feature from games like Mario Galaxy.

The "A small world" concept was applied in the use of a little planet and to decide the art and characters, I thinked in the insects scale and be tiny compare to plants, also we play with a small character compared to the enemies.

I made the shaders trying to acquire that artistic/anime appearence.

The characters was inspired in flowers, plants and insects.

This game was made with Unity 5.6.

ABOUT CURRENT VERSION:

v1.0 By now the current game version only have an original background music but not audio FX.

Here is my LudumDare Entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/little-wild-invasion

Download (PC): https://titangea.itch.io/little-wild-invasion

Thank you!

Made by me @blackoptics8 over 72 hours for the Jam

Click Here to go to the Submission

Check it out and stuff :D Made with Game Maker Studio

You can play this short little game about someone trying to make a game for ludum dare 38. :D

Go right here for the submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$27925

Thanks!

I didn't get as much time as I would have liked but I am proud that I was able to finish a game in the 72 hours. The graphics are not great but its a cool small island survival game.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/survival-on-smol-island

After a stressful first Jam we managed to finish in time to see the website was down. Thankfully it's back now and we're happier than ever! :smile:

Click Here to go to the Submission

I'm way too sleepy to say too much about it now, but I am very pleased with how our game turned out:

Eine Kleine InsektMusik is a music-based game about a bug trapped in a piano. Try not to get squished!

Link to LDjam game page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/eine-kleine-insektmusik

Now that the site is stable, let's try this again... I tried to make a RPG Maker game for this jam. Guess how it went.

You play as Steve, Steve, Not Steve, and Steve, and your job is to help the princess of Rudrah on her errands. Do things like kill a stalker, a child, and an entire army! It’s fun for the whole family!

Link to download: https://moonmoongames.itch.io/a-bit-of-a-little-dinghy and link to page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$24761

And after 3 days we finally managed to finish it! It's a survival game about a poor alien that's just trying to protect his planet from invaders who want to steal the power from the crystals that grow there.

We aimed for a pixel-style art since we enjoy it so much, and a lot of the inspiration for the art style came from Risk of Rain, their graphics are simply awesome, so we aimed for something similar with our own touch :D

Wasd to move

J to attack

P to pause

and the aliens only focus one crystal at a time. Good luck! We hope you guys enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it!

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/1tme29fbbuo218x/GetOffMyPlanet.rar

Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$15358

Hi all. My entry into the compo is called Lunar Limit. It's a 80s-style arcade shooter programmed for the NES.

With this game, I wanted to push the NES system further than seen before. I wanted to display as much shit as possible on the screen at once without slowdown and without flicker.

In the end I managed to accomplish this goal. Here's how:

Sprite Limitations

The NES can render up to 64 8x8 pixel sprites per frame. In Lunar Limit, about 40 of these sprites are used for the player and various effects, leaving only 24 sprites remaining for enemies and enemy bullets. In practice, this would equate to only 8 enemies and 16 enemy bullets on screen at once; not a very compelling number.

In addition to the 64 sprite limit, there's also an 8-sprite limit that applies per-scanline, where a scanline is simply a horizontal row of pixels stretching across the screen. Trying to render more than 8 sprites per-scanline is simply not possible. If you tell the NES to render more it will only display the first 8 you gave it.

The 8-sprite limit is what causes many old NES games to flicker. The flicker is caused by alternating the display order of sprites each frame such that sprites invisible one frame will become visible on the next.

Personally, I hate the look of this flicker effect, especially when seen on modern LCD displays where each frame turns into an epilepsy-inducing eye strain. Introducing flicker was out of the question for my game. An alternative had to be found.

Introducing Backgrounds

Along with sprites, the NES is also capable of rendering a full-screen of 8x8 tiles colloquially referred to as the background layer. The background layer, while fiddly to work with, is not restrictive when it comes to the amount of objects it can display.

Here's an idea: What if enemy bullets were rendered using the background layer?

This is the technique I ended up using, but it came with a whole slew of other challenges. Below, I'll explain the problems and how I solved them.

Grid Alignment

Backgrounds are made up of 8x8 tiles, and those tiles are aligned to a grid. This means that anything rendered to the background layer must be grid-aligned. Unfortunately, this results in movement which is just too jerky for rendering bullets.

The jerkiness can be reduced by shrinking the grid size, or rather, by faking a smaller grid size. Rather than rendering a bullet as a single 8x8 tile, it is possible to render it as one of four tiles representing a 4x4 tile:

In actuality, additional tiles will be needed to render multiple bullets on the same tile. The total number required is 2⁴ = 16.

You may be wondering why I stopped at 4x4. Why not use a 2x2 or even 1x1, for example? Well, the answer is memory. The NES has only enough memory to hold 256 tile graphics, and using a 2x2 grid would require 2¹⁶ tiles = 65536, which far exceeds the NES's capability. Don't even get me started on how much memory a 1x1 grid would require.

Bandwidth

A second problem with backgrounds is that they're slow to update. Like, really slow.

During each frame of an NES game, all graphical updates must occur in a tiny window of ~2200 CPU cycles called VBLANK. Of those 2200 cycles, 500 of them will be used to update sprite memory, leaving only 1700 cycles for updating the background. Now, given that it takes exactly 8 cycles to update 1 background tile, and that in total there are 960 tiles per screen, this means that updating the entire screen takes 960 * 8 = 7680 cycles, which is way more than the 1700 cycles available. Because of this, updating the whole background in a single frame is simply impossible.

Lots of games work around this by blanking the screen every time the background needs changing. Watch a playthrough of a NES game, such as Battlekid, to see what I mean. Every time the background changes the screen goes black for half a second while the memory gets updated. It's a necessity of the hardware; not a stylistic choice.

An alternative to blanking the screen is to update only part of the background each frame, such as one-fourth of it. 7680 cycles divided by 4 is 1920, which is more cycles than available, but because the amount of tiles being updated (960 / 4 = 240) is less than 256, an optimization can be made. The NES has this special region of memory called the zero page, which is the first 256 bytes of its memory. Accessing zero page memory is 1 cycle faster than accessing it elsewhere. If background data is stored in the zero page then updates will take 7 cycles per tile as opposed to 8. Calcuating again, 240*7 = 1680 cycles, which just barely fits into the 1700 cycles available.

To Be Continued

These blog posts have a character limit and so stay tuned for a second post.

Edit: Part 2

I'm in, by the way!

Our new FPP - First Person Painter game is published!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/framed

Wanna watch an old guy (well, probably older than you anyway) do some gamedev? Check out my Timelapse video of my Ludum Dare 38 entry, Contaminated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tDHsQJ1tKY

Uh, oops. UI scaled for 1024x768, changed game's resolution to 800x600. Apparently I didn't use the RectTransforms correctly because the UI broke a little. The game was still fully playable, but UI elements like High Score and text in the word "Score" were cut off.

I had lowered the resolution mid-compo because 720p displays wouldn't be able to fit a 1024x768 game.

The fix (scaling down a couple UI elements and cutting out some text) is documented in https://github.com/chronosv2/ld38/commit/87788345036c92d0be8fbdcfc7461ada1220b6bc

Play the game at https://chronosv2.itch.io/destruction-zone

As far as I'm aware that was the only thing wrong with the game, so that's a relief.

A small world in a small world in a small world in a… : hugoveille.itch.io/world-en-abyme  !

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$21230

Ever wanted to be thrown into an endless world populated by an endless amount of NPC's?

In Small World, it's either kill or be killed. Take the safe route and enjoy conversations until you get bored enough to acquire the taste for 8bit blood!

My entry into the compo is called Lunar Limit. It’s a 80s-style arcade shooter programmed for the NES. This is part 2 of a technical write-up on the game. Part 1 can be found here.

Double Buffering

Updating one-fourth of the background per frame comes with an unfortunate tearing effect where the top half of the screen is a few frames ahead of the bottom half. This is noticeable, ugly, and worth fixing.

For Lunar Limit, a double buffering strategy was used, made possible by the NES having enough memory to hold two screens worth of background data. The game alternates the background displayed every four frames, always updating the background screen not currently visible.

Not many NES games use or would benefit from double buffering. In fact, most NES games would be worse with double buffering as it adds a frame of latency. But in the right situations, double buffering is great!

Framerate

The NES outputs video at 60 frames per second, but given that it takes 4 frames to update the background, the speed of the bullets is reduced to 15 frames per second. As one may expect, 15 FPS looks awfully jerky.

An improvement can be made by taking advantages of palettes. In the NES world, a color palette consists of 4 colors. By changing a color palette, the colors of all things using the palette will change too. Changing color palettes is a very fast operation.

The previous tileset for bullets I showed used only 2 colors. If you've forgotten, here it is again:

To improve the framerate, the tileset can be modified to convey additional information using colors. Specifically, it can convey the position of bullets two frames into the future using a different color. A fourth color can be used to mark positions shared by the present and the future. That's enough colors to fully utilize the color palette.

• Color 1 = No bullet.
• Color 2 = Bullet exists now.
• Color 3 = Bullet exists 2 frames into the future.
• Color 4 = Bullet exists now and it also exists 2 frames into the future.

Applying this to the tileset results in the following:

Note that adding this extra information increases the amount of tiles needed from 16 to 256. There are lots of color combinations!

Anyway, here's how rendering works:

• On frames 1 and 2, set the color palette so that colors 2 and 4 are non-black and colors 1 and 3 are black. This displays the bullets in the present.
• On frames 3 and 4, set the color palette so that colors 3 and 4 are non-black and colors 1 and 2 are black. This displays the bullets in the future, which is actually the present now as two frames have passed since the background was updated.

This technique effectively doubles the framerate to 30 FPS, all by combining the information of 2 frames into 1.

If that explanation did not work, just think of this as being similar to anaglyph 3d.

With anaglyph 3d, the color red stores information from the left eye camera, while the color blue stores information from the right. In Lunar Limit, one color stores information from frame N, while a second color stores information from a frame N+2. Changing the palette changes the information displayed.

Collisions

That's it for the rendering! Now let's talk briefly about collision checking.

To perform collision checking, an obscure feature of the NES's graphical hardware can be used. During rendering, the NES always checks whether the first sprite in memory, "sprite 0", overlaps with the background layer. A status bit is set based on the result. This makes collision checks trivial in Lunar Limit; all that needs to be done is a check of the status bit!

It may seem at first that this feature is extremely useful and applicable to many games, but oddly enough that isn't true. Out of the NES's entire 700+ game library, I haven't heard of a single game to use this feature for its collision checks. The reason is because only a single 8x8 sprite can be checked per frame, and most games use larger characters made up of several 8x8 sprites. Also, while this feature makes it possible to detect whether a sprite overlaps with the background, it's not possible to determine what the sprite overlaps with. It's impossible to discern colliding with a cloud with colliding with a spike, for example, and that makes it useless for most games.

Interestingly, a great many of games use this feature for another use: screen splits, but I won't get into that.

Conclusion

Anyway, that's about it.

Using these techniques, it's possible to display around 100 objects on the screen without slowdown and without flicker. A bit more than the 20 to 40 most NES games cap out at.

And hey! Now when you play my game you'll have an answer to "Why are the bullets so pixilated and jittery?" The answer is because a lot of thought went into making them look that pixilated and jittery. In actuality they could look much worse! Hah.

Cheers, (and good luck!)

- Pubby

Here is some gif candy for you! :D

Check it out on: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$21139

5:28 am -> 8:00 am wake up. I think its time to go to sleep...

I finally was able to upload a acceptable version of my game, so here it is :D

https://obliviaxe.itch.io/repeat

ITS SUBMITTED!!!

Think of this as a sort of shareware demo thing.

Everything after the tutorial is locked off because I ran out of time, but its a demonstration of what the system I build is capable of.

I'm definitely going to work on this more outside of ludum dare because I had great fun making it and it'd be a waste to have spent ~60 making a system with the intent of being easily expandable, and then not using it. (Also it gives me something to tweet about)

PLAY IT HERE:

:desktop: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/retrohacker-1993 :desktop:

It was a hard jam, our 7th consecutive and the first one we use 3D graphics. Original concept was pretty ambitious so many things were cut but the core gameplay is there. Creating literally a whole world is a 7 day job not a 3 one xD.

You can find our entry here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$27300

Now finally time to rest :) (and celebrate my birthday).

ld38

Check out my game Giant Friend: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/giant-friend/

You wake up, alone, in a strange room full of puzzles that will neither challenge nor surprise you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cihFoR5J0-E

Play Now

Here it is. Our submission. What a whirlwind of events. I didn't expect us all to come through, but I'm thoroughly proud of what our team accomplished. Our first attempt at tackling procedural world generation!

Intergalactic Gold Rush is an Arcade-Action game about collecting as many gold bars as you can while avoiding monsters and falling tiles. Your magical abilities allows you to generate a new set of land mass periodically. How long can you survive before plummeting into the depths of space?

It's available on Itch.io and GameJolt, so check it out!

It was a hard jam, our 7th consecutive and the first one we use 3D graphics. Original concept was pretty ambitious so many things were cut but the core gameplay is there. Creating literally a whole world is a 7 day job not a 3 one xD.

You can find our entry here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$27300

Now finally time to rest (and celebrate my birthday).

The First Iteration

This iteration featured the barebones camera movement, and the beginnings of an editor script which allowed us to place prefabs on the planet easily via normals.

The Second

At this point we were working towards making the planet more lifelike, and really getting a handle on the scale of things. In the end we wanted to go with a "This planet is way too large for what's on it" feeling. Also pictured: Start of work on the UI.

The Third

The third iteration saw more visuals, including refactored lighting and a sun and moon. Past that we also added a nice telescope that does stuff.

The Fourth

The fourth and final iteration included adding various effects/particles to the scene(such as the space dust(... don't ask how that got there... we don't know either.), and various prop additions). Past that this iteration also saw the UI in full, including combining elements. Bonus - UI:

Hi everyone! We did it. We finished the game! This was an incredible challenging game to make for the tech team- as there were a lot of problems we encountered while developing the AI's pathing. Regardless- it's all done now and we managed to make something playable- but not perfect.

Visit the Game Here at: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/super-snowman-spider-showdown-supreme Download the Game: https://theclinthennesy.itch.io/supersnowmanspider

Spiders. They're everywhere. They're crawling around the globe!

Click to Shoot. Don't let them get near your Gingerbread!

Survive. It's not as easy as it looks. Trust us.

Guide small alien creatures as they work together to get back to their Home Planet in our game, Tiny Planet!!

https://judykim.itch.io/tiny-planet

Fire nukes to propel your planet through the solar system.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/universal-journey

deleted

Finished my first Ludum Dare (Jam) up earlier today. Very pleased with how it came out!

LD: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/minds-eye

Play In Browser: https://beenrak.itch.io/minds-eye

This was my first game jam. I'm pretty happy with my game and I can't wait until the next one.

https://itch.io/embed-upload/457855?color=222034

Statera - Achieving peace and balance through violence

The main objective of the game is to keep an ecosystem in equilibrium using GUN, LIGHTNING and METEOR.

So basically there is 3 species in the game which is the Slimes, Rabbits and the Rhinos. If one of the three species's became extinct then it's game over.

After 3 days of hard and tedious work, I have finally finished my first ever entry for Ludum Dare.

Sound effects and 3d assets are not created by me.

Ludum Dare: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$18518

Download Link: https://kripp.itch.io/statera

Youtube Links:

https://youtu.be/rD4IbNjKyy0

https://youtu.be/XnDL2OZ1Qx8

Check out our game here https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$19665

PiP is a (was planned to be a) multi-layered puzzle game where the player, PiP tries to solve layers of puzzles in hopes of escaping the small world he is entrapped in.

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• A Word From the Team

We only managed to implement about 40% of what we actually planned to make. It's quite upsetting but we think it was a valuable experience nonetheless. Diving into our first Jam we WAY overestimated ourselves and planned a game that we couldn't finish in time. We hope to do better next time. Until then, we must improve our skills...

I've missed the past few Ludum Dares and forgot how intense it is to make a game in 72 hours. To say the least, I did my best. Game play is unfinished. However, I submitted a thing! A few things that I need to do next time:

*Plan more, panic less I got some ideas going, but they were unfinished and I just started working. This drove me into a wall of WTF am I doing really quick and I just sat there wondering what to do.

*Worry about the game play first, art last I say this every time I do a jam, but never follow through. I should just get placeholders in and replace if time allows.

*Submit before submission hour I panicked when I went to submit. The site was being hammered and all I saw were the spinning loading icons of doom. Fortunately, I made it.

*Keep My Cool Everything was going O.K. for me, until about 1pm today. Then, I just slowly started to freak out. I don't even know why and would like to go back in time to smack the crap out of myself. In the end, at the end of the 72 hours, your prize is your creation, no matter what you completed and what it may become if you so choose to go forward with it.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$27851

This was my first game jam. I'm pretty happy with the result and can't wait until the next one. https://itch.io/embed-upload/457855?color=222034

Game Page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/Snake-on-a-plane

Screenshot:

Second time partipcating in Ludum Dare and I'm glad I did! Ended up making a decent game. The player is on a bouncy world where he can only move from the recoil from his gun and a backpack boost! Easier to see and play than to explain! Anyways here are some screenshots and gameplay video :smile:

Links

Ludum dare submission: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$24856

Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/SL9j4hh_SFA

Thanks for reading! :smile:

Not as finished as I would have liked, but it's definitely something.

Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/$21976 Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoNameGhost

It came down to the wire, but I finished and submitted my first ever Ludum Dare entry: Soviet Space Program.

In my game, you play as a soviet astronaut stuck in an alien world with only his wits (and of course his guns) to save him. Using the recoil created by firing guns, you can traverse between planets and fight aliens. Your goal is to find and kill all four bosses so that you are safe for rescue.

Download Soviet Space Program here:

https://lukewarmpotato.itch.io/soviet-space-program